Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Making a Brancusi Popup Book

We created small prototypes of paper mechanisms, then drew out thumbnails for our own "book." It's more of a card, really--regular letter-sized cardstock, front and back.

Pop-up Thumbnails!

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Tuesday, February 24, 2015 4:33:49 PM
Here's part of my planning process for the Brancusi Popup!

Then we created a white paper dummy of our favorite design... And a final colored version. We basically make the same book twice, but it's important to work out the problems in a dummy, so you can have a clean, crisp final version that works cleanly.

Brancusi Popup Pictures

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Wednesday, February 18, 2015 2:05:06 AM
(30 Brancusi research shots are on Eben's flash drive with the video)
Here's the video! http://youtu.be/xQafdNOtvF8

And the detail shots:

Brancusi Popup Details

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Saturday, February 21, 2015 8:46:47 PM
Here are some of the details on my Brancusi popup...
Opening the first mini-book: Norwegian collector Christen Sveaas, who thought he had signed a deal for both halves of Mademoiselle Pogany, but didn't realize the second deal was signed without the second brother's consent. I made his head an angry male version of Constantin Brancusi's 1909 sculpture Portrait de Femme, a lost stone carving with only an old photograph left as evidence.
The pull-tab, closed: Alvaro's half of Mademoiselle Pogany was signed away to Christen Sveaas for less money by his niece, without his consent.
The pull-tab, opened: I modified Constantin Brancusi's limestone sculpture, "The Kiss" into the quarreling Botez brothers. Alexandru (the bearded brother) being choked by an angry Alvaro. Alvaro tore up his contract after finding out that Alexandru's daughter had signed away his half of Mademoiselle Pogany for $1.4 million less than Alexandru's half. This strained the brothers' relationship. Alexandro also never bothered to tell Christen Sveaas that his contract was torn up and not made with his consent.
The last book, closed: Both brothers secretly started negotiating with David Martinez, a Mexican-born art collector.
The last book, opened: Martinez was wise enough to pay both brothers the same amount. He is being sued by Sveaas (along with the brothers) for breach of contract, but he says it's just healthy competition. Like Sveaas, David Martinez's head is a modified "Portrait de Femme", and his body is "Male Torso", a wooden sculpture.
Then, a picture with all the tabs and books opened. I used swirls of the same colors to lead the eye in the right order for the story.
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Project 2: Popup Books based on a 3D Creative

For our second project, we also transitioned from flat design to sculpture through paper engineering: popup books. But since we're such serious artists, our project needed to be based on a 3D creative from an approved list.

I chose Constantin Brancusi, one of the pioneers of the abstract movement. He worked mainly in marble, bronze, and wood, and I saw the 2004 Guggenheim exhibit of his work when I first moved to New York.

More than you ever needed to know about Constantin Brancusi

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Tuesday, February 17, 2015 12:52:49 PM
(Since I wrote this up over a week ago, might as well post it!)
Constantin Brancusi 1876-1957
Brancusi was born to Romanian peasants in 1876, and learned woodcarving growing up as a shepherd without a formal education. He left a rough home life at the age of eleven. After becoming a household servant in a large town, an industrialist who was impressed by his constant woodcarving entered him in art school. Brancusi had to learn to read and write on his own, and studied at Romanian art schools from age 18-25. At 29, he began study in Paris at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and showed a sculpture at the Salon d’Automne at 30. He spent much time in Paris and in Romania, often visiting India, Egypt, or the rest of Europe, and regularly showing in New York. He became a French citizen in 1952, and died at 81 in Paris.
Paris provided innovative company for an artist. Brancusi's group of friends included other well-known artists in Paris: Marcel Duchamp, Matisse, and Henri Rousseau. He also spent time with Dadaists in the early 1920’s. True to his woodcarving roots, Brancusi created prototypes in wood and final sculptures in marble, bronze, and oak. The Romanian sculptor pioneered abstraction with heavy primitivisttendencies and hints of futurism and expressionism. The sleek lines of his simplified forms also fit Art Deco sensibilities of the time. He considered himself a realist, sculpting the pure essence of an object or person. Art student Margit Pogany features in a series of Mademoiselle Pogany and Danaidesculptures, and he refines her form down to the essence of a muse in general for The Muse.
Brancusi’s early work 1906-1910 (The Kiss, Suffering, A Child, Wisdom) sometimes showed greater detail, sinuous lines, and rough textures like Auguste Rodin’s art, but he quickly abandoned texture and unnecessary detail for highly polished, sleek forms on rough-hewn wood and limestone bases. While Brancusi left Rodin’s studio after briefly assisting him as a young artist, saying that he could not grow “under a big tree”, Isamu Noguchi would later grow under Brancusi as an assistant in 1927, learning to carve wood and stone from the Romanian master. 
Brancusi didn’t explain his work, making it more mysterious, but some characters and influences (like The Sorceress, a 1916 wood sculpture) came from Romanian folk art. Brancusi worked differently in different mediums: when he worked in wood, he showed stronger Expressionist tendencies creating exaggerated emotional representations of specific deities or Romanian folk characters. In metal and stone, Brancusi created archetypal forms (first-forms, heroic models, the “heroes and legends”, “gods and monsters” version of a trope). They were simplified, architectural forms meant to embody the essence of beauty, or calm, sleeping figures, or the essence of flight and grace.
The abstract and primitivist art movements developed concurrently with Freudian and Jungian psychology. In 1921, Jung published “Psychological Types.” While he originally traveled to Africa in search of unspoiled “primitive” religion to influence his new psychotherapy and psychology, language barriers prevented Jung from feeling he learned anything from “primitive” culture that provided breakthroughs. It wasn’t until 1937, when Jung traveled to India, that he was finally able to converse easily with another culture, and Hinduism shaped his philosophies on symbolism and the unconscious. 
Brancusi was familiar with the writings of Buddhist teachers. In 1933, the maharaja of Indore, YeshwantRao Holkar, commissioned a private sanctuary. Brancusi created his oak sculpture King of Kings in 1938, originally titled Spirit of Buddha, to stand in this sanctuary.  Art movements at the time were also very interested in primitivism, the unconscious, and early archetypes. Gaugin’s style, heavily influenced by Tahitian art, inspired Brancusi and seems like it prompted him to study primitive art himself, but he did not talk or write about his art, so nothing’s certain.
Is it art? Abstraction met some roadblocks as some countries struggled to embrace the movement. After shipping a 1918 version of Bird in Space to New York for a gallery show, Brancusi was told that US customs had declared the piece “household goods and appliances” instead of art, arguing that it did not look like a bird. Art is exempt from customs fees, and Brancusi took legal action. Brancusi v. United States, a case over whether Brancusi’s 1918 Bird In Space fit the definition of art or not, rewrote the legal definition of art in the United States. The judge ruled in favor of declaring Brancusi’s abstracted essence of flight art, and the definition of fine art was expanded to include more than representational art, to keep up with the times and include new art movements.
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Breaking a Garlic Bulb (Project 1: Wire Hand Sculpture)

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Thursday, January 29, 2015 10:26:57 PM
A million views of a wire hand hitting a wire garlic bulb.

And our critiques:

What I learned: Making body parts out of wire

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Thursday, January 29, 2015 10:52:30 PM
Five things that worked:
  1. Tracing veins
  2. Tracing contour lines
  3. Creating hand differently than most people
  4. Making the hand three-dimensional
  5. Garlic roots and shape work
  6. Weight is light in wrist and increases toward garlic to draw attention to garlic
Five ways to improve:
  1. File sharp garlic roots and top down
  2. Add another vein
  3. Define fingers a little better (losing them)
  4. Define palm a little better
  5. Use more heavy wire in hand so it balances the garlic

After taking the Crit advice...

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Monday, February 2, 2015 1:21:43 AM
So glad we could actually implement the feedback we got during critique. This actually makes the crit useful.
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Modulated Contour Hand Drawings

Ten Modulated Contour Hands

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:38:12 PM
(Just to practice and get fluent in hands)


And

Full-sized Practice Drawings for Wire Hand

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:41:05 PM
A few objects I considered using:
Onions
Garlic (both because I love cooking, and the roots and papery lined skin would be fun to make in wire)
Castanets (I want to heal enough to dance flamenco)
Q-tips (used in treating blepharitis)
Knitting needles/crochet hooks
Clay (while sculpting)
Scissors
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And my practice sculpture: Contour wire rock

Wire Rocks...

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Monday, January 26, 2015 11:26:01 PM
Made with recycled aluminum wire, since rocks are so rugged, and recycling is SMRT.


And the drawings it's based on:

Modulated Contour Line Drawings of Rocks

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Monday, January 26, 2015 11:29:26 PM
Because rocks are pretty darn exciting.
(HB, B, 4B, 6B, and 8B pencils)
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Project 1: Making a three-dimensional contour line drawing out of aluminum wire

Design I is flat. Design II is the first 3D art class most art students take at UNT, so James Thurman started us out with a wire sculpture.

Assignment: Create a wire hand holding an object. No "sausage fingers," no unintentional lines. Aim for a three-dimensional contour line drawing.

Prep work: Contour line drawings of our hands holding different objects and of a rock from different angles.
Create a wire sculpture of that rock from my contour line drawings.
Create a wire sculpture of my hand holding an object, based on a series of final planning contours.

My process: I fell in love with a sculpture of an Alexandrian dancer in the Met Museum gift shop years ago. It's designed to make you walk around it; the dancer herself is twisted, and you feel like you're not seeing a complete picture if you only view it from one angle.

I get to choose my hand's pose and the object I'm holding. What actions or objects create specific hand gestures?

Project 1 Brainstorming: wire sculpture of a hand holding an object

Posted by   Lisa Brunet  at Monday, January 26, 2015 9:34:38 PM
Activities with unique hand gestures:
    • Castanets (create a twisted hand pose)
    • Hula dancing
    • finger tutting or gloving
    • Bollywood dancing
    • Thai dancing
    • Sign language
    • Bowling
    • Knitting
    • Hands molding clay
    • Throwing stones (judgement)
    • Breaking garlic, slicing an onion (the roots would be fun in wire)
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