Takashi Murakami by Zenzott on flickr

I was going to write about the reason I’ve seen Muse 8 times now, but I think you all know and I decided this was more important.

If you’d asked me to explain what pop art was a two weeks ago, the most I would probably be able to muster would have been “something to do with Andy Warhol?” Also do note, I’m sure this is riddled with errors to do with dates, movements, titles etc, I’m only just learning about it all, so constructive comments very welcome!

I love my traditional art, love it. The National Gallery is my favourite in London and whilst abstraction is growing on me, paintings of things that look like what they are really appeal to me – the artist’s flair and expression being found in the brush strokes – and the skill required! Compare it to something like Tracy Emin’s bed and there’s no competition in my eyes, “traditional” art wins.

As an artist, designer and photographer, I’m always looking for inspiration. It seems wrong to shut out such a vibrant and talented world as modern art. I think that personal preference will always come back to the more “traditional” art, but the Pop Life exhibit at the Tate has helped the shift in my thinking somewhat.

What is pop art?

“Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist’s use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.” – Wikipedia

How I understand that, and correct me if I’m wrong, is the pop artists make art that is commercial or explores the boundaries between art and commerce. Context is vital. The goal isn’t necessarily to create something beautiful, but to create something controversial. It’s not about taste (that’s for sure!) and the nature of the work allows for easy mass production.

The Exhibit

The exhibition itself featured both artists from the original movement and contemporaries featuring a similar style, and similarly commenting on society.

Just a brief review, should have written this sooner while it was still fresh in my mind!

You’re greeted with a Murakami giant anime figure and Koons’ silver rabbit. As someone who frequently features dolls and toys in her personal work I enjoy the idea of recreating the toys as something else (talking Koons here).

Murakami making “collectible ‘snack toys’ packaged with sweets or chewing gum – affordable to all” is all very well, but another comment on the problems with society? Where do these mass produced plastic toys end up when they’re inevitably thrown away? See my post about the Midway Albatross.

I actually found the Warhol “Gems” to be quite impressive, probably because I’m fond of sparkly things myself. The UV light was a bit of a head messer, but it wouldn’t be a Tate Modern exhibition without some weird light in it somewhere.

I loved the Pop Shop. The colours, the designs. So funky, though I’m sure that’s not the point. (The point being commercial, affordable art)

I hated Damien Hirst’s calf in formaldehyde. Hate. No animal should die for art, and I assume it’s real? It’s hooves were gold. I kind of get what he’s saying, but Damien, next time, use your words! I was however quite taken with his sparkly wall of gems, though I feel I should have read the card next to it to really understand it’s meaning. I was too busy magpying all over the shop.

Murakami is another one who really stuck out, probably the video of Kirsten Dunst dressed up like an anime character singing “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors. A song which doesn’t mean that they are actually turning Japanese, but more turning into something they don’t expect, or then there is the rumoured meaning of “wanking”. So I’m not sure if that was part of the commentary. It was completely surreal though.

Why is pop art important?

Pop art as a movement is important because it is controversial. It asks questions, it dares to challenge you and it makes you THINK. These things are incredibly important to me as a young person and artist/designer still figuring out my place and what I think about things.

More Information

The T-shirt Competition on Threadless
The Tate Room Guide

In other photography news, I finally finished my black and white film I had in my SLR and now have those to upload when I get a minute (mostly photos from The Great Snow and a day in Brighton). I’m also planning to sit down and sort out my Project 366 photos (though I think this year didn’t start out so well with that as last year).

Week 1. Click to full view!

I love post-its. I use them whenever I can and stick them everywhere! I thought I might try something, really out of curiosity for me, and keep my post-its each week. Some things here might be clues as to what’s on the horizon.

I have to say, there’s nothing I love more on a Sunday than a big mug of tea and PostSecret. Yes it’s been around a while, I’m late to the party. I love art, and I love psychology. PostSecret is these combined, we say art is an expression of a feeling or emotion, these postcards really are just that. Each beautiful in their own way, some very depressing, some uplifting. It’s quite an emotional rollercoaster for a Sunday morning, but I still love it (plus the tea ballances out the really bad stuff, as we all know, a cup of tea is the answer to everything).

For Valentines the Mister got me one of the books. Yes there are more secrets than you could ever want to read on the website, but I still love books, and I love this book. It’s a coffee table book really, one you can go back to. Some artistic inspiration, some things to ponder. If you love the website and it’s message, you’ll love the book. Click here to find out more.

I had this photograph featured in a piece on NowPublic.com about the government maybe enforcing some kind of smoking licence scheme. I know it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s really nice that they asked to use my photograph. Also VOTE PETE for student support officer. This be him, pictured here.

I saw Sweeney Todd. Whever it was, with the Mister. I thought the movie was good. Not my favourite Burton, but it kept me entertained. Here I tried drawing with white on black paper, which is much harder than it sounds. I will post the finished piece, when I finish it, I guess.

The Mister’s mum sent us pressies from Egypt. This is the little wood camel we got. Name suggestions in the comments please!

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My best friend came to visit that Friday. Haven’t seen him since Christmas so it was a blast. The Mister cooked us up a good dinner and good times were had by all. These are some of the flowers he brought me.

I honestly adore how in England going to the beach in winter isn’t a bad idea. I spent the best part of my day down at the beach whichever day this was, just listening to music and sleeping on the pebbles. It was awesome. The weather was nice too. I love this photo.

My Valentines present was oil pastels which I asked for. Expect an art in the next few weeks This is also the card I made for the Mister, the idea for which I stole from Dinosaur Comics. Check that out. Hilarity with dinosaurs. It’s hand painted anyway. Check me out. Little miss artist.

Valentines day itself, the Mister cooked me a lovely meal, we had lots of wine, and watched Lost in Translation. I quite liked the film, it kind of reminded me of Eternal Sunshine in the way it was formulated and how it was two people making a connection.

Selling my blue Olympus 410. Buy it here.

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Massive emo moment, haha! I’ll post when I have the rest of this set up, I have a few of them. They’re sort of a sequel to my Descent themed set and part of my Self Elected project.

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Today’s picture is about something so exciting, it’s getting it’s own post.

I still need to sort out the comments system on here. I am thinking about it, honest! And I wish to reskin. This one’s too… something. It’s not me enough.

Anyone who has a GFXartist account, I have one too.

South Park this week was awesome. I can’t wait for Ed to get his X-Box back (it had the “ring of death” or whatever) so we can play Guitar Hero. It better be back before GH3 comes out…

“This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.”

It definitely does that – even from the images there a scary reality is easy to see. I can’t imagine how those must appear in reality… or how long they took to produce. I am terribly curious. I may well have a nose around the net tomorrow, if I get time. IF. That’s a big if. Check it out anyway, you may be surprised!

I’ve had a good week. Made my second trip to London since I’ve been ill, mostly to see my Mister, mostly It was good to have a day out. I’m not a fan of London but I did have a good day.

We had lunch down at St Paul’s – there’s a large Marks and Sparks food court there, they had this amazing vanilla and maple syrup smoothie thing – lush!

Then we hopped across the river to the Tate Modern. I’m not big on modern art, but I do love Cy Twombley’s ‘Four Seasons‘. Mostly because of the way he uses such a variety of materials, mostly. They’re just stunning pieces. I also really liked ‘Billingual’ by Juan Usle – however I can’t find a good photo of that online.

We were going to get the boat to the Tate Britain but missed the last one, so hung out on the grass outside the Modern for a while since the weather was so nice. Mosied back in a Waterloo direction and watched the sunset from the banks of the Thames over the Houses of Parliament.

We found dinner at a fancy Pizza Express restaurant, and ate far too much. It was so good though. I haven’t been out to dinner in ages, much less taken out to dinner, so I felt really spoilt We wandered down the river and looked at all the lights. All in all, a good day out.

Monday I did my first ever drive to Bognor to see Linz. J used to take me but we used to go the long way round, so going the proper way involved a lot of guesswork and following road numbers. We got some chips and wandered down the beach at dusky time. It was really good to see her.

I took my Mum to Brighton on Tuesday, we went shopping (picked up some guitar strings for the acoustic – my Mister appears to have got me back into playing), and then got ice creams and fell asleep on the beach.

Wednesday I drove up to see my Mister in Harpenden, got stuck in the most horrendous M1 traffic I’ve ever seen, and so came off at the first junction and guessed my way to his, and got quite lucky with my guesses really. Had a couple of nice meals with his family over the duration of my stay – tried some new food too which is unusual for me, it was good.

Friday we came back and went to Sainsbury’s in search of this easter egg I’ve wanted for about a month. They didn’t have it, which is very unfortunate as all their eggs were 75% off and as the one I wanted was a tenner originally, that would have been an amazing deal. I got a different egg that would have been equally expensive – a Lindt chocolate thing with a box of chocolates – and while the chocolates were amazing, there’s no way I would have paid a tenner for it! The Mister picked up a load of little Lindor eggs which were only 13p – if you wish to stock up on chocolate, head over to Sainsbury’s.

The past few days, when not working or doing other things, have been spent playing Sim City 3000. The Mister built up a city together and have actually done quite well so far. We got hold of a copy of SC4 Deluxe, and have developed a region as a starting point for both of us to see how we do things differently. I swore I’d never play Sims games again, but I guess I was mistaken. We’ll have to wait and see how City of Ghosthands does

As it was we didn’t make it to the galleries, just the Science and Natural History Museum – both of which were awesome but exhausting. Worth a visit, I really want to go back to the Natural History Museum for a proper nose about.

I might have some photos, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll check the camera in a minute.

Anyway, huge step for me, and I survived. I’m not too tired today despite having to get up at 7am to go do a table top sale. I have to sell a lot of my unnecessary stuff simply because it’s unused clutter – I didn’t make too much today, but will be doing another sale in a few weeks. Hopefully do a bit better.

I don’t agree with all of it, but I do like what he’s saying.

Some of you know I was painting, and painting I did. The piece is finished, however, the photo I have of it, it was still wet, and the painting is now down at my boyfriend’s in Portsmouth. So, until I’m next round there to take a decent photo to put on DeviantArt, you’ll just have to cope with the sneak preview in my photobucket here. The lighting of the photo is also rubbish, so basically, it looks an awful lot better than that.

Click to fullview

DeviantArt Description – This is Matt Bellamy (aka Tiny Man) of Muse, at the opening of some concert in Las Vegas. Or at least that’s the reference I used for it. There are differences however, just not many. Reference is here

I went to see Muse a few weeks ago with someone quite lufly. The concert was amazing, and I missed art, and felt like doing something creative with the experience. They opened the concert with Take a Bow, and in this amazing moment when the singing stopped and the music took off, Matt stepped up, kissed his fist and thrust it in the air. Everyone went wild, it was amazing. And that was the entire basis for this painting. You can see a not great quality vid of the opening here

Acryllic on card – roughly A2 size. Maybe, 20 hours? On the painting, the sketch took about 2/3 I should imagine.

I gave it away the same day I finished it, now hung proudly on the lufly person’s wall.

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As an aside, we have tickets to see Muse at Wembley Stadium – woooooooooooooo.

I was looking through some of my old research, and found a photo of this – an origami unicorn I made when I was doing a project about Bladerunner. The site with instructions is here.

I did stop, and, I got my paint out. *PAINT* I have it on my face, it’s quite exciting. I think I thoroughly ruined the outlining I did for this piece, but I don’t care. I enjoyed myself. I had to voluntarily stop though because I am so god damned tired. Plus it will end up being awesome I’m sure, I just haven’t painted in about 18 months :/

Also, I wasn’t aware Jared Leto could sing. And now I am. I’ve been listening to 30 Seconds to Mars pretty much all day. I really like their music. It reminds me of things like Nickleback I guess. Which I also liked. It went with the mood anyway, and that’s why I like music, moods.

I miss my art lessons, I miss getting messy with paint or mod rock or ink. Last year had the photography labs. I miss those too. I drew about a million stars on a piece of paper in a lecture today, mostly because I was bored, but also because I miss art.

The painting is going to be awesome, also, by the way. I have to do some more Design for Digital Devices research tonight, I might let myself stop at 8, depends how much I get done, and finish working on the background sketch. But then tomorrow and the weekend’s going to be almost completely taken up with HCI… I guess I should do some work.

I miss art.

(See also this post)

I’ve never been to a gig before. I am evidently very deprived. We went to Wembley, to see Muse. Hence, Muesday.

The crowd was rather boisterous, so whilst we were near the front for the first song we did move back a bit so as not to die or something.

It was amazing.

The set list (found here) was as follows:

Take a Bow – amazing intro, people got quite into the “you’ll burn in hell” part. I was a bit distracted by all the being thrown from side to side and what not, but it was still awesome.
Video@myspace Shortvid@youtube Vid@youtube Bestvidthusfar@youtube
Hysteria
Vid@youtube
New Born - I was dying to see this. I love the piano bits in their songs. Thus, the intro to this song, is amazing, and it was even more amazing seeing it live.
Video@youtubeland Video2@youtubeland
Butterflies and Hurricanes – This is my favourite Muse song. Ever. Therefore, them playing it, well. It. Was. Amazing. Just how Matt plays piano like that is beyond me.
Vid@youtube Pianosolovid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Assassin Vid@youtube
Map of the Problematique Vid@youtube
Plug in Baby – Shiny. Shiny. Shiny.
Vid@youtube
Soldier’s Poem – This was pretty special. Matt told peeps to get their mobiles/lighters out. I think Wembley holds something like 12,500 people, so looking back over the crowds was stunning.
Vid@youtube
Invincible – The whole arms in the air thing. The music. I loved it. Probably one of the best songs they performed, although that said it is really really hard to choose.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Supermassive Black Hole – This song gives me a buzz, live, was just. I hate to keep using the words amazing and awesome. But that’s really what it was.
Video@youtubeland Vid2@youtube
Forced In
Time is Running Out – One of the things I really liked is how they did different intros, outros and stuff. Half the time you didn’t know what they were about to play because it didn’t quite sound how you expected. This was one of those. I was glad they played it, I remember years ago when it first came out, it felt nice and nostalgic.
Starlight – I loved this. The clapping. The everything. I really love the lyrics to this.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Stockholm Syndrome – My favourite parts were the “this is the last time…” bits, everyone got all arms in the air-y.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube Vid3@youtube
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Citizen Erased
Vid@youtube
Bliss (with balloons) – Balloons. Balloons are awesome. Although they were the wrong side of the arena for us really. Bliss is also an excellent song, and this was all very excellent.
VidofBallooooooons@youtube
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Hoodoo – Shiny piano. Lots of it.
Vid@youtube
Knights of Cydonia – Great finale. The on screen type was a bit cheesy, but that’s ok. My arms almost died at this point. I still can’t really move them very well.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube Vid3@youtube

I checked out flickr, as you do, and thus far there are two people with sets of photos from last night – you can check those out here and here.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I want to see them again. Right now. I loved the set list too. Especially as they played Butterflies. That made my week.

Will probably update this shortly.

“you can be the mad hatter or you can be the teapot; you can move back and forth to the rhythm of a song. You can be a tiny droplet in the rain or in the river; you can be what you thought you ought to be all along. You can switch your point of view to an object or a process or another person’s point of view in the other person’s world.”