Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840. From a young age his father wanted him to take over the family business, but Monet wanted to be an artist. In 1851, he entered the Le Havre school of arts. He was known for his charcoal caricatures. He then met an artist, Eugéne Boudin, who taught him how to use oil paints. Monet is now known for being the founder of French impressionist paintings.

Monet uses oil paints to create his pieces. Many of his works are obviously based on the impressionist style. Impressionism being an artistic style that captures the moment. Rather than achieving a depiction, it wants to reveal the emotions and experience in the moment.

This is a painting of his wife Camille. This is one of his first paintings and it is a realist painting rather than an impressionist painting. It is a life sized painting which was peculiar at that time because life sized paintings were usually contain people of royalty. He painted the background dark to emphasize Camille and what she is wearing and the details of her dress.

Monet challenged himself and created an impressionist snow scene. The name wasn’t given to the painting until five years later when it was in an exhibition. It was named after the magpie perched on the wooden gate. The painting was recognized for using such pale and gloomy colors.

This is one of the the paintings in his series “Nympheas”. The series consists of 250 oil paintings that he created in the last 30 years of his life. Today they are on display in Museums around the world.

This painting of the Rouen Cathedral was another series of paintings he created. In these works, he broke painting tradition and only focuses primarily in one spot. Only a portion could be seen on the canvas. Everyday he would find a new detail he hadn’t prior, so this piece was near impossible for him to create.

When he was in London, Monet painted another series based on the home of the British Parliament. There are 19 painting that are the same size of the same image. However, each image was under different weather circumstances.

This painting is another image of Camille and their eldest son. Rather than focusing on line and shape he was attentive towards light and color.

Claude Monet passed due to lung cancer on December 5, 1926. He has many of his paintings in museums all across the world. His home then now serves as an attraction for the the French Academy of fine arts in Giverny, France.

http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/biography.html

http://www.monetpaintings.org/woman-in-the-green-dress/

http://giverny.org/monet/home/

Damián Ortega was born in Mexico City in 1967. Being taught and influenced by Gabriel Orozco, Ortega began his career as a political cartoonist when he was 16. These times were dark in Mexico City affecting his political cartoons and how he began to view the government and the world itself. He now makes sculptures that are still influenced by the wit and critique of his past works.

His pieces are constructed of everyday objects that visit political and social implications. He finds meaning in his art through relationships that occur between multiple things or objects. By combining these objects found in the daily routine of our lives, he lightens the political and economic issues that underly our material culture. Many pieces are often suspended becoming humorous diagrams of faces, words and buildings. These visual shifts are also viewed as cultural shifts which again brings out social history and political matters.

One of his pieces is constructed from tortillas, inviting those who see the piece to consider the possibility of using local items and knowledge tp create these types of pieces. It was geared towards allowing he viewer to consider geopolitical issues and to reach beyond the initial and former ways of abstraction.

This piece is a disassembled, suspended 1989 Volkswagen Beetle. The beetle is an important symbol to the everyday Mexican because it was the city’s official taxi. Using his idea of disassembling and splitting thang the parts by wire. To Ortega, the car parts are pieces with a perfect specific function. The car parts being analogous to the routine and systems of Mexico.

These tools were suspended to create an experience about what tools really are and what they mean. They can construct as well as destroy. They come between the user and the object they are either destroying or building. The piece touches on the duality of the universe. The outside of the sculpture is very uninviting and intimidating; the center gives another tone for the viewer. It allows for a point of view that sees the resistance between us and the object we are changing. We can’t control the world, but wit tools we can mold it.

One of his most recent known pieces is “Cosmogonía doméstica“. In this piece he built a domestic scene. It contains the contents of a commonplace kitchen: plates, bowls, teapots, utensils that are spun above a wooden table. Everything rotated slowly, half floating, around five concentric circles built into the floor. The piece was to be a a play on everyday life. Subtlety in routine alongside poverty, capital and bureaucracy. Like a majority of his works there is a cartoon vibe in this sculpture.

Works Cited

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/visit-damian-ortega

https://art21.org/artist/damian-ortega/

https://gladstonegallery.com/artist/damian-ortega/work#&panel1-15

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/35460745/

Monica Valentine was born in San Mateo, California in 1955 as the fourth of eight children. She is a sculptor who works exclusively with colorful pins, sequins, beads, and shaped foam. The foam shapes range from simple cubes to skulls and everything in between. Her work is said to “build on her passion for jewelry and express her dry, offbeat sense of humor”.

Despite her use of vivid colors, Valentine is actually completely blind, and her eyes are actually prosthetic. Her blindness was due to being born prematurely and possible mistakes made by the doctors treating her. Valentine claims she can “feel” the different colors by their temperature and says, “Blue is cold. Yellow is warm. Green is cool”.  She has always loved color and expresses that with her work and her style. Valentine is usually seen wearing monochromatic outfits and unique jewelry.

Her technique is to select a sharp tack then stick it through a sequin and a bead. She then presses the tack into the foam base, either grouping similar colors or creating contrast with them. Valentine repeats this over and over until the whole foam base is covered. Creative Growth’s gallery guide describes her work as “crown jewels of a lost disco civilization”. All her works remain untitled and therefore left open to viewer interpretation.

Valentine makes a living off her artwork selling it even at major stores like Nordstrom and Artsy with prices in the high hundreds.

Valentine has been part of an organization called Creative Growth since 2012. Creative Growth is described as “a nonprofit based in Oakland, California that serves artists with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities by providing a professional studio environment for artistic development, gallery exhibition, and representation”.

Monica Valentine’s work explores texture, shape, and color. The use of tacks sticking up off the surface creates a sense of textures. Her choice of different shaped foams makes for a more interesting surface to build on. Instead of using bland tacks, sequins, or beads, she uses vibrant arrays of colored ones.

Sources:

Art21

The New York Times

Creative Growth

Campus Movie Fest