Mandalas

Mandalas are geometric, circular symbols that are generally symmetrical and often very complex. They are important in the Buddhist and Hindu religions and represent the universe. These religions deal a lot with symbols of repetition (things that are found in most cultures can be linked back to nature, even, for instance, brand logos and spirals). A well known symbol that is used in some mandalas is the Yin-Yang, although this is among the simpler looking. The word mandala comes from Sanskrit, meaning disk.The base for all mandalas is a circle inside of a square, and inside the circle there are many patterns that spiral into the middle. Mandalas are often used to aid meditation and spiritual endeavors.

Synthetic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism is an art for that arose in the early 20th century, developed by artists like Picasso and Georges Braque. It is characterized by geometric shapes, surrealism, blocks, and collage. Basically, an image from real life is analyzed by the artist, chopped up into a bunch of geometric shapes, and then reassembled. Cubism had a major affect on all forms of art in Europe.

Michal Rovner

Michal Rovner is an Israeli photographer and video artist. She works in both Israel and New York, and has had her art showcased in many solo exhibitions and otherwise. Her art and video often have political commentary, often involving Israel. She created one piece about the borer between Lebanon and Israel, attempting and failing to cross over it.

What initially drew me to her work was the way that a lot of her images were almost blurred, but Ness Monster or Bigfoot from far away. I like that stylistic choice a lot.

There are a lot of silhouettes and often black and white coloration. These images are very striking and have such bold coloring with such dark darks and light lights that they demand to be looked at in a way.

 Her abstract pieces are also very striking, like the rest of her work. These ones are almost jagged and look as if they've been torn apart and stuck together again. They are very complex images without being overly busy and difficult to look at.

Beau White

I chose to talk about Beau White here because I love the very grotesque look his art has; it elicits a big reaction because they look realistic yet disgusting, and sometimes somewhat unreal. His art is just very odd and original and he isn't afraid of being gross for the sake of a painting.

Chuck Close

Chuck close was born in America in on July 4th, 1940. He is an American painter and photographer famous for his photo realism, he also often does abstract portraits of people that are held in galleries all around the world. He is famous for doing huge scale photo realistic paintings. In 1988 he suffered an injury that left him paralyzed, but he kept doing art afterwards successfully.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter who was born on May 6th, 1880 in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. He is remembered for helping to form a group of artists known as The Bridge, and they were some of the most well known Expressionists of the day.

He was a volunteer in the army during the first world war, but was discharged after a nervous breakdown in 1916. After this incident he was committed to a mental institution (which have historically caused more harm than good, as a side note). He was very mentally ill and grappled with similar issues for his whole life, which inevitably were the cause of his death. He committed suicide by shooting himself on June 15th in 1938 in Davos, Switzerland. He was fifty-eight years old at the time.

An important part of Expressionism is that it is very loose and well, expressive, and much more emotionally full than what was the traditional style of art previously. This can be clearly seen in his work, which is very raw and rough looking.

The art studio that Kirchner and the other artists of The Bridge worked in was truly Bohemian, and messy. Also, there was frequent nudity (as the human body was very important to Kirchner's work) as well as plenty of sexual activity.

The female form was mostly what he focused on, but he also painted landscapes and portraits. His use of wild and bright contrasting colors really makes his art very distinct. His colors are my favorite part of his work, and they draw the eye to them very well. His art demands to be viewed. His brushwork is also very expressive and complex without being overwhelming. His art is quite beautiful and well worth a look.

Self Portraits

Self portraits can be very intriguing in many ways, and can be much more than just a picture of someone. For instance, Frida Kahlo painted many very surreal and emotional self portraits with a lot of different layers:

 She uses a lot of very graphic detail and surreal imagery to get across something she may not have been able to with mere words. Her use of nature and blood is present in a lot of her work, but it is widely varied and all different.
Other artists don't have so much imagery in their self portraits, but they are more about experimenting with style and what they can do to make their portraits distinct.

These self portraits by Van Gogh and Picasso are perfect examples of this. While Van Gogh's isn't as stylized as Picasso's, the coloration and textures are not particularly realistic. And Picasso's os clearly very stylized.
To visually depict your sense of self, you don't even really need to draw yourself; the self portrait could be just a visual representation of different facets of your personality or what's important to you. They need not be your own face, it could be anything so long as it is some sort of representation of the artist.
If I were to make a self portrait, it would depend on my emotional state what it looked like, but generally I like to use very quick, jagged lines, scribbles and not much blank space. I try to fill up areas and make them a bit purposefully busy a lot  of the time. I also generally prefer monochrome, or black and white with one or two other bright, clashing colors used in small quantities. I like to represent the fact that my mind is kind of always in a lot of different places at once with the business of some of my art (also, maybe I'll draw a cat with me because I like them. There isn't much of a deeper meaning to that one, I just have a lot of cats).

Michael Landy

Michael Landy is a British visual and performance artist whose most famous pieces include destroying all of his belongings, something he described as being one of the best things he'd ever done, and Art Bin, an installation where he created an enormous bin that artists could throw their "failures" into. I find these pieces, as well as his non-performance art pieces to be rather intriguing, and well worth a look at whether or not you are a fan of performance art. His visual art can be very complex and aesthetically interesting, and have an all together whimsical feeling that make them distinct.

These pieces, for example, are very complicated and busy looking, but not in a negative way. They are a mess of different seemingly random things all stacked together and demand a lot of attention to fully take them in, but not in a tiring way. I'd say his art is worth taking a look at.