rEading cOmprehension 7...

**Within the theme of the exhibit assigned to your group, select ONE work and draw a diagram of the
work, using the principles and elements of design. Write a 250-word annotation for your diagram to the
themes of the EXPLORATIONS unit and the readings assigned for this unit. In your annotation, analyze
and include at least one other work of art in the theme you have been assigned, make 3-5 appropriate
citations from the readings, and consider SCALE (artifact, space, building, and place) as you complete
your work.

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According to dictionary.com, one of the definitions of art is “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” Although we are all people, I feel that’s the only thing majority of us have in common. We implement different personalities, difference in opinions and difference in expression.  I believe that this definition is also a characterization for the modernism movement. During this time, as we discussed during history class, our crisis is we now possess this confidence where we believe individuals to be more important than the community. Design is now for the elite and well off. We’ve lost any sort of design language.

The Town & Country theme of the Greensboro Collects show in the Weatherspoon Art Museum was an expression on how smaller towns and countries have yet forgotten about the community. Concentrating on the piece titled “Friday Night at the Ozark Airdome,” by Walter Barker, the idea of community is still relevant in this image of the town watching a movie outside. With its contrast in colors and textures, this work of art expresses the audience as almost one large form. The individual people can only be distinguished by the various colored tinctures. The simplicity and scale of the house in the background and wooden fence express how we’ve lost sight of the minimalism of the past and are more focused on how much more an individual can realize before the other. One thing is for sure, the idea of commodity, firmness and delight are present within this piece in the balance of colors and whites, repetition of similarities and scale of the piece as a whole.

The work of Deborah Grant also caught my eye. Entitled, “By the Skin of Our Teeth,” it’s a mixed media piece made of collaged paper, ink, and oil. Although multiple types of media were used it’s still a very simplistic piece. It “stresses purity of form and sleekness of surface while increasingly exploiting the expressive power of the irregular form introduced into an otherwise insistent structural grid,” (Roth, pg. 569). Richard Meier, a designer who drew influenced form Le Corbusier, concentrate the use of pure white geometric forms and pipe railings, as in the Douglass House in 1971-1973. Similar to the design style of Richard Meier, this piece expresses “minimalism and reduction of materials.” (Roth, 570)  

"By the Skin of Our Teeth #2" -- Deborah Grant (2006)

Douglass House by Richard Meier