Corey
Art 21: Stories
Stories in Art
The main theme of telling a story with art was a large connection that each of the four artists this week had. Kara Walker used silhouettes of black people from the south to tell a story of oppression, Kiki Smith tells stories through the human body, or just parts of it, such as the arms. Do-Ho Suh had a stories taking home with you, and even his past military experience, shown by the dog tags, and finally, Trenton Doyle Hancock told stories similar to comic books, but through large paintings, where he was not confined to little boxes in a magazine, as well as using symbolism to tell Biblical stories. Each artist has taken a part of their life, usually a major part, and presents that as a story in a unique and creative way. It’s easy to write a book about being forced into the Korean Army, it takes a lot more thought to arrange a large collection of military dog tags and get the same message across.
One piece that particularly stood out to me was the arrangement of military dog tags by Do-Ho Suh. In this piece Suh not only created a 3D sculpture of a military jacket or uniform entirely out of dog tags, but also completely covered the floor with them, connecting the jacket to the floor with a smooth curve, rather than just having the jacket sitting on the floor. This made it look more like the jacket was coming up out of the floor. As every male in Korea was predestined for the military, it becomes, as Suh describes it, “A great deal of the Korean man’s identity.” Dog tags are typically used for the identification of dead bodies and can also represent each individual soldier. When you take most likely thousands of these tags and create a hollowed military outfit, it allows you to see how it takes many faceless and uniform Korean men to make up the larger “body” of the country itself. This piece is especially interesting because the uniform is hollow, with what appears to be a mirrored or highly reflective surface on the inside, allowing you to see yourself in it when you look at the statue. This is an important piece that sheds light on the emotions of an ex-soldier in a country where military service is mandatory.
Word-Word: Mud Money.
Aside from starting with the same letter and having a sense of assimilation, the words "Mud" and "Money" are not typically related, however, when put together it represents the idea of "dirty money" or money acquired in a way not typically considered "legitimate." This can be linked to the idea of bribes in political situations or shady organizations such as the Mafia.
Image-Image: News Anchor and Parrot.
The visual elements that tie these two pictures together are the somewhat tropical looking tree behind the news anchor that you would normally associate with the parrot. The parrot and the news anchor also have their heads turned at about the same angle and generally just look very similar. The relation here is that both the parrot and the news anchor can talk, however, neither does very much critical thinking about what they are saying, simply repeating words they hear someone else say.
Image-Word: Titanic White House.
Although not typically physically related to each other, the White House can be compared to how the Titanic itself sank, that is, an iceberg. Now aside from the fact that they are both white, the iceberg that sank the Titanic looked normal, or even small and harmless on the surface, however, underneath the water, hidden from everyone, it was much bigger and much worse. Some would argue, similar to our government.
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- IMAGE WORD last edited on 17 September 2008 at 8:19 pm by 148.61.82.74