Images With(In) Books

This week we were given the opportunity to work with a medium that most. Of us had little experience with. While I did enjoy the collage workshop, I felt that my piece was disorganized and no where near what I usually produce. One can blame it on having just barely woken up but I feel the collage will not be the way to go for me.

The same could be said for the digital art workshop. While I did enjoy learning a new way to create art work, I felt going the media route was way beyond my co fort zone. While I do plan to include some sort of media to my final piece, I do not think it will consist of a lot of it. What were your thoughts on the workshops? Do you think you might incorporate some of the new things we learned this week?

The collage workshop really gave me respect for Ernst! The seamless, cohesive way the pictures he used in his collage form one big image seemed totally unattainable to me when working with the magazines. Regardless, though, the workshop helped me create a cool collage and gave me a better understanding of what I want to do with my final project.

The workshop also made me think about the way collages function as a reflection of the culture they are created in. We used pretty current magazines, so the collages we made mostly showed the current times we live in, even if they had a certain message to them.  Collages are unique reflections in that way because they are not made from universal art materials, like paint, pencil, charcoal, etc.

I’m glad we had the chance to do both workshops, as each medium had its own merits. Collage had certain limitations that working with Adobe did not. I’m not sure if collage artists find it appealing to work with what they can find that already exists, but I liked that I already had some of what I was going to use in front of me. This limitation sort of narrowed down the options in terms of what I could make. On the other hand, as I started working on my collage, I did find myself wishing for certain images I couldn’t find — I wonder if this is when collage artists start to draw or make their own pieces to include (like Matisse did)? Anyway, artist processes probably aren’t so linear.

Ironically, the limitations of collage actually also sparked creativity. The images I picked from the magazines led me to think of different concepts I could portray that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, especially if I had started with a single concept in mind like I did with Adobe. The images opened up new paths, whereas with Adobe, I feel like I was limited with my lack — or abundance of — ideas (sometimes I had too many things I wanted to do, and wound up staring at the screen thinking about which one I should pick). However, unlike collage, I could create anything I wanted in Illustrator. Even though I didn’t know all the functions of the program, I knew it was powerful enough that I could do basically anything, which was definitely different from the feeling I got with collage. I’m not sure which medium I liked better — it probably depends on the mood I’m in, but I think it’d be interesting to find out more about why artists would choose, say, acrylic paint over pastels, sculpture with steel over sculpture with wood, etc. For example, I wonder what Yun-Fei Ji experienced when he worked with paper to make a 3D work, which was a departure from his 2D handscrolls.

During the collage workshop, I found myself thinking about a philosophy of literature class I took a few semesters ago during which we discussed the legitimacy of black-out poetry. A  lot of people argued that using a marker to obscure all but a few choice words on a page could not be considered an original work, and others argued that black-out poetry was no less legitimate, but simply worked with a smaller lexicon.

I really enjoyed the collage workshop, but I found myself asking a similar question: am I producing something original? The product I pieced together wouldn’t have been possible had Vogue decided against including an Alice in Wonderland shoot in their December issue, or an interior design feature, or an ad featuring an unhappily married couple. But looking at my finished collage, it’s clear that there’s no place for it in Vogue. So obviously the process was transformative, but how much transformation is necessary for a work to qualify as original?

I think that all the workshops we’ve had for class have been rewarding and increased my understanding of the texts we’ve read, but the collage workshop on Monday may have been the most enjoyable. I wasn’t excited about making a collage initially. I didn’t feel like dealing with scissors or messy glue sticks, and had no idea/plan for what I wanted to make. But once we got going, I found myself embracing the mess and being much more creative than I anticipated.

The wonderfully cheesy poetry magazines that the library supplied were actually perfect for collage, with lots of animals and people in different scenarios. Thinking back to Ernst, I started to combine the people and animals, and see how seamless I could make it look. My final product was pretty weird, but I had a lot of fun making it, and laughed the whole time as I was cutting the heads off of men in a fishing boat and replacing them with the heads of cats.

I was much more creative in the collage workshop than in the digital workshop, and I think a big reason for that was because for the collage workshop we literally had something to work with. It was daunting to sit in front of a computer where you can create whatever you want and just come up with something. The materials of the collage inspired me and gave me direction. Maybe Ernst chose to do collage instead of drawing because the materials allowed him to be more creative.

During our digital illustration tutorial, I remember someone asking why there were different software programs for certain tasks if all of them had similar tools, and professor Serrano explained that we could think of this specialization “like a modern scriptorium.” I thought that this was a funny and interesting insight. Whereas the lone artist would not have been able to complete a manuscript because he was insufficiently trained in all of the various arts needed to produce a true masterpiece, so too can no one software be expected to handle vector graphics, pixel or raster graphics, photo editing, written content, and multipage layout formatting and excel at all concurrent tasks. In software, a degree of specialization is needed in order to provide the most relevant and powerful tools, while still maintaining usability. Yet it is still true that certain tools prevail across these specialized softwares. Like the illuminators who specialized in one decorative art but were quick to realize excellence or shortcoming in others, there is crossover. But the nature of the crossover is different; these programs are aimed at a user who might prefer one program over others, but could theoretically use all.

The specialization of the scriptorium focused more on the singularity of the art being produced than on the singularity of the artist: teams of masters and apprentices would lay the gold leaf, for example, and if they were skilled enough it would appear to be a single and unified work in the style of the scriptorium. Perhaps our artistic focus or concept of an artist has moved towards the singular. Even though plenty of modern artists produce their works through collective effort and even sometimes employ apprentices, the public concept of an artist seems to center on a lone figure. The scriptorium is now to be found in the specialized tools used to produce art, and not in the collective of specialized artists working to create a unified masterpiece.

Sometimes I think digital art can be seen separate from traditional art. The fact that everything is done on a computer adds an element of distance that is not the same as using a paint or pencil to create a piece of work. When you draw a red circle on a piece of paper with paintbrush, you understand that there is red paint, created with red pigments, and brush made of hairs and wood, and there is no secret to how you make the red circle appear in front of you. I know this sounds incredibly simple, almost too simple, but now think of a computer. How do you create a red circle on your computer? You click a button, drag your cursor, pick a color and there you go. Do you actually know the process of how that circle got there? Not the average person does and that’s what creates the distance. People don’t respect what they don’t understand. At the end of the day, a computer and a pencil are not that different artistically because they are both tools for creativity.

Today, I feel that photoshop, which would fit into the category of digital art, never really gets recognized as art. I’m not trying to say magazine covers with girls altered to look thinner is art but there is something to be said when you see an image of something completely imaginary that has been made on a computer but it is so seamless it looks real. These pieces are just as seamless as Max Ernst’s work but they are never revered on the same level. Of course, Max Ernst did not believe his art was first interpreted properly, so it will be interesting to see if attitudes toward digital art will change, and if it will become more of an art norm in the future. I know the workshop on Wednesday taught me to have a little more respect for it.

The workshop on Wednesday where we worked with Adobe Illustrator was really fun. Personally, I have used the program before and am very familiar with it. I think it’s a great tool that can be used effectively to illustrate ideas and create pieces of art. And, in terms of a collage, I think that it could be extremely useful. Piecing together different parts of pictures is really fun and should come out well when using Illustrator. Furthermore, I find that, because there are so many ways to use the program, many different types of artwork can come out of it as a result. Both using images on the internet as well as drawing something from scratch can all produce different results that have the possibility of being really cool.

The collage itself is a very interesting art form. It prides itself on solely taking things from other people and compiling them into one image, therefore creating something from the mind of the artist doing the collage. While I believe that this is a very valid way of expression when it comes to art, Adobe Illustrator also introduces the possibility of adding some original aspect to the collage, thus making it more of an individual piece instead of a compilation. Whatever one chooses to make when using Illustrator during the collage project, it is still a very useful tool that I believe is perfect for this assignment.

During Monday’s class, I was struck by the singular absurdity of doing arts and crafts in a 200 level course at an elite liberal arts school. I am certainly not complaining – I rather enjoyed the activity, and felt that it had merit in illustrating the technique of collage, and perhaps also the value of it. I would like to issue a disclaimer that the following text is not a commentary on Ernst’s artistic ability, but rather, my own. Collage is enjoyable because it makes the creative process much more accessible. It is less synthesis than combination. The raw materials already exist and are left to the invention of the collage maker to cut and layer them in interesting ways. It relies on the direction of the maker, but not necessarily his or her ability to draw or paint.

Perhaps some of the power of Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonte derives from it’s nature as a collage compilation. If we accept that he is making socio-political critiques, then the knowledge that the content of the book came from existing publications of the time period becomes especially significant. He is twisting and manipulating the culture of the time to make a statement about that same culture. In this way, he is making an argument that is more poignant than if his pictures were hand-drawn – none of it is pure invention, just interpretation.