okies… this is gonna be a big one… here’s the main update from my workbook… how analouge am I ?!? 
Hmm, ok I wrote that then uploaded all the images… and it would appear they’re all in reverse order… oh well, as long as you follow them from this test up, you’ll be fine!
There are more pictures for me to share with you, but it would seem that I’ve used up all my available space on this site, so I’ll find somewhere else to post the rest of the images, and link it to here!
Whilst I’m on here, I’ll give you the wonder that is my artefact write-up as well, but first the links to my int’ project, and group Narritive map thing…
http://asqueal.maqski.net/Narrative/intro.htm
and …
http://kenbarrs.maqski.net/intercies/int.html
And here ya go… you ready for this?!?
Giacometti write-up.
For this project, I thought long and hard about what artist to decided to base my artefact upon. As far as art is concerned, I am mainly drawn to photography, digital manipulation or digital image generation. Although many of my current favourite artists lay within these fields, I decided to opt for an artist that worked in a more physical medium; one that was not of this generation, and one that was perhaps a forerunner to the art that we witness today. I was not deterred by the fact that my skills, with regards to painting or drawing, would hold me back from reproducing some of the more well known pieces of art, as I have long had an admiration for the work of Alberto Giacometti. Although Giacometti has produced a variety of oil paintings, drawings and other such works, I have found myself particularly captivated by the bronze sculptures that he has produced.
These pieces drew me to them the first time I saw them, around about a decade ago, whilst at Secondary School. I believe it was a school trip to one of the London galleries, that I first saw his work. Giacometti was not the supposed focus of the trip, however I was instantly fascinated. His tall, dark, emaciated statues were both haunting and beautiful at the same time. They were like no other sculpture I had seen before, nor since. However due to the fact that the focus of our journey was another artist, I was unable to properly research Giacometti in an academic field, and although I collected a few images, I failed to further research the works, and they fell into memory, only to be recalled when I happened to see one of his works (which in my eyes is far too rare an occurrence). This brief gave me the prime opportunity to better research the artist that had so captivated me so many years ago.
I decided to look into all of the works that Giacometti had produced, not in case some of his other pieces appealed to me more than the sculptures, but more to give me more of a feel, as to what kind of work had evolved into the sculpture, and where had it lead the artist next. As well as the works, I looked into the man himself, to see what influences he had been subjected to, and how he had progressed throughout his life, and through his work. I felt this would give me more of an insight to the how’s and why’s of the works, thus enabling me to not only to produce a merely physical, but intellectual representation of the art.
The piece that I wished to produce as my artefact is Giacometti’s ‘Woman Standing’ or ‘Standing Woman’, deciding on what translation you decide upon. Although other sculptures within this same style are better known, this piece seems to me, to epitomise the styling of the series. Giacometti seems, to me, to be expressing the detachment of the person from the body. The Guggenheim Museum reflects upon this piece by stating “the notion that the essence of an individual persists even as the body appears to vanish, that is, to become nonexistent”. Giacometti himself seems to take a bit more of a typically abstract view and is quoted as saying “lifesize figures irritate me, after all, because a person passing by on the street has no weight; in any case he’s much lighter than the same person when he’s dead or has fainted. He keeps his balance with his legs. You don’t feel your weight. I wanted—without having thought about it—to reproduce this lightness, and that by making the body so thin.”Perhaps, though, there is a darker, more literal undertone than meets the eye. The first date I can pin to this piece is 1947, shortly after the end of WWII, and is perhaps in response to concentration camps. The sights of those kept in the camps had a massive impact across the globe, not least on the free-minded artists of the world. Perhaps seeing how the destruction of the body, had detrimental impacts upon the mind, quietly stirred the realisation of symbiosis between the body and mind. It may also have been a direct retaliation against the Nazi way of life. Nazi propaganda promoted the body beautiful as strong and athletic; as a definite and powerful presence. However the minds that occupied these physical bodies could be seen as a direct opposite. Perhaps, it was the strong-minded, yet physically weak prisoners’ triumph over the physically powerful, yet easily led minds of the Nazi’s that may have been a possibly sub-conscious thread in these works. Whatever inspiration fuelled Giacometti can only be speculated upon however, so I set out with an open, but informed mind to create the artefact. There was no way that I could create an exact replica of my chosen piece… it is an impressive 153cm high, and made of cast bronze, however Giacometti made machetes of his pieces before committing to the full size object, and so decided this was a far more plausible option. I believe Giacometti used clay to sculpt his smaller works, but without access to a kiln, any work I made would dry-out and crack, so I opted to make a wire frame skeleton to the piece, and coat it in thin applications of roughly built-up plaster, and then colour it in acrylics to emulate the full size piece. This proved to be distinctly more challenging than I had thought however. After a dismal attempt, I decided to try and replicate the piece by means of a wire frame again, but with a papier-mâché coating. This process definitely produced a better adhesion to the wire, but seemed to produce far too much of a smooth surface. Woman Standing was rough, burred and grating. I then tried going back along the plaster route… this time with the plastered bandages that are used to make casts when people break their limbs. It was this process over a very thin wire frame that produced the closest results to Giacometti’s work. The trouble was getting the gaps between the arms, and building-up the features, however, with enough patience, wire, plaster bandage and wooden splints, it seems anything is possible… Now it’s time to take a close-up, low-angle photo, and pretend it’s the real thing! enjoy folks!
