Semiotics

My ideas on Semiotics 

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was born July 14, 1862 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. In 1876, Klimt was awarded a scholarship to the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. 

Gustav Klimt is an artist I actually like, this stemmed from my mother who has a budding collection of his work. My sister and I always argue over whose going to inherit her collection of Klimt, once she pops her clogs. Klimt's paintings are elegantly erotic; the women are always clothed in fanciful gowns to conceal their nakedness. His paintings are whimsical and pretty with flowers in the hair, stylised and extravagant hats, exotic people and animals; canvases covered in spirals and curves, whirlpools and bright shapes. There is just so much detail in his paintings, that one must admire his skill with a paint brush. 'The Kiss', is one of Klimt's most famous of pieces, and also one of my favourites. The painting is of a couple embracing in an intimate lock. It pulls at my heartstrings to see a tender moment depicted like this. In my opinion this is called art. Not splattered paint on canvases, like Pollock which anybody could recreate.  

 The Kiss 1907-1908 

References:http://www.gustav-klimt.com/ (Accessed: 15 March 2012) 

Hottentot Vensus Women

The sad story of Saartjie Baartman, whose life has influenced black artists. She was a Khoikhoi woman who was persuaded by an English doctor, William Dunlop to travel to England where she would make a  fortune, instead she was paraded around England as a sexual freak, for the public to gawk at,  " the stage two feet high, along which she was led by her keeper and exhibited like a wild beast, being obliged to walk, stand or sit as he ordered". She was then taken to Paris in 1814 where she continued to be exhibited and humiliated, she became a subject of medical and scientific research where they named her genital condition the ‘Hottentot apron’. The saddest part of Baartman’s life is that she died alone in 1816, the muse de l’homme in Paris took a death-cast of her body, removing her skeleton but pickled her brain and genitals in a jar; even after death she was subjected to public scrutiny and humiliation. 

However artists such as Lyle Ashton and Renee Valerie Cox recreated the image of the “Hottentot Venus 2000”. In my opinion Harris and Cox are  identifying themselves with their African culture and understanding the meaning of being an African women in the 21st century.  Harris discusses  the meaning of the image and what it depicts “reclaiming of the image of the Hottentot Venus is a way of exploring my own psychical identification with the image at the level of spectacle. I am playing with what it means to be an African diasporic artist producing and selling work in a culture that is by and large narcissistically mired in the debasement and objectification of blackness.  And yet, I see my work less as a didactic critique and more as an interrogation of the ambivalence around the body.” Inevitably  the artist wants the viewer to scruntinize her body and   ignorantly   stereotype her as a black women who is provocatively dressed, instead of  seeing it as a political statement to people who prejudice against African culture and sexuality. Her pose displays strength and power that instantly grabbed my attention, admiring her courage which  shines a mirror on our prejudices and ignorance as a society .

References: http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/saartjie.htm (Accessed: 24 February 2012)

http://confederatearticles.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/article%C2%B7of%C2%B7inspiration-renee-cox/ (Accessed: 24 February 2012)

Cindy Sherman

Sherman (American, born 1954) is an intriguing photographer, who masquerades as a myriad of characters and personas that expose the stereotyping of modern women in society. She really is a multi-tasker; to create her images she plays the role of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser and stylist. Though the images are of her; she transforms herself completely to the point of being unrecognisable. Whether portraying a career girl or a fussy housewife, she always plays a role, but never depicts Cindy Sherman the person. She depersonalises the images, which is interesting for a viewer to see. I've really become a fan of Sherman,because she's a fashion icon who has her own creative style, where as people like Lady Gaga copy it. And designers like Balenciaga gave her the honour to showcase a series of six self-portraits, in which she wears Balenciaga, that feature quotes from interviews and reviews of Sherman.

References: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/fashions-night-out-in-pictures/
(Accessed: 10 April 2012)
http://www.cindysherman.com/ (Accessed: 10 April 2012)

Sonia Boyce

Boyce is a black British artist born in London 1962. Boyce studied art at the East Ham College and Stourbridge College of art until 1983. Boyce is a unique artist who has a finger in every pie; her medium includes photography, installation, text, drawing and also painting. Her work questions racial stereotypes in the media. In her early days as an artist she used chalk and pastels drawing  her friends and family, often including wallpaper patterns and bright colours which she associated with the Caribbean, and connected with her own background. Through this she examined her own position as a black female living in Britan (e.g. Lay Back, Keep Quiet and Think of What Made Britain so Great, charcoal, pastel and watercolour on paper, 4 parts, 15.25×6.50 m each, 1986; AC Eng) 

From Tarzan to Rambo: English born 'Native' considers her relationship to the constructed/self image and her roots in reconstruction 1987






References :Sonia Boyce (exh. cat., intro P. Ntuli; London, Air Gal., 1987) [texts by Boyce]
The Impossible Self (exh. cat. by B. Ferguson, S. Nairne, S. Boyce and others, Winnipeg, A.G., 1988)http://www.iniva.org/library/archive/people/b/boyce_sonia (no date)
(Accessed:25 April 2012)
http://www.artfortune.com/sonia-boyce/artist-129487/ (no date)
(Accessed:25 April 2012

Damien Hirst Con-man or Genius?

Damien Hirst is a peculiar man obsessed with preserving dead bodies of animals. I honestly don't know how this man is one of the richest living artists. He's had dead sharks and sheep put into a tank of formaldehyde, an assistant to paint coloured dots on canvases and a room full of medicine boxes displayed on shelves. Hirst is a lazy con artist, who has other people to do his work, in his own words "I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it" so what does he actually do apart from thinking up ideas. I'm not a fan of conceptual art; consciously placing inanimate objects around is not a form art.  Hirst hasn't actually taken the time to create something, as an audience we appreciate the artists work because we know we couldn't make it ourselves with Hirst that’s not the case. Looking at a dead shark in a tank is interesting but it doesn't evoke any emotions, and to be honest what’s the purpose of this shark, how does it represent his views and emotions? Instead you have pretentious art critics blowing smoke up his ass ranting and raving how Hirsts shark addresses 'the big issues of life and death'. How has Hirst inherited the status as a great artist of our time? An, accolade that was once occupied by actual greats such as Lucien Freud, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.Anyhow enough with my rant, Hirst will be exhibiting his so called artwork at the Tate modern in London.The art they exhibit is supposed to be the best in the world, so be prepared to see skilfully painted dots and perfectly stacked medicine boxes. in Hirst's mind these objects represent death; but in my opinion they are just ready made objects placed in a room. 

  

                                            

The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living
This shark made Hirst a rich man, he didn't even have the audacity to catch it himself . 

References: Julian Spalding (2012) 'Con art the genius Damien Hirst', 31 March 2012. Daily Mail online. Available at:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123346/Con-art-The-genius-Damien-Hirst.  (Accessed:1 April 2012). 


Hirst, Damien and Burn, Gordon (2001). 'On the Way to Work'. Publisher: Faber and Faber (November 5, 2001)

Banksy in a Burka

The Burka-clad women, female graffiti artist Shamsia Hassani, spray painted in Kabul mean she risks being arrested or even worse executed. Yet she's determined to highlight the oppression felt by women in the war-torn Afghanistan through her art. Her activism to highlight women's rights comes as Afghan Clerics announce repressive new rules that state women are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education and at all times have a male guardian when they travel, it seems we have not made Afghanistan a better place as it reverts back towards Taliban policies and we plan to leave. "I wanted to do something about women's rights," says Shamsia, 24, an associate professor of fine arts at Kabul University. "I felt like no one was doing them justice. I wanted to mix modern style of my painting with their past life to show what kind of life women have in this age." 

One of her most celebrated murals shows a woman in a Burka sitting on a concrete step with her head bowed. 'She's wondering if she can get up, or if she will fall down.' 

Hassani now faces being arrested for working with a male colleague, as well as it being illegal to graffiti on public buildings, it's especially dangerous walking around the street sharing her art and with it her political message. "In three decades of war, women have had to carry the greatest burdens on their shoulders . Women in Afghanistan need to be careful with every step they take." Women like Shamsia Hassani are the artists we should be looking up to, not the nut jobs like Tracey Amin who take back charitable work she donates. Her work is the kind that inspires as well as grabs headlines across the world in a time when most papers and news outlets are downsizing their foreign news departments. Reminding us that while we'd prefer more reality shows than another episode of Panorama, such ignorance and disinterest in the world around us makes for a fertile environment in which atrocities tend to occur. Shamsia Hassani not only highlight's women's rights in Afghanistan but reminds me of all the other women currently struggling across the globe for recognition. These spray paintings are not just symbolising oppressed Muslim Burka-clad women but representative of the many women's movements such as the denunciation of female genital mutilation in Africa, campaigners advocating rights for divorced and unwed mothers in India, stopping forced marriages in Iran.