Bow Tie Guy of the Day: Pop Art

Pop Art (päp ärt)

This is part of my Fine Art Series or the History of Art through Bow Ties.

Pop Art was a movement started in the 1950's. They brought mundane cultural objects to the level of art. This particular piece is indicative of Roy Lictenstein's work where he would appropriate a panel from a comic book blow it up and re-crop it.

This is an image of Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt from DC comics. I re-drew it, cropped it differently and changed the word balloon. This was to mimic Lictenstein's style.

Bow Tie Guy of the Day: De Stijl

De Stijl (də ˈstīl)

For each of my syllabi I have a different Bow Tie Guy that in most cases has something to do with the course. This one is found on my Survey of Western Art II course. I love Mondrian's work for it's simplicity and beauty. Although this is not a complete abstraction of form it is strongly influenced by Se Stijl. This is the beginning of my The Fine Art of Bow Ties series.

Founded in 1917, the De Stijl advocated pure abstraction through a reduction of form (vertical and horizontal lines and rectangles) and color (red, yellow and blue) to the essentials or most basic. They wanted to elevated the everyday object to the level of art. Mondrian, one of the founders taught at the Bahaus School and helped apply these thoughts to graphic and industrial design. 

Mark Tansey (1949–)

This last Friday, while visiting the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with students, I was reminded of my love for the work of Mark Tansey. In a college art program that frowned upon narrative art, I found an artist that not only told a story, but one that told the story with humor and intelligence. 

Tansey has said “In the late 1970s, what was particularly attractive about pictorial representation was that one faced an opening and extending realm of content rather than dematerialization, endgames, and prolonged swan songs. Difficulties lay in the long established and increasingly critical isolation of subject matter from art practice. Critical discourse and art education had restricted the notion of content to two pockets coalescing around formal and conceptual poles. To speak about subject matter in a picture simply was not done.

My feeling was that there was no longer any justification for these restrictions. Pictures should be able to function across the fullest range of content. The conceptual should be able to mingle with the formal and subject matter should enjoy intimate relations with both.” 

Enunciation

Currently on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Enunciation is a double portrait of Duchamp. He is sitting in the foreground and is in the other train as Rrose Sélavy, a pseudonym he created in a series of photographs taken by Man Ray. This is an impossible encounter.

Action Painting II

This, in my mind, is a wonderful example of what others think of artists and how easy it is to paint. In under 8 seconds everyone was able to paint a perfect picture of the shuttle launch. Notice the young girl in the bottom left. Again he is playing with reality. This is an impossibility. One in which I find great delight and humor. Tansey played with reality and realism. He paints art jokes with brilliance and I am grateful for his contribution to art and his influence in my art as well.