An Influence- Swoon

Swoon

Artist

1. When/ where was the artist born?

New London, Conneticut, 1978.

2. Give a brief biography of the artist.

Swoon is a street artist born in New London, Connecticut, and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. She moved to New York City at age nineteen following her creative aspirations, and specializes in life-size wheat paste prints and paper cut-outs of figures. Swoon’s real name is Caledonia Dance Curry, yet she has adopted Swoon she associates with street art and is a street artist and does not want to be prosecuted for making illegal artworks and “destroying” pubic property. Swoon studied painting at the Pratt institute in Brooklyn and started doing street art around 1999.

3. Art Movement

German Expressionist Woodblock prints

Graffiti Art

Street Art

Influencers in Public Space

4. Art Era

Post Modern - Contemporary

6.  Artistic Influences

When she first began creating her block print posters, Swoon was heavily influenced by Gordon Matta-Clark, an American artist best known for his temporary site-specific works, specifically his “building cuts,” a series of for which he removed various sections of floors, ceilings, and walls in abandoned buildings in the 1970s. Because these buildings were slated for demolition, only a limited number of people would be able to see it.  

7.  Personal Influences

She moved to New York city to go to art school and was influenced by the rich street life of the city.  Her objection to the somewhat inactive, institutionalized, recorded (everyone learnt what was written in the history book-archival) nature of academic art, inspired her to create art using non-permanent materials, within a format that not only promoted the decay of the artwork but allowed it to connect/interact with its environment and its community. Also Swoon is influenced by the community, and the people are the main subject matter. (New York- dirty, run down, strange, different).

8. Other Influences

Influenced by the rich street life of New York. 

Also, Swoon does not use her real name as she is interested in making artworks rather than being famous.

Artwork

Find 2x Artworks for each artist

Explain the kind of subject matter the artist has represented for each artwork.

(i.)                    In the first example, “Untitled “; the subject matter is to women. One is older, most likely the mother/ carer/ friend, and the other is younger and is being comforted, by the older woman. The subject matter is typical of Swoon’s work because it shows someone who is vulnerable.  Swoon’s world is often populated with street people, and friends and family shown realistically. Her artwork tell stories and are often about the dialogue between her environments, community, the artwork itself, and the wall and the artwork.

(ii.)                  In the second example, “Man on a Milk-crate”; the subject matter is an elderly man, simply sitting on a milk-crate. This is based on a time that Swoon saw a man ticketed for the illegal use of a milk crate, which he was sitting on in the middle of the street. Swoon thought this was ridiculous, because people should be able to use the streets as public spaces. This, she feels, is equivalent to encouraging the people to not use the streets as public spaces. With this in mind, she immediately went to work pasting up men on milkcrates around the city.

Describe the style of the artwork. Include use of colour, cutting lines, lines, technique and brush-strokes (if any).

Swoon carves and creates huge woodblock prints, often life sized.

(i.)  In the example “Untitled” the style is mainly black and white and her work reminds me of other woodblock prints that we have studied for example, German Woodblock Prints.  She uses a range of different lines to show the feeling between the two women.  The hands in the artwork for example are deliberately long and dramatic with the jagged lines showing the hands and clothing almost mingling together.  The black and white of the figures contrasts with the background of the artwork which is like cut out paper, that Swoon has also drawn on.  Swoon is a master of using cut out paper, to play with positive and negative space, as she explores the experience of the street. 

(ii.)The second artwork shows a small amount of colour, but it is drab and kind of dirty, like the man sitting on a milk crate might be.   The colour is also on the mans face, and there is graffiti in the background, to show where the man is on the street. 

Is the artist making a social comment through visual imagery?

Swoon picks her spots carefully, exploring neglected space and walls with interesting textures. Her backdrops include abandoned buildings, rundown warehouses, and broken-looking walls. Because she is interested in the history and texture of the wall, this feature is not hidden, but rather enhanced by the thin newsprint paper. Also, with her cutouts, the figures are intricately cut to reveal the wall that they rest on. This opens up a dialogue between the artwork and the wall, as it works to reveal the wall’s material and history and the social world of the street and its importance.

Also, with the man on the street, sitting on the milk-crate, Swoon make many copies of him, and pastes them up everywhere, because she wants people to know that she thinks that he shouldn’t of been arrested and that she thinks they are wrong, she is trying to get us to change our minds with her. She is making a social comment.

Define the meaning of the artwork.

Swoon’s materials (newspaper and wheatstarch paste) are of particular importance because they stress the temporary quality of the work. She does not consider what she is doing illegal, and instead pastes her prints up unabashedly, sometimes in the middle of the day, which allows passersby to interact with her as she is hanging them, inviting a performance aspect to her piece.  Swoons’ artwork’s are meaningful because they are made of materials that are not meant to last for long, such as recycled newsprint, so she can quickly make a social comment about a topic then the work decays as she moves on to the next topic.  In the artwork “Untitled” she is showing the relationship between two women, which may not ever be shown in an art gallery, as she is interested in everyone’s problems and showing them to be equally important.  In the artwork about the man on the milk crate she has chosen to show a cheap milk-crate which are often left outside or out the back of a business, in a dirty laneway, and people with no whee else to sit, use the milk crates to sit on.

World

Examine how current or historical events at the time the artist was alive shape the artist’s practice.

It is hard to say exactly what historical events influenced Swoon, although her way of making graffiti Street Art could be inspired by stylised graffiti writing that began in New York in the 1960’s, and was related to “Hip Hop” Culture.  Street Art was named as a movement in the 1980’s and began as a type of rebellion, so the artists used tags and spray cans to showcase their ideas as they use any surface to show their unique ideas.

Justify your examination of the influence of current or historical world events on the artwork.

- In the 1960’s, with Hip Hop culture, and the term street art, first being used in the 1980’s, many artist were interested in “Urban Guerrilla Art”. These ideas meant that artists were interesting in taking artworks into the streets and to the mass of people (poor, street..etc.) Street artists were doing this so they could get their artworks out of art galleries and museums.  In other words they were making artworks that could relate to ‘common’  people and not just people with money to buy artworks. Swoon even says that “she couldn’t make art for the sole purpose of exhibiting in these comatoriums.  Here she is making a comment that artworks in galleries are enough to put you into a coma they are so boring and not able to relate to everyday people.

- Swoon and other street artists, are responding to the times in which they live in, she is very interested in helping people such as: rape victims and people who live/ live off the street.

Summarise how the country where the artist was born or lived influenced the artworks.

 Swoon is an artist from the United States of America, and she is particularly interested in the streets of New York, and other cities, especially the parts of the city that are downtrodden and not used.  These artists see the unused parts of the city as places that they can uses to show their ideas.  The city is a place where you see both rich and poor people in the same spaces, and Swoon is choosing to show the people of the street and by making their everyday life the subject matter of her artworks.

Audience

Give a personal evaluation of the artwork

Do you think the artwork is successful in conveying a meaning to the audience through the use of line and colour? What is your personal response to the artwork?

 Yes, I think the artwork is successful as it shows very clearly the relationship of the two women, even though we don’t know who they are.  Part of Swoon’s ideas are about how artworks are not named, and not dated which shows how she is interested in the fact that the artwork is not designed to be around for a long time, or to be put into a gallery. The second artwork is successful because it shows an issue for poorer citizens, as milk crates are free and just lying around, yet you can be prosecuted for stealing them or sitting on them Swoon’s ideas are very important in understanding city life.

Find a critical or an audience response to the artwork from the time it was made; also find a critical or an audience response to the artwork from contemporary times. Interpret how audience response may differ or remain the same today.

It is hard to locate critical writing about the individual example I have chosen, because the works by Swoon are difficult to date, as they are designed to not last very long.   I found a 2005 article called “Swoon” about an exhibition in the Deitch Gallery in New York, which reports on the artworks she made for an exhibition, there. The article is interested in how Swoon’s artworks have now been placed inside the gallery walls, which Swoon was reluctant about, as she wanted her art to connect with people in the street rather than in a gallery.

Frames

Subjective Frame:

Swoons’ artworks are intensely personal as she wants to create many works as quickly as possible, to get them out there in multiple forms so like printmaking as a medium in art there are many examples for all people to see. That means she is interested in equality and social justice for everyone so everyone has access to art as well as pointing out the injustices of life.

Structural Frame:

Swoon’s artworks that I have discussed both look like they have been drawn and they both are about making marks on the paper to show an idea. They are like a graphic artwork, similar to woodblocks prints but in a contemporary style, with graffiti in the background for example, so they look slightly unfinished and quickly done.  They use techniques that show that everything changes quickly and nothing is stable or “archival”.

Cultural Frame:

Artists like Swoon, who work with inherently ephemeral materials face less controversy and public animosity specifically because the works they put up are made of ephemeral materials. As I have written previously, Swoon’s prints can most frequently be found in the forgotten corners of otherwise obvious public spaces. She does not consider what she is doing illegal, and instead pastes her prints up unabashedly, sometimes in the middle of the day, which allows passersby to interact with her as she is hanging them. In spite of this impermanent aspect of her work, is it classified under the same category as permanent defacement of property and is still considered as illegal as art made with more permanent materials, such as aerosol spray or markers. Even street artists who work with less ephemeral materials, face less scrutiny than graffiti artists, if simply because what they do oftentimes just seems more artistic.

Postmodern Frame:

Although she has partaken in numerous projects since her arrival on the street art scene, it is her life-sized wheat paste newspaper prints and intricate cutouts that initially gained the attention of the art world. Similarly, Swoon’s wheat starch newspaper prints can only survive for a relatively brief period, as they are exposed to the elements. Swoon understands that because of the fragility of her materials and the exposure to weather conditions, the pieces will soon disappear completely from the wall space.  For the brief time that the print does remain, Swoon wants them to become part of the space they inhabit, and to interact with its community in “a human way.” And so, these life-size prints of people work to reclaim the visual landscape and to create dialogue and interest in the community through their presence.

The works are based on snapshots of everyday city life, in a postmodern world, they create a dialogue between the viewer and the happenings of the city around them, as it is actually happening.

Tittle: Unknown; Media: Mixed Media (scavenged and local materials as well as print making materials.); Size: 26cm x 34cm.

Media: Mixed Media (scavenged and local materials as well as print making materials.); Size: 26cm x 34cm.