Week Three

Lens-Based Artists:

1.)  Peter Menzel

http://www.menzelphoto.com/

Peter Menzel is a freelance photojournalist. My favorite work by Peter Menzel is his series in which he photographs families all over the world behind a table filled with their week’s worth of food. I really like this work because it is a good visual that shows how much food we consume in a week; it is a real eye opener.

2.)  Matthew Carden

http://www.matthewcarden.com/

Matthew Carden is a contemporary photographer that combines toys with food. When I look at his work, I see a critique in food consumption. Compared to the toys, the food is larger than life. The size of the food criticizes the amount of food we actually consume. It also tells how we as a society place food on a high pedestal. Food is so important in our everyday life, and it is shown through Carden’s work. 

3.)  Cherry Archer

http://cherryarcher.com/

Cherry Archer is a contemporary photographer. Archer’s project titled “Consumption Society” mostly relates to my own work. “Consumption Society is a series of photographs that shows how and what we consume (as far as food is concerned), and why we glamorize it; the work was influenced by the level of consumption in Western Society.  

Non-Lens-Based Artists:

1.)  Martha Rosler

http://www.martharosler.net/

Martha Rosler is an installation and performance artist. She also works with video. In her series “Bringing the War Home”, Rosler combines war with pop culture using collage. This series shows how we as a society are no longer shocked or fear the images that she is depicting. Instead, we are desensitized to the horrors of war because of how often the media exposes us to it. Martha Rosler’s work is relevant to my work because I have recently started to work with collage. I am also interested in exploring consumption and the attraction to things that are “unflattering”.

2.)  Jennifer Rubell

http://jenniferrubell.com/index.php?sec=bio

Jennifer Rubell is New York based installation and performing artist. She uses a lot of food and drink in her installations. She also encourages the audience to participate in her installations, something that violates the traditional boundaries of art institutions. In her series of work “Nutcrackers”, Rubell took female mannequins and mounted them on their sides. Visitors of the exhibition were then invited to take a pecan and place it on the mannequin’s bottom thigh, and crack it open by pulling down the upper thigh. I really like this work because it embodies two stereotypes: the idealized sexual beauty of a woman, and the powerful nut-busting woman. This is relevant to my work because I like to explore the stereotype of idealized beauty in our society.

3.) Joy Kampia

      http://www.joykampia.com/

Joy Kampia is a contemporary artist that has a degree in Studio Art with an emphasis in textile. Her favorite medium to work with is crochet. My favorite work by Joy Kampia is her wearable art collection (her wearable art collection includes crocheted dresses). I really like this work because it says a lot about the consumption of food: are we really that obsessed with food that we have to wear it? What happens when we do wear it? What happens when we start to become the food we consume?

Week Two

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Lens Based Artists:

1.)  Charles McClaghy Collection

http://www.retronaut.co/2012/01/exotic-dancers-1890s/

The following two posts correspond with each other. The Charles McClaghy Collection composited photographs of exotic dancers from the 1890’s:

2.)  Charles Brasher

http://www.charlesbrasherphotography.com/new/index.html

Charles Brasher is a contemporary photographer that has a series of work dealing with modern day exotic dancers. I decided to include a contrast between exotic dancers then and now in this blog posting because female body evolution really interests me. It is really interesting to see how our standards as a society have changed over the centuries. 

3.)  Laurie Toby Edison

http://laurietobyedison.com/index.asp

Laurie Toby Edison is a contemporary photographer. She has a body of work entitled “Women En Large”. This body of work is an attempt to empower and portray the beauty of supersized women. This work really interested me because it is such a contrast of what we normally see (nudes of “ideally” beautiful” women).

Non-Lens-Based Artists:

1.)  Robin Antar

http://www.rantar.com/

Robin Antar is a sculptor that likes the art of “creating visual records of contemporary culture”. Antar says: “it’s more than art imitating life, it’s art mirroring life” (http://www.popinternational.com/robin-antar-biography.html). Antar mostly sculpts with marble, travertine and alabaster. The goal of her work is to freeze the object in time as an artistic form of artifact. This relates to the work I plan to produce because Antar is putting food on a pedestal and glamorizing it; she makes the food physically bigger than it actually is.

2.)  Prudence Staite

http://www.foodisart.co.uk/FOOD_IS_ART/HOME.html

Prudence Staite sculpts with chocolate and food to make edible art. Staite says: “art should be interactive and stimulate all the senses, especially taste!” Staite started off uncertain about whether she wanted to be a chef or an artist. But she then decided to get an art degree and fuse the two together. Staite really wants her viewers to interact with her artwork. Her work relates to what I am interested in because she involves her audience in her art with multiple senses. This helps her viewers walk away with an unforgettable experience. 

3.)  Zim and Zou “ The Future of Food”.

http://www.zimandzou.fr/70282/466713/gallery/the-future-of-food

Zim and Zou focus on paper art. Their series of work called “The Future of Food” relates mostly to what I would like to do for this project because it involves making food out of paper. My favorite thing about this work is the irony involved; the colors that are used to make the hamburger are not the colors of a typical hamburger. This serves as an underlying ironic critique of the food industry.

Week One

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This semester, I would like to produce work that explores the paradoxical elements of body image in America. Even though America gives woman a set of illusionary guidelines and qualifications that they must follow in order to be considered beautiful, the accessibility to fast food and junk food is overbearing. How are women supposed to be thin and beautiful with all this bad food out there? Do you even have to be thin to be beautiful? These are all things I would like to explore this semester. The following examples are relevant to the work I would like to produce over the semester:

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Lens Based Artists:

1.)  Christine Benjamin     

      http://christinebenjamin.com/

Christine Benjamin worked as a clinical social worker for 14 years. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she decided to study photography and phototherapy. Benjamin mostly concentrates on portraiture, photographing women with breast cancer. Her “New Work 2” series fits in with what I would like to explore. In this work, a Snow White character eats fast food and is shown buying not so princess-like food at the grocery store.

  2.)  California Gurls – Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dog

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F57P9C4SAW4

     

This music video is junk food overload! Katy Perry, the “ideal” sexy character in this music video, parades around wearing junk food. Why are “sexy” women advertising food that is bad for you? In this case, you are not what you eat…

3.)  Small Fry: a documentary film by Hayley

      http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/436374006/small-fry-a-documentary-film

This documentary is “in the works”; it began August 2012 in Oakland, California. This documentary is planned to explore the relationship between fast food and body image. Hayley, the main character in this film, will attempt to lose 70 pounds in one year; she will try and go from a size 14 (the average size of an American woman) to a size 0 (the average size of a runway model). She will do this by eating a healthy well-balanced diet. The catch is that for one meal a day, she will eat fast food. Through this documentary, Hayley is not trying to say that fast food should be part of your diet. She is also not trying to say that a size 0 means you are beautiful. She is simply trying to prove or disprove her hypothesis in this experiment.

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Non-Lens-Based Artists

1.)  Jean Wells 

      http://www.wellsart.com/

Jean Wells is an American artist who works mostly with mosaics. Her work is very technical, yet still playful and paradoxical. The discourse around her work usually revolves around the loaded topic of consumerism. My two favorite pieces of work by Jean Wells include “Urban Fruit Tree” and “Ice Cream Sundae”. I really like “Urban Fruit Tree” because it is futuristic take on what food accessibility and convenience will look like. I like “Ice Cream Sundae” because it is more about body image. The larger than life portion of ice cream next to the pinup girl is completely paradoxical. Will this girl still look the same after she eats that large portion of ice cream? Not at all.

2.)  Kent Christensen 

      http://kentchristensen.com/

Kent Christensen mostly focuses on drawings, prints and oil paintings. He lives and works in New York City and Utah. Christensen’s work is about cultural and personal associations of food, place and culture. He re-contextualizes personal, emotional, and psychological associations with the power of food; he does this in a satirical manner.

3.)  “Conflicting Messages of a Media Monster”      

      http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/anorexia/Anorexic005-MediaMonster.html

This article that I found talks about the mixed messages our society portrays. Skinny models advertise junk food in order to make it look more appealing, but does anybody really become skinny after eating junk food? Another point that the article makes: as the obesity rate in America increases, the female body image becomes thinner and thinner. Why is this?  My favorite quote of the article is “our culture is saying eat, eat, eat but don’t get fat” because it demonstrates perfectly paradoxical body images in America.