To me, “abstraction” is something that doesn’t necessarily aim for objectivity. This can be anything from a burst of colors to different materials being gathered and displayed as a “weird” shape.
At first, I preferred more “representation” art pieces over “abstraction”, but after the discussion we had during class, I was able to view abstraction in a new way. After visiting Piotr Kowalski’s 1965 sculpture NOW, it gave me the chance to stop and truly take the sculpture in. Prior to the class visit, I would always simply pass by it and ignore it since I didn’t want to stop and think about what it could possibly represent, something representation does for you. The visit along with the class discussion pushed me to look at the sculpture and appreciate it and acknowledge that its more than a “whale” as prof. Zucman said a group leader described the sculpture to be.
Finger Painting Activity
- The experience was something new to me since I have never done anything similar to this.
- This activity was easier than I expected. Before starting, I felt a bit stressed because I am generally a very “planned out” person, meaning I like to plan mostly every event happening to me or plan how I’m going to draw/paint something.
- Painting a painting with no subject felt pretty liberating. As I previously mentioned, before starting I had no idea how this was going to go and whether I would actually like it or not. After I set my bottles of paint out in-front of me and stopped overthinking the objective (that being to simply finger-paint), I began to enjoy it. I chose every color that I gravitated to and just began to truly “feel” the paint. It felt nice to not worry about things like “neatness”, whether I was doing it right, or is this too much, bur rather just do whatever I felt like doing. Now, I am. very proud of my painting because it allowed me to express myself with no limits, something I can’t really do in my other paintings.
- Usually, I only really see “realistic” paintings around me. My neighborhood was covered with murals of people/figures like La Virgen María (The Virgin Mary), Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, birds in some sort of scenery, etc. I would rarely see any “abstract” murals, but when I would, I would really enjoy seeing the different colors incorporated into the paintings.
Edwin Hernandez 