Root of the Problem:
This blog features some of my work in addition to visual research and articles I am reading. There will also be an occasional project with my students to look at.
ca. 1910 Sonora, Mexico Deer hide, glass eyes, antlers 31 x 25 x 33 cm Collected by Edward H. Davis 11/2382
Brought to life with the music of deer songs, this headdress is worn by Yoeme Deer Dancers dancing to the beat of the songs. Shaking gourd rattles, the deer dancers also wear deer-hoof rattles around their waists, as well as cocoon rattles around their lower legs. Yoeme have always believed they exist in close communion with all the inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert and the Deer Dancers help them feel this connection. Contemporary Yoeme regard the Deer Dance and Deer Dance songs as the most essential expression of what it means to be Yoeme—that is, to be entrusted with the well-being of the earth, its animals and plants.
People power comes to the Turbine Hall: Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds
It took an army of 1,600 Chinese artisans to create Ai Weiwei's 100m handpainted porcelain 'seeds', which are scattered over the floor of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall
Anonymous Chinese artist, 'Peanut, Arachis hypogaea', late 18th or early 19th century. Museum no. E.1754-1924
Anonymous Chinese artist 'Peanut, Arachis hypogaea' Late 18th or early 19th century Watercolour Museum no. E.1754-1924
As China opened up to foreign trade in the eighteenth century European botanists were compelled to record the plants they encountered for the first time. Rather than return home with dry and lifeless specimens, native artists were employed to produce drawings from living species, particularly around the ports of Macao and Canton.
Though Chinese artists could boast a long tradition of flower painting, their abstract style was very different from the precise botanical illustration undertaken in Europe. In order to satisfy their patrons' tastes, these native artists began to study European examples and to adopt the same conventions.
This study of a peanut plant shows the characteristically hybrid style that emerged. Attesting to its European influence, the drawing is arranged on a blank page and every detail, including the last nibbled leaf is recorded. Nevertheless, there are still Chinese traits such as the flattened perspective.