Gary Hill

Gary Hill is a video artist who has exhibited his video installations worldwide. Electronic Linguistic, created in 1977, is one of his early pieces. In this work he shows the relationship between linguistic and electronic “phenomena.” He does this by using white pixel images, which appear and move on a black screen, which correlated to high-frequency sounds. As the video progresses, the pixels become larger and start to pulsate more intensely.

The way that Hill was able to correlate the images and the high frequency sounds really fascinated me. He made the frequencies change as the pixel images changed. As the video goes on the pixels turn into a circular shape accompanied by high tones. The work ends with a silent image, which lasts for several seconds. This early work was a precursor to his later more complex art pieces.

LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, was completely different than what I was expecting. It was massive as compared to the Norton Simon Museum and had a lot more artwork. It was also extremely gorgeous and had modern buildings. There were also a huge variety of different painting styles. When I went to the Norton Simon Museum I wasn’t really a huge fan of contemporary art. The contemporary art at LACMA completely changed my mind. Everything in the contemporary building was interesting. I also noticed that almost all the artwork in the contemporary building had bold colors, which really caught my eye and attracted me to the artwork. I am really glad that I was able to experience going to this museum.

Lari Pittman

Lari Pittman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1952. He was inspired by commercial advertising, folk art, and decorative traditions. Pittman’s art comprises of themes such as romantic loves, violence, and mortality. In his paintings, Pittman gives human characteristics to furniture, weapons, and animals. Pittman paints his art in layers that overlap each other. His art is a rebellion against the division of two contradicting ideas. His work actually depicts the complementary nature of beauty and suffering as well as pain and pleasure. In the early 1980s, Pittman started to use silhouettes. He used silhouettes to discuss social conventions, human behavior and encoded behavior. He believes that even if the work has a strong declarative voice, which is obvious, the painting’s subtext or code is actually being advanced. I personally like Lari Pittman’s artwork. The colors he uses are bold and each of his paintings have a unique message which is he trying to convey.