Assignment 003: Jason Schmidt, Portraits of Contemporary Artists

Vanessa Beercroft

Bio: 

Beercroft is an Italian contemporary artists who has been described as almost everything under the sun.  Her work has been called provocative, horrible, brilliant, fashion, forward thinking, and so much more.  Her work falls somewhere in the middle of documentary and performance.  She is a painter, drawer, photographer, performance artist, and also a multimedia artist. She is widely known for documenting her openings and using the videos and photographs taken from the openings as its own separate work of art.

 

Schloss Vinsebeck, Steinheim. vb51.201, 2002, photographs from performance

LVMH, Paris, France. vb56.607_08A.vb, 2005, Photograph from performance

I don't particularly enjoy Beercroft's work.  I find it to be a bit odd without real purpose for it being the way it is.  Although I do really enjoy her photographs from her performance pieces.  While looking through her work of drawings and paintings I found those to come off as very amateur. 

Nobuyoshi Araki

Bio:

Araki is a Tokyo born photographer and contemporary artist. One of his most famous works is a series of photographs that he took of his wife entitled, The Sentimental Journey which was taken on their honeymoon.  She died in 1990 shortly after.  He has since then caught the eye of celebrities such as Bjork and Lady Gaga.

Untitled, 1993, silver gelatin print

 Lady Gaga in Bondage, Polaroid test shot, 2011

I find Araki's work to be provocative and well composed.  He pushes the limits of what is acceptable and  is able to captivate a wide range of audiences all over the world.  I feel inspired by some of his nude works and am interested in each of his works more as I explore his works. 

Doug Aitken

Bio:

Aitken is an American artist born in California.  His arts range everywhere from narrative film to sculptures to photography to architectural works to videos.  He is very well known for his mutli screened multimedia installations. 

99 Cent Dreams, 2007, Multimedia

Wilderness, 2006, automated mirror sculpture

I find Aitken's work to be very interesting.  I can imagine how amazing it would be to walk into one of his openings with a work such as the automated mirror sculpture.  Since he tends to not have photographic works it is harder for me to critique his work but I am very drawn in by him.