For my abstraction I chose a painting of a very similar 1929 Ford RPU by Keith Weesner. The artist has obviously taken the time to include details to make it appear somewhat realistic and life-like, but at the same time has been liberal with his artistic expression in order to make it his own. The basic dimensions of the car are obviously modified and changed in order to make it appear more sleek and aggressive. Furthermore, items like the wheels are tires have been painted as more elliptical shapes rather that rounds ones. The view can still appreciate the fact that it is a tire, but the ellipse gives the viewer the feeling of forward movement. The almost cartoonish proportions of the rest of the car allow us to see the woman in the passenger seat as more of a character than a person as she as similarly awkward angles and features once she is closely examined. Although this image would fall short as a technical sketch, it works great as an abstraction because the liberation taken flows throughout the entire image.
As my symbolic image, I chose to use an image that was created as a thought provoking backlash towards to over-used 'Coexist' bumper stickers. The coexist bumper stickers had the word spelled out using a multitude of religious symbols. This allowed the original creator to express the image of coexisting not only through word-play but also through visual cues by showing the view religious signs shown together when they are usually independent of one another. This artist, in order to mock the original, did the same thing but used emblems from firearm manufactures. It uses symbolism in three ways to get it's point across. The first is simply by putting logos that use or resemble letters of the alphabet together in order to make the view see them as a word. The second, is to assemble it in such a fashion that the viewer sees it and initially recognizes it as the bumper sticker using religious symbols before realizing what has changed. The third way is just the mere fact that he or she used logos from firearms manufactures to spell out a word like "coexist" creates a certain amount of irony since anybody that recognizes the logos will inevitably know that they brands they represent are not in the business of selling coexistence.
No comments:
Post a Comment