Pages 683 - 693

I'm going to focus on one particular artwork from these pages, Glenn Ligon's Untitled (I Feel Most Colored...) 1990. I loved this painting because it reminded me a lot of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe's Lips, the way that it starts clean at the top and as the stencil moves down the artwork it becomes barely recognizable. What I really love about this work is the way the words move down the painting, it becomes completely black against the white background. I also especially love the fact that she uses the word "thrown" against the white background. Using the word "thrown" brings out an almost aggressive meaning to the phrase, signifying brutality. When I read it I picture someone literally being thrown against a wall, and I'm not sure if this was intentional, but it speaks loudly to me. And as each phrase is repeated down the canvas its as if she is thrown over and over again until there is nothing left of the meaning.

Pages 656 - 665

My focus for these pages will mostly be with the German artists, Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer. What I find so interesting about Richter's work is within his attempt to reposition painting as a critical reflection on German history, but he does so in such an abstract way. I have family that lived in Germany and have been to many of the cities in Germany and was just recently in Munich. Munich in particular, is a city that rebuilt the entire city in the same way that it stood before the destruction from the second World War. Most of the German cities re-built their buildings in a new architectural style, but Munich stuck to the classical style of architecture celebrating the rococo style. What I find so interesting about Gerhard Richter's work is how he focuses on the painting style to shy away from the pictures generation, and yet his paintings, his portraits in particular, look extremely similar to a blurry photo. When I first saw Richter's work, I immediately thought it was a photograph and not a painting at all. Kiefer's work, on the other hand, looks very much like a painting, with his almost 3-Dimensional texture to his paintings. Both artists are very descriptive of Germany in that era by presenting their work in a very dark and gloomy manner. We see a shift in Richter's work 20 years later which his incorporation of much more color and a shift from his black, white, and gray palette he worked with so prominently before. In 1988, the artists contemplate a renewal of the history painting which speaks loudly to the thought process of the country at the time. With their country destroyed, they began to adopt many old practices, architecture, and other aspects of culture to keep their culture embedded in their society after it had been destroyed in the war. Richter and Kiefer speak to this shift in the German population in their art, and its extremely expressive of German culture at the time.

Pages 649-655

Of the artists featured in these pages during the ACT UP movement, one stands out to me above the rest, Krzysztof Wodiczko and his piece Projection on South Africa House 1985. Krxysztof Wodiczko's work reminds me of the modern day artist Banksy, appealing to a similar message in a similar style. The main difference being that Wodiczko's work are more projections whereas Banksy is spray paint, but the messages are similar. Political messages that are critiquing the government and the effects of the government on society. These pages led me to look furth into Wodiczko's work to see what other projection projects he has done, and the other one that stands out to me is his NEWTOPIA series, where he projects eyes onto a large monumental city building and has auditory interviews of people from that city speaking while the eyes are projected blinking and looking at the city at large. This performance piece speaks largely to the way artists communicated in a political manner at the time, and Wodiczko did it in a way that was powerful and made an impact.




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NEWTOPIA INSTALLATION