Saturday 8 June 2013

Norm Magnusson Landscape In-Depth Analysis

This art piece was created by and photographed by a contempary New York based painter and sculpturer named Norm Magnusson. He is a New York based and political activist who was born on March 20th 1960. He is also the founder of the art movement 'funism' that begun in 1991. He started his career by making allegorical animal paintings including social commentaries, and realised his interest in political art in particular and how it could be used as persuasion.

This directed him into the public community where he made a variety of short videos, viral emails and roadside historical markers which led him to being on the U.S national television.

Through his work he tries to bring across messages to the public. For example: the signs presented at the top of this page which were a part of his project named '1-75'. This projectconsisted of of signs with a historical content written on them which he placed in 50 different placeson the Interstate 75 highway. he did this to inform the public about a specific person, and their beliefs who stood in the spot where the sign has been placed, as well as to inspire others along the route of which the markers were placed. I like the way that he has used two bright primary colours for the signs: yellow and blue which stand out. I think that the reason for his choice of colours is to catch the publics attention to understand the importance of the message.

After he did this project he created another one in 2009 which was called 'Decorating Nature'. Throughout this project he decorated 100 pieces of nature by using various colours of paint to add patterns on different types of vegetation/nature for example: leaves, rocks, trees, pine cones etc. Norm Magnusson said that this project is 'art that is aesthetically and intellectually accessible and deals with important themes'. The purpose of this second project was for Norm Magnusson to express the connection he believes he has with nature, by taking it out of nature to 'edit'/ alter it, and place it back in nature with his own 'touch' to it. 

I like the second picture where Norm Magnusson has painted circles onto a brown leaf because he has made it stand out from the rest of nature it is surrounded by. This is due to the fact that the leaf is brown as well as the nature around it, therefore blended in as a part of nature, but now that it has a colourful pattern on it (done by Norm Magnusson himself), that specific piece of nature visually shows a connection between Norm Magnusson and nature.

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