New artists and new movements

This last week in Art 211 we viewed some new material. We jumped off the main track of watching video excerpts about art/technology advances and actually focused down on a handful of artists and their movements.

After seeing the timeline of the ever changing art movements we were introduced to a few in particular. A couple of artists were brought to our attention. One of these being Marcel Duchamp. This artist helped to fuel one of the largest turning points in art history. His works challenged what had become know as art. One picture in particular stuck out and is considered one of Duchamp's most important paintings.

This painting makes fun of histories most noticeable painting, the Mona Lisa. In the Duchamp version not much is changed. The women still sits in her pose, but now she wears a mustache and a go-tee. Also, at the base of the painting there is text spelled as L.H.O.O.Q. This text has little meaning unless you speak French. If said in the right way the text becomes a phrase, "Her ass is on fire". Duchamp is clearly making a huge statement with this painting. He is making fun of not just the Mona Lisa but all art.

The second artist we viewed was one I have heard of and seen a large portion of his work. He is the father of the surreal movement and he is Salvador Dali. We were shown a video of his that was incredibly hard to understand. But I believe now that, that was one of the points of the movie. Some of the scenes were odd. One scene had a man cut open a womens eye, another a hand with a hole in it and ants crawling out. Very interesting video to say the least.