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romybackleralgraphicsexam · 8 years ago

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“Douglas Coupland artist analysis

Biography

Douglas Coupland is a very versatile and talented 55 year old Canadian man, who has accomplished many things in his years, with the 13 novels he has written, his written and performed pieces for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and, is work as a columnist for The Financial Times of London.

Coupland has recently had two sperate and very popular museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, and Villa Stücke in Munich.

His work is widely known and appreciated. He is a humble man and from reading interviews he is refreshingly outspoken and smart. He has studied art and design in Vancouver- Canada, Hokkaido- Japan, and Milan-Italy

Subjective framework

I like Coupland’s point of view and how he can portray this through his art. Some of my favourite pieces by his are from the Deep Face collection where the faces of people are covered by brightly coloured blocks and shapes which are meant to be reminiscent of pixels. This work was based on Facebooks technical development on facial recognition software that was being used with or without the user's consent. This would mean that the person’s face would just become another bunch of pixels in a system eliminating their identity. His work has lots of thinking points such as does this work show how technology is making us less human and taking our identity? Or is the showing with the use of different colours and shaped, that even with our faces in the system, we are still individuals. Political and thought provoking art is something I really take inspiration from because they are hard hitting and make an impact/difference in the way we look at certain things.

I am a lover of the way he uses the monotone image but injects them with colour in an abstract way. He experiments with pixelation and different techniques to create his art and I have taken a lot of inspiration from him. Even the way he talks about the world and technology inspires me for this project because he talks about us being out of touch and in a different reality which is what I want to explore and create designs around.

Structural Framework

Coupland uses multiple medias such as books, websites, handmade art and, digitally designed pieces.

Focusing more on his digital designs, He uses monotone head shots and photographs of people. Some of these images are vintage from the 80s-90s but most are recently taken photographs as noted from the camera quality ad clothing of the individuals.

His work is edited and manipulated digitally using Adobe software. His Deep face project was done digitally with the different shapes however, he does use some techniques from hand painting such as pain spills/dripping paint effects that he photographed and then photoshopped in.This can also be seen used in his Pacific Trash work where he coats globes in acrylic paint to show the effects of technology.

With the Designs where he has covered/obscured the faces of his subject/s, Coupland has drawn all of the focus to the middle of the design as with a face you would normally look someone straight in the eye. This draws our attention and illustrates the loss of identity or lack of being able to identify someone in this way. You would be forced to find other ways of identifying this person like looking for freckles.

Cultural Framework

Being a smart and opinionated man, Coupland has showcased his beliefs through his art and is very influenced by technological developments and the longing for a simpler less pixelated world.

Coupland has been influenced by many people during his years as a creative. Marshall McLuhan who was a forward thinking novelist and iCanadian professor in the late 20s until the 80s. He coined the phrases "global village" and "the medium is the message" He wrote about the inevitable ideas of an information-dependent planet and studies media theory. His views and opinions inspired Coupland when he was growing up and this is where his viewpoint comes from.

Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein’s work has influenced Coupland’s artistic side as you can see the majority of his pieces use these notable Pop art colours and abstract styles. Coupland grew up in a time where Pop art was becoming a rising craze and it often expressed political views which could also have contributed to his thought provoking work. His work does remind me of Inge Morath and Saul Steinberg’s masquerade collection because they also cover people’s faces in their photos.

Post Modern Framework

This work is very much influenced by current events that link in with technology and its developments. Coupland has shown an incredible interest in this subject and also wants to demonstrate the effect it has on people and how we have strayed away from the simpler times of newspapers and privacy.

His recent work has been influenced by robotics and the links between humans and machines. This is no surprise with the development of artificial intelligence and the various movies surrounding the subject.

Quotes and thoughts of Douglas Coupland

“If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.”

“ Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life.”

“Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes.”

https://www.coupland.com/columns/1990s-the-good-decade

https://www.coupland.com/columns/tentacular-douglas-coupland-on-helvetica-clip-art-and-the-gangly-beast-that-is-the-internet

https://www.coupland.com/columns/douglas-coupland-on-how-we-fell-out-of-love-with-phone-calls

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