Hum 100 Project 2 short answer

What is your chosen artifact? Include a link to or a picture of the artifact.

Paths and Edges #4 by Richard Serra

I. Describe the artifact in detail. For instance, how would you describe it to someone who could not see it?

Paths and Edges #4 is part of a collection of sixty etchings created by Richard Serra in 2007. This particular etching is of several large black semi-circles on a white background. To describe this etching best, I would say it is like seeing a rainbow. However, the rainbow is strikingly black and the white background is barely visible.

II. Choose elements of the artifact that you believe are most important to how you experience it and explain why. For instance, what particularly catches your senses or makes you want to keep experiencing it? Does the choice of medium impact your experience? Serra’s Paths and Edges #4 gives his audience the desire and sense of touch with the visual magnitude of the large black semi-circles on the nearly unseen white background.

III. State your opinion on what you believe is the purpose of this artifact and the success of the creator in achieving the purpose. For instance, what message do you believe the creator is trying to express, and is that message successfully expressed? When viewing Paths and Edges #4 you don’t think of the artist Serra or his intention. These black huge hypnotizing semi-circles awakens your sense of imagination. It personally brought me back to a time in my childhood where my favorite toy was a Kaleidoscope. This was his purpose, he wanted people viewing his art to experience it in their own way and beyond just viewing what he created.

IV. Discuss how the artifact reflects the culture (or context) in which it exists. Be sure to address what aspects of culture have relevance for this artifact: politics, history, religion, social perceptions, technology, media, education, and so on. In other words, how do the artifact and its culture interrelate? For instance, how would a particular form of body modification reflect the urban culture in which you encountered it? Paths and Edges was created by Serra who was intrigued by space and the things contained in it, which he ultimately wanted to organize. He hated his work being critiqued. This was one reason why he made people viewing his etchings, the art. He felt the new function of art today should be to get art viewers to look past what an everyday objects use is by getting a consumer hi-tech driven culture to get a different perspective of the object. He wants to show art doesn’t have to be beautiful to be art. Paths and Edges is one of Serra’s many ways of creating Abstract art. The abstract etchings demand for all, took look beyond initial perception. The use of their own mind and life experiences to determine the actual perception. Paths and Edges are a Universal artifact. Seen by many cultures beside America, such as France and Japan. Serra’s art still implodes all a sense of Freedom.

V. Use the artifact to discuss how acts of creative expression impact and are impacted by the people and situations that surround it. How might the artifact and the person who created it have impacted each other? For instance, how might the geographic location where the artifact was made, the materials used to create the artifact, the medium of the creative process, or the environment where the artifact is displayed influence the creator’s life or future creative work? How might the artifact and the culture or context in which it was created have impacted each other? For instance, does the artifact add to the understanding of the culture from which it was created? What contributions does it make to continuing on a dialogue about that culture and the importance of its artifacts? Paths and Edges was created in New York, and Published by Gemini G.E.L LLC. New York is known for embracing The Fine Arts. Richard Serra recalls, at the age of four being taken by spatial differences. He worked for a Steel Mill while in school. Similarly, his father worked as a Pipe Fitter at a shipyard. Serra went with his father one day to watch the launch of a ship he had been working on. The experience of seeing the boat which look like steel just tied together until it was launched into the water and resurfaced as a boat. Paths and Edges’ primary color is Black. The use of Black conveys Serra’s love of steel. Steel is seen a strong, perhaps intimidating material. It’s needed by most cultures for familiar uses. Paths and Edges brings an unfamiliar perspective of steel and the space it occupies.

VI. Questions: Pose questions you have after thinking deeply about this artifact. What more do you want to know regarding:

A. The relationship between human culture and expression

B.

Question 1: Why are there so many etchings in Paths and Edges?

Question 2: Was there a different purpose for creating each etching in this collection.

C. Your personal assumptions about artifacts of this sort and why they exist

D.

Question 1: Was Paths and Edges suppose to make me want to touch it?

Question 2: How did it get me to in vision something beyond what my eyes saw.

C. How your values have shaped and are shaped by your expression and that of others

Question 1: What value of art did it give someone who is not influenced by an artsy culture?

Question 2: Do savvy art viewers see etching’s the same as the unsavvy?

E. The relationship between the possible intent of the creator and your own interpretation of its meaning

F.

Question 1: Did Serra intend for the average person to want to see more of his creations?

Question 2: Is he proud of his new version of art?

VII. Speculate on how you would go about answering these questions. For instance, what sorts of things would you study about these kinds of artifacts and their contexts that might begin addressing these questions? I would research more on Paths and Edges and Richard Serra’s past and present work. I would use art article’s, biographies and look for critic reviews.