We're back at the Tate Britain for the Muybridge and Whiteread exhibitions. Eadweard Muybridge is well-known for the zoopraxiscope--a revolving reel of sequential images that depicts a subject in motion when viewed, or projected onto a screen. Unfortunately, the one at the museum was not working. A shame, really. I appreciated the film strips of the running horse and walking human. I can understand how these images were innovative when they first appeared; they captured the rapid movements of the limbs that the human eye cannot process. These images also revealed the amazing manner the body balances itself as limbs and head move about. My professor for Drawing II constantly reminded us about the subtle shifts in the model's body whenever she took on a new pose, how the angle of the hip was different from the angle of the shoulders for example. These little details were all the more apparent in Muybridge's photography.
Then I headed to Rachel Whiteread's exhibition in the gallery space next door. I am guilty for hearing about this artist in a few of my previous classes and always forgetting her name, but once I see her work I get the sudden "Oh yeah! That woman!" reaction. This exhibition concentrated mostly on her blueprint drawings, with maybe a couple of her sculptures on display. I was particularly drawn (hark, a pun!) to the one called 'Ceiling Rose,' which was composed of concentric inky black lines. The organic linework reminded me of some of the Art Nouveau prints I looked at in my History of Modern Design class. The thicker lines in the middle of the drawing conveyed a sense of heaviness that drove all associations with chandeliers out of my mind. I was told that people are naturally attracted to circular forms; I wonder if that is the reason I liked looking at 'Ceiling Rose.'
No comments:
Post a Comment