Integrative studio2: Bridge project2

Part I: Object, Form/Material, or Image – Find / Create  an object, form, or image that relates to your topic. Using this, create 5 diptychs.

My object: Coca-cola

5 diptychs:
  1. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/journey/us/en/private/fileassets/pdf/2011/05/Coca-Cola_125_years_booklet.pdf.                                “The U.S. government requests that Coca‐Cola be made available to the troops. Robert Woodru pledges to provide Coke to the military for a nickel regardless of what it costs the Company to produce the product. During the war, 64 portable bottling plants are sent to Asia, Europe and North Africa. More than 5 billion bottles of Coca‐Cola are distributed.”                                                             In this pair of diptychs, I want to focus on the internationalization and localization of Coca-cola. Nowadays, people can find a can of Coca-cola in every part of the world. In order to achieve this, after WWII, Coca-cola builds a large amount of factories in every country to shorten the time and money spent in transportation, and also the most important, every region has their own version of logo. In this way, Coca-cola makes people in different countries accept it more easily. In this pair of diptychs, I draw a several countries’ version of Coca-cola logo in one paper, and draw the original – English – version of Coca-cola logo in the other by using watercolor and art masking fluid.

Reflect questions:

  • What conversation happened between each image in this diptych?

The text and form combined together and present multiple culture backgrounds. Visually, it creates differences in emphasis by using different portion of negative space.

  • How was the medium selected successful at supporting the content of your object, form, or image? (if it was not as successful as others, why?)

The art masking fluid allows me to combine text and forms/shapes together as I want. However, the edges of texts are a little bit unclear.

  • How did the materiality (medium used) affect the content or meaning of the individual artworks?

Since I drew this pair of diptychs using water color, in some degree it adds the graceful lines and fluent shapes of the pattern, and also show the liquid image of Coca-cola.

  • What did you learn about your content through this medium exploration?

As a paint, watercolor is very flexible, because it has a wide range of colors, and due to the liquidity, the shapes are easily formed and it could layer again and again. In my diptychs, I layered the overlapping part of patterns, and creates a sense of 3D form.

  • How did the medium you used change the context of your object, form, or image?

The patterns are similar, the only change is the text which represent different countries. I think the paint shows how Coca-cola is the same thing no-matter in what country, it’s just the changing in the logo shows how Coca-cola using localization achieves internationalization.

  • What websites / books / museums / galleries / other artists did you research during this process for ideas and inspiration?

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/journey/us/en/private/fileassets/pdf/2011/05/Coca-Cola_125_years_booklet.pdf

Regarding the whole process:

  • How does this experiment shift your overall thesis question?

It reminds me that an item is subject, how it reflects different perspective is that how people view it. So I need to try to consider every part of the culture backgrounds behind it when I do researches.

2.

Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 1982. Composite Polaroid. Collection of the artist.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Green Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962. Acrylic, screenprint, and graphite pencil on canvas. Overall: 82 3/4 × 57 1/8 in. (210.2 × 145.1 cm).

“And it wasn’t about the individual things so much, as the sheer abundance of things, which reflected the spread of mass manufacturing and growing postwar American consumer culture.”

I was inspired by David Hockney’s polaroid pictures collage Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 198 and Andy Warhol’s painting Green Coca-Cola Bottles. As a British artist, David Hockney viewed the shimmering swimming pool under the sun as the symbol of California. It’s exotic and joyful. So he used cameras to capture a lot of moments of swimming pools and those became the California in his eyes. In Andy Warhol’s eyes, coca-cola is the beautiful thing in everyday’s life. When he created the collection which includes the Green Coca-Cola Bottles, he said:“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers by essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” I think it reflects my theme class in some degree that coca-cola is viewed as an item of breaking classes. But I also think about it in an other perspective, since I was a foreigner in speak of America as well as its product coca-cola, can I view coca-cola as the same representation/symbol as Andy Warhol did? As same as a foreigner, can I find a perspective to symbolize an item like David Hockney? So by using the same technique as David Hockney used in Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 198 and shooting the same item in Andy Warhol’s Green Coca-Cola Bottles — coca-cola, I created this diptych to convey my perspective of coca-cola. And in another paper, I use polaroid pictures which shot about  a Chinese coconut beverage, just like the Andy Warhol draw Coca-cola in his painting, because this kind of coconut beverage in China is similar to Coca-cola in the United States. I want to view a similar item in a different culture background, especially in this case, in my own culture background.

Reflective questions:

  • What conversation happened between each image in this diptych?

Two different kind of beverages shows one similar culture in two different counties.

  • How was the medium selected successful at supporting the content of your object, form, or image? (if it was not as successful as others, why?)

Since I got the inspiration form David Hockey’s Gregory Swimming Los Angeles March 31st 1982.  I choose the same material that he used in his cameraworks.

  • How did the materiality (medium used) affect the content or meaning of the individual artworks?

Since polaroid picture forms image immediately, and photography captures the “right-now” moment, I think the material adds an instantaneous element to it .

  • What did you learn about your content through this medium exploration?

Same item may have various meanings in different artists’ eye, so the way every artist choose to present it may vary as well.

  • How did the medium you used change the context of your object, form, or image?

In Andy Warhol’s painting, Coca-cola is present by drawing, and in my diptychs, I changed that to polaroid. In this way, I combined two artists’ perspectives.

  • What websites / books / museums / galleries / other artists did you research during this process for ideas and inspiration?

All the sources that I used are listed above.

Regarding the whole process:

  • How does this experiment shift your overall thesis question?

When doing researches, some comparison in other culture backgrounds may provide a new perspective.

3.

In this pair of diptychs, I want to focus on the mass production of Coca-cola and, class-equality and capitalism it represents. So I use the logo of Coca-cola and create a pattern and print on a gilded paper. In the gilded paper, I think it reflects the capitalism behinds Coca-cola. Gold represents real, and I think it matches the advertisement phrases “It is the real thing.” In the other one, I print the Coca-cola logo in colors which are the same as  its now-exist packages colors to represent different kinds of Coca-cola and different kinds of classes who can all enjoy this beverage. Also I add a gilded pull-ring of Coca-cola can to make a connection between two pieces.

4.

In this pair of diptychs, I want to experience with different kinds of materials. So I use wood board, red card board and transparent plastic paper to make two shapes of Coca-cola bottles with backgrounds. I layer these three different kinds of material together into one piece, and I choose to reveal a part of transparent plastic paper which covers the red Coca-cola bootle because it would reflect light and adds brightness to it. So in some degree, it mimics the smooth surface of the bootle.

5.

In this pair of diptychs, I want to view the item in a different perspective other than mine. So I asked 5 friends of mine to draw things they would think of when hearing about Coca-cola, and in the other piece, I use two Coca-cola can and a plastic Coca-cola bottle to make a collage to match the chaotic piece my friends drew, and since these cans and bottles are the ones I drunk, it’s like my daily version of Coca-cola. I want to do this pair of diptychs is because I want to view the item in a daily life view, so I can jump out of the perspective of what I see in researches.

 

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