Anna's Blog: October 2012

Vuc Cosic is a new media artist who was part of the movement, net.art in the early 90’s. Net.art is another way of saying internet art, which is made to be viewed online and no other way. It was difficult to find much of his art because some of the links on the website are no longer good. Also, the website for Vuc Cosic focuses on other artists from the net.art movement.

History of Art for the Airports is a series of images, some of them animated, that are simplified versions of famous artworks. They are simplified to look like the signs in airports. Cosic has an interest in history, having originally been an archaeologist, which explains his choice of showing artworks through history.

The piece titled Venus is representing the famous statue, Venus de Milo, which is missing both arms. So in Cosic’s piece, he simplified it by making it look like the instantly recognizable symbol for woman, and cut of the arms where they were severed in the statue.

He also did several images from films, like King Kong. He placed the woman symbol on top of a hand symbol and animated it so that the hand gets bigger, like it is moving up toward you. This is recognizable as King Kong because the hand is much larger than the woman, showing the scale, and this actually occurs in the movie.

Most of these images are recognizable to most people and the simplified versions become humorous because we are familiar with the originals and with the style of airport signs and the combination of the two creates a new meaning. The airport symbols, like bathroom signs, are designed to be universally recognizable; they are incredibly simplified so that everyone will understand what they mean. For example, bathroom signs are separated into men’s and women’s by one simple thing: the woman is wearing a dress. Other than that, they are exactly the same. So by simplifying these artworks, he is making them more iconic and more recognizable to everyone. He is breaking them down into the most prominent features, the features that we would remember about that piece. So when we see the sign, we can recognize that one element and be able to identify the piece or the artist.

Warhol, Cambell's Soup Can

Duchamp, Nude Descending Staircase

Lumiere Brothers, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

Citations:

http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/history/

http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/1725/

Here is my portrait so far. There have definitely been some challenges to this. I'm still trying to get used to the pen tool. I have difficulty with it because it will fill a much larger area than I want it to and then I can't seen the line of whatever I'm trying to go over. Another problem I've had is keeping my layers straight. I don't pay much attention to what layer I'm in when I start drawing and then I end up having to move whatever I just drew to a different layer. I also have a hard time choosing the right color for different shadows and skin tones. I am most likely going to be altering all of the skin tones that I have so far to make them all seem more cohesive and more similar. Also, I haven't yet decided what to do with my background, but I haven't really been thinking about that yet. Right now, I think the biggest issues I've had are choosing the right skin tone and getting the lines/ shapes right using the pen tool.