SUSTAINED INVESTIGATION

Theme: What does this mean?

To create meaningful art an artist needs to find a theme or topic with which they have a strong personal link. At this point in your IB course your theme can be broad and cover a wide range of subject matter (NATURE, MAN MADE, FASHION, BEAUTY etc) but it needs to be personally linked to you the artist. Think about what interests you. What fascinates you? What are you passionate about?

Some examples themes that you could choose from

(you are strongly encouraged to develop your own):

• Metamorphosis – life cycles, change, alteration, transfiguration, mutation

• Music – sound, making tone visible, music culture, what do music and art have in common?

• Dance – movement, rhythm, repetition, physicality, meaning in gesture

• Legend/mythology – ancient, primitive, modern, stories, archetypes, moral lessons, religion, ritual, social obligations

• Nature vs. Science – current issues (bioethics) technology, how do we understand the world? Our place in the universe, limits of scientific knowledge, art and science, Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, etc.

• Myself - diary, memories, esteem, place in the world, pride, shame, family, heritage, ethnicity, self-portrait, friends, loves, enemies.

• Gender issues – male & female, role in society, in family, in evolution. Advantages/disadvantages of being one or the other. Stereotypes, cultural roles, sexuality, gender in politics, gender reversal.

• Scale – close-up/magnified, objects blown out of proportion, large vs. miniscule, other worlds of scale, space, positive/negative, color and texture.

• Other worlds – underwater, space, extraterrestrial, microscopic, imagination, computer/virtual world.

• Animals – other life, instinctual, life cycles of, physical/spiritual power in, ecology, animals as symbols, cultural associations with animals.

• Art and the senses – ways of knowing, art that smells, tastes, feels, etc. Art that appeals to alternative senses.

• Cryptography – art as code, codes in life, symbols, signs, text, sense in nonsense, order, mathematics, key to understanding.

• God/religion – creation, destruction, judgment, what is holy? Role of religion in society, metaphysics, personal sense of god, mercy, forgiveness, justification, sin, sacrifice.

• Kitsch – what is kitsch? What is beautiful? What is not? Value, mass production, pop culture, your own personal sense of kitsch, aspects of society as revealed in its kitsch.

• Graphics – use of line, color and composition to create a graphic identity, advertising, mass media, manipulation of imagery, the (blurred) line between what reality and the graphic representation.

• Human anatomy – body, muscle, bone, skin, weight distribution, issues of beauty and human body, use/abuse of the body, skin (color?), aging, disease.

• Dreams – meaning, analysis, associations, truth in, the bizarre, wish-fulfillment, imagery, Surrealism, the subconscious, Sigmund Freud.

• Chance – allowing chance to dictate art, automatic drawing, the Exquisite Corpse, Surrealism, Dadaism, kinetic art, image association.

• Emotion – human feelings, expression, knowledge through emotion, emotional situations, culture and emotions, controlled/uncontrolled emotions, conveying emotion, color, line and shape and emotions, Expressionism, Fauvism, Abstraction.

• Collection/series – repetition, repeated objects, objects in a series, objects that share something in common, distant vs. close relationships between objects, association.

• Beauty/ugliness – what defines these? What constitutes the appealing or the repulsive? Manipulating materials so that they take on appealing/repulsive qualities.

• “The Wedding”- from the engagement ring to the sealing kiss

• Architectural renderings- showing (exploring) the interior and exterior space with a strong focus on light, perspective and structure

• Exploration- using realistic and non-objective animals (stipple technique….a series of black and white ink drawings moving into color)

• People - Portraits and the human form

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