Week 8- Modernism, Industrialisation and Architecture

The Guggenhiem Museum
:The design of the building is phenomenal and surpasses any modern museum construction of the 20th century. Created by American artist Frank O Gehry in 1997, the buildings revolutionary construction provides much more than any standard Museum. The construction geometry consists of sinous forms and curving architecture with orthogonal shapes that make up the interior. To gain interest the museum was made out of various materials that sited a new way of building, the interior consists of clad in glass, titanium and lime stone. For the exterior, a very furnished titanium plates have been spread over the building. As for the scale, the body of the building would be considered standard but abstracted. The form of the building is very different to anything society had seen before and is considered an aesthethic revolution for the containment of art. There is a known flaw in the design of thebuilding and it has been critized greatly over years, that being the condition of interior. The staircase spirals in a circular form upwards which has been called an inconvience for viewing art, as it has to be seen on a angle. However, people seem to still enjoy the building and the art it presents.

Frank O Gehry; born February 28, 1929 is considered to be the most important Architect of our age, his style is classed as destructivism, a reaction to Modern  structures that are not constructed like a standard building. Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universa ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they don't seem to reflect a belief that form follows construction.



Guggenheim Museum

Exterior

Interior

___________________________________________________________________________________

The Eiffel Tower (1889-2011)

The construction of the Eiffel tower is of an exceptional standard. It has become one of the most recognised constructions in history and is the current and modern icon of Paris. It is an enormous tower that is situated in the Champ De Mars it reaches the height of 324 metres-which is equivilant to a 81 story building. It is constructed out of pudded iron and is noted the tallest building in Paris, and  is also apparent to be the most visited paid-monument in the world. The Eiffel tower was designed by Engineer Gustave Eiffil 41 years ago, and to this day he is and always will be recognised as a very important man that had played a crucial role in history.

Eiffel Tower At Night

Originally the Eiffel tower had been contructed to impress the visitors for the 1889 year world exhibition.
This was a new approach to impress! and evidentionally a very expensive and also resourceful decision. Changes to the eiffel tower occurred in 1959.  The tower obtained an additional antenna, extending the height by 15 metres, and this is used for satelite and radio. Another interesting renovation is that once every 7 years it has a new coat of paint done. For the Guggenhiem a dramatic change occured when I t was moved

To compare the construction of the eiffel tower to the biblio Guggenhiem museum I could start off by saying the costructions are two completely different forms. The very abstracted figure of the Guggenhiem contrasts dramatically to the Eiffel towers prismic body. But in terms of construction, there are vaguely similar geometrical shapes.   An obvious and positive similarity between the two constructions would be that they pose an interest in Tourism. Both obtain a unique style that has attracted thousands of people from all round the world. Furthermore to address the purpose of the creation of each building, a main point would be to say that they were built to gain tourism, interest/appreciation in art, and on a global scale characterise be enable paris and New York to be recognised as countries that appreciate art in a new way. The aesthetics of each buildings are really where the disimularities and simularities lie. The materials for instance; are used for different purposes. The Titanium plates used in the Guggenhiem  for instance provided more of a visual appeal than the material used for the Eiffel tower. I consider the Eiffel tower to contain it's own style and it certainly doesn't need to have a special substance tthat would inhance it's appearance (besides the paint of course) but to note the construction.- the eiffel tower required a heavier and more versitile material to hold it's enormity. But for the guggenheim both strength and a cutting edge type of material was needed.





References:
-http://www.aviewoncities.com/nyc/guggenheim.htm
-https://engineering.purdue.edu/MSE/AboutUs/GotMaterials/Buildings/patel.html

-http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A506369

-https://engineering.purdue.edu/MSE/AboutUs/GotMaterials/Buildings/patel.html

7. Add a Sublime image of your choice to your blog, which can be Art or just a Sublime photograph.

 

Andreas Gursky, Loveparade, 2001

6. How does Misrach's photography make you feel? Does it appeal to your imagination?

I  have respect for Misrach as his work always portray's something capitvating or relevant. Working with colour and various extreme view points, his work makes me want to look further and to find the meaning behind it, to unmask the abiguity that lies within his photograph's. His more recent works seem to experiment with a technique of rendering depth or distance in his paintings and this is the high and low view points that he shoots from. In combination with the vast landscape and utilized colour palette he creates a very captivating image. His style is consistant and appeals to me with the raw beauty he presents. His work definately appeals to my imagination, I like how he focuses on where the figure lies in his photos.  It's rather dramatic even, most definately emphasising the dominance of a landscape.

5. Identify some other artists or designers that work with ideas around the Sublime, from the Enlightenment era as well as contemporary artists.

Within the Distant-There, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 62 x 48 inches

This work has been created by Jeremy Morgan, an associate professor at an art institute in San Francesco. These two works interested me because I really enjoy the way he has employed such harmonious contour and colour blending to get an abstract landscape. His work seems to convey the environment reflecting  the phenomenal nature of it's physical process-a fusion like combination of nature. Both images are allied with photographic and collage techniques and applied with acrylics. I see a focus on the body of nature, and traquility of the environment in these works. The applied context is confusing and ambiguis because he has abstracted the two images strongly, but to adress the change in

''My work grows from a contemplation of the fusion of both conceptual and perceptual models. The paintings become pivotal points between internal feeling and external stimuli; a meeting place of the material and non-material. As an educator, I endeavor to function as a guide and as catalyst to enable the creative process within my students wherein material process manifests concepts.''(Jeremy Morgan-31-03-11)

 References:

-http://www.sfai.edu/People/Person.aspx?id=662&sectionID=2&navID=365

-http://blogs.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2011/03/100_profiles_jeremy_morgan.php

-http://www.himmelbergergallery.com/Morgan_about.html

4. Discuss the subject matter, and aesthetic (look) of Misrach's work to identify the Sublime in his work. Add some more images of his work.

Untitled 2004

                                           This artwork is called 'Flippers'

                                          completed 2004 by Richard Misrach.

Here Misrach portray's an extract from a popular beach. People are in leisure; reclining and facing outwards to the sea as they bask in the sun. The picture plane is facing the viewer as he has used a direct aerial perspective that looks down at the people. The placement of people is semi unbalanced, yet the image contains a sharpness of liking about it. Aesthetically the chosen subject matter is good. It's revealing a time of leisure to the viewer and reminding us of where we should be. The instant thought of a 'HOLIDAY' corrupts the minds of the people who endlessly stare at the image of where they dream to go for a day at the beach. He presents a sublime landscape through the placement of his camera and the clear interaction of nature and man. this can be interpreted as man taking over the landscape; as the image distributes more than one figure covering the extract of the beach. In a lone image of containing one figure placed in a landscape, the determination of who is dominant would rely on the scale and compositional placement of that figure.

References:

-http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/exhibition/beach

-http://mgdirlampho208.blogspot.com/2011/05/richard-misrach.html

3. How did the concept of the Sublime come out of the Enlightenment thought?

The Scientific Revolution is classed as transition of theory and scientific belief in the world. The way scientific reason was to be percieved and understood, the classes of social development and theoretical establishment within reason. It's a intellectual movement that involved many attempts to reconstruct social order in ideal form, which had ushered in the age of modern mass politics. There was a systematic approach that addressed important things. These bold new ways of thinking eventually had an impact on everyday life. The Scientific revolution contributed to many ideas of the development of the sublime landscape.

Scientific research contributed to the advance of technology and helped bring about the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy: the phenom-enon we call the Industrial Revolution. Utopianism helped inspire political revolutions in America and France: attempts to reconstruct the social order in ideal form, which ushered in the age of modern mass politics, But a scientific approach could also mean any kind of systematic approach: a rationalistic one, in which an attempt is made to deduce important things about the nature of art from first principles, or an historical one, in which generalizations about art are inferred from a study of particular cases.

references:

-http://www.answers.com/topic/enlightenment

-http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/lewis_clark_il/htmls/il_country_exp/places/beautiful_sublime.html

-http://www.sublimelandscapes.com/

-Edmund Burke, A philosophical Enquiry Into the Orgin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, London. 1757, in Collected Works, T.W Copeland, ed London:1865-1867

2. Define the concept of the Sublime.

Following 'the discoveries of geography within reason' this was one thought to be an intellectual basis that the sublime carried. The main concept was to simply convert the subject matter of humanistic ideas and social development to landscapes to finally the presentation of a landsscape and man. During the 18th century landscapes were pretty unimportant until sublime came into place. It started when artists began to integrate landscapes into their works as backgrounds which then had moved to becoming a main subject matter. The reason for this was that other than in early history landscapes were recorded for historical purposes, they were considered to be more relevant in creating different atmospheres. Landscapes provided a pictureque setting for some more important, human drama, and as topography, or a scientific reconstruction of land masses of a particular area. The sublime compositionally followed aspects of hiarachy and human placement within a landscape, where man was set as above nature and placed significantly to be seen as small or large.

Week 6 - The Landscape And Sublime

1. When and what was the enlightenment?

Described as the age of reason and thought, the enlightenment was characterised by theory and a system of thought that soon lead the renaissance, 'Naturalism over supernaturalism, the social and communicable over the private and mystical, a celebration of secular life'. Situated during the 17-18th century in Europe It had infiltrated the concepts of life on earth that was outlined by scientific progression and belief. Social integration and many theories of how things worked. The universe for instance was considered to be seen as 'fundamentally rational; meaning that it can be understood from reason alone. Another main aspect to the movement was the focus on Human Life and the natural world-geography. Scientists at the time were rather 'egotistical' because they believed that science could basically answer and solve anything that came to interest; therefore it was factual to say that religion had no say in the understanding of the physical and human worlds. The political attitude was distain with a fear of ''enthusiasm'' and more subject to containing only the thought of the enlightenment philosophy.


References:

-http://www.sublimelandscapes.com/
-http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397117&section=6
-http://bodhicittasangha.org/pdf/NgondroConcise.pdf (the enlightenment and the sublime)