Second Day of Year 2 at UCA

Tuesday 22nd September 2020

By the end of this week, I should have evidence of:

• completed research sheet: + mind map + notes etc

• my ideas: my concept for recreating/interpreting the painting

• materials: what props, materials I will need to begin photographing next week

I need to remember to take pictures of my planning, I can't do it in school so it is more likely that I will forget. But I will take them all at once and then put them in a post all by themselves. One thing to remember is that I could consider the concept of adding objects with hidden symbolism.

The first thing I had to do was choose a painting.

My choices were -

Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Edward Hopper's Morning Sun and

Éduoard Manet's A Bar at the Folies Bergère.

I didn't choose the first one because there were multiple people, there are way too many hidden messages for me to decipher, there is a table and I thought it was too complicated for me.

I didn't choose the third one because I didn't understand it, there was another person and more people in the background and there were many bottles and drinks in the painting which I couldn't recreate.

I chose the second one because although there was a play on lights and shadows that I didn't think I could recreate and I didn't know what was happening, I thought it was really interesting. I focused on the negatives because if I could overcome them then that would be good.

The artwork is called 'Morning Sun' and is by Edward Hopper, created in 1952. The medium is oil paint and apparently it belongs to the neoclassicism and modernism periods. The subject is loneliness and it is located in Columbus Museum of Art and has been since 1954. The next thing I had to do was find out 3 facts that I didn't know and get the 3 references.

1. Morning Sun can represent loneliness but also optimism

Hampton, M unknown, Morning Sun, [accessed 22 September 2020] <https://www.sartle.com/artwork/morning-sun-edward-hopper>

2. It shows how crowded yet isolating the world can be

The School of Life (2015), ART/ARCHITECTURE - Edward Hopper Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rluUMpndKbo [accessed 22 September 2020]

3. To some "the woman herself seems to be trapped in the coldness of the light"

Stremmel, K 2004, pg 58, Realism, Taschen

I need to remember to use Harvard referencing for my work but it is a bit complicated to remember because there are different ones shown online. But basically Harvard referencing is the author and date method. I should be fine if I stick to this formula:

online things = author's name, date published, article/video title, [Online], [accessed when?], Available from:

book = author's name, date published, book title, edn{edition if applicable}, publisher

After that I went on to do some in-depth research on the painting and the artist. The things that I found out will be in the next post, dedicated to just that. The next thing was to go wide, for this I did a mind map, all the things I thought about weren't on the mind map but here are some things that I found interesting:

Realism - the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully without artificiality and avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements.

Using saturate colours to heighten contrast and create mood

Loneliness in art and how it is presented/represented

I looked at neoclassicism, modernism, existentialism, oil painting, 20th Century American art and realism a little. Here are their definitions or something about them :

Neoclassicism is a revival of the many styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period, which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style – Wikipedia

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. – Wikipedia

Existentialism is a form of philosophical enquiry that explores the nature of existence by emphasizing experience of the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. -Wikipedia

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. The choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time – Wikipedia

Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. – Wikipedia

American realism became the new direction for American visual artists at the turn of the 20th century. The Ashcan painters George Bellows, Everett Shinn, George Benjamin Luks, William Glackens, and John Sloan were among those who developed socially conscious imagery in their works. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) led the Photo-Secession movement, which created pathways for photography as an emerging art form. – Wikipedia

The final step, which would lead the door to my own thought and ideas, focus! At this point what I had to do was focus on a concept in the painting that I found interesting and use it to shape my concept for my photograph. This step was to take some of my research and use it to create my own interpretation of the painting, this could be literal or a subtle interpretation.

So now I will be speaking in present and future tense.

My idea is to take the theme of loneliness presented in the painting and transform it, whether by modernising it or trying to make a false opposite. I think this will bean interesting thing to explore but to thoroughly and properly show this, I will need to make quite a few mock-ups. I can't draw so they will be trial photographs. The research needs to be finished by the end of the week but I think I have done most if not all of it so now is to refine my ideas.

I have some ideas but I will wait until Thursday to talk about them after I have looked at everything a bit more. Some things I am looking at are opposing the colours (pink to green, white to black, blue to orange, grey to grey/purple[?] and yellow to purple) and showing parallels. Maybe change the camera angle to show something different from what the original image shows and think about the context of the time. One thing I have also been considering is a monotone theme or having the same scene but without a figure there and seeing whether the mood of the image changes. I am thinking that maybe the monotone theme would be more impactful, especially if everything but the 'smile' or face is monotone, but I am not sure. It would also make controlled lightning more important.

I think I forgot to define prototype yesterday so here is the definition by Google, "a first or preliminary version of a device or vehicle from which other forms are developed."

One decision I had to make was a green shirt made out of paper with a real smile vs an actual green shirt with a paper smile. I chose the latter option. This decision was made fairly easily. The other option was a bit stupid. I really like the idea but I don't know where I will find a green shirt. I believe that in order to answer the questions, I need to be able to visualise the scene better and therefore need to create a physical mock-up. Perhaps a construction and play with using a phone flashlight.

Another decision was whether I should incorporate one or more people. I chose to go with one person as opposed to two people because it would be difficult to find two models and two costumes and the scene can be adequately captivated with one person, two would just be excessive. Towards the absence of people, I didn't really think about that but I think that I would still like to keep the person in a sort of hommage(?) to the original. The photograph therefore becomes an appreciation of the original as opposed to a standalone inspired piece. This is very much the effect of having grown great appreciation myself for the piece after having researched about it and its artist. The piece really draws you in and echoes feeling similar to ones I have felt myself, therefore through my piece, I would like to involve aspects of the original or at the very least think about or pay attention to the details in the piece.