Artwork case Study

Review and research of an artwork from QAG / GOMA, that made between 1950 & the present.

Artwork Title: With Winds (1990)

Artist: Lee U-Fan (pronounced Lee Yuu – hwarn)

Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 227.5 x 182cm 

• Elements of design:

The artwork using minimal, free and dynamic brushstrokes on a large scale (227.5 x 182 cm) canvas; by leaving most part of the canvas blank, to create a sense of space - as he calls "the living composition of the empty spaces."

• Subject matter:

What you see in this image is less important than what you don’t see. 

The series of marks painted by the artist are designed to create a sense of space or emptiness. The artist refers to this as yohaku or ‘the art of emptiness’. It is an emptiness that

attempts to provoke your imagination into creating your own image and, in turn,
your own reality. The viewer’s imagination is encouraged to decide what happens in this space and to transform the ‘emptiness’ into something with meaning.

Lee U-fan’s painted marks and gestures act as a guide towards understanding how your inner self (your mind) creates its own reality through an encounter with the outer world.

• The presentation and display:

A large scale canvas hang on the gallery wall.

Lee says:  “This is a very complicated issue. If you look at the paintings closely, you can see that they are not something I painted with the wall in mind. Although they are meant to be hung on a wall, they convey the relationship they have with the floor and with the space. But if you look at that iron plate leaning against the wall, it doesn’t matter whether it is flat on the floor or stands upright, because the work is simply about making one aware of the space.”

• Genre:

Mono-ha, literally "School of things"

http://www.kamakura-g.com/KG-html/monoha-page/e-monoha-what.htm

(As refer to Korean Minimalism)

• The Code:

Traditional Chinese calligraphy; calligraphy views the act of painting as a form of contemplation or meditation.

The Zen philosophy or esoteric buddhism. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingon_Buddhism

• Contemporary ideas and events that may have influenced the creation of the work:

An exhibition called “Tricks and Vision – Stolen Eyes,” held at Tokyo Gallery and Muramatsu Gallery in 1968. Organized by emerging critics Junzo Ishiko and Yusuke Nakahara, its display of 19 artists who used “tricky” visual effects in their work (“tricky” being a Japanese adaptation of the English to refer to trompe l’oeil optical illusions) encouraged Lee to consider how art could question the uncertainty of one’s perception of reality.

Abstract expressionism in mid-century America was influenced by the Buddhist teachings of Zen. In keeping with Zen Philosophy, expressionism valued the process of making, the non-material world and the importance of absence and spaces between solid objects.

Japanese contemporary art during the mid-1960s, happenings of the Gutai group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutai_group

 

Artist's biography and cultural background:

Lee U-fan was born in Seoul in 1936 and has lived in Japan since 1956. He is a

painter and sculptor.  During his university years, when he read literary giants such as Tanizaki and Mishima, forced him to relinquish his literary ambitions and turn to art criticism.

Lee hasd experiment with abstraction: works from this period included canvases marked with oil paint applied directly from the tube—an attempt to render visible the gradual absorption of the paint into the fabric.

At the end of the 1960s, Lee’s questioning of visual perception gradually began to encompass a broader concern with the interrelationships of space and matter.

Inspired by topology—a branch of mathematics that studies the structure of space—the simple displacement of soil in Phase---the material universe is finite and no humans can add or subtract from it.
Lee’s conception of space is related to yohaku, the unpainted spaces in classical Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting. Often translated as “margin”—as it was in the title of Lee’s retrospective at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2005, Yohaku no Geijutsu (Art of Margins)—the characters in yohaku signify “remainder” and “white,” implying a void. 

The artist’s philosophical perspective led to him becoming

a founding member of the important Mono-ha movement. 

The movement was formed in response to what was perceived as rampant consumerism emerging in Japan as it rapidly modernised after World War Two.

Mono-ha manifests Lee U-fan’s interest in developing a practice that deliberately

rejects this consumer-based materialism.

• The influence of internationalism. ( globalisation/ multi-culturalism, etc) and / or the legacy of colonialism in the work.

Globalisation: Lee works towards establishing a connection with the western philosophy and the Asian tradition. 

• Precedents for the artwork produced by other artists.

Joseph Beuys (German) 1931- 1986
Frau/Tierschädel (Woman/Animal Skull) 1956—1957
http://artnews.org/gallery.php?i=569&exi=14271
Yves Klein (French) 1928-1962
Anthropometry: Princess Helena 1960
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3137&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1
Jackson Pollock (American) 1921- 1956
Number  7, 1951
http://www.abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_grnfthrs_fldr/g007_pollock_no7,1951.html

• How electronic and information technologies have impacted on the presentation and/or creation of the artwork.

The electronic and information technologies have reduced the visual impact -- the sense of space, that the artwork had created, due to the size of the electronic displays (screens) are usually lot smaller compare to the actual painting.

• Consider the differing audiences and venues the artwork has had.

The artwork displayed in a western gallery, had fulfilled  the purpose of challenging the western ideology, the consumer-based materialism.

Source from:
Art Asia Pacific magazine interview:

http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/62/IllusionsAndInterrelationshipsLeeUfan

GOMA APT 2002:
http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Lee_Ufan

Arts News & Media Australia

Australia Council for Arts
http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news

ARTERY
Australia Council’s for news and information about artists, events, projects and trends that shape the Australian arts landscape.
http://artery.australiacouncil.gov.au/

ARTS YARN UP

The Australia Council for the Arts' Indigenous arts magazine.
http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/arts_yarn_up_magazine

Arts Hub.com.au
Jobs,News, Reviews & Features In the Arts
http://www.artshub.com.au/au/arts-news/

ABC arts http://www.abc.net.au/arts/
   -Artscape  ( An half-hour arts programs.)
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/tv_radio/artscape/

Das Superpaper  (Magazine)
emerging and contemporary art in Australia
Das Platforms.com
http://www.dasplatforms.com/

Brisbane & Southern Queensland Arts Guide (Seasonal)
http://www.artsguide.com.au

Art lines by QAG  (Quarterly) $18

Art & Australia  (Quarterly) $22

Artlink (Quarterly) $14

Art Monthly Australia (Monthly) $ 9.95

Precis - Allegory of the cave, Plato

Allegory of the cave, Plato

In the allegory of the cave, Plato asks us to imagine the following scenario: A group of prisoners have lived in a cave since birth. These people are bound in such a way that they can only look straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind the fire is a partial wall. On top of the wall are various statues, which are manipulated by another group of people, laying out of sight. Because of the fire, the statues cast shadows on the wall that the prisoners are facing. The prisoners believe that these shadows are the most real things in the world. 

the way we perceive things around us and the way we lead our lives, is actually not the "truth". We human beings are leading ignorant, lives, following the paths, rules, norms, ethics, set by the previous generations without questioning them.

Now he asks us to imagine that one of these prisoners is freed from his bonds, and is able to look at the fire and at the statues themselves. He eventually realises that all these things are more real than the shadows he has always believed to be the most real things; he grasps how the fire and the statues together caused the shadows, which are copies of the real things. Next this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above.He finally look at the real objects—real trees, flowers, houses, and other physical objects. He sees that these are even more real than the statues were, and that those objects were only the copies of these.

Finally, he lifts his sights toward the heavens and looks at the sun. He understands that the sun is the cause of everything he sees around him—of the light, of his capacity for sight. 

The stages the prisoner passes through in the allegory of the cave correspond to the various levels on the line. The line, first of all, is broken into two equal halves: the visible realm (which we can grasp with our senses) and the intelligible realm (which we can only grasp with the mind). When the prisoner is in the cave he is in the visible realm. When he ascends into the daylight, he enters the intelligible.

The lowest rung on the cognitive line is imagination. In the cave, this is represented as the prisoner whose feet and head are bound, so that he can only see shadows. What he takes to be the most real things are not real at all; they are shadows, mere images. These shadows are meant to represent images from art. A man who is stuck in the imagination stage of development takes his truths from epic poetry and theatre, or other fictions. He derives his conception of himself and his world from these art forms rather than from looking at the real world.

When the prisoner frees himself and looks at the statues he reaches the next stage in the line: belief. The statues are meant to correspond to the real objects of our sensation—real people, trees, flowers, and so on. The man in the cognitive stage of belief mistakenly takes these sensible particulars as the most real things.

When he ascends into the world above, though, he sees that there is something even more real: the Forms, of which the sensible particulars are imperfect copies. He is now at the stage of thought in his cognition. He can reason about Forms, but not in a purely abstract way. He uses images and unproven assumptions as crutches.

Finally, he turns his sights to the sun, which represents the ultimate Form, the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is the cause of all other Forms, and is the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. It is the ultimate object of knowledge. Once the prisoner has grasped the Form of the Good, he has reached the highest stage of cognition: understanding. He no longer has any need for images or unproven assumptions to aid in his reasoning. By reaching the Form of the Good, he hits on the first principle of philosophy which explains everything without the need of any assumptions or images. He can now use this understanding derived from comprehending the Form of the Good to transform all his previous thought into understanding—he can understand all of the Forms.

Only the philosopher can reach this stage, and that is why only he is fit to rule.

Plato is unable to provide direct detail about the Form of the Good, and instead illustrates his idea by comparing it to the sun. The Form of the Good is to the intelligible realm, he claims, as the sun is the visible realm. (In the metaphor, the fire in the cave represents the sun.) First of all, just as the sun provides light and visibility in the visible realm, the Form of the Good is the source of intelligibility. The sun makes sight possible, and, similarly, the Form of the Good is responsible for our capacity for knowledge. The sun causes things to come to be in the visible world. The Form of the Good is responsible for the existence of Forms, for their coming to be in the intelligible world.

It is a story showing how true reality is not always what it seems to be on the surface. It is a story of open-mindedness and the power of possibility.

Plato created a scenario which shows the mankind a true picture of an imaginary world. We all may acquire and comprehend the world around us as our experience of physical objects, but it would be a mistake to limit ourselves to the conventional thoughts indentured by our stubbornness towards change.

In fact, one can view the first Matrix film as an interpretation of Plato’s work. The reality of the matrix is that it is “a construct” meant to keep people enslaved. When Morpheus asks Neo: “What is real? How do you define real?” He is echoing Platonic thought. Further he tells Neo: “No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” This definitely is in direct relationship to Plato’s views on the inability of language to convey truth or to free people from mental bondage.

Identify a public sculpture in Brisbane City.

Identify a public sculpture.

What is the purpose of this sculpture?

What elements of its design, placement and content lead you to reach this conclusion?

Echoes From The North Sculpture (2005)

Augustine Dall'Ava

Mild steel, Stainless steel, Auto enamel paint

H8.6mx W2.7, H7.6m xW3.3, H3.7mxW1.8m

The Echoes From the North sculpture was originally commissioned by the Gandel Retail Management in 2004. It is an optimistic group of sculptures, installed at the corner of Edward and Queen Street as a Permanent artwork. The form and the highly reflective metallic

colours are visual signifiers associated with Brisbane and the naturalenvironment of Queensland.

A bold, brightly coloured sculpture is just what the rather drab street needed, reminding passersby of the beautiful colours and hues of the energetic Brisbane city and the natural environment of Queensland. The three mild steel / stainless steel sculptures, of varying sizes, feature unusual shapes (a cube and a flame), balancing, sometimes precariously, from on top of their colourful columns. The colours are symbolic of the landscape and environment of Queensland; the metallic reds, blues and yellows reflect the iridescent colours of the tropical fish of the Great Barrier Reef, the green the rainforest, the white the beautiful beaches, blue the water and golden yellow the sun. As night falls and long shadows are cast on the city, the sculpture take on a more interesting form.

Interpret artwork through analysis of cultural histories

Brisbane City as layered history

The Treasury casino

The architectural and design elements of Neoclassical building in

The Treasury casino: 

Symmetrical shape, tall classical columns, and triangular pediment.

 Neoclassicism was a dominant style in western art, because of the aesthetic purposes, political motives and the intellectual movement. The movement aimed to revive the spirit of the great civilisations of ancient Greece Rome. The Founding Fathers hoped to create a national identity to bind the new republic and its citizens through architecture. Also, the architects wanted to make the analogy between the young nation and imperial Rome, especially in the designs of government buildings. The Brisbane City Hall is another building in this style.

Brisbane City Hall

The Treasury casino is a typically idealise beauty and proportion, with balance and planned order. The four-storey high building has surrounded by exterior arcades, in warmer or wet climates provide shelter for pedestrians. The building structure combined with the local sandstone, also displays the atmosphere of confidence, pride and the wealth of the society. Before the building was sold and now form the Treasury casino, The Queensland Government Cabinet met in the building until the 1905. The design brief for this massive sandstone building was to 'express the majesty of government and the dignity of public service'.

The Brisbane City Hall is another building that meets all the typical neoclassicism architectural elements. Such as the Symmetrical shape, triangular pediment; and with have a mix of order: Ionic, Doric and Corinthian tall columns of the facades.

The City Hall’s clock tower rising 92 m above the ground, made The City

Hall is easy to distinguish from other neoclassicism buildings. And the tall columns that raise almost the full height of the building, the columns supporting the tympanum are of the Corinthian order while the columns extending on either side are of the Ionic order.

The Main Auditorium is City Hall's single largest space and is covered by a large copper dome. The dome is supported on a brick base that allows the interior of the Main Auditorium to be unobscured by columns.

When originally built it was intended that the building would house most of the Council's administrative offices, Aldermen's (councillors') offices, the Council Chamber, a public library and several reception rooms, in addition to the auditorium. City Hall has been a symbol of civic pride and over the years it has become one of Brisbane's greatest icons and community meeting places.

Public meeting places in the inner Brisbane City area: Queens Street mall and Anzac Square.

The Queen Street Mall is a pedestrian mall located in the centre of the city. It is Brisbane's predominant retail district, featuring shopping centres, hotels, restaurant and coffee shops, cinemas, clothing, music, jewellery and book stores, news agencies, and banks.

It is intend to bring more people into the central business district, to stimulate tourism and local business. 

ANZAC Square, named in honour of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, is a Queensland state memorial to men and women who participated in overseas armed service. It contains the Shrine of Remembrance and the 'Eternal Flame of Remembrance' held in a continuously lit bronze urn. There is also the World War II Shrine of Memories and others war-related statues, for various wars.

The square is surrounded by Middle East date palm trees which provide shade for visitor; they also represent Australia's success in the Middle East during both World Wars. Palms are also a biblical symbol of victory.

The peaceful atmosphere makes it an ideal place for resting and meeting people, also it annually hosts ceremonies for ANZAC Day and Armistice Day. 

The issue of nudity and pornification in artworks.

The issue of nudity and pornification in the works of Jeff koons,

Nobuyoshi Araki and Thomas Ruff.

Nowadays the boundary between pornography and art is getting unclear....

The age old question of “What is art?” will always be difficult to define. People are constantly pushing boundaries and challenging our preconceptions on what we consider to be acceptable art. Nudity and pornography forexample has always been touch and go in the art world, and has us constantly questioning, how far is too far? How much is too much? 

  

In this essay I am going to explore the issues of nudity and pornification in three of the following contemporary artists: Jeff koons, Nobuyoshi Araki and Thomas Ruff, All of these artworks were produced in the 1990s’, and they all caused controversy during the time they were released; therefore I focus on the impact they have had on our culture and society today.

Before we examine these artworks, I would like to briefly explain the term of “Pornification”, that been widely use in recent years. According to the Oxford Dictionary it is defined as: 

“The increasing occurrence and acceptance of sexual themes and explicit imagery in popular or mainstream culture.” The Oxford Dictionaries (2011)

The word pornification is simply to add pornographic content to an image. 

Jeff Koons “Made in Haven, 1991”

The first artwork that we are going to look at is made by the famous American artist Jeff koons. This is a series of work that features the artist with his then wife, the Italian porn star Ilona Staller, also known as Cicciolina in moments of sexual foreplay. 

These images of exuberant sexuality were first presented at the 1990 Venice Biennale where, exhibited among more conventional forms of expression, they produced both shock and titillation among viewers. Koons hit a nerve in the art world with this series, in part because it was shocking subject matter that tested the limits of late twentieth century censorship. While audiences are quite familiar with the semiotics of popular media, pornography was a form of popular culture that was and is still taboo in polite company. Koons has always sought to test the boundaries of appropriate taste. In Made in Heaven, love, romance and sexual desire are examined critically, implicating the viewer by making him a participant, as nearly all pornography requires an outside viewer to be classified as such. (Christie’s 2011, para 1) 

As he said in the interview for his book:

I am dealing with the subjective and objective. Modernism is subjective. I use Modernism as a metaphor for sexuality without love -- a kind of masturbation. And that’s Modernism. I played this off the Post-Modern. Sex with love a higher state, in which one can enter eternal, and I believe that’s what I showed people. There was love there. That’s why it wasn’t pornographic. (Muthesius & Riemschneider 1992, p.30)

This billboard poster is part of a project in which Koons made works depicting his sexual relationship with his wife. These provocative works show the naked couple in explicit poses and reference paintings by artists such as Edouard Manet to examine the place of sexuality in visual culture. Koons employed Ilona’s regular photographer and backdrops, to create the distinctive aesthetic associated with 'glamour' imagery. 

“The artist is the modern day Adam, looking buff, muscular with perfectly coifed hair. Ciccolina is the late night cable television Eve, wearing the contemporary accouterments of lace hose, a tight corset and a diamond tennis bracelet. He holds her and she holds him. While they are embracing each other, it is their individual pleasure that seems to guide their grasp of one another. The artist and Ciccolina are surrogates for all our fantasies. Blurring the boundaries between fine art and pornography, Koons challenged the conventions of artistic taste, encouraging his audience to make their own decisions about what is acceptable.” (Christie’s 2011, para 2)

As he said in the interview for his book:

In Made in Heaven I wanted to take this vocabulary of embracing your class and make it more wide. Not just to a bourgeois class but to a much wider audience. I was trying to deal with people’s desires. Also, I think it was presenting the idea of the chameleon - that if one emulates what one wants to be, one can become that. (Muthesius & Riemschneider 1992, p.29)

Nobuyoshi Araki “Shikijyo Sexual Desire, 1994-96”

Nobuyoshi Araki is best known as one of the key art photographers to present sexually explicit work. He is the epitome of the promiscuous photographer, taking tens of thousands of pictures using a range of cameras, with a predatory fluidity that gives a woman’s body, a flower, a bowl of food or a street scene a literal and psychological sexual charge.

Araki is a major celebrity in Japan, he lives and work in Tokyo, having published close to over 350 books of energetically gridded, juxtaposed and sequenced photographs, and still producing more every year. Many of his photographs are erotic; some have been called pornographic. Among his photography books are Sentimental Journey (1971, but later reissued), Tokyo Lucky Hole (1985), and Shino (2002). However, it was not until the early 1990s that Araki became well known outside Japan, the Shikijyo Sexual Desire was one of his photography series that got the West attention. His acceptance as an artist in the West has relied on the subjectivity, photographed women smeared with paint or bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo’s ancient past or Tokyo’s modern sexual underworld, as well as the boldness of his work.

Araki’s photographs of young Japanese woman are seen as a visual diary of his sexual life, for he clams to have sex with most of the woman depicted. His images are often seen as a kind of photographic foreplay, rather than a detached and exploitative voyeurism. The infrequency with which other men appear (typically as clients or sexual partners of the women whom Araki photographs) is important in preserving this reading of the work. Sometime the relationship between the photographer and his models is described as collaborative in a romantic way. As he stated:

What's important in my work is always the relationship between me and the object -- it's a kind of love story. I don't concern myself with why a relationship starts or where it goes. The most important thing is just the relationship between the two of us at that moment. This world becomes our world. As stated by Liddell (2006) ‘Nobuyoshi Araki - Intimate photography: Tokyo, nostalgia and sex’

To the extent, that it is also suggested that Araki and his camera are conduits for these women’s sexual fantasies. 

“Since his photography is considered to be a diary, one that promotes his genuine desire for these women, much of the potential debate about the possible pornographic and exploitative aspects of his work is curtailed. This shying away from obvious reading of Araki’s images demonstrates how intimate photography can circumvent debates that surround so much other contemporary art photographers and photographic imagery in general.” (Cotton 2009, p.143)

Thomas Ruff “Nudes, 1999”

With the development of internet then the explosion of porn website, the Nudes series were made. German photographer Thomas Ruff is specifically interested in just how far he can restrict immediate sexual association while still leaving the subject matter clear. Ruff is best known for coolly objective images which support his claim that "photography can only reproduce the surface of things".Ruff records, but generally refrains from implying a particular viewpoint, inviting others to supply their own interpretation of his work. His aim, in other words, is to render sexual material somehow un-sexual, and to achieve this he employs a number of distancing devices.The sources of his works were downloaded from the porn website, re-photographed, blurred then enlarged and enhanced with digital pixellation. Ruff's images are photographs of photographs from which he wishes to remove his own interpretative presence. 

“With their saccharine tonal ranges, these are beautiful images that demonstrate how idealization is key to the representation of a subject , and that potentially any subject (and here a relatively new form of images-making and viewing) can become a meditaton on aesthetic form.” (Cotton 2009, p.213-4)

To this end, the only information he specifically provides regarding their content is a single word: 'Nudes'. Other than this, viewer are left to draw their own conclusions. Our inability to make out exactly what is happening may cause us to lose interest or even experience frustation. Eventual recognition of the context might cause concern, shock or even a voyeuristic sense of pleasure. For others, the partially veiled nature of the images could render them more erotic.Yet as Ruff has made clear:

  “What people see, eventually, is only what's already inside them.” (Brennan 2005, para 2)

After the last 20 years, our society had been exposed to all these erotic artworks and images, we have been immersed in the pornified mass media and the arrival of the internet era, where the satisfaction of every kink is a click away, we live in a world where the pornification of popular culture is nearly complete.... Bryant Paul, who teaches telecommunications at Indiana University and has written about media images of sexuality:

“You've seen this throughout history," he adds. ''Every time a new medium comes around, there's an explosion of sexual content. It happened with books, it happened with movies, it happened with the VCR. And now the Internet allows it to happen to an even greater extent.” As stated by Aucoin(2006) ‘The pornification of America’.

Pornography has become part of our main stream culture.Therefore the question, “is it art or pornography?” may depend on what era you came from, and how strong is the story or message behind it. Maybe art is just there to challenge our society, leading us to think more and view further.

Bibliography

2011, The Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

 Aucoin, D 2006, ‘The pornification of America’, The Boston Globe, retrieved  November 2,2011,from http://www.boston.com/yourlife/articles/2006/01/24/the_pornification_of_america/

Brennan, M 2005, Sex and sexuality in art, retrieved Nov 5,2011, from http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/sex-in-art/sexuality-contemporary-art.html

Christies.com 2011, Jeff Koons (b.1945) Ponies, Christie’s auction house, retrieved November 7,2011 from http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4288606 

Cotton, C 2009, The photograph as contemporary art (new edition), Thames & Hudson Ltd, London.

Liddell, C.B 2006, ‘Nobuyoshi Araki - Intimate photography: Tokyo, nostalgia and sex’, The Japan Times online, retrieved November 7,2011 fromhttp://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fa20061123a1.html

Muthesius, A & Riemschneider, B 1992, Jeff Koons, Benedikt Taschen, Cologne.

Post-Modern issues and artworks.

Post-Modern issues and artworks.


The Avant-garde, Originality & Appropriation


Gender & Sexuality
Feminism. Gay rights. Taboo expressions


Cultural Identity & Indigenous Identity
Cultural orgins. Indigenous cultures, Globalisation


Class, Economics and Politics
Marxism. Political models. National wealth


Environment & Material Consumption
Ignorance, Complicity, Apathy

Arbeit McFries, Jake & Dinos Chapman, 2001.

Mixed Media. 122 x122 x 122cm

Stimulus:

• Plastic figures without clothing, some deformed.
• Plastic body parts partially painted with red paint.
• McDonald’s sign
• Vultures (Some standing on the rooftop, some standing on the ground and some landed on plastic figures.)
• A brick house with one wall partly collapsed and a tall chimney.
• Black smoky colour painted in the interior of the brick house
• Glass roof, partly broken
• High metal net fence surrounded the brick house
• Tress
• A poster / billboard
• Broken windows
• Glass door
• Pillars

Meaning:

• Red painted on figures and bodies = Blood
  
• Deformed plastic toys figures and bodies = Injured or killed people
  
• Figures with vulture landed in it= Attacked / eaten by vulture.
• McDonald’s= The world largest cain fast food restaurant
• McDonald’s sign on a brick house with tall chimney and poster on the wall= A fast food shop / factory.
•  Vulture=Bird that eat death or injured animal or person.
• Black smoky colour painted in the interior of the brick house = Dirty;Dusty;Burn mark.
• Broken windows, door and glass roof= Damaged
• High metal net fence surrounded the brick house = High defense
• Partly collapsed wall= Damaged

Signs:

• Fast food(McDonald’s)= junk food - high in fat, sugar and salt, and low in fibre and vitamins; negative.

• Fast food shop= Unethical business.

• Vulture= Death, horror, negative.

• The dust, the burn mark and all the damaged had found on the house= Hazard, destroy, ruined; negative.

• Fence - High defense= Prison; negative.

• People attacked or eaten by vulture= Death, horror; negative.
  

Myths:

• McDonald’s is the evil --
• Bringing people greater risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

• Sick people eaten by vulture.

• The place will finally be destroy, just like a horror movie, the evil and the others will die at the end.

Ideology:

• Consumerism
• Famine
• Poor animal rights, animal finally fight back.
• End of the world

How the artwork “The flower that bloom in midnight” by Yayoi Kusama is influenced by colour field, surrealism, and pop art from the Modernist period.

The flowers that bloom at midnight,2009.

YAYOI KUSAMA

Flowers That Bloom at Midnight M1, 2009

Fiberglass-reinforced plastic, metal and all-weather urethane paint

85 7/8 x 71 1/4 x 116 1/8 inches (218 x 181 x 295 cm)

The artwork “the  flowers that bloom at midnight”(2009) was a set of seven pieces non-naturalistic looking exuberant flowers sculpture in large scales, which measure from four to sixteen feet high. Cast in highly durable fiberglass-reinforced plastic and metal, all hand painted in bold opaque subtractive colours with Kusama’s signature polka dot, which she calls "infinity nets", all over each piece. Arranged in the gallery like an artificial garden, the flowers tower and sprawl about in their psychedelic glory, offering the viewer multiple vantages while reaching outward into the surrounding space in all directions.

“The artist Yayoi Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thought since childhood, often a suicidal nature.”(Wikipedia) In my point of view, her polka dots obsession is a way to relieve her suicidal nature,Kusama is often quoted as saying: "If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,"(Art Review) also she believe the polka dot is her source of energy as she quoted “A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement… Polka dots are a way to infinity.”(Kusama)- she started to begin covering surface (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work.The vast fields of polka dots, or “infinity nets”, as she call them, were taken directly from her hallucinations, which influenced by surrealism, a movement was founded in Paris, in 1924. “Surrealism was closely related to Dada, its principal source; each of which was conceived as a revolutionary mode of thought and action - a way of life rather than a set of stylistic attitudes. The central idea of the movement was to release the creative powers of the unconscious mind.” (Chilvers,2003) “Surrealism dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention.”  As you can see the photo above, the sculpture that cover with polka dots and the twisty non-naturalistic looking flowers, would be a reflection of Kusama’s subconscious, her dreams and her hallucinations. Also, each piece or the whole set of artwork can be arranged differently (It is a random arrangement which is not based on any definite plan.) (see the small photo above) every time where it is exhibited, the artist recreated the whole structure of the artwork. It aimed to create art which was ‘automatic’, meaning that it had emerged directly from the unconscious without shaped by reason, morality or aesthetic judgement.

The artwork that cover in flat opaque subtractive colours and polka dots, I also consider had influenced by colour field painting. “A type of abstract painting in which the whole picture or surface consist of large expanses of more or less unmodulated colour, with no strong contrasts of tone or obvious focus of attention” (Chilvers,2003) Look at the color of the artwork, it had been painted in only two flat colours in each surface with no highlight or tone involved. “This type of painting developed in the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading pioneers including Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko” (Chilvers,2003),whom Kusama’s work has been compared to. It is thus an aspect of Abstract Expressionism and it has been seen as a type -- or precursor -- of minimal art.

The other art movement that influenced the artwork or the artist herself, was pop art. “A movement based on the imagery of consumerism and popular culture (hence “pop'”), flourishing from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, chiefly in the US and Britain. The term was coined 1955. Comic books, advertisements, packaging, and images from television and the cinema were all part of the iconography of the movement.” (Chilvers,2003) Kusama was living in New York in the late 60s, actively involved in lot of art movement such as minimalism, feminism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, conceptual art and pop art, during that period she embraced by some of the leading pop artist such as Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. She had recognized herself as a pop artist in one of the magazine interview “I was in the vanguard of Pop Art, and regarded as a Pop artist by the people around me. I felt that America’s energy was trying to change its history. I was part of the movement.”(BOMB) 

Refer the artwork, there contain certain elements of pop art. First, the colours of use, Kusama used fair amount of primary colours(Red, yellow, blue) which is very common to found in comic or billboard like pop art and a combination of analogous colours, such as blue and green; lime green and yellow -- These colors sit next to one another on the color wheel and are in harmony with one another. The primary and analogous colours created a harmony and cheerful atmosphere for the art work. Also each piece -- the non-naturalistic flowers, had very curvy  shape thats giving a adorable (cutie), child - like feel to the entire work, which may influenced from the Japanese comic style - Manga. In the last two decade, Kusama’s works became very popular, especially in Japanese. Kusama herself turns into a pop culture icon, since then she started making her artwork into all sort of merchandise. (see pictures next) That’s what pop art is all about -- mass-production and popular culture.

Yayoi Kusama is without doubt Japan’s most famous and premiere artist of the modern era.  She is currently the second highest living female artist at auction and the most expensive and coveted female Asian artist. Her unique work had inspired lot of artist and had a huge affect in modern art history.

For me, Kusama is a great example of “nothing is important”, her childhood and her mental illness did not stop her determined to be an artist. It really encourage me to keep on what I’m doing, following my dream no matter how.

ArtReview magazine, October issue, 2007.
http://www.artreview.com

Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama#cite_note-4

CHILVERS, I. 2003. The concise Oxford dictionary of art and artists, Oxford ; New York, Oxford University Press.

KUSAMA,Y. 1978. Manhattan jisatsu misui joshuhan (Manhattan Suicide Addict), Kosakusha, Tokyo,(extract) reproduced in Hoptman et al., p.124.

BOMB Magazine, issue 66,1999. Interview by Grady Turner.