Methods of Inquiry

Wassily Kandinsky focused on the ways in which music and art are connected. Kandinsky associated each note with a specific hue. “the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.”

Kandinsky first decided to study painting after having an extremely visual response to a performance of Wagner’s composition Lohengrin. He was quoted saying “I saw all my colors in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me.”

Kandinsky experienced a neurological phenomenon called synesthesia, also known as joined perception, a very rare condition where one sense like hearing triggers another sense like sight. Some other symptoms include smelling something when they hear a sound or see a shape when they drink something.  

Kandinsky created a variety of experimental performances. The most famous is the Yellow Sound which utilized original music, media, and lighting. Kandinsky believed that color could allow viewers to be in touch with their spiritual selves. 

Kandinsky’s evaluation of specific colors: “believed that yellow could disturb people while blue awakened the highest spiritual aspirations” 

Kandinsky said art had the potential to evoke a myriad of responses, psychological, physical, and emotional. I hope that my paintings for the final project can evoke responses like Kandinsky’s art. I plan to integrate his style in my third painting about the body extension piece about the limitations of senses. I think synesthesia has a lot of correlations with the theme of sensory deprivation and will be a very interesting topic to explore. 

Albers wrote a book called the Interaction of Color where he explores the use of color and distribution of hues in a piece. Josef Albers “defied the standard academic approach of “theory and practice,” focusing instead on “development of observation and articulation,” with an emphasis not only on seeing color but also feeling the relationships between colors.” 

In this piece below called the Relativity of Color, both smaller brown squares are actually the same color but it is impossible to see that because of the colors that surround them affect the way our brain perceives them. 

Josef Albers also studied the After image effect which “demonstrates the interaction of color caused by the interdependence of color” “On the left are yellow circles of equal diameter which touch each other and fill out a white square. There is a black dot in its center. On the right is an empty white square, also with a centered black dot. Each is on a black background. After staring for half a minute at the left square, shift the focus suddenly to the right square. Instead of the usual color-based afterimage that would complement the yellow circles with blue, their opposite, a shape-based afterimage is manifest as diamond shapes — the ‘leftover’ of the circles — are seen in yellow. This illusion double, reversed afterimage is sometimes called contrast reversal.”

We recently received feedback on our previous two projects, the sequencing project and the body extension project. 

Endi repeatedly stated that both of my projects have a lot of potential and by going back and rethinking some of my processes, grades could be improved. I intend to rework my sequence project to make my piece more understandable and cohesive. My group and I are currently brainstorming ways to improve our body extension piece and video presentation. 

REFLECTION AND NEXT STEPS: SEQUENCE PROJECT

We turned in the Sequence project about a month into the semester and in retrospect there are a lot of things I would change. I do not think I fully embraced how the project and I now have some different ideas on how I would redo my piece. I am hoping to improve my grade a little bit so I am currently planning on reorganizing my photos and re-presenting to Endi. In the reflection that Endi sent each of us individually, he spoke a lot about the potential of my piece and appreciated my honest reflection. “There are many ways to think about the composition, format of presentation, the strategy of presenting the images and more.”-Endi. After receiving this feedback I am willing to rethink how I could improve the piece to more effectively represent my original ideas. I hope to work on it during the next two weeks.

REFLECTION AND NEXT STEPS: BODY EXTENSION

When Endi and I were talking about my abstract painting series that I am going to do for my final project in Methods he asked me who my favorite painter is. It has always been Georgia O'Keeffe. Her painting technique is so amazing and she also uses really vivid colors in a very effective way. This is something that I want to accomplish in my final piece. Endi asked me what I know about color and I didn’t really know how to respond. As art students, I believe we all have a pretty good understanding of color and the ways in which it can be used. I think that there is always more to be learned. Knowing complimentary colors and how different hues and tones change an art piece is all important but we also need to be aware of how our colors are perceived by the viewer. Endi showed me some of his prints that were made up of a variety of vivid colors. Each print was very different looking despite being the same content, just different values. Color is a very powerful tool and can completely change the way in which something is perceived. I think this is something that O’Keeffe was very aware of and is one of the reasons why I love her so much. These two paintings are two of my favorites of her. The first is called Red Canna. I really like how the bright red and orange hues are accompanied by the vivid magenta, I think its very intriguing and an uncommon color combination. The second painting is called Sky Above the Clouds. I actually just had the opportunity to see it in Chicago over spring break. It’s huge! It's over 40 feet long and is so amazing to see in person. I love the consistency of soft pastels throughout it, it is so dreamy and appealing to look at. 

To be completely honest I am beyond confused about this project. I have read the worksheet a number of times and am convinced that I could do pretty much whatever I want and could make it fit into this project description. To stick with that theme of being utterly confused I am thinking I will paint a series of abstract paintings about this class. Abstract art and paintings, in general, can be very confusing and can be interpreted in a number of ways. I believe Methods of Inquiry is very similar in that most of us have no idea what is really going on and our work can be interpreted in many different ways.

I am going to create three paintings, about our last three projects.

The first project was to create a story from other stories. I cut and pasted pieces of the Kafka story “Metamorphosis”. I am going to create an abstract piece representing the story I created. I want parts of the story I created to be evident but for it to also be confusing and ambiguous.

The second project was the sequencing project where I completed a ridiculous amount of research about squirrels on the University of Michigan campus. For this projects painting, I might paint an enormous squirrel because why not. I might also make some very weird abstract piece about the frustration I experienced surrounding that project.

The third project was the group project and we created body extensions. My group created a very strange extension that we could all wear. It was about the restriction of feeling, sight, sound, and movement. I have a bunch of ideas of where I could take this painting.