Movies

Movie Discussions


Movie 1: Cindy Sherman

When it comes to Cindy Sherman, many things come to mind about different aspects of what could be considered her "brilliance". I for one, am thoroughly in love with this artist and can relate to her on many levels with my own thoughts, ideas, and artistic muses. First, she describes a camera as a "tool" rather than a primary focus of her artwork, she says that it is not the camera doing the work, it's still the artist's work just the camera helps capture the artwork in much less time than if she were to paint it. I love that in her self portraits especially, she was always dressing up as other women and turning her head to new angles just to see how many women she could really be and not sticking to one specific stigma of women. She portrayed all types of women in all different types of clothing, emotions, and underlying scenarios. She also stood up for women who were victims to sexual offenses whether emotional, physical, or plain just being objectified and made the men who looked at her work expecting to see sensual women feel bad for objectifying the women with her centerfold project. Despite all the criticism of her work throughout the years no matter how "disturbing" or "weird" it was, she was always more interested in the crazy theories that others could come up with rather than making them up herself, and left the underlying meaning of her images up to the viewer for interpretation. Over all I think that Cindy Sherman is a great role model for not only myself, but also for all young women of art, in a way that she signifies not caring what the others think and just making art that you love no matter how "weird" it may be.


Movie 2: Georges Rousse

Georges Rousse is such an inspirational and unique artist with how he incorporates the two things he loves, painting and photography, into one. The way that he can turn 3-Dimensional Space into 2-D and also paint on that 3D surface to make a structure stand out as if it is 3D in a 2D image is just fascinating. With his use of circular forms he creates a sort of freedom with discontinuous space and uses techniques that apply the nature of light as well. I can't image how expensive all that paint must be to paint those buildings, especially when he paints the entirety of an entire room. I also admire that he uses old abandoned buildings as his medium because in reality, people can only ever see that work again by his images because it no longer exists.
All and all I am in awe of this artist and how creative his mind is to have invented such a unique application of photography with his artwork.

Movie 3: Vic Muniz

Vic Muniz is such an inspiring artist who not only creates massive works of art using every day or unordinary objects, but he also turns them into photography and often donates his proceeds of the artwork to a worthy cause or the cause of the art piece itself. I was very moved by his project featured in the documentary about the trash collectors in Rio and how he used the money from the proceeds after creating this art to help a business in that low income area really thrive to help the city move to recycling instead of trash. The locals all had amazing and moving stories and he really used their stories incorporating them into his work of them, and it just tells such a vivid story it is electrifying.
Even better to add to the story, Rio is where he was from, which is another part of a story of homecoming and helping those in need back from where you used to live by using your success. All in all, a wonderful man and a fantastic artist.

Movie 4: Jeff Wall

The artist Jeff Wall began as a painter, and then soon transitioned to photography. His goal was to make photographs that could be large in size and be able to be hung on a wall just like a large painting would and people to have them in their homes. His works can vary from completely obviously artificial, which was the intent, and then almost completely truthful such as a landscape. He also had a great taste for cinematic photography. Mr. Wall collaborated with performers rather than models so that in his images, when something looks like it's happening, it's really the results of a performance which I think is what made them so unique. He saw photo's for all that they were including what they showed, and what they excluded. It was this excluded space that he was really fascinated with and loved to harness the excluded space in his photo's in some way whether it be a woman looking out into the empty space, or lines in photos where he had to take the shot in two negatives and piece them together. Over all this man shows an interesting perspective on contemporary photographic phenomenons through all of his work on showing even the slightest hidden details.

Movie 5: Becher

In this video, we were shown a collaborative couple of deadpan style artists and their main project that was photographing old industrial structures. They took photographs of different industrial structures, but they were all the same structure per piece, and then put the photographs into a grid type format all next to each other so that you are basically forced to compare them and group them together. They chose industrial structures because they were structures that were doomed to disappear and they wanted to take this unmovable, but doomed, structures and make them movable, just carry them off. I enjoyed that they tried not to tamper with the photograph too much by timing when they took their photographs to the perfect day and they were all taken on the same type of day so that there was not much difference between the photo's and you could really just focus on the structures rather than the outside surroundings and environment. Even though I am not a huge fan of deadpan style, I admire the work that these artists went to, to try and create the most "pure" form of photography as they could get for their subject matter.

Movie 6: A Remix Manifesto

In this video, it covers the concept of the art of remixing. Remixing music mainly, it talks about the pros and cons of remix and addresses the pending issues of copyright infringement and if remixing is really able to call itself art. I found it interesting how they piece together new music based on bits and pieces from other songs that have already been made and make a completely new song, and it is interesting whether or not it really can be called a new song because it is all from songs that already exist. Personally, I can see both sides of the argument when it comes to copyright infringement lawsuits and whether or not they should really bother with it for this out coming new music. On one hand, it was the original artists creation, they don't want other people to steal what they put so much hard work into making, but on the other hand, if the song that was remixed from your original creation becomes popular, your original song also becomes popular because people want to know where it came from in the remix. When it comes to remixes, I am personally neutral on whether or not it is right or wrong. From an artists standpoint, I can see how it would be right in the fact that many things with art and music have already been done it is very hard to come up with something completely original in this day and age, but also if I did come up with something original, I'm not sure how I would feel if someone just took it and changed it a little and called it completely their own.