Topic Two: Pattern and Ornament Assignment #4

Assignment #4 Ambitious Piece

Chair Quadrants

 This is the quadrant of the chair I used. From this, I thought of three things: assemblage, color, and putting together Ikea furniture. So I knew I wanted to do an interactive piece that the viewer had to, in a sense, "build", and I wanted it to be mixed-media. I remembered the discussion we had in class about James Franco, and I did not understand why the class hated him so, so I did some research and finally ended up with an idea for the composition and concept of the piece.

Concept

In this piece, I wanted to convey the idea that James Franco was an conceited, pompous, egotistical douche. This is where colors came in. In my chair design, the colors I used were yellow, pink, and purple. According to this website, purple could symbolize conceit, arrogance, dignity; yellow could symbolize egoism, enlightenment, and caution. These colors went perfectly with how I wanted to portray Franco. At this point, I had two ideas: Repeat the same image of Franco on different materials using different mediums to show that Franco did multiple things: Acting, Art, Directing Poetry, etc., and the second idea was to create that same image of Franco in a jigsaw puzzle kind of way. I chose to do something along the lines of the latter idea.

Process

This is the sketch I came up with. This image is taken from a video of James Franco kissing his reflection, here is the link if you really wish to indulge in that, which I felt perfectly captured how he saw himself. Yellow,which could mean egoism, was to be his skin tone. Purple is usually found on the outer coats of Royal people, so I thought that his jacket should definitely be purple, as purple could mean  conceit and arrogance. Pink is often thought as girly something guys shouldn't wear, and Franco often "plays" around with his sexuality, so I thought it should be a surrounding color. I wanted to mock Franco's art, which is where the words " Facile Fuck" comes in. In Franco's earlier pieces, he would paint a subject, and then he world paint a word describing the subject and then the word that identifies he subject on top of the piece. Both these definitions of facile can be interpreted as: 1.appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial   2. easily achieved; effortless
 Franco puts little effort into what he does, and his productions end up mediocre in the eyes of many, and Franco only deals with concepts on a superficial level. He tries to be deep and deliver some kind of message, but he does not develop past the idea itself. For example, Franco would play around with the idea that he is gay. He would play gay characters on movies and do interviews with his "gay" self. Yet there is no real purpose to doing this as far as I can see, besides grabbing the attention of the public. He is not trying to deliver any kind of message on how gay people are viewed, or what they face. You may say that he is finally coming out of the closet, but remember, James Franco perceives his life as performance art, and all the incidents he has had with young women and actresses does not exactly build upon the idea that James Franco is gay. But I digress. I decided to go with a piece that reflected my latter idea of a jigsaw-puzzle-like piece.

I recreated the sketch above on the canvas I laid out for myself, and began painting on each material one at a time.

 Presentation

      I wanted this piece to be built, like a piece of furniture from Ikea. I wanted people to interact with it. The most important thing was making it parody the art museum/ gallery environment. The idea was to present it in a shoddy fashion, while keeping some things seemingly professional, and others not.

     I did not really plan too much on the way it was set up, I simply played around with how things were organized until I found the look I desired.

 Aftermath

     The interactions did not go exactly as I thought it would, but I did leave the instructions vague-ish on purpose. Either way, all forms of interaction were welcomed, and I believe the idea I wanted to get across was easily perceived.