Reading the books

Along side watching all the movie adaptations of Alice that i own, i read both ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there’ so that i could better understand where the movies had gotten their inspiration for the films and to see how closely they kept the the actual storyline of the original book. As well as reading these i read ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’ the original manuscript of the story. Sent to Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Alice, as a Christmas present off Lewis Carrol who made the story up for her and her sisters one summers day when she was a child. The book is written in Lewis Carroll’s handwriting and has his own hand drawn illustrations. It was interesting to see how different the story originally was to the version we all know today. Characters like the mad hatter and cheshire can’t aren’t even in the original story at all.

Lewis Carroll’s illustration of Alice in the story

Lewis Carroll’s drawing of Alice Liddell

Artist Research – Tracey Emin, Everyone I have ever slept with

This is a piece of Tracey Emin’s work that i have always admired. I feel that this piece is very relevant to my installation project as it encourages the viewer to climb inside of the piece to truly experience it, much like what i intend for my piece to do.

Everyone I have ever slept with, Tracey Emin

Close up of the inside of the piece

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Below is an extract from my essay i completed for my contextual studies module;

Tracey Emin is an artist who was born in London, England in 1963. Tracey Emin is part of the Young British Artists movement that is otherwise known as the YBA’s. This is a movement of young artists who began exhibiting art together during the late 1980’s and the 1990’s. A lot of the artist work provided shock tactics and openness of materials and processes. The most well known of the YBA artists is Damien Hirst who was the one that organized the first exhibition entitled Freeze in 1988 while he was still a student at Goldsmiths College of Art in London. Tracey Emin has worked with many different mediums such as painting, drawing, film, photography, sculpture, sewn applique and neon text. Within her artworks Tracey Emin explores self portraiture by using her own life experiences. One of Emin’s most notorious pieces is the piece titled Everyone I have Ever slept with from 1995, this piece was made by the artist sewing around 100 names of everyone she had ever shared a bed with, but not just in a sexual manner, these names included family, friends and even her two aborted fetuses. These stitched names were placed on the inside of a store bought tent, to view the piece the viewer had to crawl inside of the tent, this was done to gave a sense of safety within the public space of an art gallery. The piece was sadly destroyed in 2004 along with a lot of other contemporary art pieces when there was a fire in a Momart art storage warehouse. Tracey Emin’s tent piece was often judged by people on the fact that they would mistakenly think it was a list of the names that the artist had had sex with rather than had fallen asleep in the same bed with. This was because of the euphemism connected to the saying slept with. When Tracey Emin’s piece was about more than just sex.

Artist Research – Jessica Stockholder, On spending money tenderly

The artist, Jessica Stockholder used found objects to make the piece. This piece plays about with scale, colour and texture. What i like about this piece is that there is so many different components to the piece that it makes you want to explore them all to see what they are and examine them closer. i also enjoy the bold colours of the geometric shapes on the floor and walls of the space.

On spending money tenderly, Jessica Stockholder

Artist Research – Ilya Kabakov, The man who flew into space from his apartmant

This piece was created by Ilya Kabakov in the 1980’s. it creates a world in which a man has created a slingshot and fired himself into space to escape from life. what i like about the piece is that the artist was able to create a whole new world within his installation that makes you want to know about about the character that would have lived there. it almost feels like a scene from a story book or something.

The man that flew into space from his apartment, Ilya Kabakov

Artist Research – Kurt Schwitters, Merzbau

Kurt Schwitters started to work on Merzbau in 1923 and continued to work on it up until he fled germany to escape the Nazi’s. The studio where the piece was made was bombed in 1943, destroying the piece inside. I really liked the look of the piece as there is a lot going on with it so there is many parts you can study. i like the fact that is was a ‘living’ piece of artwork as it was always being changed while schwitters added to it.

Merzbau, Kurt Schwitters

Artist Research – Edward Kienholz

As part of a research task my class was split into groups and given one artist to research into. as i had been placed into a group of 3 we had to spread the tasks out more and so i was given the task of researching the artist, Edward Kienholz, and looking at two pieces of his art, i chose to research Roxys and The Merry Go World. While other members of the group researched into his ideas and concepts and different pieces of Edward Kienholz work. Below is a link to view the powerpoint with all of our information on it

Research powerpoint instalation

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While researching Edward Kienholz for the research task his work seemed really familiar to me. That was when i realised that i had seen an exhibition by him back in 2005. I remember there was a few pieces in the room however the main piece that i remember is The Merry Go World. That is why i chose to research this piece for the research task. For more information on this piece refer to my slide on the presentation. What i remember about the piece is the flashing lights and the Childlike wonder of the piece. However i was only about 11 or 12 at the time as was too nervous to go inside of it as there was an interactive part to it, however i now regret not going into it.

The Merry Go World – Edward Kienholz

Artist Research – Tim Burton

Tim Burton is one of my favourite directors as i love his dark, whimsical gothic style. During this project i have found out that he has been influenced by german expressionism. i can see close connections to The cabinet of Dr Caligari. Such as Penguin from tim burtons adaptation of Batman is very similar to the creepy Dr Caligari. And Edward Scissorhands is very similar to Cesare the ‘monster’ of the film, Both are gentle characters who are turned into monsters the also both have dark sunken eyes. A lot of Burtons drawings are similarto the sets from Dr Caligari.

Penguin

Dr Caligari

Edward Scissorhands

Cesare

Tim Burton Drawing

Set from Dr Caligari

Artist Research – The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 1920

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a film directed by Robert Wiene in 1920. It is said to be the first ‘real’ horror movie. I really enjoyed watching this film and the ending leaves you wondering what really happened. I enjoyed the mixture of sets and the style in which they have been drawn. I also like the dark story line and characters. I like the fact that they have used different filters over the film to signify different aspects to the film for example there is an orange filter to show day time, a blue filter for night time and a pink filter when we are in the woman’s house.

Artist Research – L’age D’or 1931

L’age D’or is the second collaborative film between Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made in 1931 after filming Un chein Andalou in 1929. This film in very different to Un Chein Andalou as it has an easier to follow plot line and even title cards to explain the story. As the story was in french i struggled to understand what was being said, however i spent a lot of time translating the title cards using a translator to give myself a little understanding of what was going on in the film.
This somewhat helped me however i could sort of get the gist of what was happening without the translations. I found myself actually enjoying watching this film as i wouldn’t normally have chosen to watch it.
With this film there is a lot of dream-like scenes where things don’t make much sense to the rest of the film. It has a lot of fetichism within this film showing a lot of lust between characters.

Artist Research – Voyage Dans La Lune 1902

Voyage Dans La Lune is a film by Georges Mèliès in 1902. This film is a very theatrical piece where there is a lot of over acting which adds humour to the piece. The film uses sets to create a whole other world. This film has been inspiration to modern day films and sci-fi content. I really enjoyed this piece however i don’t think i will take any of these techniques further into my own film as it doesn’t fit with my ideas for my piece.