David Emin – The Modern Art Mouse.

Play at 2:18 min

Tracey Emin on being told that her bed isn’t art –

” just screamed louder and said yes it is, its my art”

I liked this idea that by being an artist you can clam anything is artwork, so I took it to the extreme and had fun with the idea that if I were an artist I clam everything as ‘Modern Art’.

And to make sure that everyone knew these things were modern art I began to put sticky notes everywhereeeee!  Buses, walls, people, signs, pretty much anything I came across had been given the title of Modern art.

Shortly after my sticky note escapades I came across David Shrigley‘s work and loved his tongue in cheek attitude.

Well within a few days it was my cousin’s 16th birthday and she give me the task of getting her something different, that nobody else would ever get her. Of course I accepted this challenge and immediately searched eBay for a taxidermy creature.

 One of my favourite works by Shrigley was the animals with signs, and what could be a more perfect gift for a girls 16th birthday?! And yes I know that this idea isn’t original and is stolen from Shrigley but as a gift I think it is fun and had to be done.

And of course I named him David Emin to honor the artists that I stole from to create him.

What is a Portrait

 

SURFACE

“Everything is Surface” – Andy Warhol

Stylish but Blank!

Andy Warhol’s screen print of Marilyn is purely surface. The images were often sourced from newspapers or press shots. They were impersonal and said nothing about the subject. But knowing the history and background of Marilyn we can read between the lines and give our own interpretation to the image.

With this screen print the images are fading out gradually to nothing. This could be interpreted as Marilyn’s fame slowly fading out of peoples memories since her death. This could also be the case for Elvis.

This image of Jackie Kennedy before and after her husband’s death could be considered to have a deeper meaning, showing the emotional strain of losing a loved one through the media’s unsympathetic camera lens.

Not Portraiture in any traditional sense.

Like Warhol Gerhard Richter uses photos from the mass media. Richter projected the images onto walls and hand painted the projected image.   Both Richter and Warhol spoke of the importance of surfaces, the lack of depth and the equality of various subject matter.

 Richter blurs his paintings .

“I blur things to make everything equally important and everything equally unimportant”.

Cindy Sherman creates a mask for herself, she dresses up in wigs and clothing to transform herself into characters.

These images aren’t self-portraits in the classic sense.

EXPOSED

 Photographer Nan Goldin captures her life, she captures the good the bad and the ugly. She shows everything to the viewer in her work. Many of the people in her images died of drug overdoses or aids. Goldin showed over 700 photographs at the Mudd Club and various art galleries.

Tracey Emin’s work also puts herself on display, both hers and Goldins work blurs the lines between what should be public and private.

SCIENCE

Gary Schneider creates ‘Genetic Self Portraits’ with handprints, photographs of his irises, parts of his DNA sequences, x-rays and microscopic images of his own hair.

All of these artists challenge the idea of what a portrait is.

And I think it is impossible to fully define what a  true portrait is.