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Abstract Expressionism Final

1.)    For the final project I chose to recreate an untitled piece by Mark Rothko that was painted in the year of 1969. The reason I chose this piece was because it really popped out while I was scrolling through the Art Institute of Chicago website. I really liked how simple it looked, but also complicated because of the various layers that were incorporated. Rothko was a Russian born citizen who ultimately moved to America to further his career as an artist. The piece I decided to recreate is untitled, but there are a bunch of other really cool paintings available on this website.

 2.)    When I initially approached this painting, I was a little troubled because I wasn’t really sure how to make this painting more unique. However, after looking at some of his other works, it was clear to me that I could venture out of my comfort zone and put my own twist on it. As a result, I ultimately followed the same sort of structure that Rothko had on his painting, but I elected to use brighter colors to help this painting truly stand out. As you can tell in the original piece, Rothko used darker colors, which is neat, but I thought it could stand out a little bit more by using two different shades of blue, and even light pink.

  3.)    Five interesting things I learned about Rothko was that he was born in Russia and later immigrated to the United States. He incorporated Surrealism into his paintings to help highlight the tragedies involved with World War II. He spoke multiple languages and was so intelligent that he skipped from third to fifth grade. He received a scholarship to Yale but found it to be too racist. He was an avid traveler and visited Europe for five months along side his wife.

 4.)    An artist’s work that inspired me this semester was Sam Floyd’s surrealism dreamscape. I thought Sam did an excellent job with this piece because it was incredibly accurate to the original picture he chose. I remember when I first saw this piece, and I was absolutely blown away by the attention to detail, including the highlights in the eyes, and accuracy of the person standing on the bridge. This picture motivated me to become less tense when I was painting my own projects and pay more attention to the little details in paintings.

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For the dada project, I painted a variety of different colored lines, and traced some pen marks around them to help make the design pop. I also dropped a variety of different cutouts on the paper, and glued them where they landed.

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For this dreamscape project, I was inspired to paint a picture of the human eye with certain elements of the sky found within it. I was able to find something like this online, but I also incorporated the sun and even some birds into the painting to help it come more to life. 

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Smartphone waterfall

For this weeks assignment I chose to paint an picture of a cellphone and nature seemingly fusing together. You can see a waterfall coming out of the phone, and I thought this was a really interesting concept to pick.

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For my cubism project, I chose to incorporate some newspaper clippings, along with an emission ticket from a Buffalo Bills game and some other beer logos. The theme of my project is based around sports in Buffalo, so I decided to incorporate these designs and cut out various shapes to help tie this piece more together.

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For my Fauvism portrait, I chose to paint a picture of my roommate, Jack. While taking into consideration that Jack is a very lively, energetic, and outgoing person, I chose to use vibrant colors like yellow, red, and blue to help express this. I also incorporated a bunch of other colors like purple, pink, green, and orange just to sort of make the portrait stand out more. Like we learned about in class, the Fauvists do not seem to care about particular styles in their paintings, so I elected to incorporate a bunch of randomly placed designs in the background to help make this image come to life.

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For this assignment, I chose to paint a scene from the show Phineas and Ferb because I thought it contained some really good saturation in the background.

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1.) Selfies, or the awkward pictures that you take of yourself on the phone, are a relatively new advancement in human society. Although self-portraits have been around for quite some time now, the smart phone has made it easier to capture pictures of yourself just by clicking a button. In recent years, selfies have been getting a lot of attention because of how bizarre the process actually is. While it might be considered normal in today’s society, one can’t help but be weirded out by the fact that you can find thousands of pictures of different people on a variety of social media websites. Although they could serve as a method of communication, or even as a way of expressing yourself from a different perspective, selfies do seem like they are becoming an imminent threat to human society. Based off of my own experiences, selfies seem like they could affect you both socially and emotionally.

My relationship with selfies has not really changed over the last decade of my life. In my opinion, the selfie does more harm than it does good. This is because of my own experiences growing up in a world dominated by social media and smartphones. In my free time, I often like to scroll through pictures online, where I am readily exposed to a variety of different selfies of people from around the globe. Although it serves as a way to kill time, it is also serves as a way of losing confidence in yourself, because most of the time you are exposed to pictures of celebrities or even models. The problem with this, is that many of these selfies depict people who are seemingly flawless, and it makes you think more about your own actual appearance. Seeing this, it is easy to lose confidence in yourself, and it even begins effecting your social life outside of social media. However, I came to realize that many of these pictures you are exposed to are actually heavily edited with filters to make your appearance seem more flawless. It is important to understand that the selfie should not dictate how you choose to live your life. At the end of the day, I realized that no one is perfect, and I should not let other people’s selfies impact my own.

2.) Jerry Saltz, an art critic for New York Magazine referred to Parmigianino’s painting as the first selfie in a 2014 article. This is because he believed that the selfie included all of the necessary components that a typical selfie should contain. Saltz made it apparent that the selfie contained attributes like; a bizarre angle, an elongated arm, foreshortening, compositional distortion, and close-in intimacy. However, from this self-portrait of Parmigianino in a Convex Mirror, it was clear that the selfie has seen some serious revisions over the years. The 16th century self-portrait, in my opinion, is nothing like the typical selfie we see today on social media. This is because we are living in an age where technology is continuing to improve, and it is becoming easier to take a picture of yourself. Over the years, it is apparent that the selfie has been evolving, and people are becoming lazier while taking a picture of themselves.

As previously discussed, the selfie has seen some serious changes, especially in the last decade of my life. While living in a digital age, it is easy to notice these changes because there are multiple social media platforms in which you can explore all different types of selfies. In my opinion, the selfie has transformed into a picture that only depicts your face, but the bizarre angle and elongated arms are still subtly present. This is because smart phones make it far easier to take a picture of yourself, opposed to painting an image of yourself that is represented on a Convex Mirror. That is why, in my opinion, the selfie angle of the current moment is whatever you want it to be. I think that people are becoming lazier because the process has become increasingly easier, and the cameras are so powerful, that they are taking pictures of themselves however they want.

3.) Over the years, advancements made towards technology have greatly impacted the lives of millions of people around the world. For instance, smart phones are constantly being improved each year, with the help of some serious revisions towards the camera quality. One of the ways companies work to keep your fascination with phones, is offering an abundance of filters that change your appearance after taking a picture. Although these image altering filters have been around for quite some time now, I do not think have reached a plateau. This is because companies will continue to produce more filters that will change your appearance in different ways, and it will keep the consumer more engaged. As an avid user of Instagram, a popular social media website, I can see this exact tactic being put to use. Meaning, every time I go on Instagram it seems like there is a new filter that everyone seems to fall in love with.

As previously stated, technology is only going to get progressively better as time goes on, so I do not see these filters becoming a thing of the past anytime soon. However, I do see that these filters could become problematic because of the false image they project back to you. In my opinion, I am not really a big fan of these filters because they make someone look like they have no flaws, which could hurt the confidence of another person. Although I do not see them going extinct in the near future, I would like to see more people branching away from filters and taking more natural pictures of themselves.

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For this assignment, I decided to write an empowering statement that says, "Your worth does not come from the approval of others around you." Because of how impactful this statement is to me, I decided to hang this poster on the front door of my apartment, so others could see it before entering the building. I think it could help someone at the end of stressful day.

The overall focus of this assignment highlights the importance of being yourself, and never letting anybody else influence who you truly are. I got this idea from experiences growing up, and from this, I was able to realize that nobody else could influence the way I carry myself around. I used a variety of different texts to help make this message pop out, including the underlined "Not!"

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For this assignment I was able to take a photograph of my roommate, Jack, who was dressed up in the complementary color combo of red and green. We chose to take our picture outside on the railroad tracks so that the ‘L’ shape compositional strategy could be used. You can also see a little bit of the "S" shape that sort of leads your attention to Jack's face and also off to the distance.

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For this project, I decided to put my poem on the fridge in my apartment. That way, the next time my roommates get a glass of water, they will see the message I left for them.

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Name: Michael Carbaugh

Pronouns: He/Him

From: Orchard Park, NY

Academic Path: History Major

Favorite Artist: Cecily Brown

Hobbies: Lacrosse, Skiing, Fishing

Favorite Quote: "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson