Nick G FMP

When artists begin to explore their individual style, they don’t tend to find it straight away, its more of a case that the style finds you. I believe that you come across your own individual style if you attempt other methods of creation.

Whenever a designer/artist begins their career in art & design, they all need to learn the basics of their trade, getting these pinnacle basics correct before progressing is a valuable process. For example when I was starting out within graphic design, I was spending hours and hours on programs such as Photoshop & illustrator, learning the tools and shortcuts. Another example is Henri Matisse, who is renowned for been one of the key artists in the creation of color theory and the correct method will apply it, but Henri Matisse, originally started off painting still life’s and landscapes in a Flemish painting method.

An individual style cannot be rushed, it takes time to nurture your own style and find it along the way. There are 3 stages in finding your own style, the first is knowledge. Having an understanding of various types of methods and media to use, and ways to implement this in your work can I have a huge impact on how you execute various briefs. I believe a good knowledge of art history can help, for example knowing various methods of techniques within photography I found can help influence your work. Mixing techniques such as The Bragaglia Brothers, Etienne Jules Marey and Edward Muybridge has influenced me in various ways of experimenting with various shooting methods for my film. The second stage is Practice. Finding various techniques and methods of executing work takes a lot of practice and cannot be mastered overnight. Once finding various methods that you believe works well for you, making sure you can execute them at a high standard is vital for any artist. For example Pablo Picasso probably one of the most famous painters of the 20th century practiced how to be condense his work, how he created art with a powerful visual to start off with then he took it down to its core essence, which later sparked the art movement cubism. As the famous quote states, ‘practice makes perfect’. The finally stage in finding your own individual style is experimentation. Once having the knowledge and practice of various techniques it is vital that you experiment with most of them to create your own individual style. Experimentation is the best part of designing, throwing in various different types of media and techniques all at once, experimenting with different materials can create an amazing piece of work through your own individual style. During his later years Henri Matisse was diagnosed with cancer, but this never stopped his creativity. He began to experiment with paper cut outs and began to create these wonderful pieces of art using various different types of colored paper.

Even when artists reach a professional level within their career they still seek out a new style, they still want to learn new ways of executing work. Speaking and seeking advice from various other artists who have their own individual style which can then progress yourself onto progressing your own style. In ways it helps develop the art world and move it forward.

Been in artist in today society, you are and should always be aware of current artists and their styles, and breaking it down to see how they have been influenced and by who. A good way to do this is to visit galleries as much as you can, by doing this helps you explore yourself and express yourself by seeing other peoples work. These days artist are experimenting with all types of media and techniques, mixing it all up and changing various elements of their work, reason being is because everyone wants to create their own individual style, one of the reason being the economic struggle. No company wants the same artist as the next, again, they want to be different from their next competitor.

Artists from around the world are now using all types of material to make them stand out from the crowd. For example a British artist called Anish Kapoor has created a piece called Leviathan, which is 75,000 cubic-meter burgundy balloon that's made of PVC vinyl. He has allowed visitors touch the outside and then walk inside the 35-meter high installation, which also makes it interactive. Straight away something that makes the artists stand out from the rest. Viewers have said to explain it feels like going into the belly of a whale or a cathedral with three chambers veering off it, along with the initial sense of darkness and the deep red tones do make you feel you're in the belly of some beast. This is something that I have never seen done, with the experimentation and narrative of his work gives him a personal style.

Another artist who created his own style which has lead onto developing the world’s state of advertisement was Andy Warhol & the art movement Pop Art. The main meaning behind pop art was looking at the fascination of the culture that had been born after the war. It looked at everyday objects such as soup cans, comic strips and washing powder and integrated it with fine art, it removes the subject/object from it surroundings and isolates it and combines it with other. Pop art was an ‘off-breed’ of Dadaism. Andy began to take a like to the art movement and started to paint daily objects of mass production like Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles. What Warhol wanted to do was remove the bridge of fine art and commercial art that was used in magazines and books. After this he became a famous artist and social figure within the New York art scene.

Another piece of art that challenged and questioned the art scene was Marcel Duchamps “Fountain”. Created in 1917, it was simply a urinal placed on it back. This created outrage among art critics, purely because no one seen it as art, and originally I can totally understand why this was not seen as art. Spanning from the art movement Dada which was really an Anti Art movement, Duchamp submitted this work under a false name as he was a board member of a society. Duchamp submitted Fountain as a prank, and was meant to insult his avant-garde artists. From then on, Duchamp was known as a challenger towards art and a associate of the dada and surrealist art movements. But not knowing that he was a classical artist that had experimented with various techniques within the Post Impressionism and Fauvism art movements.

While creating my film, experimentation was a vital part within my development of my film. As my film is based on social realism aspects such a lonesome and loneliness, I wanted to create a very kitchen sink movie. As this style of social realism was started in the late 1950’s and focused on the working class Briton, I wanted to create a more modern version feel to it. As Britain is a totally different place to what it was 60 years ago I wanted to but a 21st century spin on it. I looked at various kitchen sink films such as ‘Look Back in Anger’ and ‘Saturday Night & Sunday Morning’ which heavily showcase the domestic situations of Britons, for example accommodation, socializing and political situations. Looking at this kind of style, reminded me of a very style, which has influenced me massively during my FMP, and that is the work of Shane Meadows. It seems that his work has also been highly influenced by this type of film, and he has created a certain modern style of the ‘kitchen sink’ movement. When looking at both types of visual expression I really do like both, been from a working class background myself it kind of puts an elegant and finesse look on the background, the true, raw, gritty way of capturing this type of social background compliments and works well with the elegance of the cinematograph style of recording.

Been from a working class background, there are massive amounts of influences that affect an individuals personal style of work. For example personal & group influences allow artist to effect their style. A prime example of this was Bauhaus. Bauhaus was a school of art, design and architecture, which was founded in Germany in 1919. Bauhaus style was hugely influenced by geometric design and the way each geometric shape compliments each other. The school had some of the most creative students among its teachers, including Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky. It has had a massive influence in design today in such fields as architecture, furniture, and typography. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and design. Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture all over the world after the demolition of it by the Nazi’s. One of the main cities to be gifted with talented Bauhaus artists and architecture was Tel Aviv. Bauhaus has had a massive influence within my work across the whole, when it comes down to layout, composition, typography and design, Bauhaus has set a extremely professional mark on how to execute these elements so well.

Bauhaus also then helped spawn on the art movement called Constructivism Art. Originated in Russia, which was a country that had rejected art and focused on social & political purposes. This art movement had a great effect on developments on art in a whole across Russia and eventually around the world. Germany was the main hub for most constructivist activity but it then grew all over the world to places like Paris, London and then the states. Constructivism is very geometric and experimental but doesn’t have that much emotion behind it. It is also stripped down to its basic elements and reduction was a key element of this art movement. Key artists such as Theo Van Doesbury and Naum Gabo pushed the art movement to its limits. It is believed to of said that as a lot of the world would reject art this helped give an understanding, unity and peace.

This type of art movement has influenced me heavily through my practices when it comes to design. It has taught me a lot in terms of color use and composition. I really the like the clean-cut feel to most of the work created within this art. Although I still like the idea of imagination and abstracted ideas behind most of art, I find it hard to believe that the two can sit side to side. But this is where the stage of creating your personal style comes from. Experimentation of these different art techniques could create a whole new style.

Along with Russian Constructivism art movement which was seen to have a political outcome, another art movement interlinked with the political influence and that was renaissance. The renaissance art movement dates back to the 14th century and was created in Italy. It was created to revive the interest of artistic achievements of the classical world. The current state of the world was heavily focused on religion, politics and its followers, the movement was created to create more attention to the ‘man of society’, as world was on the brink of expression through individuality.

During these times society was on an up as well, it was becoming more sophisticated, stability through the government, economic growth and the rise of education. The rise of education lead to libraries and academy’s opening and more research been done of the world. True pioneers within this movement were Da Vinci, who integrated art, science and writing within his work. Michelangelo and Raphael were also key figures during this movement. Looking pre renaissance era at art from Byzantine art, which was very mosaic, & panel art/painting you can understand the impact that this must have had on the world once it reached outside of Italy. It shows a lot more sophistication and intelligence than previous art movements, and some people say it bridged the gap between middle ages and the modern era which a massive influence to the modern world.

For some artists that exceed in various areas they are different for the sake of being different. Some artists tend to create work that is not inspiring at all, but more controversial, and they hope that their style of work is controversial and because of this they become a recognized designer and hopefully find fame. If it’s a new style of art direction or technique, it will always attract criticism from one party. The world is constantly moving and always progressing, and this is exactly what art needs to do, progress with people & cultures.