Haring's Use of Lines

How has Haring used Line in his image below?

Where do you see lines? 

Think back to what we have discussed so far about Line:

Did he use Gesture, Contour or Calligraphic Lines?

What are the lines coming from the UFO and around the dog supposed to represent?

How has he used line expressively? 

What do his lines contribute to the meaning or message behind his work?

Answer the questions in blue by leaving a comment. 

Make sure you post your name (first last initial) and hour to get credit.

Tagging Vs. Street Art

Is Graffiti Art? Or is it just vandalism? Graffiti's history is as old as time itself, but in modern times has evolved into a much more sophisticated form of expression. Should we make a distinction between the type of graffiti known as tagging and what could more appropriately be called street art? Is one better than the other?

Graffiti: Crime or Art Form?


Should graffiti be considered a crime or celebrated as an art form? I think to really answer this question appropriately, we need to investigate graffiti through more specific categories. People who are disconnected from hip hop culture, or don’t have at least an understanding for it, tend to generalize graffiti and look at it right away as gang related or violating property. But they do not understand that graffiti does not only consist of violating property and gang names being spray painted on a wall to claim ownership of an area, but it has developed so much to the point that graffiti pieces are being sold in art galleries for hundreds of dollars. "To an extent, some graffiti is used in a positive way to get a message across or to remember someone -- that I would consider an art form. I think when people just tag walls and stuff, it tends to look trashy." (Young, 2003). As Young explained, while some forms of graffiti may be looked at poorly, there are also other forms that have brought new light to culture and proved themselves to be worthy of being considered art. Graffiti can be categorized as three main sections which are tagging, throw ups, and bomb art.

[reposted from Elana's blog for school access]

Tagging

Tagging Description

Throw Ups

Throw-up Description

Bomb Art

Bomb Art Description

What is your opinion? Do you think Graffiti is Art? Would you consider some types of graffiti art and others vandalism? What distinguishes one from the other?

Write a comment supporting your opinion.

Leave your comment with your name and hour...

PS: Here is an article about a program in NYC where vandals are taught how and when to put their skills to good use...NY Times Paint Straight

Graffiti - Is it Art?

After our discussion in class, I found this interesting advertisement incorporating graffiti.  

What do you think they are saying in this ad? What are they using graffiti to represent? How is it a symbol?

Leave me a comment...

Ten Noteworthy Events

List 10 noteworthy (to you, anyway) events in the last 48 hours. Use these as a starting point for an entry in your ME book.

Trash? ~ or ~ Art?

Is the plastic bag below Trash or Art?

The artist Joshua Allen Harris uses plastic bags as an art medium that intrigues his viewers. See them in action in the video below... 

 More about the artist, Joshua Allen Harris.  

What do you think about his work?
Leave me a comment with your opinion & thoughts. Make sure to leave your name and hour...

What is Art?

The questions "What is Art?" and "What is an Artist?" today are not easily answered. According to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." The art historian Thomas McEvilley agrees that today "more or less anything can be designated as art." Arthur Danto, professor of philosophy at Columbia University and art critic of The Nation, believes that today "you can't say something's art or not art anymore. That (discussion is) all finished."

However, what has finished is not the creation of artworks, but a certain way of talking about art. Artists, whoever they are, continue to produce, but we, non-artists, are no longer able to say whether it is art or not. But at the same time, we aren't comfortable with dismissing it as art because it fails to fit what we think art should be (whatever that is).  We struggle with this because we have been taught that art is important and we're unwilling to face up to the recently revealed insight that art in fact has no "essence." When all is said and done, "art" remains significant to human beings. In some cases it seems natural that anything can be art and elicit an art like response. On the other hand, the idea that now anything can be art, and that no form of art is truer than any other, can also strike us as unacceptable.

The chewing gum displayed in this post, Is it art?

Or is the work below by Maurizio Savini, created from chewing gum, a better example of what art is?

What do you think?

Leave a comment with your opinion. Make sure you leave your name and hour to get credit.