Starting a study on the use of the structure of human bodies in the works of art, I decided to turn to artists who seemed to me especially interesting. So, for example, about Antony Gormley, who interprets the human body through sculpture, we know a lot and I already wrote about him.
I chose one artist from London, extremely interesting from the point of the technique and one weird artist from Australia. And three more women artists from Russia, Estonia and America.
Matthew Stone
Matthew Stone [Painting] At: https://hifructose.com/2018/07/12/matthew-stones-latest-medium-bending-paintings/ (Accessed on 05.06.19)
Matthew Stone photographs paint strokes on glass and then uses them to build bodies using software. When printed, they inhabit “a shared world,” a statement says, “defined by a grey infinity floor, proliferating petals of paint and a raw linen void as backdrop.” (Smith, 2018)
Stone developed and introduced a new technique of "creating" a picture. This technique with the use of modern technology that allows it to interpret reality in a unique way characteristic only for our time. Compositions of works from complex and group to simple and lovely. For example, an artist can develop a theme only in color or on a particular part of the body. Here it seems to me interesting to note that the new technique of creating an image makes all the works unique in their own way and allows you to look at them through the prism of a new technology.
The artist emphasizes the structure of the body, changing colors, skipping some forms, but the human body always remains as the basis.
Only one thing confuses me. On electronic media, the work seems to be lively and voluminous, I can assume that they will look the same live. But in the real world, the works are printed, that is, they are without a physical volume, which really hurts me. Although here again, a strong natural feeling is the desire to touch this volume, touch it with your eyes, and in real life it is just a print.
Of course, here it is fashionable to pull up many philosophical aspects - the question of the real in the digital age, the question of the physical body of the so-called and what is an object of art, and so on.
I'm afraid to imagine that I can try it and I will like this technique. I have so strongly denied the "simple print", the lack of physical craft and the direct transfer of the artist's energy to the material, and now I feel that this may change. :(
Mark Powell
Mysterious artist from Melbourne about which I can not find enough information, but who managed to create a serious emotional work.
“My sculptures exaggerate and distort nature’s violent biological processes of degeneration and regeneration, parasitism, and the cannibalistic recycling of flesh which enables myriad life forms to evolve ever more complex perceptual and locomotive functions” he once wrote of his work. (Smithe, 2017)
Mark Powell, Meat Cathedral Diorama in display case (wood and glass), 70 x 100 x 70 cm [Sculpture] At: http://macabregallery.com/en/mark-powell-diorama-meat-cathedral/ (Accessed on 05.06.19)
The artist uses the structure of the human body and based on it creates new creatures. If the previous artist (Matthew Stone) only poetically decomposes the structure of the body, then Powell reinterprets the structure of the body itself. What does this give? It seems to me that this allows the viewer to look beyond the limits of the evolutionary process and ask the question, why do we look that way and what is all this for?
I don’t like blood bodies, the first impressions may be that the artist had big problems in his childhood and now he heals himself in this way, but this is an art to leave a strong emotional impression through provocation (as one option).
So, for example, Louise Bourgeois, had problems in childhood, and in a number of works, this manifests itself through painful works. What is interesting to see they are the same brown and bloody ...
Louise Bourgeois (1974) Destruction Of The Father [Sculpture] At: https://curiator.com/art/louise-bourgeois/destruction-of-the-father (Accessed on 03.07.19)
Katja Novitskova
I would say that Katja is more of a philosopher than an artist. She works in the post-Internet direction, so from a technical point of view her work is always computerized and digital. At the same time, the artist often uses images of animals and the human body.
Her work of art is more like a philosophical rationale of "human development on the Internet" than, for example, decoration on the wall (if we applied one of the potential goals of art).
Katja Novitskova At: https://www.instagram.com/p/BrsuKpDF3gk/ (Accessed on 14.06.19)
The artist develops the basic idea of where the real world can be mixed with a digital (half-real) world and how this process can be developed.
Man as a structure and as the world is much more complex than the Internet, Katja develops this idea by combining photos of real and digital, or bringing digital image to the physical.
It is interesting to note that even though many artists are doing the same thing - they print out collages and images from the Internet as a picture or sculpture with additional digital processing, but why did Katja get such popularity and interest from art critics? Answering this question, I can assume that environmental issues are on top of the agenda today, so everything that calls for conservation is automatically popular. Using ready-made, automatic swings for children, the artist remakes out into robots thereby, from her words, creating a new creature ...
Why does «every» artist want to create a new, unseen, creature? Is this a way to raise the question of primordiality? If I create an unprecedented creature from photographs and print it out in the form of a sculpture or a painting - will it answer the universe questions by itself? Or for such work will need a textbook with explanations and my theories?
Masha Yankovskaya and Rebecca Leveille
The next two artists work in a figurative style according to an old tradition – painting) These works focus on the human body and show it in all its beauty.
I was attracted to the works of Masha Yankovskaya and Rebecca Leveille for its brightness and originality of the plot. But now, after analyzing the works of previous artists, I thought that the works are extremely decorative and narrative.
On the one hand, it helps artists to have hundreds of thousands of subscribers in Instagram, people enthusiastically respond to these works. In the pictures of a narrative character, you can trace criticism or a hint of religion, relationships, and even the television series "The Game of Thrones."
On the other hand, the human body as long as we know it will remain the same, there is nothing new by definition, but how to portray it, how to describe it, in other words the way of representation these art is not interesting in terms of technology and creative approach of realization.
Masha Yankovskaya «Голод» ("Hunger") [Painting] At: http://mashayankovskaya.art/oiloncanvas (Accessed on 03.07.19)
Rebecca Leveille, (2016), oil, 60 x 40 cm [Painting] At: https://www.rleveille.com/paintings.html (Accessed on 03.07.19)
On the way, I found this image by Nester Formentera (the Philippines born, Dublin-based artist) and to complete this research I thought it is interesting that artist mimicking the technology (it is another way of responding to the technology – to recreate digital-like lines) and stay very vivid. Although the ideas and scenarios of the works themselves are not very intricate and scattered alphabetically - chaotic, from the head of an Indian to the hands of Durer.
Nester Formentera (2018) pen, [Drawing] At: https://nesterformentera.com/pages/linework (Accessed on 03.07.19)
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