Transformer diptych (part 2)

Excitingly, I discovered buff titanium paint this week. I was trying to explain my excitement to a friend last night and they didn't quite understand the colour until I explained that it was like buff paper. Okay, so it may also be called beige on the label, which I think isn't half as good a name, but as Shakespeare said, 

"...What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

The buff titanium has been very helpful for doing my beach scenes, when white or naples yellow just wasn't giving me the colour mix I was after. Of course, my beach scenes are going to have a couple of quirky items in...Transformers, you ask? Well, no, not in the beach scenes, but the Transformers are still going strong. I finished my diptych last Friday. The iridescent white worked well when mixed in with the purples, blues and greys - a slight shimmer, but not too much. Unfortunately, I think where my paintings are hanging in the corridor there isn't enough sunlight to catch the shimmer so it hasn't picked up in my photo that well.

Transformer diptych

Well, I confess, I was a bit disappointed yesterday. I had really been hoping to use a pearlescent medium to make my transformers in my planned diptych shiny and bright, but they don't have the medium in oils only acrylic. So, I am hoping that the iridescent white I bought mixed with the right colours will be able to do the trick. Here are some sketches I did last week to familiarise myself with my transformers, Optimus Prime and Shockwave. I don't understand it, but Shockwave, who is supposed to be the bad one, seems to have a much gentler spirit than Optimus Prime. Not that toys have spirit of course! Unless you have been watching Toy Story :). This week has been spent making canvases and reading about Monet and Gauguin for an essay I need to write. Both artists have surprised me in a number of ways.

Optimus Prime

Shockwave

Metropolis: dystopian and utopian response to new technologies

For our visual culture seminar on Monday, we are required to research an artist /and /or art work that represents either a dystopian or utopian response to the impact of new technologies during the modern period (1900-1970). To do this we need to gather examples from a variety of sources. I confess I have probably done the research backwards and found the art work I wanted to research and then went looking for final support in the galleries of Edinburgh. The art work I chose was the film Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang, together with the associated set designs by Erich Kettelhut and the promotional posters. I thought that this was perfect given that it has both a dystopian and utopian response to technology and because I vividly remember watching it at home with my mum when I was younger.

"Metropolis, you know, was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers of New York in October 1924… I thought that it was the crossroads of multiple and confused human forces, blinded and knocking into one another, in an irresistible desire for exploitation, and living in perpetual anxiety." 
– Fritz Lang 1 

Peter Ruppert, the author of Reader in a Strange Land: The Activity of Reading Literary Utopias, summarises the plot as follows (http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_ruppert.html) 

Set in a futuristic dictatorship in which the ruling class lives in decadent luxury above ground while slavelike workers toil in unbearable conditions below, Metropolis tells the melodramatic story of a workers' revolt. Their Luddite rebellion is actually the unanticipated result of plot hatched between the Master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen, and a mad scientist named Rotwang. The scheme is to undermine the workers' liberation movement and to discredit its leader Maria by infiltrating the workers' ranks with an agent-provocateur, a cyborg-double of Maria. This scheme backfires when the cyborg, acting in defiance of its programming, leads the workers on a rampage to destroy the machines that enslave them. But by destroying the machines, the workers flood their homes and nearly drown their children. Stability is restored at the end of the film after the workers burn the cyborg/witch, and the ruler's son, Freder, assumes the role of mediator between the workers and the ruling class. 

Video clip 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PAdQ5anhZE

Madonna's take on Metropolis (for a bit of fun :))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsVcUzP_O_8&ob=av2e

Five images sourced from online libraries

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Tower of Babel
(Source: ECA Library Image Collection) 

Heinz Schulz-Neudamm
1926
(ARTstor)

Werner Graul
c. 1926
(Source: ARTstor)

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Hall of the Machines: View from Above)
(Source:  http://www.kino.com/metropolis/gallery5.html#gal5) 

Erich Kettelhut
Set design for Metropolis : 1925
Part of Opening Sequence
(Source: ECA Library Image Collection) 

One digital photograph taken at a gallery in Scotland

In 1952, the Independent Group was formed. Its leaders included Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and William Turnball. Reflecting the Utopianism of contemporary politics, but looking resolutely to the future, the artists of the Independent Group believed the modern world would be shaped by technology and mechanisation. (Source: Fry, A (2010) Eduardo Paolozzi - Pop goes the Easel [Internet]. Available at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/art_reviews_eduardo_paolozzi_pop_goes_the_easel_anthony_fry_1_808758 [Accessed 3 March 2012]).

I took the digital photo below of Paolozzi's (1924-2005) studio, as set up in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, as the sculpture of the robot/human head is reminiscent of the scene in Metropolis where the cyborg-double of Maria is brought to life.

One online text (pdf)

https://sites.google.com/site/theblueprussion2/expressionist-utopias (originally sourced from <http://www.jstor.org/>)


One podcast

http://media.ipadio.com/98018_20110915134309.mp3 (originally sourced from http://feeds.feedburner.com/CineSci6/)