Some Art Opinions with Mack

Bob Crowley was born in Cork, Ireland in 1952. He is an Academy Award winning scenic designer, and has designed over 20 productions over his career. He uses a variety of colors and shapes, and movement in his pieces. He uses variety by experimenting with colors and messing around with shapes. For example, in the play The Glass Menagerie, he made a staircase that seems like it was leaning and going away from the audience. Crowley uses movement in most of pieces. For example, in his play American in Paris, he uses projections of airplanes to give the illusion that they are flying over head.

Digital Grotesque is a 3D printing studio created by two architects, Benjamin Dillenburger and Michael Hansmeyer. It's goal is to create rooms, know as Grottos, just by using a 3D printer. It's Grottos are intense, and filled with minute details that really put the room together. Eric Van Straaten combines images of female forms with birds to explore ideas of youth, femininity, freedom and environmental issues. For example, one of his pieces called "Flamingo" points out the history of the bird species through his descriptions of his works. He uses a lot of color and his pieces leave you wonder what it all means.

Frank Philip Stella was born on May 12, 1936, and is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker who still works today. He works with color and shapes, making a fun and slightly disorientating effect. He uses patterns and messes with them to create an abstract piece of art. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Stella would experiment with bright colors and patterns to make the viewer see different shapes. Today, he has experimented with more sculptures. They look like they are meant to represent something, but it's hard to tell which is the point. Stella also uses his paintings to discombobulate and overwhelm the viewer with all the action happening in the piece.  Older work: Newer Work:

This episode of TED Talk tells the story of a photographer who asked for a world wide group project. The project was for random people to take photos of those on the street and send those photos to him. People all around the globe did this: Native American tribes, people in Pakistan and Israel, and gay people in Russia. I think that the project was super empowering and an intelligent way to tell the story of people whose stories are never told.

A diptych is a painting or artwork that is two flat pieces hinged or attached together. Below is a diptych that has a blend of the principles of art: balance, harmony, and gradation. The balance comes from the use of the same colors, brush strokes, and intense disproportion of the characters. The harmony is that they are clearly from the same universe and they compliment each other. The painting plays around with gradation: small eyes to large ones, warped head shapes, light colors on the face compared to the dark background. Triptychs are the same as diptychs, but instead of two pieces of artwork, it's three. Below is a triptych that follows the same principles of art. The fact that the three pieces are connected by universe and interact with each other means that the artist is using harmony. The painting has balance because of the way the artist set up the two adults to be beside each other. It also has gradation because of the use of dark and light colors surrounding the peo...

Below are kinetic sculptures designed by a Belgian artist named Pol Bury. He uses water, gravity, stainless steel, and/or wood to make unsettling and moving sculptures.

The dictionary defines social justice as "justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society."  The dictionary's definition would be an idyllic world. It would be incredible if women made the same amount money as men, it would be amazing if black people had the same privileges as white people, and it would be wonderful if the LGBT community had the same opportunities in public society as hetrosexual and cisgender people. However, social justice means something different to different people. There's discourse all around the world about what should be corrected in society and what should be left alone, and artists can express their versions of justice through their art. One of those artists that I will focus on today is The NAMES Project. The NAMES Project is dedicated to showcasing the effects AIDS and HIV can have on the family of those who are HIV positive or who have lost members to the disease. They created The Quilt: a...

Marcel Duchamp was an artist in the early 1900s who coined the term "readymade" art works. He challenged society's idea of what is art by taking everyday objects out of their usual context. These were his groundbreaking readymade pieces.

Fauvism is a style of painting with vivid expressionistic and unrealistic use of color that thrived in Paris in 1905. Henri Matisse was regarded as the movement's leading figure.

The Arts and Crafts Movement  was an international movement in the decorative and fine arts scene. This began in Britain and continued throughout Europe and North America between 1880 and 1920. Japan also took up the movement in 1920. 

Vermeer was born in 1632 in Delft, Netherlands. Today, 34 paintings are firmly attributed to him, with three being debated on whether or not they are his. However, 74 pictures were attributed to him by Thoré-Bürger, a journalist and art critic who is best known for his rediscovery of Vermeer in 1866. Most of his work involves paintings of people and their everyday lives. However, Vermeer pushes the use of lights and dark to the extreme, making the beholder feel the depth of the painting. Also, some of his paintings show women living day to day, including the stresses and pressures of life such as women drinking, praying, preparing themselves for the morning, or sitting at the table processing the events of the day.