Hello dear Steemians,
as I've explored with you, some of my politically engaged paintings in the previous posts, I decided to give you some context and present you some artists whose work has been my inspiration in terms of evaluating artistic responses to oppression and suffering. Before starting on my own project, I also decided that I would make a copy of their work to exercise my hand. Art has both been utilized to promote political messages, but also conversely artists have their work to express their political beliefs. Political messages, whether subtle or overt, can resonate in officially commissioned works. Artists have long been associated with radical political activities.
One of the artist following the trend of creating politically engaged artworks is the French painter Jules De Balincourt. Jules de Balincourt’s paintings in the social, political and economic landscape of the United States, where the Paris-born artist has lived since childhood. Working from the position of an outsider, the artist questions structures of power and influence, laying bare injustices and hypocrisies while maintaining an amused attachment to the myths through which identity and nationality are constructed. He practices the art of playful nature of the compositions. He made the contemplation of political themes—such as how we perceive the world through the way we draw our maps or the idea of "Peaceful Protest” easily identifiable for his viewer.
When I visited New York I accidentally found myself at his exhibition, the abstraction, some flickering landscapes behind the peaceful protests in a contemporary days was what got me dragged into political art and it made me want to explore the idea of both liberty and oppression and how it could both exist in a restless world, that I live in.
This is the work i chose to copy:
When copying a work, I personally usually choose a segment that seems the most interesting and useful to me and then i don't exactly copy but interpret on it. This was the part that I chose from the composition presented above, next to a copy of the work that i did.
In a stylistic amalgam of Pop and folk, abstract and figurative, he mixes traditional oil paint with tape, sprays paint, stencils and other “low” materials. These are the same techniques and materials that I used with my first artwork of A2 project and as the background helps to evoke unsettling ambiance, the painting brings an ambiguity to the viewer.
I hope you enjoyed the post. Please leave all the feedback and any remarks in the comments as it means the world to me !
Thank you so much,
Maria