controversial art & big ideas art 11 adv & ib

Controversial Art&

Big Ideas

Art 11 Adv & IB

Exploring Life: Science or Art?

Dr. Gunther von Hagens Damien Hirst, Artist

In 1977, the German anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens invented a technology called plastination.

This ground breaking preservation method replaces bodily fluids and fat with reactive fluid plastics that harden after vacuum-

forced impregnation.

Dr. Gunther von Hagens

  Before hardening the plastic in the specimens, the

plastinates are fixed into lifelike poses, illustrating how our bodies internally

respond to everyday movements and activities.

Plastination is a very slow and labour intensive

process. It takes an average of 1500 hours to to

transform a body into a full body plastinate.

           Human Corpse Playing Chess

Dr. Gunther von Hagens

Von Hagens is quite the self-promoter. "A good teacher is a good showman," he says.

In 2001 he donned a flesh-color bodysuit painted to look like a plastinated cadaver and danced on a float in Berlin's "Love Parade," a celebration of techno music.

A year later he earned the nickname Dr. Frankenstein from British tabloids after performing a pay-per-view autopsy in London, charging $21 a head.

“What's the problem? Is there something about cadavers that is wrong?

The bodies are in essence machinery that is no longer functioning. They weren't killed for use. The bodies were donated, in the same way that bodies are dedicated to medical schools and other scientific uses.

(And they probably undergo less desecration here than being chopped up by a med student.)

The exhibit is presented not so much as art as educational.” from an online blog…

“The anatomist alone is assigned a specific role - he is forced in his daily work to reject the taboos and convictions that people have about death and the dead.

I myself am not controversial, but my exhibitions are, because I am asking viewers to transcend their fundamental beliefs and convictions about our joint and inescapable fate.”

Dr. Gunther von Hagens

“Goriest Show on Earth” – Forbes magazine

Von Hagens insists all specimens come from consenting donors.

Body Worlds has exhibited to sell-out crowds (18 million people and counting) in 32

cities around the globe. It is considered a science

exhibition.

On the other hand, Damien Hirst is a British conceptual artist who does work that appears to be similar and he has made millions.

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol, England. As an artist he has continually challenged the boundaries between art, science, the

media and popular culture.

A cow and her calf sawn in two, pharmaceutical bottles, cigarette butts, medicine cabinets, office furniture, medical instruments, butterflies and tropical fish are just some of the means Hirst employs to communicate his unflinching view of the ambiguity at the heart of human experience.

Damien Hirst, Artist

•Mother and Child Divided, composed of a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde.

“Maybe the creepiest of Damien's pieces to date, two cows, sliced and diced and reassembled, almost, out of order, with a piece of head at each end.

Walking between the tanks, you can see right through the suspended cross sections of animal and all the intricacies of the internal biological machinations. You are, of course, bombarded with myriad thoughts of life's origins, your own creation and genesis and certainly, perhaps the most universal thought running

through everyone's mind: How long do you have before you find yourself as Damien Hirst's next work of art?”

Damien Hirst

Artist

“Some Comfort Gained from the Acceptance of the Inherent Lies in Everything” 1996

• The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), composed of a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde. This piece was nominated for a Turner Prize.

“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. I've found out there aren't any. I wanted to be stopped but no one will stop me.”

Damien Hirst

“Away from the Flock”

Damien Hirst

“What I really like is minimum effort for maximum result.”

YBAs

Art goes on in your head," he says. "If you

said something interesting, that might

be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down. Art comes from everywhere.

It's your response to your surroundings.

There are on-going ideas I've been working out for years, like how to make a rainbow in a gallery.

I've always got a massive list of titles, of ideas for shows, and of

works without titles.”

Hirst said that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be f@cking arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "shite"—"They're shit compared

to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely f@cking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one

painted by Rachel." He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, "'make one of your own.' And

she said, 'No, I want one of yours.' But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.'“ By February 1999, two assistants had painted

300 spot paintings.

"They hate me now because I made lots of money," said Hirst, referring to his recent Pharmacy Sale, where the artist pocketed an estimated $19,000,000-plus.

Memento Mori titled For the Love of God, was a human skull recreated in platinum and adorned with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats.

Approximately $15,000,000 worth of diamonds were used.

Asking price $100,000,000

It is said that an art piece has three substantial parts: The Artist's Intent The Work The Viewer’s Response

Describe the creator’s intent, the work and the viewer’s response for either Dr. Gunther von Hagen’s show or the work of Damien Hirst (minimum 500 words) you could also choose Banksy’s new wrok too.

Chuck Close, Andy Warhol

Chuck Close was born in Washington on July 5, 1940. He is an American photorealistic painter and

photographer.

Chuck Close

(born in 1940)

American

Photo-Realist

Painter

To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell.

His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill.

His first picture with this method was Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5” in by 83.5” in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968.

Close has often returned to the same photos to paint

over and over again with different techniques.

Some of his early drawings were so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book they

are still indistinguishable from a regular photograph.

In 1988, Close had a spinal artery collapse, on the day he was to give a speech at an art awards ceremony.

He felt ill beforehand, asked to be first, gave his speech, then painfully went to a hospital across the street.

A few hours later he was a quadriplegic.

Close continued to paint with a brush held between his teeth, creating mini-portraits in grid squares created by an assistant. From a distance, these squares appear as a single, unified image.

Chuck Close's subjects are his family, his friends, himself, and fellow artists whose faces are described

through his distinct, meticulous marks. His photos/inkjet prints are exquisitely detailed, capturing shifting tones and shadows as well as his subjects’ hairs and wrinkles.

The Granddaddy of Media Spinners: Andy Warhol

1950s Pop Art

Andy Warhol

AmericanPop Artist

~Famous for “Happenings” at The Factory Warehouse

~ Warhol coined the phrases ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ and ‘superstar’

Warhol: Pop Art

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.””

Warhol: Pop Art

“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.”

Warhol: Pop Art

*

Warhol: Pop Art

Warhol: Pop Art

Warhol: Pop Art

Warhol: Pop Art

Warhol: Pop Art

Warhol: Pop Art “The Factory”*

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

Warhol: Pop Art

Marina Abramović

The Grandmother of Performance Art

Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramvovic

• Examines the boundaries between the performer and the audience

• Explores the limits (outer limits) of physical boundaries, including tolerance, privacy & pain

• Also presents the audience with confrontational work that challenges comfort zones and expectations

• Also challenges states of consciousness

• Shock art

• Kind of Warholian

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Rhythm 10, 1973

In her first performance Abramović explored elements of ritual and gesture. Making use of twenty knives and two tape recorders, the artist played the Russian game in which rhythmic knife jabs are aimed between the splayed fingers of her hand. Each time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife from the row of twenty she had set up, and recorded the operation.

After cutting herself twenty times, she replayed the tape, listened to the sounds, and tried to repeat the same movements, attempting to replicate the mistakes, merging together past and present. She set out to explore the physical and mental limitations of the body – the pain and the sounds of the stabbing, the double sounds from the history and from the replication. With this piece, Abramović began to consider the state of consciousness of the performer. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.”

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.

Marina Abramovic Performance Artist