Introduction- Pablo Picasso and Stellar are two artists who both use shock tactics to create artworks that resonate with the audience. Although ones a modernist and the other a postmodernist, they both share similarities in their subject matter, and that is shock value. Body 1- Pablo Picasso was a Spanish artist who was born in 1881. Picasso was a painter, printmaker, ceramicist, sculptor and stage designer who spent majority of his life living in France. Picasso showed outstanding talent from a young age, who painted in a realistic manner throughout his entire childhood, and into adolescence.
Picasso as seen to be one of the most creative artists of the 20th century, who played a major impact influencing young artists. Picasso is also well known for co- founding the period of the cubist movement, along with the invention of sculpture which was constructed, the co-invention of collage and the numerous amount of styles of which he developed by exploring further than other artists. The cubist movement was a type of essential approach to the representation of form and space.
The style was first formed from Analytic Cubism to the later Synthetic Cubism, in which forms seemed to be covered over one another. Picasso was seen as a modernist artist as he was the co-founder of cubism, as well as most of his art being abstract and full of shape. Modernism is known for being individual as well as providing artistic theories while expressing and testing out new ideas. The modernist style was firstly found in retail, entertainment, fashion and shops and wasn’t properly recognized in art until the late sass’s. Artworks- the Weeping Woman series features the most famous artworks in which Pablo Picasso painted. One of these artworks ‘Queering’ is featured throughout the series. Queering is mural sized, oil on canvas which Picasso painted in 1937. Queering displays the chaos and tragedy of which individuals and innocent civilians, even animals and building experienced when the bombing of Queering occurred. The painting is seen as more of a peace symbol rather than an artwork, which helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world’s attention.
Another artwork relating to Queering was Picasso famous artwork Weeping Woman’. Weeping Woman is viewed as a continuation of the tragedy obvious in Queering. Weeping Woman was also oil on canvas and was also painted in 1937, to Join his series. The woman which can be seen in Weeping Woman can also be found in his previous work Queering. She is en clutching onto what appears to be her dead child who was killed from the Spanish Civil War. There are a large variety of etchings, drawings and paintings that feature this emotional female character.
Both Weeping Woman and Queering are seen as visual representations on the emotion and feelings that the people felt towards the bombing and war, although some people believe, these paintings were also evaluating the relationship Picasso had with the model Dora, which is the emotional woman featured in these two artworks, representing the fiery relationship they had, although these artworks created a positive dynamic between the artwork, artist, model and even audience.
Both artworks of Queering and Weeping woman are seen as the artist’s personal way in shocking the audience by painting the torment of a man haunted by the horrific images of the massacres taking place around him, in the Civil War. Picasso work easily shocked the audience when they were first painted his works as it vilified government and war. Stellar is a postmodern artist who can relate to using the same theme which is shock value, similar to Stellar. Stellar is a Cypriot-Australian artist who was born in 1946.
He moved from Cyprus to Australia when he was at a young age. Stellar studied Arts and Craft at T. S. T. C. , Art and Technology at CHATEAU and M. R. I. T. , Melbourne University. He not only studied, but taught Art and Sociology at Yashmak International School and Sculpture and Drawing at Ballard University College. Stealer’s work if often based on suspensions, simulations and interventions of the body, going further beyond what any other artist would usually go. He uses technology to confront the audience and challenge the concept of art.
He unites artwork and audience by extending his own body and its capabilities, using it as a sculpture or boundary with technology. He is also well known by his bizarre and different style of artwork through the use of performance, art events and interactive artworks. Stellar has engaged with the theme of the body throughout majority of his artworks. He has the reputation to be involved with his artworks, therefore making them personal to himself and becoming engaged with also the audience.
Stellar is a postmodern artist as he emerges art movement which contradict modernism in his artworks. Some of these art movements include intermediary, installation, conceptual art and multimedia, generally involving video which is described at postmodern. 2 artworks- Stellar is well known by many people as the artist who uses suspension to portray a performance, using his body as a medium. In the seventies, when Stellar first started experimenting with suspensions, he made his performances mostly private and all acts were performed with surgical equipment.
Stealer’s suspension performances attracted the audience as it provided them with excitement which occasionally generated shock value. Stealers artwork Suspension, involved his naked flesh, pierced with hooks, which were inserted with wires and pulleys which raised him up off the ground, pulling and stretching at his skin. When the hook enters Stealer’s skin, it causes his body to become a physical extension. This then shocks the audience, although it stimulates a calm reaction from Stellar, slower pulse and blood flow is then diminished.
Another famous artwork which Stellar has created to gain a reaction from the audience is his artwork Extended Arm. The Extend is constructed materials such as stainless steel, aluminum and acrylic. The artwork is a lifelike robotic hand, with five fingers, with some novel capabilities. It is able to do such movements such as wrist rotation as well as thumb rotation, individual finger flexing tit each finger being able to gripper in it.
Similar to Picasso, Stellar designs his artworks in hoping to shock the audience which will attract the audience to gain interest in his artworks, and to get his name well known by the general public. As Picasso famous artworks have been around for years longer than Stellar, both artists portrayed their own type of shock. The way shock is seen now, in comparison to when Picasso first originally started creating artworks, has changed drastically, as shock back then wouldn’t create the same impact in present.
