Blue

Below are a few points of thought on the colour blue that I've taken from an article in The Guardian written about by Miles Davis' album 'Kind of Blue' (25/07/09, extract from Richard William's book 'The Blue Moment: Miles Davis's kind of Blue and the Remaking of Modern Music'). As we all know, different colours and shades can reinforce various emotions and alter our interpretation of things. But some of these debatable ideas and facts also take blue into account as a word and a music genre, offering possible inspiration for further use and thought of blue- both visually and audibly.
A lot of the article appeared to be so distant from likely interpretations of blue, I would say much of what Richard Williams has written about 'blue' as a colour is probably not even worth taking into account! But it is interesting to read about cultural ideas and artists' views of the colour blue...


- "A nice word to say, and to sing, the gentle explosion of its initial double-consonant immediately softened and then succeeded by a long and shapely vowel."
- 'L'heure bleue' (the blue hour) is a time between work and play defined by "transience and evanescence"- basically a time between two aspects of life, which briefly passes and quickly fades away.
- Blue is the colour of:
the Virgin Mary's cloak
Tribal dyes
The suits worn by J Edgar Hoover's FBI men
Rock 'n' Roll denim
- Some expressions, film and music quotes that have used and phrased various shades of blue: Blue velvet, blue angel, blue valentines, blue moon, blue and sentimental, love is blue, way to blue, midnight blue, almost blue, born to be blue, blue on blue.
- "Goethe dressed Young Werther in a blue coat and, in his 'Theory of Colours', observed that "blue brings the principle of darkness with it"".
- Rilke wrote his poems on blue paper.
- Cezanne believed that by adding blue to every colour on his palette he could create the sense of natural light.
- Kadinsky wrote: "Blue unflods in its lower depths the element of tranquility. The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound".
- Matisse once said he was "pierced in the heart" by the blue of a butterflies wings.

My painting of 'The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer'

Painting of the Sculpture

Acrylic, lace.

By request from Laura! This is a painting I did of the sculpture a few years ago. This was part of a study rather than an actual piece. I think it was part of my GCSE project so it was quite a while ago now! I was very encouraged to capture the use of mixed media, as this is a key aspect of the sculpture that I admire, along with the childish confidence of the pose.

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, Edgar Degas

[Sculpture]
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
By Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
1880

This is one of my all time favourite art pieces that I have loved since a very young age! I think I must have loved the innocence and beauty of the stucture, and was inspired by the use of various highly relevant medium, so much I did my own mixed-media painting of it. He carved her with wax, using a real ballet dress and shoes, and horse hair for the hair.
I just read an article in The Guardian that said one of the sculptures (he did a few variations of it) was sold for £5m five years ago, and is now back in the transfer market at £12million. Gutted I'll probably never get to own one! But I saw her last summer at the Liverpool Tate, and she can also be seen in the musee d'Orsay in Paris.

Christian Louboutin spring/summer 2009 ad campaign

Fashion ad campaigns are becoming much more than just photo shoot photography of skinny models in expensive clothes. This Spring/Summer, Christian Louboutin has launched a new campaign, resembling the artistic influence of the Baroque era. Peter Lippmann, the still life photographer behind the campaign, has taken inspiration from 17th-18th artworks, particularly painters of the Dutch Golden Age. The shoes have been arranged in still life to resemble classic paintings. I love the unique take on this fashion campaign as, although the style itself is not unique in the art culture, for fashion it is a very original angle. If I were to come up with this concept, particularly for fashion, I would worry that the old fashioned style would create similar impressions of the shoes. However, it has been carried out beautifully, and represents the brand of Christian Louboutin, and Baroque art beautifully.

Fashion Sex Campaigns

For a long time advertising campaigns have used sex as a theme to sell, particularly for fashion campaigns where they aim to represent people as sexy. However as some of these that I have found show, it can often be taken too far.

Below is an image from a 2007 Dolce and Gabana campaign, which was heavily criticised for glorifying gang rape. This lead to the campaign being banned in Italy.Much more provocative, is the 2007 Tom Ford for Men campaign below. To me this campaign offers little creative imagination, and is just using the woman's body in a tacky and distasteful way, at an attempt to clearly try and be controversial. Tom Ford supported the campaign by saying its sexy, which I definitely disagree with. This one, believe it or not, is one of the tamer images that have been used for the campaign.

In my view, a lot of these campaigns are deliberately ignoring advertising standard's regulations, and creating media hype in order to create maximum awareness and coverage for the brand. A lot of them probably aim to get banned, and make it a competition to see which can be the most controversial.

'Old Boy'

[FILM]

'Old Boy'

Directed by Park Chan-Wook

Won the Grand Prix award at the 2004 Cannes film festival.

My Korean housemate recommended this film, and as I had never seen a Korean film before, I was quite intrigued simply to see whether the film techniques and style were different to that produced in America. I was pleasantly surprised- although pleasant is probably the wrong word for this gripping, ultra-violent revenge plot. I was not only surprised by the high production values but also the the well written narrative. The obvious route would be to compare this film to the revenge-thriller 'Kill Bill'. Although the summary of the plot may apear rather similar (a man who has been locked in a cell for 15 years without explanation, is freed and goes on a rampage to seek revenge), 'Old Boy' is much darker and has more twists - definitely a narrative that is less obvious and predictable. Although when viewing the film I picked up on a few characteristics that were similar to 'Kill Bill', it wouldn't be fair to suggest that one influenced the other, as they were both produced in 2003.

'Old Boy' became controversial in 2007, when it created media hype and moral panic, as it was said to have influenced the shootings by Cho Seung-Hui. This was due to photogrpahs that the killer took of himself resembling scenes from the film. The film features scenes described by an article in The Sun (20.04.07) as "tongue slitting, skull hammering, dental torture and someone eating a live octopus", and headlined the article "Cho 'copied' video nasty". In a similar but more balanced article (April 2007), The Telegraph pointed out that although the photos "show Cho holding a gun to his head and wielding a hammer, images that appear in the film, [he] made no reference to the film in any of his accompanying notes and messages". Although it is a very violent film, there has been no proof of any copy-cat murders, and my view is that it was simply another moral panic created by the media in order to sell.
One negative aspect that my Korean housemate pointed out while watching the film, was his frustration over the inaccurate translations of Korean to English in the subtitles, which resulted in some of the script being less effective and dramatic as probably intended. He pointed out even odd words that could have been translated better and more effectively. However, I presume this is a problem with any translated film.
Now I feel I have warned enough about the violence (it really isn't that bad but I know some people may want to look away!) I also feel the need to mention the narrative twist that some may frown upon... I will say no more so not to ruin it, but it's kind of... sick!

One last thing- I have also read that Will Smith has signed up to star in a 'family-friendly' Steven Spielburg make of 'Old Boy', which I initially wasn't keen on the idea of, as it sounds like they are planning to change it quite a lot. However, it also sounds like the Hollywood version will bear no resemblance whatsoever to the original, and will in fact be based on the original manga comics rather than the film, so it's probably worth giving it a chance as a completely different film! It's currenlty at the centre of a legal battle with the publishers of the manga comics, so there is no certainty as to when, or even if, the American adaptation will be made.

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Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian): "When it comes to gut-wenchingly violent cinema, the Koreans are going further than anyone. And doing it better, too."

Daniel Etherington (Channel 4): "Intense and dark but also humorous and moving, this is an ambitious film that fulfils its promise, despite an arguably overly protracted denouement. Excellent."

Jamie Russell (BBC website): "With its twisting and turning plot, it's hard to talk about Old Boy without spoiling the delirious sense of disorientation that awaits first time viewers."

'Pictures of Walls' -not the best graffiti...

[BOOK]

'Pictures of Walls'

Compiled by Banksy/ POW

This book presents graffiti and city wall scrawls from all over the world, where people have used the city environment to create something new. Although most the graffiti shown in this book is artistically lacking skill, and certainly not what you would normally consider 'graffiti art', their aim is to deliver a message in a blunt and direct fashion, and are often funny and quite clever. After looking through this book I have notice more hidden images around me and look at things differently. The images in this book plus a load more can also be viewed at http://www.picturesofwalls.com/ where you can also send in your own photos.