Art Event #2.

The presentation on the painting, Landscape with an Anchorite Saint, by Nicolas Poussin was interesting due to the fact that the man in the painting was a mystery until recently. Much of the painting remained in mystery until in 1999 when technology offered art historians the ability to clean paintings efficiently without damaging anything. When the painting was cleaned art historians were able to partially decipher the painting and the meaning. The painting features several interesting elements including a lightening bolt and a mysterious raven. The lightning bolt is such an interesting element because it’s a rarity in renaissance paintings. The ability of a renaissance painter to show real time weather conditions in a painting was quite an achievement during that time period. The mysterious raven is still in question and was only able to be seen recently after cleaning. The meaning of the raven in the painting is still up in the air.

Art Event #1.

Broken Flowers is a movie about a lonesome man, Don. Don receives a mysterious anonymous pink letter in the mail that says he has a 19-year-old son. The letter goes onto say that Don’s son went on a camping trip but hasn’t returned home. The letter then goes on to say that Don’s son has probably gone looking for his real father. After reading the letter Don thinks it might be a prank but his neighbor/friend convinces him that he should find out who wrote the letter. Don’s neighbor organizes a trip for Don to visit all his past girlfriends and try to uncover his son’s mother. Overall I think the movie really dragged on and on and generally had a very depressing mood. There were a lot of awkward moments that seemed to drag on way to far to keep an audience focused. There were also excessive scenes of driving montages and bland dialogue and music. The ending was the best part of the movie. The ending was so good because it felt like the climax. Don thinks he finds his son and tries to slowly tell him that he’s his father but when the kid runs away and Don chases him a mysterious car drives past Don. The camera shows a close-up of a kid in the car that is starring at Don. This final scene is open to the audience to decide who Don’s son actually was. The kid who was running away from Don or the mysterious kid in the car? Although I found the end to be interesting the rest of the movie was really bland and I think if the rest of the movie incorporated scenes like the final scene it would’ve been a much better movie.

Magic Post-it Notes.

This video is a stop motion video of post it notes on a wall that tell a progressing story of a day dreaming boy. The amount of time that must have went into making this video is amazing. Not only do the post-it notes create amazing pieces of artwork frame by frame but they are also apart of a continuous video that is a piece of artwork itself.

Zero Gravity.

Li Wei is an artist who creates death defying photographs of himself hanging off building ledges, flying through the air, crashing into buildings and much more stomach wrenching images. His artwork is a cross between photography and performance art. These photographs are so interesting because there completely out of the ordinary and instill a story behind them. The viewer is left to question why the Wei is falling from the building or how Wei has just been able to take flight in an industrial scrapyard. More of his work can be seen here.

Giant Sculptures.

Artist Ron Mueck is a sculptor that creates both tiny and humongous hyper realistic sculptures of people. His sculptures show every detail of the human body. Ron even goes to even farther lengths to create as realistic sculpture as possible as to put his own hair into some of his sculptures.

3-D Chalk Artists.

I recently found two awesome chalk artists, Kurt Wenner and Julian Beever on www.2leep.com, that create realistic 3-D drawings in public streets and sidewalks. From certain angles these chalk drawings look distorted and completely out of proportion but from the right angle they look almost realistic. I found these drawings to be really interesting because of the medium in use and how the artist creates 3-D images on a 2-D plane. What's interesting about the medium is that its not permanent and will eventually wash away. All that work can only be seen days after the initiall drawing in person or in a photograph. Julian Beever's work can be seen here: http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm