Post 2- Artist Influences(Cierrah Kelly)

 1.Who are the 5+ artists you chose 

1. Kara Walker 
2. Kerry James 
3. William Kentridge 
4. Cindy Sherman 
5. Alex Da Corte 

2. What are 5+ themes these artists explore in their work?

 Kara Walker work is known exploring the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through silhouetted figures. She places her silhouette work onto the walls and create an theatrical space. 

Kerry James work interrogates Western art history and includes themes and imagery that have been historically excluded. In his paintings, drawings, installations, and public works he makes work that privileges the Black figure, using race, history, and everyday Black experiences.

William Kentridge work consists of using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he uses political event into poetic allegories. Without a script or storyboard, he plots out each animated film. Kentridge also uses and stereoscopic viewers in order to create an optical illusion with anamorphic projections, extending his drawings into three dimensions. 

Cindy Sherman works uses public figures, uses kitsch and surrealism to create her digital photography. Sherman’s studies of portraiture and self-portraiture has an mixture of camp and horror, it’s heightened by gritty realism.

Alex Da Corte work references Disney cartoons and familiar characters from children stories. Tagged along in his videos is anthropomorphized everyday objects and in his videos have pop-culture  figures. In his videos Da Corte portrays himself into many characters, his videos are in dreamlike and immersive environments. In his videos there’s many colorful carpets, brightly painted walls, and neon lights. He has a team to help him with makeup and costumes, Da Corte’s contrasting, remixing and flattening one of a kind images and icons far different from their original meaning. This allows him to create new stories about popular characters with a new mixture of empathy, criticism, comedy, and the macabre. 

3.What are 5+ challenges these artists faced in creating their work?

Kara Walker hadn’t discussed any issues had face with creating her artwork, but it can be assume that she has a hard time of creating a narrative with her work due to relying on silhouettes to tell a story and the meaning behind it. 

Kerry James Marshall talks about how him as an artist have to conceptualize the imagery that he going to produce and the value that he thinks it will have for the culture. 

William Kentridge talks about  how it took him a long time to understand that there was no expectation of what he was work was doing. People would have to understood or justify themselves in a boarder world or use logic to explain his work. And it took him to a long time to understand the substantive work he was doing.  

Cindy Sherman has face the issues of finding inspiration for her work. She also had issues of  how she would be perceived as the characters she creates rather than herself. 

Alex Da Corte talks about how he wants his mind to be freer than it is but he doesn’t come easy to him so he has to spend time with the characters that he presents himself in his work in an devotional research-based way. He also mentions that there’s distance in the past of people who have influenced him. If he thinks of an icon as a flat symbol how can he give it depth and he think of people who he admire or the people confuse him to give him depth.

4. What are 5+ inspirations you drew from these artists?

With Kara Walker works, how she uses silhouette in order to composed storytelling inspired to really focus on the shapes of my characters in scenarios. Especially since silhouette is very important to  characters and a lot is told about by the character’s personality just by their characters.

 

Kerry James inspires me to use more historical themes into my work and use it to create an allegory since so much is happening right now. 

William Kentridge using charcoal animation inspires me to use animation since animation has always been something I want to do. 

Cindy Sherman inspires me to dive into kitsch and surrealism into my art and not being scared to be abnormal.

Alex Da Corte also makes embrace my interest into the macabre and put more of it into my work. 

5. What are 5+ things you would like to incorporate into your own work after learning about these  artists?

Five things that I would like to incorporate into my own work after learning about these artists 

• Surrealism 
• Kitch 
• Macabre
• Historical events
• Allegories