The purpose of the inside out project is to make a statement. The project is now really open to anyone willing to commit, but JR started the whole thing a few years ago, he did a lot of art like that of the inside out project in his early years, the project just basically opened up his idea to the general public.
JR was born in France, and did present a lot of his early work there, but progressed to bigger cities with more controversial topics. His art represented many world issues. He even traveled to cities in war to display his art. Here in his TEDTalk JR talks about the process of the inside out project, and how he established his ideas.
So now that we all know a bit about his past, what is he doing now? Where is he living? Working? Displaying his art?
One of the more recent pieces of art that JR has been involved with is the NYCB Art Series. In my opinion the NYCB art series does not make as much of a statement as some of his other pieces, but it is still interesting. The NYCB art series is basically a bunch of photographs of ballerinas, (I'll get more into that later). The art that I am used to seeing JR do is a lot different than this series.
Does this ring a bell to anyone? This is from JR's 'face to face' series. JR himself explains the idea behind the series, "We then traveled through the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much...After a week, we had the exact same conclusion: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families... And he is endlessly fighting with him. It's obvious, but they don't see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize."
It is obvious through this project and many others that JR is one to say what is on his mind. He does not let society quiet him, he will be heard and his message will be spread.
Now, back to the NYCB Art Series. JR was asked to photograph ballerinas for an art series, and began in 2014. This series is actually quite beautiful. I find it more appealing to the eye than his other pieces, but less meaningful.
I looked through most of the series and I found a photograph that I want to analyse, it was actually one of the first ones I saw, and right away I knew that that was the one I wanted to look into further, I must have felt some kind of connection or pull to it.
Cool right? I actually didn't realize that it was an eye at first I thought it looked like people swimming in milk or something.
Okay, now for the analyzing time: Art analyzing is usually completed in 4 steps- Description, Analysis, Interpretation, and Judgement.
This artwork is a large scale image of a human eye. The materials used to create this image are people dressed in white, and plain white paper. The people are all laying on the paper, pushing it and holding it in such ways to create the image of an eye from above. This wouldn't be the prettiest looking drawing or painting, it is however beautiful because of the way it is done, all of the people come together to make a portrait on paper. Paper is used in art lots, for drawing, painting, printing, however I've never seen it used quite like this.
I think that JR choose to used paper as a medium for this art series because of his familiarity and identification with it. He made his name in the art world by printing large scale pictures on paper and pasting them up, it only seems fair to fall back to paper when beginning a new art project. Although this time, the paper has no printing on it, it it blank, representing a clean slate and a new series for JR to begin.
The focus of this piece is the center of the eye, from there, the viewers look out and can admire the rest of the art piece. I think that the center was intended to be the focal point because of the organization in the middle. The people are aligned in a perfect circle, the paper is un-crumpled, and as the picture progresses, the paper gets messier and the people become increasingly more scattered.
I think that this piece is very symbolic to JR's past work. JR would often paste up pictures, of people, or peoples eye's. I think that he choose to use an eye in this art piece to show that he is still true to his artwork even though he is branching out a bit. White is the color of innocence and the archetypal character 'the virgin', so I think its fair to say he was trying to represent a certain degree of purity in this photograph.
I'm not quite sure if my views on this piece are what JR intended when he created it, but it makes sense to me. However I do have a few questions.
Why are some people laying face down while others lay face up?
Why are there so many people in the outside crease of the eye? To me it would make more sense if they were in the inside corner, is there a reason behind this? Perhaps everything is not always as it seems?
Was this design pre-planned, or did JR make it up as he went along?
No comments:
Post a Comment