Visual Cultures

Blade Runner (1982)

2 weeks ago, I have watched Blade Runner film. This post is about the review of the film, and I also want to answer some questions according to the film. Blade Runner is a film that made in 1982, but the action taking place in the future in 2019. In 2019, people made a machine that designed same like human called “Replicants”. They are illegal on earth, and if they go to our planet they are hunted down and killed. Not like any other humans, replicants only can live 4 years. But, they want to be like human, they want to live forever. So they plan a mission to go to the earth and meet their creator to tell the creator about what they want. But, their mission isn’t planned perfectly. A Blade Runner (hunter of the replicants) named Rick Deckard has been sent to catch and kill them.

The first question is why does Roy save Deckard from falling before he dies? Roy save Deckard from falling before Roy dies is because Roy want to tell Deckard to appreciate his life as a human who can live longer than the replicants and Roy know that he will die in that time and he knew there is no way to expand his lifetime, so he save Deckard.

Second question is where do we see fragmentation and the absence of narrative in the movie? The fragmentation in the movie is in the end of this film. The ending in this film is not really clear and there is no exact narrative ending. If the viewer understand the narrative from the beginning, they can conclude the end of the film, and they might be understand what is the film about.

The third question where does the Oedipus Complex fit in the film? The Oedipus Complex in the film is when Roy the replicant, killed his father (his creator) Tyrell.

Fourth question is in which form do memories exist for the replicants? The memory exist for the replicants is from the memory that creator wants and that memory also didn’t last longer.

The fifth question, where is the concept of Pastiche to be found in the film? Pastiche is a work of art that imitates the style of some previous work. So we can found concept of Pastiche in the film is when Gaff make many kind of origami from unused things.

Sixth question, Rachel asks Deckard if he had ever taken the test. If he fails which is the copy? It means that Rachel is not sure who is Deckard? Is he a human or a replicant? Her question means that how if Deckard fail in Voight-Kampff (VK) Test (test to analyze that someone is human or replicant) it means he is a replicant and which is the copy?

Seventh question, in relation to the previous question, explain the unicorn dream of Deckard and the origami unicorn on the final scene. The unicorn in the Deckard dream means the real human and the origami in the final scene means the replicant. It means that Deckard might be a human or a replicant.

The question number eight, film Noir aesthetic, three point light – hard light, always dark and rainy. One of the main characteristics of postmodernism is the critic to progress. How does it fit with this aesthetic? It fit to the aesthetic in 2019 and the playing of lights make it fit into postmodernism aesthetic.

Question number nine, when is the action taking place? Is it the future, the past, or is it now? The Blade Runner action setting taking place in the future, in 2019, but the process of making the film is in the past, in 1982.

The last question is about Rachel. Rachel states “I am not in the business, I am the business”. Explain the sentence! It means she is not in business of selling something (replicants), but she is the business because she is the thing that selled or we can say that she is one of the replicants.

That’s all about Blade Runner film screening.

“Appreciate your life before you lost it.” – Unknown

References:

http://www.entertainmentscene360.com/index.php/movie-analysis-postmodernism-in-blade-runner-33076/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/synopsis?ref_=ttmd_ql_stry_3

What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism is an era that came because of a critic of modernism and the project of modernity. Postmodernism is the most controversial era, because this era defies definition; an unstable mix of the theatrical and theoretical, postmodernism was a visually thrilling multifaceted style that ranged from the colorful to the ruinous, the ludicrous to the luxurious.

Postmodernity started in 1970 with the architecture. Postmodernism came after modernism era. Modernism was an exploration of possibilities and a perpetual search for uniqueness and its cognate (individuality). Modernism was rejected by architectural postmodernism in the 50’s and 60’s for conservative reasons.

The characteristic of postmodernism era is anxiety and nihilism. Anxiety is scare. Nihilism is rejection. So, the characteristic of postmodernism era is full of scare and rejection.

Postmodernism shattered established ideas about style. It brought a radical freedom to art and design through gestures that were often funny, sometimes confrontational and occasionally absurd. Most of all, over the course of two decades, from about 1970 to 1990, postmodernism brought a new self-awareness about style itself.

Postmodernism is related to narrative and meta-narrative (beyond the narrative). Besides those two things, postmodernism also related to celebratory and interventionist. Celebratory is nihilism without anxiety as the art functions and the social signs. Interventionist is the relation between the artist as manipulator and viewer as active reader.

Jeff Koons is one of many famous postmodernist artist. He is the one of the most financially successful but controversial postmodernist artists since Andy Warhol (1928-87). Influenced by several of his Pop-art predecessors, like Claes Oldenburg. Jeff Koons is known for his Neo-Pop kitsch style of avant-garde art, exemplified by works such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988, porcelain or gold, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art), and by giant reproductions of banal objects like Puppy(1992, flowering plants, Bilbao Guggenheim Museum), and Balloon Dog (1994-2000, stainless steel, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York). Art critics are divided in their opinions of Koons’ postmodernist art, even though his works have sold at auction for astronomical prices. In 1991, one version of Michael Jackson and Bubbles sold for $5.6 million. In 2007, his magenta coloured Hanging Heart, sold at Sotheby’s New York for $23 million, at the time, a world auction record for a living artist. In July 2008, his Balloon Flower sold at Christie’s London for a record $25.7 million, just before the global crash. Since then the value of contemporary art has plummeted although prices for Koons’ earlier series are reportedly holding their own. Still employing more than 100 people in his New York studio, Koons retains one very important advantage: he is treated with enormous respect by the museum world – a clear sign of his popularity with the general public.

These are the photos of his sculpture.

“Balloon Dog” by Jeff Koons

“Michael Jackson and Bubbles” by Jeff Koons

“Puppy” by Jeff Koons

“Hanging Heart” by Jeff Koons

Differences of opinion about Koons’ worth as an artist essentially revolve around differences in the meaning of art. Traditional art theory places great importance on the craftsmanship disclosed by an objective work of art – like a beautiful painting or a wonderfully realistic sculpture. Furthermore, purists consider that only certain subjects are worthy of artistic representation. Using these criteria, critics point to the lack of craftsmanship in Koons’ works, and the fact that a lot of the work was performed by assistants. What’s more, his subjects are uniformly low-brow – too low-brow to be “artistic”. His admirers, on the other hand, point to his popularity among the general public, his high regard among museums, and his bank balance, and say something like: it may not be art, but people like it.

References:

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/postmodernism/

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/jeff-koons.htm

What is POP ART?

Pop Art known as the art of popular cultures. Pop Art is an art that employs aspects of mass culture, such as comic books, billboards, advertising, packaging, screening, and etc. Pop Art related to Dadaism. Dadaism is a way of life (provocative and absurd).

Characteristic of pop art is a sense of optimistic and presented colorfully. Images used that represent the popular culture of the day. Often everyday consumer products, such as soup cans or coke bottles were used as images. Images of often colourful and distinctive. Commercial printing methods such as silk screen used to produce paintings, making it possible for the general public to purchase a copy. Pop artists often use images based on comic strips. Multiple images of the same subject often used.

Pop Art involved in 1960’s in the post war. Pop Art established because of The Pop Artists such as Andy Warhol and David Hockney. The pop artist create pop art as an art movement in its own right.

The use of pop art techniques meant that the work could be reproduced and printed very easily. The pop artist work was often amusing and used everyday objects such as coke tins, dollar bills and comic strips as their subjects. Pop art also used the faces of well known people such as Marilyn Monroe, again as their subjects.

Now I want to describe one of the most famous pop artist, Andy Warhol. He originally worked as a ‘commercial artist’ and his subject matter was derived from the imagery of mass-culture: advertising, comics, newspapers, TV and the movies.

Look at these pop art work.

“Marilyn Monroe” by Andy Warhol

“Campbell’s Soup Cans” by Andy Warhol

Those pop art works are made by Andy Warhol. In that picture, Andy Warhol choose Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup Cans as his pop art object.

His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist.

Warhol embodied the spirit of American popular culture and elevated its imagery to the status of museum art. He used second-hand images of celebrities and consumer products which he believed had an intrinsic banality that made them more interesting. He felt that they had been stripped of their meaning and emotional presence through their mass-exposure.

Warhol’s paradoxical statements such as, “I am a deeply superficial person” or “art should be meaningful in the most shallow way” are echoed in his work. The left hand panel of his ‘Marilyn Diptych’ is a crudely colored photograph of the actress whose sense of ‘self’ is degraded through the repetition of her image, whereas the right hand panel is a physically degraded black and white image that reflects the ephemeral qualities of fame. Their combined panels are a memorable discourse on the nature of celebrity and its power to both create and destroy its acquaintances. The ‘diptych’ format was originally used in medieval painting for religious images of personal devotion, an appropriate choice considering Warhol’s fascination for Marilyn Monroe.

References:

http://art-bydens.blogspot.com/2012/08/ten-famous-pop-art-artists.html#.UoOdRXA733s

http://www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/popart1a.html

http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/pop_art.htm

What is The Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is a period when the lights come. It means like a reborn from a darkness period. Enlightenment comes after France Revolution and after Renaissance era. It happens in the 17th until 18th century. The feeling of enlightenment are cheerful and full of happiness. The enlightenment was a philosophic movement of the 18th century marked by a rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas and an emphasis on rationalism. Before The Enlightenment era, it was a darkness time. It full of darkness. Darkness is everywhere. It’s because of France Revolution.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment, influenced by the scientific revolutions of the previous century, believed in shedding the light of science and reason on the world, and in order to question traditional ideas and ways of doing things. The scientific revolution (based on empirical observation, and not on metaphysics or spirituality) gave the impression that the universe behaved according to universal and unchanging laws (think of Newton here). This provided a model for looking rationally on human institutions as well as nature.

From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/ says that: The Enlightenment is the period in the history of western thought and culture, stretching roughly from the mid-decades of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics; these revolutions swept away the medieval world-view and ushered in our modern western world. Enlightenment thought culminates historically in the political upheaval of the French Revolution, in which the traditional hierarchical political and social orders (the French monarchy, the privileges of the French nobility, the political power and authority of the Catholic Church) were violently destroyed and replaced by a political and social order informed by the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality for all, founded, ostensibly, upon principles of human reason. The Enlightenment begins with the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The rise of the new science progressively undermines not only the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, but, with it, the entire set of presuppositions that had served to constrain and guide philosophical inquiry. The dramatic success of the new science in explaining the natural world, in accounting for a wide variety of phenomena by appeal to a relatively small number of elegant mathematical formula, promotes philosophy (in the broad sense of the time, which includes natural science) from a handmaiden of theology, constrained by its purposes and methods, to an independent force with the power and authority to challenge the old and construct the new, in the realms both of theory and practice, on the basis of its own principles. D’Alembert, a leading figure of the French Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as “the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the enthusiasm for that progress, but also because of the characteristic expectation of the age that philosophy (in this broad sense) would dramatically improve human life.

Look at this painting.

It is a painting of the enlightenment era. It called “Liberty of France“.

As you can see in the painting, it is about France Revolution. The style of that painting is a combination of dark and light. We really can know that the meaning of that painting is telling about France Revolution. Where the persecution is really happen. You can see that the woman is bring the flag of France. The characteristics of France revolution paintings are heavy, strong, brave, full of energy, dynamic composition, and dramatic.

The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (at this point King Louis XVI), and the aristocracy. Enlightenment thinkers condemned Rococo art for being immoral and indecent, and called for a new kind of art that would be moral instead of immoral, and teach people right and wrong.

Denis Diderot, Enlightenment philosopher, writer and art critic, wrote that the aim of art was “to make virtue attractive, vice odious, ridicule forceful; that is the aim of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel’ (Essai sur la peinture).

These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was literally bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people both angry and hungry. In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its first stage, all the revolutionaries ask for is a constitution that would limit the power of the king.

Ultimately the idea of a constitution failed, and the revolution entered a more radical stage. In 1792, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were beheaded along with thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.

References:

http://marxisttheory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/liberty-the-enlightenment.jpg

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/1700-1800-Age-of-Enlightenment.html