Exam Unit - Half Term Prep & Some Additional Starting Points

Over half term you need to prepare for the Externally Set Unit - for second years this will be the culmination of your course, for first years this serves as your end of year mock exam and can later be used to contribute towards your coursework submission.

Over the half term week it is essential that you take a good set of photographs specifically to inspire the forthcoming project. These need to be well considered; be prepared to go the extra mile to get imagery that is going to excite and motivate you for the next 3 months. Get a minimum of 40 photographs on a related theme, you can use starting points outlined below, on the exam paper, or of your own.

All elements of Coursework (sketchbooks, outcomes, personal study) or City work (sketchbook, outcome) must be submitted on Monday 19th February when we return to lessons.

You will need the imagery to begin work on your Exam Unit in your first lesson back.

A LEVEL ART UNIT 2 (EXTERNALLY SET ASSIGNMENT)

“Freedom and/or Limitations”

In addressing any of the starting points outlined below the same things will be looked for when your work is assessed:

• A substantial body of visually interesting primary source material, including your own photographs taken specifically for this unit and a series of high quality observational drawings and prints.
• A broad range of research sources, thoughtfully presented alongside your own analysis of specific images. Research should be complemented by visual responses to the Artists and Designers you have selected. It is important that your sources are relevant to your own work and the links between the two are explained.
• Meaningful visual development of your ideas, this should explore elements such as materials/technique, composition, colour, tone and scale. Developmental studies should be annotated explaining decisions taken and progress made.
• A well realised final outcome produced in the final exam time (15 hours).

Starting Points:

Peter Doig - Concrete Cabin

San Francisco from Alcatraz Cell

  

Boundaries: Within the Landscape boundaries both natural and man-made frequently occur. These areas provide visually interesting combinations: wild and managed, sea and shore, town and country.

Many Artists have responded to the visual tension created on the margins where one type of landscape meets another, sometimes these boundaries capture elements of both freedom and limitations, such as the image of San Francisco seen from an Alcatraz prison cell above. Look at some Artists whose work explores this theme and take a range of your own photographs to develop a body of work from.

References: Bill Jacklin (Central Park paintings), Claude Monet, Peter Doig, John Keane.

Henri deToulouse-Lautrec 

Andreas Gursky

 

Social Interaction: Social events are an expression of the freedom and choices available to us in modern society, the options for how to spend our precious leisure time are wider than ever. Pubs, cafes, parties and nightclubs provide rich imagery that has inspired Artists across the generations from Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings of the dancers at the Moulin Rouge to Andreas Gursky’s composite photographs of Madonna concerts.

Gather your own imagery from places where people gather to socialise, you could explore more intimate moments between individuals or look at the visual impact of a mass of people crowded together.

References: Bill Jacklin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Eduoard Manet, Andreas Gursky.

Cy Twombly

Gerhard Richter

   

Abstraction : In the years that followed the invention of the camera Artists found new ways of depicting their experiences visually, this “reinvention” of what painting sought to address provided freedom for Artists to look internally for inspiration and make purely abstract work.

Abstraction brought the visual Arts closer to other creative fields such as music. Just as composers or jazz musicians make instinctive “free” choices about what sounds to combine or sequence, so abstract painters make intuitive decisions about colour, shape and composition.

Look at a variety of Abstract Artist’s work and take a range of photos that possess abstract qualities (zoom in or choose unusual angles so subject matter becomes unrecognisable, experiment with long exposures and blurred imagery), use these sources to develop abstractions that explore colour, mark making and composition.

References: Hans Hofmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Gerhard Richter, Willem de Kooning, Howard Hodgkin, Cy Twombly.

Eduardo Recife

David Salle

Combining Images: The advent of Collage as an Artform in the 20^th Century has allowed Artists and Illustrators the freedom to juxtapose imagery from different sources within single Artworks. Often this can create contrasts between apparently unrelated material. Visual tensions are often produced by this marrying of imagery. Collage Artists are often like magpies, collecting material from diverse sources.

Look at a range of works by the Artists in the reference section and then collect a broad spectrum of your own material to work with, this should include some photographic material that gives you scope for producing some sustained initial drawings and prints.

References: Eduardo Recife, Robert Rauschenberg, David Salle, James Rosenquist, Peter Blake, Kurt Schwitters, John Keane, Ben Allen, Joseph Cornell.

Ben Johnson

Teh Chankerk

Architectural Forms: Towns and Cities are rarely built and planned over a short period of time, they evolve and new buildings jostle for space with classical architecture. Each generation of buildings accesses new materials and construction techniques, which has allowed Architects increasing freedom to explore inventive and ambitious projects.

Many Artists have been inspired by Architecture, both old and new, buildings give structure to a composition and imagery from Architectural sources can lead to work in 2 or 3 dimensions of either a figurative or an abstract nature.

Look at a range of Artists who use the built environment as their visual stimulus, and take a range of photos that explore Architectural contrasts, look for unusual viewpoints and reflections to create strong compositions.

References: Architects Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers Artists Ben Johnson, Richard Galpin, Dennis Creffield, John Virtue, Brendan Neiland, Frank Auerbach, David Hepher.

Exam Paper 2018 - Freedom and/or Limitations

The Open Road (with Limitations)

As with any set of visual work the quality of the source imagery you gather for the Exam Unit is vital. Remember this unit is worth 40% of your overall grade, so it is essential to gather strong source imagery, use half term to take a strong set of photographs to inspire your project. 
Use the bullet points in the theme introduction below and search sites like Pinterest for inspiration.

Introduction to the theme from the Exam Paper:


The theme is:FREEDOM and/or LIMITATIONS
Archibald MacLeish wrote ‘Freedom is the right to choose’. Originally expressed in a political context, this phrase could also sum up many of the fundamental ideas that have inspired artists. For the Fauves it was the right to paint in whatever colours they chose. For the Cubists, the choice was how to depict form and space. In Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Readymades’ he chose ordinary objects to be transformed into pieces of artwork. Artists and designers relish the freedom to explore ideas and express their own personality in their work. Van Gogh is perhaps the archetypal ‘romantic artist’, who chose to take his own path, expressing with brushstrokes, colour and energy his unique vision of the world. Mondrian’s highly disciplined paintings were governed by the wish to condense experience down into its simplest expression. The freedom to move, to travel, to dance and to have fun has inspired many artists. Sydney Carline and Peter Lanyon explore the soaring freedom of flight. Francis Alÿs and Tania Kovats explore more conceptual possibilities of travel. Dance inspired Degas and Matisse. Music inspired Paul Klee and Romare Bearden. No artist has been more playful than Picasso, who would insert clues, such as the letters ‘JOU’ (inferring ‘play’ in French), into his Cubist paintings and collages. The advancement of technology and availability of new materials have always given artists and designers freedom to explore new ideas and to push materials to new limits. In the early industrial age iron and steel gave designers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel the opportunity to design bridges and ships on a scale that had previously been impossible. New materials and ideas fuelled a revolution of possibilities in the 1960s. Synthetic materials such as plastic could be used to create forms with great freedom. Verner Panton’s cantilevered S shaped chair was playful, brightly coloured and inspired by popular culture, echoing the sense of fun and liberation that was a characteristic of 1960s design. Art crossed into design, for instance Bridget Riley’s Op Art paintings inspiring the design of miniskirts, and commercial design crossed into art, for Warhol and other Pop Artists. Musicians such as the Doors and the Beatles drew on multiple influences from literature and art. Today’s new technologies, such as 3D printing, computer-aided design and virtual reality, offer even more spectacular possibilities. Joris Laarman’s Bone Chair for instance uses CAD to mimic the way growth occurs in nature. Swedish design group Front have developed motion capture technology to make light-pen strokes drawn in the air into physical reality and build ‘spontaneous furniture’. Artists and craftspeople relish the material qualities of their chosen media. Sometimes they work within the traditional limitations of the media and create a restrained beauty, such as Edmund de Waal’s porcelain forms, and at other times they challenge expectations. Eva Hesse’s use of latex and rope expanded the vocabulary of sculpture in the 1970s. Roger Hiorns’ sparkling cave of copper sulphate crystals transformed an ordinary Peckham flat in 2008. True originality is hard won. The photographer Richard Avedon wrote ‘Start with a style and you are in chains – start with an idea and you are free’.

Here are some other suggestions to help stimulate your imagination: 
• fences, barriers, borders, chains, ropes, binding 
• ditches, tidal reaches, city limits 
• arcs, intersections, parabolas, mathematical forms 
• captivity, confinement, prisons, offices, cells 
• stresses, cracks, breaking points 
• free expression, political freedoms, debate, discussion, argument, protest 
• travel, exploration, independence, leisure, holidays, escape 
• dance, eccentricity, abandonment, rescue 
• flight, birds, aeroplanes, clouds, thermals 
• running, jumping, falling, swimming, diving 
• swirls, marks, gestures, colours 
• leotards, cycling clothes, flowing fabrics, wetsuits