Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton was born in London on the 24th of  February 1922 and died on the13th of September 2011. He went to the Royal Academy Schools for two years at the age of 16 to 18. He then studied engineering draughtsmanship at a Government Training Centre in 1940 to soon move to working as a 'jig and tool' designer. He then returned  to the Royal Academy Schools in 1946, where he was sadly expelled. He then went on to attended the Slade School of Art from 1948 to 1951.


Hamilton was  inspired by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson work. It influenced some of Hamilton's early work. D'Arcy's influence led to Hamiltons exhibition of his engravings was held at Gimpel Fils, London, in 1950. Hamilton devised and designed the exhibitions Growth and Form at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951, and Man, Machine and Motion at the Hatton Gallery. He had  his work exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in 1955, and participated in This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956, for which he produced a collage entitled Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? for the poster and catalogue. With Victor Pasmore in 1957 he devised and organised an Exhibit, at the Hatton Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Hamilton was a member of the Independent Group, formed in the 1950s by a group of artists and writers at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. They had the sole purpose to contributed to the development of Pop art in Britain.  Hamilton interpreted this as meaning that 'all art is equal - there was no hierarchy of value.

Hamilton taught at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and University of Newcastle. He gave up teaching full-time in 1966. He designed a typographic version of Duchamp's Green Box and published it in 1960. Keen to embrace certain types of technology within his art, Hamilton began creating computer-generated works in the 1980s. He has had a long career as a print-maker. In 1983 he won the World Print Council Award. In 1991 he married the artist Rita Donagh.

Gerrit Rietveld

                                      
 Gerrit Rietveld

Gerrit Reietveld was born on the 24 June 1888 and died the day after his 76th birthday on the 25 June 1964. He was a Dutch architect and designer. He was also apart of the De Stijl movement, which mean The Style in Dutch. His work also relates to cubism as his work is mainly made up of one shape. Most of his furniture was designed and manufactured to accompany his architectural designs.

His long and eventful career began as a young boy in his father’s carpentry shop in Utrecht.  He left the shop in 1917 to set up an establishment of his own. At that point he was able to make a new start for himself and also design.

The Amsterdam School.had some influence in his first attempts of his own artistic type of work. Rietveld re-invented the structure of chairs and other objects and built them as constructivist sculptures. Before Rievelt changed the designs of chairs they were very fit to the human body. The main use of the chair in the olden days was to keep the person who sat in it protected from the wind as they sat next to the fire. In 1918 he designed an early version of his Red and Blue Chair. It was published in the De Stijl Magazine which he soon later became a member of  in 1919. Through the magazine Rietveld came in contact with various architects associated with the modern Dutch movement. These artist all had the same idea as Rietvelt, to get rid of  old designs. He was also able to build the Schröder House in 1925, which was a well known piece of his time and today.

Rietveld’s work had gone smoothly until 1943 when he was barred from practising as an architect. This was caused  because he refused to join the Nazi-controlled Kulturkammer. After the war, the country and Rietveld gradually returned their normal lives, and Rietveld continued his work until he died.

The Red and Blue Chair and the Zig Zag chair  seem to the chair designs which will always be in style and iconic  designs. Gerrit Rietveld’s designs for the red an blue chair where the ones I looked at. We had to replicate his design on either a one to three scale or one to four square model. I chose to make mine a one to three square model. Using card board and a hot glue gun I was able to re-create the chair.

Tristan Eaton

Tristan Eaton

  

Tristan is currently the President and Creative Director of THUNDERDOG STUDIOS, INC., a prominent New York based Designer Toy Brand and Creative Agency and happily resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.Born in Los Angeles in 1978, Tristan began pursuing street art as a teenager, painting everything from billboards to dumpsters in the urban landscape wherever he lived, including London, Detroit and New York. Eaton designed his first toy for Fisher Price at 18 years old and has since become a driving force in the world of 'Designer Toys '. As a creative leader in the world of advertising, Eaton regularly consults such brands as Hasbro, Pepsi and Nike on many creative projects that span the globe and cross all mediums .

Tristan's work can be seen at the Cooper Hewitt Museum and in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Tristan Eaton I have to say is one of my two favourite artist. What I like about his art is his graffiti style. I like how he uses his own touches to different objects. The way that he is able to turn everything into a cartoon as well.

His pieces will differ to stencils digital art and graffiti. His graffiti being detailed and his digital work being bold and full.

 

Frank Gehry

 Frank Gehry was born in Toronto, Ontario,Canada in 1929.He is a architect that designs furniture and buildings. He does his designs in his own style of deconstructed architecure. I find that most of his designs for furniture are done in a biological curvy way and his buildings are designed in abstract way.

His buildings are much different than regular modern buildings of today. He works on large scales. Though the fist part of his career started out in a pratice, Frank O. Gehry and Associates in 1963. Which followed to the firm Gehry & Krueger Inc. Which employed a large number of senior architects who had extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects.

After that he changed his career to an artistically directed atelier. His deconstructed architectural style began in the late 1970s.
Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of Deconstructivism , which is also referred to as post-structuralist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. Deconstructivism now spreads through the field of architecture and has influenced almost every contemporary architect in the world. Gehry is best known for his curvy, metallic wave-form museums in Bilbao, Seattle, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, but it all started with strange impulses applied to his own traditional little Santa Monica house in the late 1970s. Frank Gehry’s house in Santa Monica came before its time as a harbinger of the Deconstructivist movement.

 Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. Gehry's own Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, and in such a manner as to subvert its original spatial intention.






 

God Save the Queen says Jamie Reid

God Save the Queen 1977 music cover Design

The image is what a punk rock group called the 'Sex Pistols' had Jamie Reid design on one of their CD covers.The surprising features of this image is that it is a head shot of the queen which has been defaced. This today wouldn't be look at as a bad thing, but when it was created in 1977 it was very out of the ordinary. So when the CD and the cover went public it was noticed.

I believe the image was made through a series of Newsprint, Photocopying, ink, and paper collage. The reason for their choice in material and images I would think would be because it was new and would have an impact on their popularity to the media.
The message the actual art I think is giving is the queen has no real opinion in what she sees or says. I don't like the piece itself but I do like the style in which it is done.

 

Jamie Reid is one person that didn't just push the envelope, he ripped striaght through it and still tried to give to the post office. He I think started a shift in what was presentable and not. He was one of the first people to deface the queen in the name of a cd cover album for the "Sex Pistols".

He was born in 1947 in England. He is not only known for his art but also as Jamie Reid the English anarchist with connections to the Situationists. His work, featuring letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of a ransom note. He came close to defining the image of punk rock, particularly in the UK.

Mr. Brainwash

Mr. Brainwash

Mr. Brainwash is known worldwide as a pop graffiti artist, who started painting on the streets of Los Angeles. He uses a range of media such as stencils, spray paints, posters, and pop inspired images. His real name is Thierry Guetta.

He is not only known for his art work in the streets but also in the movie industry. He was thought to have gained worldwide recognition with Banksy’s nominated film, Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Mr. Brainwash started his art show in 2008 out in Los Angeles’ ‘Life is Beautiful’ exhibition at CBS studios. The exhibition was able to stay open for three months and attract more than 50,000 visitors. After his exhibition he gained a lot of attention which led to Madonna asking him to design the cover of her 2009 CD album.

Adding to the CD cover he then went on to design 15 different covers for the accompanying vinyl’s singles and DVD releases.
Then in February of 2010 his work made it’s way to New York where he made the unveiling of ICONS. This is a 15,000 square foot exhibition in Manhattan. Since it was a huge success and became sold out it was extended to be open a further six months under the name of ICONS REMIX.
Then in secret for a finale of 2010 he went to Miaimi and turned a 25,000 square ft empty building into what he called Under Construction.


 In 2011 he then returned to Los Angeles where he continued to transform a huge building (80,000square ft) into his own art gallery.
Recently in 2012 he opened his first European show during the time of the London 2012 Olympics.
His work: I found that a lot of his work was actually all in the same area. He had his work based around monarchs and people of history. His work also had a little change in each picture that in some way linked to his pop graffiti style.

Kara Walker

Kara Walker is a African American artist born in 1969. She is known for her stencil style art. She draws her art on black paper, cuts it out, and then sticks it onto white walls. Some of  the walls where she hangs her art on are concave.

 Her artwork is interesting to me and many others. In most of her silhouettes there are different levels. She does this by just placing some images higher than others.

Her art is mainly about America's racial and gender situations. “Most pieces have to do with exchanges of power and attempts to steal power away from others.”
 
Kara's work has another speciality, as most of her work now only lives in pictures. After her exhibitions, she then has the original peices destroyed.

For her inspiration she says it goes like this, “One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.”

Kara is  currently living in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts in the MFA program at Columbia University.