David Hockney

Jacob Cavenee

Art 177-Digital Photography

Professor Pease

24 April 2016

David Hockney

            David Hockney was born in Bradford, England on July 9, 1937. Admiring art from Picasso, Mattisse, and Fragonard, his parents encouraged him to express his art and study it in the future (bio.com). Hockney attended the Bradford school of art from 1953 to 1957, then was enlisted into to military service to finish his national requirements (bio.com). After her was finished, Hockney graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 1959 (bio.com). Hockney was a very good student, receiving awards and selling his pieces to private collectors. For Hockney’s early work, his paintings incorporated a lot of his literary learnings, and used fragments of poems and quotations from Walt Whitman (bio.com).

Hockney’s first visit to California was in 1963, and eventually moved there in 1966. California became a major influence on Hockney’s paintings. Hockney’s obsession with the pools led to his iconic work labeled A Bigger Splash (bio.com). This is when Hockney’s style evolved and was considered to be more of a realist (bio.com). Another famous work from Hockney was his joiner series, influenced by his paintings of California homes interior and exterior. A joiner is an assemblage of polaroid photos laid out in a grid (bio.com). Stumbling upon this series on accident, Hockney was working on a painting of a living room and he took a series of photos for his reference, and fixed them together so he could paint from the image (bio.com). He realized that the collages he was making were an art form unto itself, and began to create more (bio.com). His inspiration for this series came from when he would lay and fix the photos how he wanted them to be. Cubism is a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20th century, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure, the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents, and the organization of the planes of a represented object independently of representational requirements. A main figure associated with cubism is Pablo Picasso, a big inspiration to Hockney.

            By the mid 1970’s, Hockney started to become more involved with photography. He abandoned everything but painting to really focus on photography projects. In the 1980’s, Hockney returned to painting, primarily focused on seascapes, flowers and portraits of loved ones (bio.com). The marriage of art and technology became an ongoing fascination, he used laser fax machines and laser printers in 1990, and in 2009 he started using the Brushes app on apple products to create paintings (bio.com). In 2011, Hockney was voted most influential British artist of all time (bio.com).

Works Citied

"David Hockney." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

"The Definition of Cubism." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

Duane Michals

Jacob Cavenee

Art 177- Digital Photography

Professor Pease

19 April 2016

Duane Michals

            Duane Michals was born on February 18, 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Michals obsession with art came in 1946, while taking college classes at Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (Art Net). In 1953, Michals received his bachelors from the University of Denver in Colorado (Art Net). After completing his schooling, Michals enlisted and was drafted into the army. After finishing his service, Michals joined the Parson School of Design in 1956, intending to become a graphic designer, but ended up not finishing his studies (Art Net). Michals interest in photography started after he went to Russia on vacation. While Michals is not educated in photography, he worked as a commercial photographer for the magazines; Mademoiselle and Esquire (Art Net). One of his most memorable piece of work was covering the filming of The Great Gatsby for vogue in 1974. While most photographers at the time and still today have studios, Michals did not and preferred to take portraits of people in their own environment (Art Net). Two of Michals famous trademarks were using a series to tell a story and give information that the images could not convey by writing text near his photographs. Michals thoughts of schooling for photography are, “If you already know what you’re doing, you’re not really being creative. Creativity is the discovery that you make in the process of evolving. So that’s essentially the most important thing to me, to always stay open.” (Reznik). Some of Michals influences come from Lewis Carroll, William Blake, and Rene Magritte (Art Net). A series is a number of things of a similar kind coming one after another, all one theme. A sequence is a particular order of things that follow each other, all one story. Michals has received two awards for his photography, a gold medal for photography from the national arts club in 1994 and a master series award from the school of visual art in 2000 (Art Net). I love that Michals isn’t afraid to challenge photography with his own ideas and tell people and students to take what you know and run with it. Michals has made remarkable contributions to the artistic photography movement.

Work Citied

"Duane Michals (American, Born 1932)." Duane Michals Biography – Duane Michals on Artnet. Art Net, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Reznik, Eugene. "Interview: Duane Michals on 50 Years of Sequences and Staging Photos." American Photo. American Photo Mag, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Cindy Sherman

Jacob Cavenee

Art 177-Photography

Professor Pease

4 April 2016

Cindy Sherman

Untitled

            Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Sherman was raised in Huntington, Long Island. Being the youngest of five children, Sherman’s parents were not totally interested in the arts (The Art Story). Sherman enrolled to Buffalo State College, starting off with her regular studio courses such as drawing, painting and photography (Art History Archive). Sherman initially failed her required photography class because of difficulties with the subject’s technical side, and decided to focus on her major of painting (Art History Archive). Eventually Sherman studied photography with a different instructor, Professor Revelle, who inspired her to “Just take pictures” (Art History Archive). After some help from her new professor, Sherman finally found a spark inside of her that found the immediacy of photography more exciting than her original painting major. Sherman graduated in 1976 and moved to New York to further her career (cindysherman.com).

Feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities (Merriam-Webster.com). “The work is what it is and hopefully it’s seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work, but I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff” (Berne). While Sherman’s work displays feminist messages and women stereotypes, she doesn’t officially think of herself as a feminist. Sherman’s photography techniques rely on the unusualness of her photographs. Sherman models in all of her photos that display a certain attitude, character, emotion, and message (Bright Hub). Her talent is not based on the technical aspects of photography but on the artistic products of the camera (Bright Hub). Some of Sherman’s influences are; Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Andres Serrano, Catherine Opie, John Waters, and the postmodern art movement (The Art Story). Cindy Sherman is still producing her unique brand of photographic art. The average selling price of her photographs is $50,000 (Bright Hub). But, her film stills were priced at nearly $200,000 (Bright Hub). In 2011, Sherman’s “Untitled #96” from 1981, was auctioned off for 3.89 million dollars (Zhang). I think that it’s amazing that her photography is sold for so much money. It’s crazy that people will pay that much money for a photograph, but also inspiring that photographers work can receive that much praise and sell for a lot of money. Sherman uses herself as a prop because “I also realized that I myself don’t know exactly what I want from a picture, so it’s hard to articulate that to somebody else-anybody else. When I’m doing it myself, I’m really just using the mirror to summon something I don’t even know until I see it.” (Berne). “I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear. Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren’t meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible.” (The Art Story).

Untitled #96

Film Still #14

(All photos from cindysherman.com)

Works Citied

"Cindy Sherman Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works." The Art Story. The Art Story, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"Cindy Sherman." Cindy Sherman - The Art History Archive. Art History Archive, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"Biography - Cindy Sherman - Photographer, Model, Director, Actor, Avant-Garde Images, Doll Parts and Prosthetics, Movies." Biography - Cindy Sherman. Cindysherman.com, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"Feminism." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster.com, n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.

Berne, Betsy. "Studio: Cindy Sherman." Studio: Cindy Sherman. Tate Magazine, 1 June 2003. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"A Brief Biography of Cindy Sherman & Photographs Taken by Cindy Sherman." Bright Hub. Bright Hub, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.

Zhang, Michael. "Cindy Sherman Photograph Sells for $3.8 Million, Setting New Record." Php Bloginfoname RSS. Peta Pixel, 12 May 2011. Web. 02 Apr. 2016.