EPIC FAIL

“All Art is Quite Useless”

Feeling as though I wanted to make a series of images, and also being envious of/inspired by art created using the program Illustrator (and wanting to use it somehow) I decided to search for another similar idea for a second image. Looking through more Oscar Wilde quotes I came across “all art is quite useless”. Deciding that this was perfect for the style of art that I was appropriating into my own images, I began to devote my brain power to finding a way to incorporate the quote right into my image (like I did in the first one) while keeping with the same Pop art theme. I then thought of Roy Lichtenstein’s work. My idea was to incorporate a Pop art icon like Marilyn Monroe and make the work reminiscent of Lichtenstein, a perfect marriage of Pop art styles. “All art is quite useless” is ironic in the sense that it is written on a piece of artwork, by an artist. However I wanted more to embody the philosophies of Pop art: the cult of the celebrity, the f*@#k you to all ‘high art’, and the joining of art with mass culture. This is the type of art, bordering on propaganda/advertising that interests me the most.

(Also, I have created more than one version of this image using different colour fills and filters)

EPIC FAIL

“Anything Popular is wrong”

These two images share a common thread, in the message they emit and the source that my inspirations were derived from. However, before my ideas were in place I knew that I wanted to use illustrator, and I also knew that I wanted to use Photoshop. I hadn’t touched these programs before this class because I hadn’t needed to but I’ve always felt the need to have some sort of grasp on these programs, especially Photoshop. So, I was forced to spend hours on Youtube listening to tutorial after crappy tutorial, and this is where the thought of my first image (the typographic portrait of Marilyn) came from. A tutorial about how to work, and warp text in Photoshop into a portrait gave me a base idea. Once I had this vague notion of what my first image would be I needed a quote. I searched databases for quotes and the first quote that grabbed my attention was an Oscar Wilde quote, “Anything Popular is wrong”. This was the first quote, short and sweet, that gave me the fully formed idea. Satirical and outrageous, a flamboyant public figure with a huge ego; Oscar Wilde was definitely the archaic Andy Warhol. This made me think of Pop art, its irony and satire, and it also made me think of Marilyn Monroe whose face is as famous as it is because of art. I decided then and there that I wanted to use her face and recreate it using Oscar Wilde’s quote, A perfect ironic combination of word and image.