Project 4 Response Blog

For this project, I really spent a lot of time considering what theme I wanted to work with. I really wanted to search for something different than the works we already got to explore in the text but I also wanted to see works from some of the artists we had learned about. I decided to go with ocean theme, titling my exhibit: Nautical Artistry. This theme allowed me to search through familiar artists to see if they had done any ocean themed projects, but also explore new artists.

Artstor became very helpful once I figured out the log in process. It allowed the opportunity to search through so many paintings in one spot. I also liked the feature in which you could search different time eras. For the last part of my slideshow I was looking for more modern pieces so I was able to narrow my search to the last 20 years.

I organized my exhibit into three sections that would all fit into the nautical theme but still provide different types of art: Classical, Abstract/Surrealism, and Modern.

The Classical Pieces included:
1. The Shipwreck by Francisco Goya
2. Watson and The Shark by John Singleton Copley
3. Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bourguereau
4. Raft of Medusa by Theodore Gericault
5. Undertow by Winslow Homer
6. Seascape by Vincent van Gogh
All of these pieces are similar styles from the 1700 and 1800's. Van Gogh fits into the time frame but is definitely a transition from these classical pieces into abstract works. His technique is very different from the first 5 paintings.

The Abstract/Surrealism Pieces included:
7. Ocean Greyness by Jackson Pollock
8. Ocean Motion by Roy Lichtenstein
9. Collective Invention by Rene Margritte
10. Ocean Park #49 by Richard Diebenken
11. Fire and Water #3 by Long Nguyen
These pieces were all very interesting to me as some of them were not typical ocean scenes. Most of them were just lines and colors that were representational of the water. Collective Invention was interesting because we saw a realistic ocean scene in the background but the focus was on a fish head merged with a woman's legs.

The Modern Pieces included:
12. Island of the Infantile Avarice by Robert Williams
13. The Ocean of Whiskey by David Sandlin
14. Lost Correspondent by Jason deCaires Taylor
15. Dream Object (I got lost...) by Jim Shaw.
All of these modern pieces were done between 1996 and 2006. These were very different from the first two sections. After watching the Lowbrow video I was led to Robert Williams and was able to find a piece of his that fit into my theme so I was happy to include a new art concept that I recently learned. In this category I was also able to include a sculpture into my exhibit with the Lost Correspondent.

The only problem I really had was as much as I enjoyed Artstor as a resource, it seemed that if I found a piece in their collection, sometimes I couldn't find it anywhere else online and it made it hard for me to find complete details on some of the pieces.

Overall I enjoyed putting this slideshow together. I was really happy with my theme and think I found unique pieces to put together. My favorite items would be Watson and the Shark and the Lost Correspondent.