Ephemera
''The Decay of Reality''
Ephemera (Still Life)
December 1, 2016
Ephemera (Still Life)
December 1, 2016
Exhibition Text
This piece was made to represent the reality of the modern world and what the world doesn't see. I Wanted to capture this through the representation of a still life inspired by Caravaggio. My finished piece was influenced by Caravaggio work of "Basket of Fruit" and I connected it to the Baroque style. The blue plastic basket in my piece represents the modern age I live in now where the world is different than the wooden basket in Caravaggio's piece back then when the world was a different place. The decay of fruit represents the reality of the messed up world we live in today, but now all we see is the perfect life in which my artist inspiration is. Caravaggio's painting "Basket of Fruit" represents the false world we live in to my still life being what the real world we live in that we don't want to see. Just like the idiom "all good things must come to an end" can relate to the meaning of my piece. My piece was made with my own resources that I composed for myself.
Artist Inspiration
Made this Ephemera based on two artist inspirations. So using the Baroque and Post-Impressionism style from my inspirations I then made my piece from their art. One of my inspiration pieces is "Basket of fruit" by Caravaggio using Baroque style. The another inspiration piece is "Still Life with Apples" by Paul Cezanne using Post-Impressionism.
My artwork is similar to Caravaggio and Cezanne by having a still life as my piece. Like my inspirations, I also used apples, oranges, pears, grapes, and leafs in my piece as well. Also in comparison, It shows what people see the world being and with my piece show the reality of the world and how it isn't perfect. I tried depicting this by having my fruit decay and making that my final piece rather than having fresh fruit in a basket as my final piece. Also in comparison to Cezanne's piece, we both capture the moment where time is frozen in our pieces and we depict a certain moment in time we want to express our art.
How my piece is different from my artist inspiration what I want the meaning of a still life to be. I wanted to express the imperfection of what we don't see in a single moment. I did this because I don't believe in a perfect world and we just like to look at it being one where I know there's no such thing and accept the fact of how messed up life is. I also used the art movements and techniques from my two inspirations for my final piece. I tried to use the same technique and setting within my piece to have a better connection with my inspirations. I wanted to have the 19th century look similar to Caravaggio's piece "Basket of fruit" that had an old looking yellow painted wall. I used my old kitchen tile décor as the background of my piece to make it look like Caravaggio's piece and the time period it was made in. My piece is also similar to my other artist inspirations piece "Still Life with Apples" by Paul Cezanne with here setup and white simple background. I tried to recreate this using the white background of my room and garage to get a good backdrop for my piece.
My artwork is similar to Caravaggio and Cezanne by having a still life as my piece. Like my inspirations, I also used apples, oranges, pears, grapes, and leafs in my piece as well. Also in comparison, It shows what people see the world being and with my piece show the reality of the world and how it isn't perfect. I tried depicting this by having my fruit decay and making that my final piece rather than having fresh fruit in a basket as my final piece. Also in comparison to Cezanne's piece, we both capture the moment where time is frozen in our pieces and we depict a certain moment in time we want to express our art.
How my piece is different from my artist inspiration what I want the meaning of a still life to be. I wanted to express the imperfection of what we don't see in a single moment. I did this because I don't believe in a perfect world and we just like to look at it being one where I know there's no such thing and accept the fact of how messed up life is. I also used the art movements and techniques from my two inspirations for my final piece. I tried to use the same technique and setting within my piece to have a better connection with my inspirations. I wanted to have the 19th century look similar to Caravaggio's piece "Basket of fruit" that had an old looking yellow painted wall. I used my old kitchen tile décor as the background of my piece to make it look like Caravaggio's piece and the time period it was made in. My piece is also similar to my other artist inspirations piece "Still Life with Apples" by Paul Cezanne with here setup and white simple background. I tried to recreate this using the white background of my room and garage to get a good backdrop for my piece.
Making Process
The Meaning
The meaning of this piece is that the world is not perfect. What I mean by this is that when you look at these paintings of still life's of fruit you only see the image of what it was in a perfect state. Although unlike the painting the still life they made it from is not so perfect anymore because the fruit will begin to decay and rot away. This is what I want to capture, what the real world looks like today rather than what people think it looks. as to represent the modern era I used a blue plastic basket rather than a wooden one to show more of a difference with my piece vs my artist inspiration piece The "Basket of fruit" by Caravaggio. I also used a blue background similar to my other artist inspiration Cezanne and his piece "Still life with apples." Why is my piece called "The Decay of Reality". is that it represents I wanted to express the imperfection of what we don't see in a single moment. This piece symbolizes how I personally look at the concept of life and what I think about it. I wanted it to look like there's someone there looking out for me. the rotting brown fruit represents the divide in our society and how we think life is a great place but are blind to the concept of life being cruel. But the bright orange in the piece represents the piece of life that you enjoy out of all the other aspects. the bright orange also represents the passing of you to your offsprings and their the bright new generation that will change the future. his is the hidden meaning in my piece where it represents how I look at life compared to what other perceive it to be like Caravaggio and his piece "Basket of Fruit."
CritiqueMy piece "The Decay of Reality" share similarities with my inspirations from Caravaggio's and Cezanne works of art. My piece is also created from grown foods from nature. Caravaggio's art and mine both emphasize the idea of ephemeral in a time of perfection and that nothing last even our beautiful works of art. Which could be the end of life to nature decomposing it? My piece is composed of many items and components from my thoughts on certain topics related to my inspirations and my piece. Although the difference with my piece and my artist inspiration are that my ephemera represents the decay of reality today rather than a less moderate old period. Also, my piece is decaying fruit to show the reality of life that when there is life there is death as well. This also relates to the idiom "all good things must come to an end" and just like death we can't avoid it it's inevitable.
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Planning Sketches
The first step of the ephemeral piece was to make planning sketches of ideas that you want to make your art from. I had many ideas from different inspirations that I have chosen. One idea I had was having apples on a plate and have them be tempered with to make them look different from each other. Another idea I had was to remake a modern still life based off my inspirations I chose. I decided to combine all three of my planning sketches into one piece made from parts of each planning sketch.
The Process of DecomposingExperimenting Ideas
when doing my piece I tried to experiment what would change the outcome of my final piece. For my ephemeral piece when shopping for my fruit i pick many of every fruit i would want to make this piece from. When setting up my basket of fruit I had to many fruit and i was swapping the places of the fruit all over to find a outcome that i would like my final piece to look like liked that part of my planning sketch. I also used different background that would have an effect on how well my basket of fruit would stand out.
Reflection
All through the venture, I've taken in numerous things from the procedure and what I could improve. After having my still life ephemera be outside in the garage for a couple day I realized that it wouldn't decompose due to the cold weather preserving it. Also, my parents didn't want it in the house. so I had to work my way around the system to find a way to make them decompose faster. After finding an area in the house wich was my basement was ready to start letting nature takes its course and decompose the ephemera putting a handful of leaves onto the rock, I also noticed that im going to have to daily record photos of the fruit and the state it was in once every day. I struggled with these the most. Just getting my ephemera to the rotation was the biggest challenge I had to deal with in this project. this project was a different one unlike what I have done before. Alos the fruit wouldnt decompose expecually to orange in my piece. The orange was then due to the lack of rotting implemented into my meaning of my piece. this was a project that was the best won't. my artist inspiration piece The "Basket of fruit" by Caravaggio. Caravaggio was a popular baroque artist and when I was looking for an inspiration I found him and his art. I just liked the idea when looking at his piece so I tried to think of some ideas to make one of my own that is inspired from his piece that still can represent my topic of . This is how I got the idea to make my piece ''The Decay of Reality."
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CONNECTION TO ACT
- My inspiration from Caravaggio has a big impact on my piece as a whole. The theme Oblivous and nature is what i wanted to do for my ephemera related to fruit and the decaying process. The rotten fruit is my piece and what idea i got from my inspiration.
- The overall approach of Caravaggio is that when capture a moment of time that is perfect that way you captured it will stay perfect but not the image it was taken from.. Everything that is life is perfect every moment until death.
- I've found giving up, which could be intense. To relinquish something that we put such a great amount of endeavors into could be extremely troublesome however to give up it indicates quality.
- The central theme of my inspiration revolves around the course of life and how its nature that will make us decay until we dont exsist physically anymore. through the life cycle. It investigates the possibility of impermanent in nature and how everything would need to surrender to nature to go
- I've inductions that the works of art that Caravaggio made will all be decayed away by nature. However, the natural product in his work of art will be always impeccable in that depiction if kept and dealt with.
REFERENCES
“Still life with a basket of fruit - Caravaggio - www.caravaggio-foundation.org.” 2002. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.