Sally Mann's Nostalgic Vision

Sally Mann

Depicting dismal family portraits and eerie landscapes from the Deep South, Sally Mann, an American photographer, shows dynamic imagery of black and white among the subjects in her work.  Creating these images, she shows concepts of death, sexuality, and sensuality to society, mainly in the U.S., capturing the fights during the Culture Wars and the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) supporting to her photography.  In Mann’s work, she takes pictures of her family and landscapes in a non-traditional format, which gives a scratched and unfinished feel, with damaged cameras and lenses to create nostalgia in her photography.  Among her fellow peers, photographers Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit controversy in their styles of sexuality and death with the support of the NEA.  Since these artist are trying to draw societies attention to freedom of speech, many critics and spectators aren’t comfortable with the subjects portrayed in these images because they don’t understand its purpose.

New Mothers, Sally Mann

In the Immediate Family (1992), the book and later exhibit, her third collection and most notable achievement of Mann’s.  New Mothers, which was shown as part of the Immediate Family series, sparked disturbing imagery of three children in Spring 1992 when the first exhibit was critiqued at the Houk Friedman Gallery in New York.  In New Mothers, Mann is depicting her children, Emmett, 12, Jessie, 10, and Virginia, 7, acting as adults at their adolescence.  Since she puts her children in this theme of adulthood, Mann views her children as if they were living their adulthood in society.  She admires her children by dressing them up as adults and took the picture as her children posed naturally in a family setting, but portrays the imagery in death and perceptions of sexuality.

The Rehearsal Place, Sally Mann

After Immediate Family, she was already a well known photographer to admirers of her black and white line of work.  Other books were focused on the decomposing bodies and portraits in What Remains (2003) and landscapes in Deep South (2005).  In her fifth book, What Remains, divided into five parts, which depicts dead, decay, and studies of children portraits.  An example of these studies, The Rehearsal Place exhibits a child immersed just showing her hair spread among the water.  In other sections of the book, images show off gruesome imagery of decay in the process and bones.

Deep South Series, Sally Mann

In Deep South, the book reveals quite the opposite of What Remains and captures the landmarks of where she made a 65 black-and-white landscapes taken from 1992 to 2004.  The images were constructed by 8x10 film and wet plate collodion.  With the carefully selected pictures, she assembles a collage of her best compositions into one collection of imagery.  Some examples of her landscape photography show off some haunting scenes of battlefields during the Civil War.

Lewis Law Portfolio, Sally Mann

 

Koons Ready-Made Exhibits

Jeff Koons

“Art is a vehicle of acceptance, first you accept yourself, and eventually the highest state, is the acceptance of others,” Jeff Koons said.  Working with his team of about 130 people, he creates ready-mades (ordinary manufactured objects) and his team paints precise bright colors on aluminum and stainless steel materials.  While Koons, an American commodity artist continually works on a handful of old and new projects referencing Minimalism and Pop Art.  His noticeable objects are rendered for the public in New York City and exhibits at the Palace of Versailles.  He grabs the attention of the public with his over-sized ready-mades, like Duchamp did, in creating shock value and controversy to his spectators. He believes that people must interact with art to fully experience the art he creates, so that’s why he puts these over-sized works of art out for societies acceptance.  When you see Koons’ art, you’ll be able to identify his mass production work and unique style in a variety of forms.

Tulips, Jeff Koons

Puppy, Jeff Koons

 An example of Koons unique style, Tulips, a mass-produced bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers, which lays about 2 meters tall and 5 meters across with mirroring surfaces.  This stainless steel bouquet was part of the “Celebration” series by Koons in 1994, which included Rabbit (1986), and Balloon Dog (Blue) (1994).  These industrial-looking objects are made from stainless steel and similar to Minimalism materials used to create projects, like Judd’s Untitled, where Koons intention is to create an environment of parties and holidays.  However, Puppy (1992), a massive 18-century floral arrangement sculpture standing 12 meters tall bringing aesthetics to the present using computer modeling.  Once all of the objects are put together, the spectator feels part of a parade with the object resembling inflatables and the public becomes part of the party.

Sandwiches, Jeff Koons

In Koons exhibit, “Easyfun-Etheral,” he features food, fashion, and fun; artists like Dali, Pollock, and Rosenquist influence him, in paintings such as Sandwiches and Lips.  In Sandwiches, Koons refers to a 1963 Chevy Impala, animated deli meats, and moustache imagery of Dali’s artwork where splashes of milk Koons’ is influenced by Pollock’s abstractions.  In addition, the collage of imagery on canvas notices the billboard-style painting of Rosenquist, which all the techniques tie in with Pop Art culture.  Similar to Koons’ Sandwiches painting, Lips is an image fantasy dream-scape of lips, an eye, and eyelashes, which also see in Dali’s surreal paintings.  Koons depicts gravity-defying forms of pleasure with present computer manipulations and splashes of juice also reference Pollock’s abstractions.

Lips, Jeff Koons

Today, with over 150 achievements, Koons forces us to expand our imagination to the next level with his diverse style and industrial models.  Continuing to inspire the public and celebrities with his unique sense of style, he will continue to exhibit more objects as he calls for acceptance from all over the world.  Since we respond to art differently, Koons explains to Vanity Fair, “…the concept that when a painter paints a painting or a sculptor makes a sculpture it is not complete unless a beholder, a viewer, responds to it.”  Since other artists have a connection the their art, it’s important that the spectator feels and senses the emotion, which I believe Koons’ does a great job grabbing the views attention.

Balloon Dog (Blue), Jeff Koons

Rabbit, Jeff Koons