Research - Politics And Identity

Political art is something that has a strong relationship between politics and the arts, especially between various kinds of art and power. And this has been the case across various geographies, cultures and periods. Throughout the history of mankind, one thing has been common in art, and that is there always have been some artists who have challenged the status quo when it comes to the political situation in their country.

Some people say that politics is an art that either explicitly opposes or implicitly supports the status quo is political art. And this happens because different people have different views on what makes art political. But one generally acceptable definition that all agree with is that art can be said political if it portrays all the direct and indirect influences of politics on society.

There are four major functions of political art - sociopolitical expression, propaganda, protest and satire.

- Sociopolitical Expression: The artist tries to express concerns regarding specific social and political issues to help common man understanding the current political and social issue.

- Propaganda: Sometimes, these artists are also used to communicate some agenda for or against the government. This is called Propaganda.

- Protest: One more function of political art is to disapprove of the actions or decisions of the politicians. This way, the art is used as a tool for protest.

- Satire: In this art form, the artist chooses to show his funny side and chooses humour to portray a serious political event and create awareness among society.

In Political art, there are 3 categories - portrayal, promotion or projections.

Portrayal - As the name suggests, this art form shows a mirror of the political scenario in present or past. It simply puts on canvas what is happening, or what happened in the past or a possible scenario of what may happen. This art form describes events or situations that may occur as a result of the prevailing social or political structures. Any political perspective is implicit in the art but is also free-floating.

Promotion - This art form presents ways and means to resolve a particular problem. In which a particular aspect of an event is ‘promoted’ over other aspects, hence the name. This aspect would focus on the people who are actively struggling to change the situation in which they find themselves. Here a particular view of the event is promoted over other images of the same event, which may have an opposing view. Unlike ‘Portrayal’, his art form has a positive effect only. It is hard to create an opposing point of view. The art styles or movements of Socialist Realism and ‘Political Art’ (such as banners and posters etc.) and Social Realism to some extent are examples of ‘Promotion’.

Projection - This art form involves a current political situation and then extrapolates it to form a new image of the entire situation. This art form tries to speculate what could happen in future, due to the current political situation. Such speculative art can have a positive effect by suggesting thoughts that are outside one’s usual ways of thinking. Art styles or movements such as Surrealism, collage, utopian or visionary images are perfect examples of this art form.

(An example of political art)

Some political artists include Banksy, who is an artist whose identity is unknown. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stencilling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls and bridges throughout the world.

(Follow Your Dreams, 2010)

(Kissing Coppers, 2022)

Kissing Coppers is a Banksy stencil that pictures two British policemen kissing. It was originally unveiled on the wall of The Prince Albert pub in Brighton in 2004. It gained significant attention due to Banksy's notoriety as a provocative street artist and activist. Kissing Coppers has frequently been regarded as one of Banksy’s most notable works, so much so that it was selected as the most iconic British piece of art at The Other Art Fair in London.

Research - Abstraction and Process art

The term can be applied to art that is based on an object, figure or landscape, where forms have been simplified or schematic. It is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Some artists of this abstraction movement have preferred terms such as non-objective art, but in practice, the word abstract is used across the board and the distinction between the two is not always obvious.

It is the art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effects.

Abstract art became a well-known art form in the 20th century as it started to evolve in the 19th Century. It originally started in 1844 with the artistic industrial revolution. The Industrial Revolution brought great advances in engineering, which included the mechanisation of factories and the invention of the steam engine.

JMW Turner was a ground-breaking painter whose work captured some changes within England. The style of painting came to place on the appearance of light and verged towards abstraction. For example, his 1844 painting Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway offers little detail of the landscape, its dramatic viewpoint manages to both create an atmosphere and give an impression of rapid movement.

Abstract art has evolved to the point that simplistic shapes can be considered art, such as Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow by Piet Mondrian created in 1930. It consists of thick, black brushwork, defining the borders of coloured rectangles. As the title suggests, the only colours used in it besides black and white are red, blue, and yellow oil paints on canvas. The piece is very similar to Mondrian's 1930 Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow.

Both artists' styles contrast against each other due to the time of the art revolution, JMW Turner's art is more detailed than Piet's. His paintings show details so the viewer can gain an idea of what these abstracted shapes are supposed to be, while some of Piet's are the opposite. The viewer can interpret what this art could represent, rather than Turner's who is what it shows.

Both artists pieces of art are abstract to start with as they are in the process of creation, but as time goes on and they become more detailed, they are still abstract pieces of art.

(JMW Turner - Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817-20, Watercolour, gum, and scraping out on paper)

(Piet Mondrian - Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Oil on canvas)

"This canvas presents the viewer with the culmination of Mondrian's life-long pursuit of conveying the order that underlies the natural world through purely abstract forms on a flat picture plane. Broadening the use of his basic pictorial vocabulary of lines, squares and primary colours, the black grid has been replaced by lines of colour interspersed with blocks of solid colour. This, and his other late abstract paintings, show a new, revitalized energy that was directly inspired by the vitality of New York City and the tempo of jazz music. The asymmetrical distribution of the brightly coloured squares within the yellow lines echoes the varied pace of life in the bustling metropolis, one can almost see the people hurrying down the sidewalk as taxi cabs hustle from stop-light to stop-light. Broadway Boogie-Woogie not only alludes to life within the city but also heralds New York's developing role as the new centre of modern art after World War II. Mondrian's last complete painting demonstrates his continued stylistic innovation while remaining true to his theories and format."

- The Artstory.

Module pieces - Tracing The Land

Land art is made directly in the landscape by sculpting the land itself or by making structures in the landscape with natural materials. Land art, also known as earth art, was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. It was established by pioneering artists who investigated natural sites, alternative modes of artistic production, and ways to circumvent the commercial art system.

Earth art, another phrase for land art, is an art technique that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs.

Land art was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous land artwork is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty of 1970, an earthwork built into the Great Salt Lake in the USA. Though some artists such as Smithson used mechanical earth-moving equipment to make their artworks, others made minimal and temporary interventions in the landscape such as Richard Long who simply walked up and down until he had made a mark in the earth.

(Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970)

(Great Salt Lake, Utah)

(Mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, water)

A liminal space is a place of transition. It is typically devoid of humans and, in some cases, distinctly surreal—its artistic antecedents might be works of art such as The Red Tower, by Giorgio de Chirico.

So as I experimented with the art of liminal spaces, I researched how the absence of human presence is essential, as it gives off the feeling of unfamiliarity and unrealism, or maybe even being forgotten. Human absence is notably made present by the artist’s gestures and objects in the more figurative-looking works.

To experiment with this art, I tried to recreate some images from the internet by using different media, such as paints, chalk and oil pastels of different surfaces, such as cards, paper and canvas, this way, I found out my strengths and weaknesses. I also took some inspiration from other artists.

My experimental pieces from earliest to latest:

The only issue with this piece is that if I were to do this again, I would stay with the technique of watercolour, but see what the colours would turn out to be as I expected them to be solid colours, not with glitter. I would also keep the colours watered down so that it's subtle and not as bold, so they don't immediately catch the viewer's eye on the colours, instead the outlines should.

(reference image)

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Mandy Payne, a multi-award-winning recent graduate from Nottingham University who currently lives and works in Sheffield, is an artist inspired by the urban landscape, issues of gentrification, inequality, social housing and the flux of city environments. She is interested in Brutalist architecture, notions of utopia/dystopia and finding beauty in the ordinary/overlooked.

Sheffield's Grade II Park Hill flats are in the process of being reassessed as a modernist treasure. Yet, as the concrete blocks await gentrification, there is the danger of their brutalist grandeur being aesthetically dissolved. She recognises this in Between Places And Spaces, a series of unforgiving paintings of the flats.

Regeneration (Park Hill Estate)

Transience (Park Hill Estate) is my favourite because of how liminal and unreal the image looks. Aerosol spray paint and oil on concrete (Private collection). The lighting on the right makes it look unsettling as liminal spaces are often associated with transitions, in which the image looks as if the light is transitioning to get brighter or darker. The shading is flat, which makes it look basic yet unsettling.

Ferdinanda Florence was an artist who works with liminal spaces, was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Arlington, VA. She received a degree in art history and studio art at The American University in 1994 and has continued to pursue a successful professional life as a scholar, teacher and practising artist. After earning her Master's degree in art history at the University of Maryland College Park in 1998, she taught high school studio art before launching her career as a freelancer artist.

Liminal Space is a location which is a transition between two other locations, or states of being. Typically these are abandoned, and often empty buildings in the early hours of the day or a school hallway during summer, for example. This makes it feel frozen, slightly unsettling, and familiar to our minds, it makes it uncanny, which Florence used to create her art.

I have taken inspiration from Florence in my own works and so I have been taking photos of empty or long abandoned areas of buildings, like shopping centres. My photos are in transition from busy to emptiness, as Florence shows. I have taken linear perspective into account while taking these photos to capture the abstract shapes, as perspective is very important when painting interiors and streetscapes. However, it is also useful when painting landscapes, still lifes, and figures and portraits.

Images taken by me:

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Paintings by Florence:

(Sunset no. 1)

(Waterman 9)

(An image that Florence had an interest in; Black Night: Russell's Corner by George Ault, 1943)

(from Florence's series called "Wilson and Old Wilson")

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Some of my photos of the empty shopping centre market stalls contain abstract shapes, abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, colour and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. These images show basic shapes with some basic colours.

An artist who uses abstract shapes and colours in their works is Anthony Caro (1924 - 2013), during a career that spanned more than six decades, Caro achieved international recognition as one of the world’s leading sculptors. In 1960, he abandoned his earlier figurative work and began making abstract sculptures in welded and painted steel. In a significant departure from tradition, these constructions were placed directly on the ground; dispensing with the convention of presenting sculptures on plinths, they confronted the viewer immediately, producing a one-to-one encounter with objects that were in the world but not of the world.

(Early One Morning, 1962)

(Month of May, 1963)

My inspiration for this technique is Julian Opie, born in London, in 1958, who creates work in a movable way without anyone's help. The portraits consist of animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing, which are hallmarks of the artist's style. His themes are "engagement with art history, use of new technology, obsession with the human body" and "work with one idea across different media."

- The Guardian.

One of Opie's most notable commissions was the design of an album cover for British pop band Blur in 2000, for which he received a Music Week CADS award. In 2006, he created an LED projection for U2's Vertigo world tour, and in 2008 Opie created a set design for Wayne McGregor's ballet Infra for the Royal Opera House in London.

The work of Julian Opie is known throughout the world. Opie's distinctive formal language is instantly recognisable with public commissions from New York to Seoul, London to Calgary, and an uninterrupted flow of international museum exhibitions. It reflects his artistic preoccupation with the idea of representation and how images are perceived and understood. “Everything you see is a trick of the light,” Opie writes. “Light bouncing into your eye, light casting shadows, creating depth, shapes, colours. Turn off the light and it’s all gone. We use vision as a means of survival and it’s essential to take it for granted to function, but awareness allows us to look at looking and by extension look at ourselves and be aware of our presence."

I have taken inspiration from Opie's works as they move to show a simple action, such as walking, Opie and Caro's art has been used as a reference to my art so that I can use the abstract shapes in the photos to create basic yet detailed images together, therefore the process for the image just created has been used to create another piece of art.

While creating the videos, I would position the shapes at a certain place on the physical image before taking a picture and moving them closer ever so slightly so that it seems like they have been moving by themselves.

Here is the link to the videos.

Two frames of the video one after the other, show part of the process:

For the second video, I used a similar approach, but rather than shapes moving closer to their positions, I used the same image but drew the lines with the colours from the original image. Once an image was taken, I would add a line so that the process of the image continues.

Taking inspiration from Piet Mondrian:

Some single frames of the process:

Research - The Ordinary

When it comes to the ordinary in art, any artwork can be considered the first authentic example of an artist's piece. An original artwork would be the first version of a painting an artist creates, not any subsequent prints, reproductions, or imitations of the artwork.

But ordinary art can also mean that ordinary everyday objects (found objects), such as things found around the house, such as a chair, can be used for composition to rearrange the ordinary to the extraordinary so that a viewer would look at the art and think that they could potentially replicate it, as art can be anything, such as a painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation.

"A work of art in the visual arts is a physical two- or three-dimensional object that is professionally determined or otherwise considered to fulfil a primarily independent aesthetic function."

- Wikipedia.

An artist who uses everyday objects, or found objects, for their artwork is Liz West (b. 1885), a British artist known for her wide-ranging works, from the intimate to the monumental. Using a variety of materials and exploring the use of light, she blurs the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, design and painting to create works that are both playful and immersive.

"West creates vivid environments that mix luminous colour and radiant light. West aims to provoke a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer through her works. She is interested in exploring how sensory phenomena can invoke psychological and physical responses that tap into our own deeply entrenched relationships with colour. West's investigation into the relationship between colour and light is often realised through an engagement between materiality and a given site. Our understanding of colour can only be realised through the presence of light. By playing and adjusting colour, West brings out the intensity and composition of her spatial arrangements."

- the About section on her website.

(Tempo, 2013)

Tempo is a simple installation of fluorescent LED lights that are in the order of the rainbow, but in a spectrum so that each colour blends into each other, and it can create other art as it casts shadows of what is around it.

"The fluorescent stick light, a key material in West's new installations, is perhaps one of the most effective visual spatial devices. Aside from its obvious exuberant colours, its most striking feature is its stripped-back materiality. West has modified each stick light with a particular colour. This colour palette is reminiscent of the neon lights that were so prominent in the 1960s coinciding with the emergence of installation art. Through methodically mixing each tube in relationship to each other, West cultivates our perceptions, drawing on Albers' practice-based theory that colour can only be truly understood in relation to other colours and, crucially, our own knowledge of the colour spectrum. The raw exuberance of the stick lights becomes a catalyst to trigger a response: the viewer is needed to activate the work." - Jack Welsh, 2013

Another artist is Martin Parr, who uses photography to set the scene and capture what is going on in the moment so that it will be encapsulated for future viewers to see. 

"At first glance, his photographs seem exaggerated or even grotesque. The motifs he chooses are strange, the colours are garish and the perspectives are unusual. Parr’s term for the overwhelming power of published images is “propaganda”. He counters this propaganda with his own chosen weapons: criticism, seduction and humour. As a result, his photographs are original and entertaining, accessible and understandable. But at the same time, they show us in a penetrating way how we live, how we present ourselves to others, and what we value."

- Introduction, Parr's website.

He takes images of people on their day-to-day routine, to make his art seem more natural and less composed.

(Fotofestival Knokke-Heist, Belgium, 2014)

(Signs of the Times, London Underground and Bus Stops, UK, 1992)