Investigation for Midterm

For my midterm, I'm planning on doing visual reflections along with the two-page artist statement. I'd like to further explore magazine culture and I've compiled quite a few interesting representations of women from magazines that I thought I could include in a midterm college or multi-media project based on an imagined spread from a magazine. I was thinking about making advertisements or several that promote the effects of aging rather than discourage it.

For instance, I could have an image of cellulite that's been edited and have a caption like "have the legs you've always wanted". It'd be an interesting thing to explore the irony of having traditionally unattractive features being highlighted rather than hidden. I've been continuing to gather images from magazines and arranging them and the next step will be to cut and paste different items together to achieve the concept I want to capture.

Artist Raylene Camerano took her own photography and tore them to combine facial features from different people she knew and combined them into one being that "fit the beauty standards". This of course was pointing out that the beauty standards cannot be met and in actuality, the reality is that so many people make up the genetics of our society there cannot be just one standard. I really liked her approach to this way of art-making as it seems to capture the essence of each person that creates a collective "invented" identity almost like Johanna Goodman does.

This is a piece from another artist, Canela Pontelli that I liked which takes classical images of women and marks them like a plastic surgeon would emphasize the ridiculous nature of facial surgery just to fit a certain standard. This kind of art is meant to demonstrate how beauty can ensnare hearts, capture minds, and can also stir up emotional wildfires. I like the use of older images that are applied in modern ways here; that might be something I will try to do in my own work.

Sources:

Camerano, Raylene. “Shredding Beauty Standards.” Medium. The Baseline, December 18, 2018. https://medium.com/the-base-line/shredding-beauty-standards-214af3aae080.

Behance. “Beauty Standards.” Behance. Accessed March 4, 2021. https://www.behance.net/gallery/23764667/Beauty-standards.