Week #8 ('21) Art Appreciation
Welcome to my weekly Art Appreciation post, where I provide a list of some amazing album covers, single art, and random art that have come out within the past week. I’ll give you the artist/photographer/painter/magician’s name, as well as any social media or websites where you can go and check out more of their work. Click here to go back and see some other Art Appreciation posts.
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We talk a lot about movement, fluidity, and kinetic energy in a piece, but there’s a logical flipside to that coin: stillness, rigidity, and potential energy. Having a piece that is based in a lack of motion rather than visible action places more of an emphasis on the elements that make up an image structurally, how those pieces fit together into a whole. The biggest difference in interpretation is in the implication; in a piece with movement, you’re looking for a narrative conclusion that is yet to come, while a still piece is a story in and of itself. Keep these things in mind while looking at these pieces I have for you; look for things that anchor the elements to the canvas.
Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they collaborate with.
Artist(s): Artmorfate
A Stream Of Consciousness, by Jay NiCE & Machacha
This one from Artmorfate is actually a great example of a piece with *two* different scenes going on, one moving and one still, a technique that is often used in media like movie posters (which this piece is seemingly trying to emulate). You have the two astronauts, stone still staring off dramatically into space, contemplating the mysteries of the universe and whatnot; these two figures (and to an extent the UFO up at the top of the piece) are the anchors, around which the action in the piece can take place, the action in question being a fiery alien abduction taking place before our very eyes. Like I was saying in the intro, the action in any given piece is usually a part of a unresolved narrative, so why are they abducting this dude? Where is he going? Why do the alien dudes seem so evilly pleased at what is taking place? I dunno. These are the questions presented in the action, and it’s up to you astute art appreciators to come up with your own answers. Beyond the still/moving parts of the composition, I’m also enamored with the colors that Artmorefate uses in this piece; it’s a mixture of purples and blacks, with the grainy texture with which he applies the color that leads to this sense of intergalactic darkness, like the murkiness of space laid out before us. These colors make the bright abduction beam all the more compelling, starkly contrasting everything else in the piece with it’s white and blazing presence. These color schemes (and more of the dizzying attention to detail you can find in this piece here) can be found in almost all of Artmorfate’s pieces, so go check out their Instagram to seem some amazing work.
Artmorefate's Instagram
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Artist(s): Rhymepuma
UGONMAKEMEKILLYOAZZ, by Him Lo & Giallo Point
I was talking about how potential energy in a piece is just as compelling as kinetic, and this piece here is pretty much exactly what I’m talking about. You have a moment (or rather a bunch of discordant moments all thrown together) caught in time, still as if the subjects are posing for a painting or a sculpture, with the only real “movement” to speak of being the firing of the gun held by the female rider. I mention sculpture because, in many respects, we’re almost looking at an illustrated version of a sculpture: the blocky shading, the very stiff and defined musculature found in the horse and the riders, the symbology and imagery in the hand motions and props, and an approach to color that almost seems like a means to an end. The color in the piece is really only here to define the different parts visually to an observer, but imagine if this was an actual bronze sculpture in front of you: every element of the piece is *physically* defined in a way that borders on caricature, slightly goofy in the context of a illustrated piece, but perfectly in line if translated into a sculpted medium. I mean even the pose that’s being struck here, the equestrian strongman, is among the most common poses in sculpting. To bring this all full circle, the sculpture is the quintessential expression of potential energy in art, trading flashy movements and flowing colors of paintings for a still look at life, and it’s a look that Rhymepuma knocks right out of the fucking park. Rhymepuma has a lot of work like this (some with much more color as well for those interested), so don’t forget to scroll through what they’ve got over on their Instagram page.
Rhymepuma's Website/Rhymepuma's Website
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