Finally! Its done. I know that I haven't made many posts in a while. My whole life seems to have been pretty much dominated by this essay. But now that I'm finished, I can hopefully focus fully on my studio practice. There are several questions that I feel I have wanted to explore but I just haven't had the time while this essay has been going on. |
I have attached my finished essay to this post so all those who want to read it, after hearing me talk about for so long, can. |
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Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Michelangelo's David Both historic, meteoric figures of the art world from the Italian Renaissance have separately been fascinated by male perfection. They both tackled it in there own individual ways da Vinci to draw, Michelangelo to sculpt. But, both depict a man they believe to be in his prime. I only ask how does an average man measure up to these giants of perfection. An yes these men were representing perfection hundreds of years ago. So how is the contemporary male different does he still need everything that the men of the past needed.
Beloved it or not but I have actually never been to the Library. And today Alex asked me to go to the library with him so we could discuss our Art Context Essay concepts and run through ideas and artists with each other. I agreed it would also be an experience working with someone as usually I do everything on my own. In the end we had a great time I ended up coming away with about 15 books. The library is massive and I didn't feel particularly comfortable working there. At home there's a kettle, a toilet, Silence, Music, a computer... I'm used to and the library just wasn't a comfortable environment to work in for me. Having said that the books and resources I came away with will be really useful and the research I did with alex just reaffirmed the train of thought I was going down, I think the session really helped him though because when we went in he wasn't sure what he was going to write about but by the time we left he had a much clearer idea. My time was spent looking into fascinations of the body based on sex using the artist I had looked a previously and the I wrote a brief essay plan to try and structure myself.
Warning!
Some images below could be perceived as explicit content and therefor viewers discretion is advised before you click Read More. Worrying. The choice word of my Art context lecturer Penny McCarthy when I asked to to look at my portfolio of work around children and drug abuse. She was more interested in my own phycological state of wellbeing than anything else. She wanted to know more about my inspiration and background, which I guess I will have to lay bare if I'm going to be confronting these issues. And she also wanted to know where I find my imagery; you see she would prefer me to be drawing from life or using imagery that I had taken. However we jested that to do this I would be putting myself into some pretty dodgy situations which wouldn't feasibly be possible nor would I really want to. She also showed a deal of interest in my drawing style asking me questions like do I use a full range of pencils as the tone in my drawings are very muted. All in all, I wasn't particularly sure if Penny really liked the work I was doing or wether she was just trying to be kind. Anyway the conversation was quickly moved on to my Art Context essay for which Penny was my lecturer. I showed her a reading list that I had put together to take to the library and a small selection of artist that could influence my essay. Penny had nothing more to do than encouraged me to pursue my reading and reaffirm that the artists I was looking at were very interesting, finishing with, she will look forward to reading what I come up with in March. I guess I could say that at the moment the Art Context work is going well the Studio Work, not so much
So over the Christmas period we were asked to choose one of the Essay questions that I have attached to the end of this post. We were asked to prepare a brief presentation using this question as a kind of way to inform the essay that we will be doing in the near future. The hope was that these presentations generate discussions and test our theories. This approach may not have all the answers but it would try to point us in the right direction for our essay's. I had several Ideas and theories based on one essay question in particular. But unfortunately my energy had very much been focused on the January assessment. So for most of my presentation I had to just wing it. On the plus side my initial argument seemed to have a clear essay structure, that I could work with. But, my research into artists and theorists around my chosen topic were lacking. Here's to a lot of hard work in the near future.
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Richard CassidyEmerging artist from Derby, England. Currently a student at Sheffield Hallam University. Archives
May 2015
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