June 29, 2021

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been busy researching about art and discovering more ways to create. In particular, I watched two documentaries that go along with this experience: From the Wild West to Jackson Pollock: America In Art and Roy Lichtenstein. These documentaries were different from what I expected, but still useful to learn about in order to broaden my knowledge of the art world.

From the Wild West to Jackson Pollock: America In Art goes into depth about the history of America and how different art pieces have documented this. I was expecting it to go more in depth about the different artists and their past and not as much the history of America, but it was still enjoyable to watch. The most interesting part to me was when the documentary compared natural aspects of the great outdoors to different paintings and works of art that were done to represent this. I also enjoyed a portion about abstract art, as I always like seeing the process behind art with no imagery. Some aspects from this documentary that I want to include in my art recreations would be implementing some abstract components alongside the more concrete ones.

I chose the documentary Roy Lichtenstein because I love his art style. I find the bright colors and stark contrast of his work to be very eye catching. I also hold him in a nostalgic light, as in grade school we did some pop-art style paintings based off of his work, so I wanted to revisit that feeling and style. The documentary goes in depth about Roy Lichtenstein's past, as well as how and why he got into art. I learned that he took inspiration from comic books, which I never realized before, but when observing his art style it makes perfect sense. The use of bright colors, shading, and onomatopoeia reflect the classic comic book style. I also enjoyed learning about how he blew up images from already existing comic books.

After the comic-book style of his art faded away, he got into abstract art that was mainly composed of previous art work's ideas. He took bits and pieces of other art pieces and put them together into brand new compositions, just as big as his previous works of art. It was really interesting to see this transition, as most of his work is highlighted in his comic-book style era. I want to incorporate this art style into my recreations, as it is iconic, but I also want to maybe incorporate his abstract style into different pieces in the future.