This week we wanted to explore the area of artists film to see how this sensibility can feed into your work this year. There are currently some good exhibitions on in London and they are worth visiting over the next few months. The first is Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s, often characterized by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.
In this clip Pollock explains his artistic process. In it he says: “Sometimes I lose the painting but I have no fear of changes, of destroying the image, because a painting has a life of its own I try to let it live.” How can we apply this approach to making images that can develop though the process of production rather than a pre-determined idea?
The other exhibition that is on at the moment is Thick Time by William Kentridge which is on at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Kentridge “is renowned for his animated expressionist drawings and films exploring time, the history of colonialism and the aspirations and failures of revolutionary politics.” Here he goes through the process of his animation.
The process is far more restrained than the expressionist approach but it still relies on elements of chance based on time and motion. Here Kentridge outlines his approach.
Over the year we will come back to this form of experimental work and it is important that you engage in the process of learning the software to be able to explore how the imagery and sound that you capture can be manipulated from reality into art.
MA 21st Century Media Practice 2017 