Fame as a Conceptual Framework

 

People will go to the extreme to make people notice them. Fame is when you are known by many people and are significant or distinguished for a certain thing or talent. Images influence and enhance peoples fame but forever being on print and being forever remembered. They can reduplicate images causing them to be famous on their own. 

I believe anyone can be famous if they get the opportunity. I do believe that some people are too obsessed with people who are famous as well as becoming famous. Some people will do the extreme to be famous.I believe that people are obsessed with celebrities because they live the life that they wish they could live. People are jealous with how celebrities are comfortable with themselves (or seem like they are) and how they can live there life in public. Not a whole lot of people are comfortable being in front of the spot light. 

Yes celebrities do die. Their bodies are mortal just like everyone else’s. However, their image, music, art work, or whatever they became famous for last forever with the idea of people preserving it. When these certain people die they are still considered famous. 

I do not personally know the drawbacks of being famous but I would figure that living your life in public would not entirely be healthy. Constantly having to worry what they do and dress like in public. Constantly having people make rumors up about you or spreading them. Constantly trying to stay on top and continue to be famous. 

Celebrities fans make them famous. You have to have followers whether its for the good or bad to continue to be famous. Celebrities cast their starting image. I believe that their fans alter their  image to be who they want them to be. For example, as far as Disney channel stars go, they change their image after they are through with teenie-bopper shows. They have to grow up and it is up to their fans whether they want to continue liking and following them through their journey of fame.

 

The work of arts such as Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe show that depending how famous you are, you may never be forgotten.

Art as a Conceptual Framework of Religion

When an artist creates their own piece of art work, they have their own opinion and idea of what the art work is meant to say.Of course, as viewers we have our own idea of what the piece of art work is saying to us; however, that may not be how the artists wanted his viewers to view the piece. We can judge a certain religious work of art as controversial until we know more in depth about the work of art and what the artist wanted to express through it. For example, one of my classmates took a picture of a women dressed as a priest, putting lipstick on. I at first took this offensive as with the scandal of the priest and the alter boy. Once she told us more about the photograph, she was trying to get the point across that women do not have the option of being priests.  

I do believe that many people do just follow the crowd before they create their own opinion on  art work, especially when it comes to religious art work. For example when it comes to Ofili and Wiley religious art work. Ofili used elephant dung on a panting of the Virgin Mary, and many people took offense to this. They did not know that in African traditions, dung is used to make religious and artistic art work.  Same goes for Wiley and his religious painting of African Americans, posed as saints but dressed in street clothes. He is trying to express that your clothes can come off, but what is inside you can not. Clothes should not be the deciding factor of why you are judged. 

An insulting image can be affirmative to someone else. For instance, the picture I took of Planned Parenthood and a rosary could seem affirmative to a Catholic who is against abortion, but could seem controversial to someone who does not believe the same beliefs as a Catholic and is not against abortion. It all depends on your certain beliefs.

To create a neutral image you have to make sure that it is not being favored to anyone religion. I believe that it was just as easy to take a neutral picture as it was to take an affirmative one.

 

The reason I chose to take a picture of a pair of doors is because it can represent freedom. You have the choice whether or not you want to enter those doors, for whatever religion or tactility lies behind those doors. You have the option to decide what lies behind each and every door that is in front of you in your life. You lead your own path in life.

 

Kara Walker silhouettes

Wiley vs saints and kings

Kara Walker

Kehinde Wiley

Race with Wiley & Walker

     

Power is the ability to do or act with the sense of accomplishing something. Often, Europeans would portray those who had power with a significant pose and royal clothing. People would look up to these individuals, for they had power. However, in the 18^th century there were no American Americans that were painting with such power, for they had no such thing.

 

 

Kehinde Wiley certainly shows a sense of power in his portraits. He uses 18^th century designs in the background, poses his prospects as if they were high royalty from the 18^th century but display’s them in their everyday street clothes.

 

Wiley’s insightful art was painted with his training of a European way but with his views of being an African American himself. He would pose his models by mimicking one of the church’s saints, but he would not paint them as a saint, as not changing their 20^th century clothing. Why did Wiley do this? Well, he is restoring power to those who never received power in the past nor recoded as saintly figures.

   

 

We are often judged by what we wear. Our clothes come off, so why are people judging something that is temporarily there? Our clothes do not determine who we are. Clothes do not make a person. African American’s are greatly judged by their clothing of hip-hop or their “street clothes.”

 

Wiley portrays in his framework that these young men should be shown as equal to these royalties from the 18^th century. Also, just because they have baggy clothing, that we often discriminate, does not mean that they are a bad person. Clothes do not determine how saintly you are. If you can pose as these 18^th century individuals, why can you not pass as them?

 

Kara Walker was another artist who was known for her silhouettes that would have themes of power, oppression, race, gender, and history of slavery. “Most pieces have to do with exchanges of power, attempts to steal power away from others.” —Kara Walker In her silhouettes there is a struggle of many different forms of power, emotional, historical, gender, physical and many more.

 

 

Both of these 20^th century artists have made shifts in power by trying to restore and express the lack of power that African Americans and other races have had over time. It is not about the entire country whether it has progressed as a “post-racial” society, but more based on each individual. The way you were raised or own personal experiences determines your thoughts on racial views. Wiley and Walker have expressed their ideas and their views and try to show equal between races, gender, centuries, and restore that power that was taken away during brutal and harsh times of slavery. 

Marcel Duchamp and Readymades

The idea of ready-mades is to take a normal factory-made object and make minor changes to it. For Duchamp, if you changed an object simply and gave it a titled, it became art. He often would say that his art was of the mind and of the hand. The viewer could take the idea of his ready-mades and interpret them the way they wanted, in a way being able for themselves to become the artist.  Duchamp’s ready-mades were unconventional. Most people were not use to this type of art and made people think more deeply into the art and find the mystifying meaning. Duchamp wanted his viewers and critics to think more about what the meaning behind the art was, instead of the actual object that was being portrayed as art.

 

Creating my own ready-made was interesting. We were to create an original work of art that was inspired by Duchamp and how he made his ready-mades, and how he titled them. My “Tangled Colors” ready-made came to mind, when I saw my roommate playing with a paperclip and twisting it in different directions. I was just going to use one paperclip for the project but then I found multi-colored paperclips and knew that the colors would look good together. I linked the paperclips together and began to contort and mangle the clips. I used many tools in doing so; my own hands, scissor, and a hammer.

 

I at first did not think Duchamp’s ready-mades should be considered art, but once I made my own, I understood why he wanted his viewers to use their own perspective to define the meaning of the object. Even though ready-mades do not take a whole lot of talent and effort they do have a meaning. The meaning could be a mockery, a tribute, expressing a new idea, anything really. Every piece of art has a meaning and a story, whether it is the Mona Lisa or Duchamp’s ready-made titled Fountain. Art is constantly changing while going through new decades and generations. Just because some artist do not make as prestigious pieces, such as Picasso’s, they are still beautiful and show expression in their own manner. Art should be understood and interpreted mostly with our mind instead of our hand: In doing so the art work becomes our own expression. We can change the meaning of the art by taking what WE think the art work should mean, instead of someone just bluntly stating his thoughts and meanings of what HE thinks the art should say. I think this is what art is supposed to be, making our own expressions and taking different meanings and thoughts in each of our own ways.

tangled colors

Introduction

Hello all! My full name is Danya Danae Tychonievich. I am originally from a small town in Ohio, called East Liverpool. My family and I moved to South Bend, Indiana when my dad got a job offer at Baker & Daniels law firm. I am truly thankful for my dad’s job opportunity. I was excited to finally get out of the small, run down, depressing town. My dad decided to take the job since he was a graduate of Notre Dame and wanted to be close to the campus since he, and everyone else in the family, is a die heart Notre Dame fan. When we moved here, my sisters and I attended St. Matthews’s grade school and then went on to go to Marian High School. I decided to go to Holy Cross and stay close to home for a couple of reasons. I am not quite ready to live in my dream location, which is South Carolina, and I wanted to be able to go to Notre Dame Games. While I am here at Holy Cross, I am studying Business and Graphic Design and hoping to double major in both and obtain a minor in Spanish. My dreams for my majors are to own my own franchise of either a restaurant or a small boutique. I also wanted to do Graphic Design so I am qualified to do my own advertisement, in which this is what brought me about to enroll in the course of Visual Literacy.

In my own words I think Visual Literacy is the ability to be able to decipher the understanding of what a piece of art is trying to express. In other words, to be able to actually “read” the work of art. I hope to obtain skills in how to read between the lines and what the artist is trying to say behind the image. I hope to be able to do this with my goal of producing my own advertisement.

I am a little nervous about blogging since I have never personally blogged nor have ever read someone else’s before. I am not quite sure what blogging is all about, and am the type of person who likes to know what I am doing before I start a project, rather than learn as I go. I am interested yet excited of how I will respond to blogging and how I am supposed to express myself on a web page that can be seen by everyone.