Final Project

Tianyu Zhu
Hold My Back, 2021
Pencil & charcoal on wooden panel
2 × 24 in × 48 in

I prefer to use pencils and charcoals to express the texture of the human body as opposed to using acrylics. The surface of human skin is relatively smooth, but the skin produces continuous and irregular undulations with the texture of muscle growth and the shape of joints. This is where my fine control of the pencils and charcoals can better express this continuous variation

At the same time, the painting can be “subtracted”, I can use the eraser to erase the brighter parts of the drawing. If I use the original photo to tell this content, it is difficult for me to reduce the irrelevant elements. For example: the texture of the back, the texture of the hand, the surrounding light, the skin, and the veins.  I have to set the light finely and take a long time to show a lot of details. And do a quick sketch so that I can delete these irrelevant elements, and at the same time I can emphasize the action of the hand clutching the back by enhancing the morphological changes and black and white of the hand joints and muscles.

Because of the softness of the wooden board, the pencil and charcoal can penetrate the board better, so that the details of drawing can be modified and adjusted more often without making the image look unclean. I think the combination of positive space and negative space can also make the picture look more dramatic.

Unit 10 Absent

The “human body” is “absent” in the artist’s artwork related to the human body, and the artist uses relatively more metaphorical techniques to replace direct representations of the body, such as the handprints in Skin With O’hara Poem (1963/5). Using a highly allegorical form of expression, the artist no longer sticks to realistic reproduction, and the body becomes a symbol of the artist’s inquiry into the relationship between man and the world or man himself. If you are at Dulles Airport in Virginia, the USA in November 2014, you will have the opportunity to see an amazing exhibition. The exhibit, entitled Life: Magnified on the walls, is organized by the Institute of Integrative Medical Sciences, the American Society for Cell Biology and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Arts Program. It shows scientific images of cells and other life scenes magnified 50,000 times, and visitors are immersed in an incredible and magical world. When I saw the brightly colored computer-rendered images, I couldn’t help but think that this is also a modern expression of life, of humanity. The complex structure and beauty of the human body is an area that contemporary artists need to seriously explore through objects that people often use, human tissues, and even some objects that resemble human organs.

Unit 9 Abject (Drawing)

Self Portrait, 2021

Pencil

55.9 cm × 76.2 cm (22 in × 30 in)

The connection between humans and nature is a theme often explored by artists. When I sit in the woods and enjoy the sunshine, I can’t help but be fully absorbed in nature. People always like to use abstract, imaginary objects or artistic expressions to depict nature, which I didn’t like at the time. When you walk into a forest, what is the first thing you see and hear? It’s the trees and the birds singing. Nature is both an energy and a physical presence that is closely related to human emotions. Imagine the weather clearing up after several days of continuous rain, and your mood turns to be happy and relaxed.

Unit 9 Abject

When artists start experimenting with mutilated bodies, or bodies that are considered “ugly” or even deformed by the public, I tend to think that the artists are trying to create satire. two Followers of Cadmus Devoured By A Dragon 1588) combines gore, violence, dark elements and gnawed bodies into an aesthetic of sensory stimulation and violence. The most important characteristic of “ugly” art is that it raises questions, and its purpose is to intervene in real problems. If beauty is complete, normal and harmonious, then we can say that ugliness, which is the opposite of beauty, is broken, abnormal and disharmonious. In “ugly” artworks, both the ugly in external form and the ugly in internal meaning carry a certain flavor of disharmony and perversity, and the grotesque that makes people feel horrible or ridiculous has exactly these things. Many of these paintings create a feeling of fear and violence in my psyche through the gory violence and monstrous elements. I believe that by creating a horrific, violent expression, these artists present the distorted, hypocritical, panicked and indifferent gray side of people’s hearts in the present day.

Unit 8 Space

What impressed me most in this chapter is Spencer Tunick’s Consumed 2. By changing the relationship between space and the human body, the artist shows that the expression of the human body is not limited to the deep portrayal of a single human detail. In the classical genre of visual art, in addition to still life and landscape, the “human body and space” is one of the mainstream topics. There is a special tension between figure and space, which can be observed in many portraits and figurative works. In the relationship between the human body and space, the human body has a central position. Since the time of Adam and Eve, the study of the human body has always occupied an important place in the history of art and is still the focus of many artists’ attention. In addition to presenting the human body as a precise anatomical structure, artists have also used a variety of techniques to represent it in their works of art. They transform the human body into a specific semantic meaning or reduce it to its essence, giving it a specific symbolic meaning. An important element in the representation of the human body is its pose, in which the figure stands, lies or sits. The expression of the human pose involves the use of space. The space in the painting, whether it may be expressed directly or implied from the side, or even sometimes ignored altogether, is present in a specific way.

Unit 7 Limit

I felt fear and discomfort as I looked at the images in this section. the pale, lifeless skin and arrow-riddled torso of Sanit Sebastian(1623) frightened me. Art is emotion, and the artist makes extensive use of the male and female human body to express some works in the state of passion. You may think that this is a fervent celebration of life, but it is more like a reflection and critique of the state of human eroticism. Most people feel that they are the owner of their own body and that they have full control of this physical body. But more and more I feel that human beings are essentially just users of this physical body, not producers and creators of this physical body. It is through their own forms that artists tell the general public that God gave us a body and we are not very good at mastering it. My fear of death is more a refusal to accept the loss of access to my body than a search for meaning and an emotional state in life. Through these words, we can see how artists of various periods have expressed the imagery of death. These include the impact of death on people’s perceptions in war, the Christian concern with the world after death, the influence of bloodlines from foreign invasions, etc. Art has not always had death and suffering at its core, and death is not the same as suffering.

Unit 6 Emotion

As the textbook says “Whether absorbed in deepest thought or grimacing with boredom, human beings evince emotion with the entire body, from face to feet. The artistic depiction of those emotions is inevitably based in the human form.” Body painting is a painting in which the painter applies the language of the human body to express his aesthetic ideals, reflect the author’s knowledge and views of people and times, and send his thoughts and feelings. Since ancient times, the human body has been considered the most perfect image in nature. Every line, every muscle and bone of the human body reflects beauty and strength. The stereotypical influence believes that the woman’s body symbolizes harmony, beauty and tranquillity; the man’s body symbolizes strength, passion and creativity …… Their various physical movements reflect the spiritual and psychological state of the figure. Some painting art is left to the subjective expression of the painter, without inhibiting the uncontrolled emotion, thus creating paintings that show too many individual abstract symbols and bizarre patterns, making people feel unintelligible in their appreciation, and it is difficult to understand the thematic content and artistic characteristics expressed by the painter’s symbols and allegories. The painter’s emotion and direction of expression in the creation of human oil painting will be different with the different ways of thinking, the country he lives in and the environment. The character presented through the painter’s brush is definitely no less distinctive and influential to the public than the character images in the works of writers. Under the painter’s painting, the personal characteristics and facial image of the character will be expressed more delicately, and the emotions will permeate the heart of every viewer without any special expression.

Unit 5 Gender

Indeed, gender issues have always been an area of passion and concern for sensitive artists. People have been creating works of art since ancient times, as evidenced by the many artifacts found in the ruins of ancient civilizations. The way they are presented shows modern people how the skills of the artist developed and how art has evolved through the years. Art subjects can be diverse. They could be nature, humans, geometric patterns, animals, religion or the everyday life of humans. A very controversial subject in art is nude. The human body has always been one of the main objects of artists. In ancient times, especially in Greek art, the nude male human body was the most common subject. Today, one of the first subjects artists paint is the nude female body. The nude body has always been the most popular subject in painting, sculpture and photography. This practice probably began with the depiction of gods and goddesses in ancient paintings. Because they were gods and goddesses, they wore no clothes and it was natural to paint these clothes. The difference lies in each individual’s perception and interpretation of the subject matter. It is worth noting that nudity in art is intended to allow people to appreciate the beauty of the human body. Pornography, on the other hand, is intended to evoke sexual feelings in both the individual and the viewer. Models have been constituted in such a way that their expressions express sex and sexuality. Of course, today’s society is also changing rapidly and has long since become a world away from the past. Cultural differences, racial conflicts, the division between rich and poor, environmental pollution, human rights issues, and the crisis of faith have long replaced the conflict between men and women as the more prominent and problematic issues of contemporary society. Neither male nor female artists can avoid these problems. Therefore, the common cultural relevance has given rise to the context of contemporary art.