Chuck Close | Art Style Analysis

Chuck Close | Art Style Analysis When he left the UW for Yale in 1962, Close changed his style completely, dumping abstract paintings based on de Kooning in favor or photorealist portraits. He turned his back on abstraction in favor of photorealism because he wanted to find his own voice and not continue to do work similar to that of his UW mentor, Art Professor Alden Mason. It was a dramatic break: Photorealism is a painting style resembling photography in its close attention to detail, the opposite of abstract expressionism. He achieved his international reputation by demonstrating that a very traditional art form, portrait painting, could be resurrected as a challenging form of contemporary expression. His work has been superficially described as photo realist, but is more revealingly positioned with the development of minimalism and process art of the 1960s and 1970s, says Christopher Ozubko, director of the UW School of Art. Closes large, iconic portraits are generated from a system of marking which involves painstaking replication of the dot system of the mechanical printing process. The portraits he producesutterly frontal, mural-size, and centered in shallow spacereplicate the veracity of a photograph and undermine the objectivity of photography at the same time, critics say. In the early days, though, his work was the complete opposite of realism. Upon his arrival at the UW from Everett Community Collegewhich back in the 1950s was a feeder for the UW art programhe was influenced heavily by the now-retired Mason. They used to get thick paint by the gallon from a special dealer in Oakland, and churned out lots of abstract works. It was the opposite of the precise work he is best known for, says Mason. We just glopped on tons of paint and followed the influence of de Kooning and other New York painters of the time. The brushwork then took a lot of energy, was emotional, hard work, full of anxiety and trauma because it was all improvisational. You had no idea what was going to turn out. The Marxist Analysis enables a piece of illustration or artwork to be put in its historical, social and cultural context. This can be done by analysing the production, consumption and status of the image. The work of Chuck Close can be analysed in this way to discover its purpose and context. I am particularly interested in the dramatic shift in the work of Chuck Close and the way he completely changed his style and way of working. Close began by producing very large photorealistic portraits and had a unique and very well liked style. Photorealism was very popular at the time culture However, he was not able to continue working in this way after suffering from a spinal cord injury in 1988, which caused him to lose mobility in all parts of his body except a small amount of movement in his neck. His accident left him feeling helpless and many believed this was the end of his career as an artist. However, he did not give up and continued producing artwork by holding a paintbrush between his teeth and painting small pixel-like sections to make up a larger image. Although his later paintings differ in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remains the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived average hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5in by 83.5in (2.73m by 2.12m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single t ube of mars black acrylic. However, Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist with tape, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares created by an assistant. Viewed from afar, these squares appear as a single, unified image which attempt photo-reality, albeit in pixelated form. Although the paralysis restricted his ability to paint as meticulously as before, Close had, in a sense, placed artificial restrictions upon his hyperrealist approach well before the injury. That is, he adopted materials and techniques that did not lend themselves well to achieving a photorealistic effect. Small bits of irregular paper or inked fingerprints were used as media to achieve astoundingly realistic and interesting results. Close proved able to create his desired effects even with the most difficult of materials to control. He soon regained some movement in his upper arm and was able to produce artwork even more freely. He then found he was not completely powerless and developed a new style of working which was even more amazing than before his accident. By losing something valuable, he found something he never would have even imagined and realised he was stronger than anyone ever thought. The cultural context of Closes work contributes a lot to its meaning. At a time of Abstract Expressionism he went against the mainstream with his photorealistic portraits and redefined portraiture. He has always worked strictly from photographs, producing canvases usually about three meters high. Chuck Close uses grids to transfer the images to the canvas producing lifelike images with intricate detail. His earlier work had a very strong photographic feel- he even blurred out things further away from the face, as a real camera lens blurs the background of a photo. Chuck Close did not work in the same way as anyone else at the time. His portraits focused on the hair, skin and details such as wrinkles, rather than on the eyes, as many other artists at the time did. Such realism was created as Close captured every pore and wrinkle. This technique started out with a series of portraits in black and white, and the artist began using more colours in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he started towards abstraction. His best known technique is the fingerprint paintings in which he used an inkpad and his own fingerprints to fill in the grid of his canvas. The canvases got bigger, but the realism was still there, in fact, if a person were to stand at a distance where he/she could see the entire image, it would be very difficult for that person to tell that the piece was created with fingerprints. Once the person gets close enough to see the fingerprints, it is very unlikely that he/she can get a good view of the piece as a whole. His most current stage of abstraction is one developed after he became partially paralyzed. He fills each of his grids with an oval composed of a few rings of bright colors. The style is still realistic, but not to the degree of Superrealism. Average paintings done with this technique is typically smaller than his earlier work. Close usually works in stages but in this piece the rounded or hard-edged scribble shapes are not determined by a grid, unlike his other work. Closes actual hand drawn pencil lines on the softground plate seem physical. To make this piece he had to alter his approach to the image but had wanted to make a face using colour separations for a long time. Colour separations are made through variations on the primary colours red, yellow and blue so rather than creating the image one square at a time, he needed to think in terms of the whole face at once even though the whole face could not come together until the final colour was layered on. Each individual state is scribbled echo of the entire face. The print is relatively small compared to the rest of his work, being only 18 1/4 x 15 1/4, zooming in on Closes face, cropping it off on all four sides. The extreme close up may symbolise the mature artist looking back on his career, confronting both the viewer and himself in a portfolio of i ntimate-sized etchings with a hand-drawn feel. Closes own explanation for why he made this piece is practical and unpretentious I wanted to demystify the process so that people understand how things happen. This piece would have been very time-consuming and labour intensive for Close as each stage had to be planned expertly. How does it communicate with the audience? This Marxist approach can lead on to Semicotic analysis which studies the use of a set of signs which enables the intended audience to understand the artworks meaning.

Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen

Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King A wise man once said, â€Å"Memory is the library of the mind.† All of the events in one’s life, ranging from birth to the present, are stored in this complex catalog of experience. There they remain untouched and collecting dust until a time of need, much like the scores of books found in today’s libraries. No matter how obscure, their topics represent the various trials of life that build one’s character and forever serve as the most reliable source of the human psyche. The novella, â€Å"Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption†, is part of a collection of stories that comprise Stephen King’s book Different Seasons which was first published in 1983. It is the story of Andy Dufresne, a successful banker incarcerated, despite his innocence, for the murder of his wife and her lover. Leaving behind not only his status, but every known aspect of his life up until this point, Andy is submerged in a culture he knows not hing about. However, he manages to adapt to these unfamiliar surroundings through the use of his former knowledge and keen intellect. King uses Andy’s character as a liaison to convey the concept of memory within the novella. He outlines the stages in Andy’s journey throughout his time in Shawshank Federal Prison by highlighting the many channels in which his wisdom aids him. Furthermore, King shows the reader how this passage develops Andy as a person through the different ways he utilizes this remembrance, both for his benefit and that of others. Andy’s heroic metamorphosis provides a template for the different perceptions of memory within the text; such as that of a self-fulfilling resource, liberating gift to othe... ...ins the reader in experiencing the transformation of Andy as a character and the unavoidable sentiments that ingrain themselves into the human psyche. By delving into this unique harmony between the feelings of both author and reader, one can come to further comprehend the questions King is bringing to the table and his premeditated goal for this work. What does it mean to truly become a legend and why does Andy Dufresne so beautifully embody this definition? These are queries that we can only begin to answer and are an active ingredient of what makes Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption the literary marvel that it is. Works Consulted Cormier, Robert. I am the Cheese. New York: Dell Laurel-Leaf, 1991. King, Stephen. â€Å"Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.† Different Seasons. New York: New American Library, 1983. (15-107).

Rethink What You Drink Essay

Between an 8oz glass of orange juice to a 24oz can of soda, one person can drink between six to eighteen teaspoons of sugar. One may not think that a can of soda a day will hurt a person greatly; but that person is wrong. If you consume one non-diet soda, sugary sport or energy drink, even juice, it can increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, even leading to chronic problems down the road. Even drinking a Five-Hour Energy or Monster in the morning everyday can lead to a caffeine related death. Keeping up homework, going to practice after school and maintaining a social life, a day being a teenager can be draining. We stay up late texting or studying for a test at the last minute, and sleep is not our number one priority. Yes, we wake up the next morning wishing we did not stay up so late, but there is always a cure for that. Almost one third of 12 to 24 year olds said they regularly down an energy drink in the morning. There is nothing wrong with consuming a Starbucks coffee or Five-Hour energy shot in the morning if it is the only thing that will keep us going. The sugar and caffeine in juice, energy drinks and coffee is one of the main factors that keep us teens moving at the pace we do. There are juices, diet sodas and energy drinks that have an okay amount of sugar and caffeine in them to where we could have one a day, and never be harmed. The National Health and Nutrition Exanimation Survey and Nutrition Services worker, Cheri Collier states, â€Å"A â€Å"sugary drink† is known as fruit drinks, soda, energy and sport drinks and sweetened bottles of water and also coffee beverages† (Gann) The consumption of sugary drinks remains high today. In fact, over a half of the American population has a sugary drink almost every day. Lisa Cimperman, registered dietitian for University Hospitals Case Medical Center said, â€Å"Many people consume too many calories each day; Liquid calories don’t make you feel full. Causing people to eat and drink more. † (Theiss) When someone has so much sugar in their system, it can lead to obesity and diabetes. It is shown that 25. 8 million Americans have diabetes (8% of population) and 191 million (2/3) are overweight/obese. (Gann) Not to say that a soda a day can lead to this, but when you are consuming mass amounts of sugar, you will become a part of that 25. 8 million. Men and women are both at risk for developing heart disease. Men who drink one sugar-sweetened beverage daily have a 20% higher risk of chronic heart disease then men who drink none. A study put on by the Harvard School of Public Health surveyed 43,000 men throughout 22 years, and results form 18,000 men were demographically similar. Results in American Heart Association journal stated: â€Å"Drinking 12oz of regular soda, fruit drinks and other sugar sweetened beverages daily was associated with higher risk of heart disease. † Dr. Frank Hu, Professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health said that the findings were notable. The same study was put on for a group of 89,000 women, and it was shown that women who drank one or less than two sugary drinks per day had a 23% increased risk of heart attack and it was four times as likely to have a chronic heart problem down the road. (Jaslow) Studying for tests, going out to parties, finishing research papers late into the night, maintaining a social life and working, life of a college student can be draining. Balancing everything usually takes a toll on one of our most critical bodily functions, sleep. So how do these college students wake up in the morning and go to class with energy? A study done by the University of Ohio stated that 74% of undergraduate students turn to energy supplements in the form of drinks or shots. A single Monster contains 14 teaspoons of sugar and a Five-Hour Energy contains over 8,000 percent of the daily-recommended intake of vitamin B12 and over 2,000 percent of vitamin B6. They say that the rush of energy one feels when consuming the drinks is due to the amount of sucralose, an artificial sweetener over 600 times sweeter than sugar and you will also see over 500 milligrams of caffeine in some drinks. So what happens to people who drink these energy drinks and Five-Hour Energy shots? According to Medicine Plus in 2007, almost 6,000 caffeine related deaths occurred in people under the age of 19, and since then, the numbers have continued to rise(Silva). When you come to thinking about drinking a nice cold 8oz soda, remember that you are putting a toxic drug into your body. You could one day have had too many sodas and be sitting at home with heart disease or diabetes. Remember not to over load yourself with a caffeine overloaded energy drink or shot. Try resorting to diet drinks with not as much sugar, or 100% fruit drinks. â€Å"Our soda habit is something we have total control over. There are a lot of things that keep us healthy that are hard work and difficult, but cutting back on sweetened drinks isn’t one of them† Dr. Stacey Rosen said, the chairman of cardiology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY. Next time, rethink what you drink. Works Cited Jaslow, Ryan. â€Å"Sugary Drink Each Day Ups Men’s Heart Disease Risk by 20 Percent. â€Å"Www. cbsnews. com. CBS News, 14 Mar. 2012. Web. 3 Dec. 2012. . Gann, Carrie, and Larry Borges. â€Å"Study: One Sugary Drink Per Day Raises Risk of Heart Disease for Men. † Www. abcnews. com. ABC News, 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 3 Dec. 2012. . Reidt, Robert. â€Å"Sugary Drinks Can Be Hard on Heart: Study. â€Å"Www. healthyliving. msn. com. Healthy Day, 2 Mar. 2012. Web. 3 Dec. 2012. . Theiss, Evelyn. â€Å"Consumption of Sugar Drinks in the U. S. Remains High, Study Shows. â€Å"Www. cleveland. com. N. p. , 31 Aug. 2011. Web. 3 Dec. 2012. . Silva, Evan D. â€Å"Monsters v. Students; the Battle for Energy. † Lariat. Multimedia Editor, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Feb. 2013. .

Walmart Business Analysis Essay - 1507 Words

For the final group project we chose to complete a management analysis on Wal-Mart. Covered in this paper are the issues of productivity, hiring practices, corporate social responsibility and culture, diversity and affirmative action, the use of information technology, leadership, teamwork, and managing ethics. Productivity is very important to any successful business. Wal-Mart has increased its productivity through many different advances. Business analysts have long admired Wal-Marts logistics management, even though the public recognizes them for their low discounted prices. Wal-Mart has always been resourceful at moving and stocking goods, building its stores as branches around distribution center hubs. But, instead of simply†¦show more content†¦The message is that the data that RFID collects can allow for process improvements. (DC Velocity, 2006) The next area analyzed was the hiring practices of the corporation. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million Associates in the United States alone and the majority of store associates work full-time, which is well above 20 to 40 percent found in the retail industry today (Wal-Mart Facts, 2006). Wal-Mart promotes from within the store and over seventy-six percent of the store management started in hourly positions (Wal-Mart Facts, 2006). According to Business Week, 2003, a sales associate earned an average of $8.23 an hour for annual wage of $13,861.00. In 2003 the poverty line for a family of three was $15,260.00 (wakeup, 2006). It seems that Wal-Mart has to promote within to keep the moral up. If the promotion is not there, employees will only stay for the so-called benefits or until another job comes their way. In the areas of corporate responsibility and culture, the results of the analysis were bittersweet. 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