AOTM (March)
Each month I am hoping to update you all on some artists I have found and am currently loving and inspired by. These will be my Artists of the Month or AOTM. This is in the hopes to share this inspiration while widening our knowledge of artists from all around the world, all over time. This month, and as my first post on this subject, I am looking at Leonardo Da Vinci, Judy Chicago and Yun Hyong-Keung. These artists have influenced me personally through my own practical art work as well as through other media I consume, yet I think they all heavily show how art is intertwined within our daily lives in various ways.
“Art isn’t made with power, like a boxer, or with resourcefulness, like a politician. Art is only made with a person’s heart.”
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Leonardo is unquestionably one of the most recognisable artists in the world due to his paintings of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. However, he has also played a hugely significant role win the realm of anatomy and developing an understanding of the structure of the human body. I have been heavily influenced by these anatomical studies within my personal work and have found his methods and techniques interesting to learn about. Da Vinci dissected 30 unfrozen cadavers to investigate the strcuture of the human body. He recorded his findings through a series of annotated drawings and sketches in his valuable ‘notebooks’.
A section of a book I recently read on suggestion from my father (Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime by Val McDermid) suggests how these drawings, especially of skulls, began to give rise and support later workings into facial reconstruction.
Da Vinci is an artist that I think almost everyone would have heard of at some point and I have found it extremely valuable to myself and my creative work to learn more about his involvement in a anatomy and how this shaped his sculptural and painting masterpieces.
JUDY CHICAGO
In light of International Women’s Day on the 8th March 2023, I felt it was an appropriate time to share an incredible artist Judy Chicago. Chicago looks into feminism through considering and celebrating women’s role in culture and history, while stating that ‘feminism is not monolithic’ and there are ‘an array of opinions’.
I was drawn to her installation piece of The Dinner Party that was first exhibited in 1979 in San Fransisco where it had a huge impact, with an estimated 100,000 visitors in the first 3 months. Truthfully the triangular formation of the tables reminded me of Squid Game, however the shape is to represent equality, with the same number of sides, corners and number of places set on each table. Furthermore, The Dinner Party is an influential piece of feminist art that commemorates 39 women from history. An additional 999 names inscribed in golden on the white tiled floor below the table. Each of the 39 women have a unique plate upon their place at the table. These plates depict exquisite lines and colours that form shapes like those of butterflies and vulvar’s. The plates are a unapologetic confrontation of female anatomy that reclaim a women’s autonomy and power of her body, knowledge and life.
In this installation is currently on show at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, where you can see the insurmountable amount of imagery that has made The Dinner Party an astoundingly impactful piece of art that institutionalised feminist art in the creative industries.
YUN HYONG-KEUNG
I first came across Yun through Kim Namjoon. Namjoon or RM is the leader and main rapper of BTS, as well as an artist and producer in his own right. His debut solo album Indigo, within which he dedicates a song ‘Yun’ to Yun Hyong-Keun. From that initial introduction and seeing snippets of Yun’s work in the promotions for Indigo I was inspired to look more into his life and the work he created.
Proclaimed as an abstract artist, Yun’s work is somber and earthly through his use of single shapes and colours. In many of his darker paintings, which are part of a series called the ‘gate of heaven and earth’, the thick bars are produced through laying concentrated mixtures of ultramarine and umber paints. The ‘gate of heaven and earth’ express his state of mind though the turbulent time of conflict and rule in Korea during the mid-to-late 20th Century.
Yun Hyong-Keun is an incredibly interesting individual, who I feel I still have much to learn about. The more I look at his work and learn about his life, the stronger emotional response I feel. I think part of this is because is down to how I was introduced to Yun and what RM says about him on Indigo, but it is truly mind-blowing how he was able to continue to create his art after his experiences in life and through the Korean War.
Each of these three artists have are very relevant to my life currently for my studies or personal research. They are unique in their fields suggesting why they have become so globally renowned. Additionally. I love these artists as I think they show what a valuable position art has within our everyday lives, for survival, research and encouraging social and cultural change.
