Group 3 Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JDf5JfKRq2JKkuAl_xjazZwRIo5SMiI-55VLa6QnYls/edit?usp=drivesdk

Andy Warhol and Ana Mendieta

Andy Warhol and Ana Mendieta are two very interesting characters in the study and history of modern art and the question of "what is art?" They both move into the art form of absurdism where they fade the line between the possible and the impossible and the distortions they create are social statements made in their times. They do not create their art per se but they take something that is already in place and either present it in a new light or create a distorted re-imagining that redefines what the object once was.
Warhol had a difficult social life and much of his inspiration comes from his being an asocial persona for much of his early life. Even though he flourished in the field of pop art, he had very little success with love or his own personal sense of being. Warhol was always self-deprecating, especially when it came to his looks and his style so one can see why he would base the majority of his art on famous figures and brand objects because those are the things that people crave and desire.Warhol was a person who sought anonymity in fame and he did everything he could not take make his name the poster child of art. He succeeded in a way as even though a person will always know a Warhol painting, they may never know Warhol.
Mendieta, on the other hand, took her art as a form of expression and heavily pushed their meaning to the viewer. She was heavily involved in nature and the feminist movement so much of her work is reliant on that means of expression. Art such as her "siluetas" that are heavily involved in feminist thought; this is played out by by Berger in the idea that "...the authority for [the nude's] conventions [derive] from a certain tradition of art." (p. 53). she carved and painted abstract figures she named after goddesses from the Taíno and Ciboney cultures. Mendieta meant for these sculptures to be discovered by future visitors to the park, but with erosion and the area’s changing uses, they were ultimately destroyed. Like the Siluetas, these works live on only through the artist’s films and photographs, haunting documents of her ephemeral attempts to seek out. Mendieta is now heavily synonymized to her work. She is the earth-body sculptures that bring personal touches to a homeland and one's history. She also used her body to show art, like is referenced by Berger in modesty "Etiquettes of modesty are not merely puritan or sentimental: it is reasonable to recognize a loss of mystery." (p. 59)
For this week's class I created a selfie in the style of Ana Mendieta, specifically, her untitled set that was her pressed against glass to distort her image.

Untitled

Citations:

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. BBC, 2008.

“Ana Mendieta.” Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/ana-mendieta.

“Andy Warhol Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-warhol-andy-artworks.htm.

“Art and Archives.” The Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, www.warhol.org/art-and-archives/.

Ana Mendieta Selfie

This week I decided to chose this photo I took over the summer. How this picture relates to Anna is where I was headed on that plan ride. That Plane was flying leaving the United States and heading to Macedonia. My family is from Macedonia and i have been going their almost every summer since i was in elementary school. Summers over their meant everything to me and my brothers because their i felt like we were finding the other halves of us that the united states couldn't quite fulfill. While there we met lots of our cousins creating bonds and relationships like we had been living together our whole life, we just felt so complete and overly exicted over there. I relate this to Anna because she was separated from her family and sent to the United States but when she was old enough to return she felt whole and again and reunited with the soil in which she was created she felt complete again with a sense of relief. This is similar to the feelings that me and my family feel when spending any time over there. While in the states a feeling of companionship and friendship is lost because i can better relate and connect with my friends over there because our entire culture and religion is exactly the same just because we were brought up in different countries doesn't mean we are not alike in many different ways.

Andy Warhol and Anna Mendiata

Resul Maksut

Born in Cuba, Mendieta came to the United States as a refugee in 1961 at the age of 12. The trauma of separation from her family, culture, and homeland became the base of her style, which was stared from physical and spiritual connections between the body and the natural world. She wrote, “I have thrown myself into the very elements that produced me. It is through my sculptures that I assert my emotional ties to the earth and conceptualize culture.” The Silueta series hundreds of earth body works and related photographs and films creates the base of her life’s project. Based initially on her own body and silhouette, the Siluetas developed into a collection of outdoor earthly figures and eventually more human forms and incorporated a some ritual effects drawn from different religions. A busy time in her life was traveling to Cuba, where Mendieta felt her practice was reconnected with its origins, prompted drawings, etchings, and sculptures, in which, for the first time, her iconic figures became beautiful individual objects.

 

            Andy grew up during the Great Depression in the urban surroundings of an industrial city. At an early age he showed a great talent for drawing. Due to an illness at the age of 6 he was stuck in bed and his mother and brothers would entertain him for hours by showing him how to draw, trace and print images. Andy loved to draw throughout his childhood. When Andy’s father died in 1942, his main wish was that Andy continues his education to college. In 1945, Andy was accepted at Carnegie Institute of Technology. He would be the first of his family to ever go beyond high school. Upon graduation in 1949, Andy and fellow classmate and artist Philip Pearlstein boarded an overnight train to New York City to pursue the art world. In 1960 he purchased a four-story townhouse and experimented with using comic strip imagery as his Art. The subject matter was untraditional and unique at the time. These early Pop paintings had a different look then people were used to. Over the next several months his painting style would evolve into being more flat and graphic. One consistent aspect, though, was that everyone in everyday life knew the images.

 

Andy and Anna both had things in common from their early childhoods and early years. Anna was separated from her Cuban family to become an adopted refugee in America throughout her adolescent years when she felt like an outsider growing up in the Midwest, she felt an ever-present disconnection from the concepts of mother, place, identity, belonging, and home. While Andy, emerged from the poverty and obscurity of an Eastern European immigrant family in Pittsburgh. Both growing up in a lower class being molded from such a young age, taking on the challenges of the world and being able to spin them around and create fame and fortune for themselves. This eventually shows in the styles and themes surrounding their work such as absence and empty feelings. Anna sustained use of the body's simplified and often nude form to depict both presence and its opposite, absence is an essential component to her work whether denoting the human. This is very similar too how others view some of his first expressions of compassion fatigue the way the public loses the ability to sympathize with events from which they feel removed. Another similarity is these two artistes were doing things that stood out such as they types of art they were making. Anna was recognized as an important contributor to land art, a movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked, taking the possibilities of art outside gallery confines, not many artistes at the time were really focusing on this at the time. Which leads to Andy and how he draws on popular culture throughout the twentieth century, Pop art marked an important new stage in the breakdown between high and low art forms. His paintings were important in pioneering these developments, but it is arguable that the diverse activities of his later years were just as influential in expanding the implications of Pop art into other spheres, and further eroding the borders between the worlds of high art and popular culture.

Work cited

“Ana Mendieta Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-mendieta-ana.htm.

“Ana Mendieta.” The Art Institute of Chicago, www.artic.edu/exhibition/ana-mendieta.

“Andy Warhol Biography.” The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - Andy Warhol Biography, warholfoundation.org/legacy/biography.html.

“Andy Warhol Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-warhol-andy.htm.

Ana Mendieta selfie

inspired by Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta had many periods throughout her lifetime, so she connected her artwork to femininity, nature, and Earth. To create her pieces, she used different types of materials. As you can see, I did not use mud, blood, animals, or water like Mendieta, but I decided to sit down and enjoy the nice weather. I love being outside, especially at the park with this beautiful scenery. This picture was taken at Bayonne Park and it is of me being one with nature.

Inspired by Ana Mendieta

Silueta Inspired By Ana Mendieta, 2018

For this assignment I used Ana Mendieta's concept of homeland in creating her land art. I created a very basic silhouette shape using sticks and leaves found in my backyard. Since the backyard is a part of my home, I created my piece there. I left concrete visible because although it is unnatural, the man made parts of the city are a part of my own identity. I grew up on concrete surfaces, so I placed my silueta on one. The shape itself is misshapen and out of proportion, especially compared to what I actually look like, but I feel that this is fitting to the period of life I am in right now. As an early adult, I am still changing and not completely sure of my identity. Sometimes I feel distorted, unbalanced, or confused to the point of feeling unreal, which I feel the distortion of the figure represents. The leaves themselves represent change. They are a part of nature that is known for changing every year. I only filled part of my silueta with them to represent that change can be gradual and small but is still happening.

Ana Mendieta and Andy Warhol

St. Gregory the Theologian, Icon,Greek, c. 1500

Andy Warhol, Mao, 1972

Andy Warhol and Ana Mendieta were both famous artists in the second half of the 20th century. They explored issues of their time with experimental and impactful artwork, and were both heavily influenced by their own life experiences, however they also differed greatly from each other. Their lives, styles, techniques, careers, and many of their themes and subject matter were almost opposites, yet they both contributed profoundly to the art world.



Many of Warhol’s and Mendieta’s themes differ from each other, but they also share some common themes in their art. Andy Warhol’s work explores the themes of fame, commercialism, industry, and repetition, whereas the prevalent themes in Mendieta’s work include feminism, the body, homeland, and earth or nature. A few themes common between both of their works are ephemerality, spirituality, and directness. Although they share these themes, they approach them in different ways. Ana Mendieta explores ephemerality through making work that is itself ephemeral. She creates land art that she leaves subject to the workings of nature, such as wind and rain and their resulting erosion. She portrays the message that every moment is fleeting because that is the way of nature. On the other hand, Andy Warhol explores ephemerality but creates works that are much more permanent. He reproduces labels, advertisements, and other forms of media to try to lengthen the ephemeral moment that is seeing one of these things. As John Berger states, "[t]he publicity image belongs to the moment", in the sense that ads are generally singular images that one may walk or drive past and only see for a moment, and in the sense that advertisements are constantly updated as times change(Berger 129-130). As such, Andy Warhol's works also belong "to the moment", however he places them in a context where they would be examined for a longer amount of time than the average advertisement. Spirituality is somewhat subtle in both Mendieta and Warhol's works, but still shows in different ways. Mendieta was influenced by Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion. She makes references to certain deities in some of her works. Warhol uses his work to examine the general concept of spirituality and how it relates to everyday life, especially considering the influence of advertising and celebrities. Both Mendieta and Warhol's works tend to be direct. Warhol's prints are exactly what they are, whether in the form of brand logos, a pop star's face, or a tragic car crash. They have the immediacy that most popular media itself tends to have, and in reflecting it so directly, causes people to consider their effects. Mendieta's self portraits are confrontational and force people to think about the concepts she addresses. For example, in her piece "Rape Scene", she depicted herself as a murdered rape victim, slouched over a table and completely exposed. This forced people to be confronted with the feelings they would have if they saw an actual rape victim, thus provoking thought about the issue of violence against women.



Both Warhol and Mendieta were significantly influenced by people and events in their lives prior to becoming artists. Their styles, techniques, and subjects were highly influenced by childhood experiences. At a young age, Warhol was frequently taken to his mother’s church, where he had hours to look at the Byzantine icons that decorated it. These images likely led him to create his simplistic, repetitive, and boldly colored screen printing style of portrait that vaguely echoes Byzantine icons.

Warhol creates a noticeable parallel between important religious figures of the Byzantine Era and important political and cultural figures of the 1960s-80s. He may have developed an insight to the almost religious following of famous people or governments that occurred in his time, which would have been influenced further by his own ongoing obsession with fame and the famous. Mendieta spent much of her childhood in Cuba, where she and her family lived next to a beach. She and her family recall burying each other in the sand as they played, which is strikingly similar to the land art following the form of the human body that Mendieta would later create.

 

Ana Mendieta, Color Photograph Documenting Earth/Body Work with Sand, Pigment, Old Man's Creek, Iowa City, from the series "Silueta Works in Iowa and Oaxaca, Mexico", 1976-78

Person buried in the sand

  

  

Like many of the themes in their work, the techniques used by Mendieta and Warhol were practically opposites, except for their use of the camera, which still differed between the two. Mendieta used her own body, as well as natural materials like mud, sticks, sand, water, fire, and even blood. She used the camera as a way to document her creations before leaving them in nature where she had made them, or to take pictures of herself in the cases where she used her own body. Sometimes she would take still photos and sometimes she would take videos, especially if her piece involved a moving force or process of nature, such as the burning of a silueta in her "Silueta en Fuego".

 

Ana Mendieta, Silueta en Fuego, 1975

 Andy Warhol, on the other hand, used photography as a main source for his work. His pieces often included prints of his own photographs or those of others. He would use ink and silk screens for most of his printing, and paint for some of his other pieces. Unlike Mendieta, these are largely man made and artificial materials. Although he occasionally took a self portrait photograph, he did not use his body or face in the same way that Mendieta did. He took these photos as if to capture a version of himself existing in a particular moment, whereas Mendieta would distort her body and face to challenge the way the viewer looked at her.

Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints), 1972

Warhol and Mendieta both created themselves through their art. It is true that actions and images people make create their identities, and art is a prime example of this. In "The Art of Self Invention", Finkelstein notes that "[a]ttached to our bodily deportment and accessories are highly detailed codes that suggest specific social implications"(Finkelstein 127). Warhol and Mendieta have an awareness of this and alter their own images accordingly in order to produce certain impressions. Mendieta aims to challenge specific impressions. In many of her self portraits she foregoes any clothing, which works to symbolize that she does not with to be involved in any assumptions that might be made about her due to the way she dresses. In other self portraits she uses makeup and prosthetic facial hair to alter her face, often giving it typically male features. This jars a viewer as it is not typical for a female person to have a moustache, for example. In yet others, she distorts her face and parts of her body with panes of glass. This challenges the notion of female perfection as enforced by the male gaze. As Berger details, the male gaze pressures women to always look and act on an unrealistic level of perfection in order to be seen as women at all (Berger 46). Mendieta challenges this by creating a flawed, and therefore realistic, image of herself. This type of work contradicts what is expected of the female image and also works to challenge this image. Andy Warhol did not aim to challenge people's perceptions of him, but did create a specific image of himself through his works. He wanted to be famous, and to gain that, he partly created an image of himself as a famous person. Both in and out of his self portraits, using accessories like white wigs and black clothing create the coded impression of someone eccentric and mysterious. This drew people to him and helped contribute to his fame.

The late 20th century was a time of many complex issues including feminism, environmentalism, war, and racism, accompanied by the rising number of advertisements, entertainers, and other famous figures. Ana Mendieta and Andy Warhol each represent a result of these issues, as their art reacts to them and is a unique product of their personalities and experiences.

Works Cited

Horsfield, Kate, et al., directors. Ana Mendieta: Fuego De Tierra. Women Make Movies, 1987.


Sanders, James, and Ric Burns. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. YouTube.com, Thirteen/WNET New York, 2006, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQXpqQO4vaE.


Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Art & Language, 1978.


Finkelstein, Joanne. The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. I.B. Tauris, 2007. 


Grishin, Sasha. “The Byzantine Icon.” Hellenic Foundation for Culture, hfc-worldwide.org/blog/2015/01/31/byzantine-icon/.


“Collection.” Art Gallery NSW, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/349.1997.7/.


“SELF-PORTRAIT FRIGHT WIG by Andy Warhol.” Artnet.com, Sotheby's New York, 1 Jan. 1986, www.artnet.com/artists/andy-warhol/self-portrait-fright-wig-57XxIychx8l9gHs2xdz1hQ2.


A., Ashley. “Ana Mendieta's Alma Silueta En Fuego.” WMST 250: Feminist Art Gallery, Blogspot, 11 May 2012, womenartandculture.blogspot.com/2012/05/ana-mendietas-alma-silueta-en-fuego.html.


Bunyan, Marcus. “Exhibition: 'Ana Mendieta: Traces' at the Museum Der Moderne Salzburg.” Artblart.com, artblart.com/tag/ana-mendieta-untitled-self-portrait-with-blood/.