Unity in color
Medium: acrylic on canvas
Size: 121.92cm x 30.48cm
Completed: September 2016
exhibition textUnity in Color is a piece inspired by the Neo-Expressionist movement. Using acrylic on canvas, I wanted to create a puzzle-like painting using lines and geometric shapes to convey a theme of unity despite the contrasting colors and details distributed throughout. I also included more intricate detailing so that the shapes shown would appear figure-like to display the theme of a united society despite racial and class differences.
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artistic inspiration
I was immediately drawn to the works of Keith Haring for inspiration when I began this project. I wanted to create a simple geometric piece that still would convey a deeper message despite it's simplicity. Haring uses solid lines and colors to create straightforward images often in the form of abstract figures. With his work, he frequently works with social and political themes, in which the different characters displayed tell a story of common issues seen in modern society. In his final piece The Pisa's Mural, the figures shown throughout all have their own distinct characteristics, shapes, and colors. Haring wanted to convey the theme of harmony in the world, where the 30 figures shown all represent an aspect of peace coming together in unity like a puzzle. The colors he used are much more subtle in this piece compared to his other works, and are used in inspiration of the colors seen throughout Pisa to create harmony with the environmental setting where the mural resides.
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For the overall composition of my piece, I was inspired by De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian. Mondrian often uses similar compositions in his works focusing on set by set rectangular paintings using primary and monochromatic color schemes. His works seem to be simple and superfluous, but are often composed to show perfect order and balance with color, shape, and arrangement. He wanted to emphasize the underlying spirituality of nature by simplifying his pieces to basic elements, in order to represent a balance of forces that control nature and the universe.
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cultural Inspiration
When researching the artists I chose to take influence from for this project, especially with Haring's style, they instantly reminded me of ancient African sculptures and other forms of African art. The aesthetic of African art has been known to heavily influence the work's and styles of a variety of modern artists, especially within the Cubism and Neo-Expressionist movement. With Haring's work, he has claimed to have taken inspiration from Picasso and other artists that were influenced by the use of human figures often depicted in African art. Like Picasso and other cubist artists, Haring wanted to sway away from traditional fine art styles with depicting naturalism and human behavior/conflicts with creating images that have figure like qualities, but also appear flat and vivid almost like a cartoon. Like Haring, I also took inspiration through researching the forms of African sculptures and how they used geometrical shapes to portray human characteristics in a more abstract way.
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Research
Haring's Key Ideas:
Mondrian's Key Ideas:
African Influences in Modern Art:
- Uses simple imagery of figures and shapes to provide commentary on political and social issues including AIDS, drug addiction, and apartheid
- Wanted to establish a sense of liveliness when communicating serious issues with his style of incorporating cartoon images and vivid colors
- His commitment to clean lines and simplicity gave new life to figuration in painting, contrasting against to the more abstract approaches of the previous generation and the more expressionistic painting of his current generation.
Mondrian's Key Ideas:
- Distilled his representations of the world to their basic elements, which represented two opposing forces: positive and the negative, the dynamic and the static, the masculine and the feminine. The balance of his compositions reflect what he saw as the universal balance of these forces.
- Advocated pure abstraction and a toned down palette in order to express an ideal of universal harmony in all of the arts.
- By using basic forms and colors, Mondrian believed that his vision of modern art would exceed divisions in culture and become a new common language based in pure primary colors, flatness of forms, and dynamic tension
African Influences in Modern Art:
- During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art.
- Pictorial flatness, vivid color palette, and fragmented shapes helped to define early modernism.
- Artists inspired by African art knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, but they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance.
Meaning
Using Haring's work as inspiration, I also wanted to create a piece that displayed the themes of unity and peace in the form of a puzzle using figure-like geometric shapes and colors. To make the image appear more like a puzzle coming together, I decided to divide the work overall into a variety of rectangular-like sections all with different shapes and with contrasting primary colors. With incorporating this layout, I wanted the idea on how a puzzle comes together with its differing pieces to represent an idea of harmony despite contrast. I also wanted the figure-like shapes displayed throughout the piece to come together as one whole image despite being distinguished as separate images with the different colors used and the separation of the piece with solid black lines. Incorporating Mondrian's ideas for inspiration, I decided to use bold primary (blue, red, yellow), and monochromatic (black, white) colors to provide contrast as well as display how these colors can come together in unity within the piece despite their differing color classifications. I also wanted to include his ideas of balance which are represented with the use of patterns and color placement choice repeated throughout the piece.
Planning/experimentation
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I first wanted to plan out how I would include Mondrian's ideas and style into my piece. I started by creating a basic sketch of two possible layouts of the background of my piece. I mostly wanted to include larger areas of squares and rectangles so that the design I would add on top of it would be able to fit inside the spaces and have bolder, thicker lines/shapes. I then used an image of my piece with the background completed to digitally organize the color scheme I would use so that the other design would contrast with the background.
With this sketch, I wanted to experiment with different characters inspired by Haring's style to possibly use for my other design sketch. I ended up deciding to go with a more abstract approach with my final design sketch, more so focusing on shapes and how they can connect to portray figures rather than figures with more obvious characteristics that can instantly be made out as characters.
This sketch ended up being my final design for this piece. I wanted to incorporate bold shapes and lines that may not be distinguishable as human forms at first glance, but do come together to represent figures as the viewer's eyes wander through the piece connecting all of the shapes together.
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process
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I began this piece by painting the entire canvas with white acrylic paint in order for the squares that would remain white to appear as a white out shade that cannot be achieved with just gesso. With the design layout of how I wanted to divide this piece, I started to create straight black lines with the help of tape to divide the canvas into a variety of squares and rectangles. After the layout was on the piece, I began to fill in each individual square and rectangle (as seen on the left) with cobalt blue, red, and yellow acrylic paint based on the pattern layout I wanted to achieve (see planning images/sketches). As I filled in each divided section I took time to make sure that all lines were clean and straight and that the colors were vivid and solid.
After each section was filled in based on the color and pattern layout as well as all of the lines being clean and straight as desired, I took my other design layout sketch (see planning images/sketches) and projected it onto my canvas and began transferring the image throughout the entire piece. Once the entire design image was on the canvas, I began to paint the outlines of the shapes and figures filling in each shape based on which colored section it was on top of (as seen on the left). With the white sections I painted the outlines and shapes blue and for the blue section I did the exact opposite by filling in the outlines with white. I followed this pattern for the other sections as well, painting the outlines in the yellow sections red and painting the outlines and shapes for the red sections yellow.
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reflection
Being as excited as I was to begin this piece, I was also very much excited for it to come together in the end. At first, I wasn't planning on combining artists and meaning in the way that I did and wanted to just focus on one single artist. Wanting the styles of contemporary art to be present in my pieces, I think I did well with not only including this but also with combining artists that have dissimilar styles and meanings behind their works. Reviewing my piece overall, I think that my idea of using shapes and lines to portray figures didn't turn out as well as I planned. When looking at the piece, the shapes and lines throughout sometimes tend to look more like graffiti hand style writing rather than figures, making the piece overwhelming and chaotic to view. With this, people viewing the piece may interpret a different meaning, but I honestly do not mind this at all because it can make the piece more interesting to discuss and view. I also think that my color layout choices could've been organized better. Putting similar color tones together ended up not adding contrast from the background layout to the design as I planned. Adding smaller lines to specific shapes and lines helped to fix these mistakes with making the piece's colors contrast against each other as well as distinguish specific shapes as human forms.
act questions
- My artistic inspiration for this project has significantly affected how the composition and design of the piece turned out as well as the overall meaning behind it. Both artists that I have incorporated, Haring and Mondrian, have similar styles and themes involved in their pieces that can be seen portrayed throughout the piece I completed.
- The approach of Haring's work with the theme of a harmonious world is seen with his use of characterized figures that come together in a puzzle like style despite their color differences and shapes. Mondrian approaches his work with themes of balance and harmony of the elements, portrayed with his use of pure primary colors and orderly shapes/patterns.
- A generalization that I have made on modern art as a whole is that many contemporary artists focus on social and political commentary in pieces that are made out to be straightforward imagery, but still have a way of conveying deeper meaning to its viewers despite its abstract styling.
- The central idea that I wanted to portray with this piece and the research behind it is unity within a society of individuals that have differing characteristics. Despite being different from one another, the figures shown unite together like a perfect puzzle. And despite these figures all being together, there still is a sense of individuality that is shown with each figure and shape.
- Conclusions that I have made while researching is that you cannot assume that abstract art is made without themes and meaning. Many come to the conclusion that a lot of modern and contemporary artists make work just for the overall look of it simply because the meaning isn't of face value when you just look over the piece. Simple elements such as color, lines, and form can all be used in ways to provide meaning and insight on relevant topics.
works cited
http://www.comune.pisa.it/english/doc/the_mural_of_keith_haring.htm
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-haring-keith.htm
http://www.xtec.cat/~jarrimad/contemp/mondrian.hml
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-mondrian-piet.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/ancient-art/african-sculpture.htm
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-haring-keith.htm
http://www.xtec.cat/~jarrimad/contemp/mondrian.hml
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-mondrian-piet.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/ancient-art/african-sculpture.htm