Essays on Contemporary Art

I want you to visualize a glass with half of water inside, is it half-empty or half-full? Some people might say half-full and some people might say half-empty. But, what do these things mean? Why do some people see it as half-full but some see...

The pulitzer prize winning graphic novel MAUS, illustrated and written by Art Spiegelman, depicts humans in the form of animals as he follows the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s’ Europe, and his son (Art), a cartoonist who tries to come to...

Art before the Second World War was predominantly centered around Paris and other European centers. The turn of the twentieth-century brought along with it an expansive range of movements attempting to move further from the old classicism and naturalism. The idea was that the turn...

In post World War II abstract expressionism was the art movement that took over American art culture in the 1940s, after being developed in New York by the New York School of art; a club made up of select artists. Abstract expressionism borrowed elements from...

When Judith Butler contemplates about gender, she uses the concept of the productive nature of iteration, continuing the tradition of Derrida. As she argues in Gender Trouble, the iteration of conventional behavioral practices precede bad, excessive or infelicitous performances, this is exactly why the performative...

Art Nouveau made quite a few cameos in the entertainment media. In 2007 Disney’s Enchanted feature their protagonist Giselle, who’s portrayed as a cliche hopeless romantic and traditionally feminine woman character, which is similar to how ideal women were portrayed in the Art Nouveau period....

Pop Art was an influential movement in the 20th century. There was an idea within the modern movement, that one had to respond to one’s own time. Pop Art was a reaction to the post-war period of mass production and advertisement imagery. The movement of...

Escapism is a common theme in art history in which artists depict events or activities that offer an escape from the woes of life. Artists have always found it useful to represent joyful activities in their works of art. The depictions created, avail momentary amusement...

A contemporary work of design I chose which I believe is bad for society is the “Cinderella High-Heel Church” in Taiwan. The structure was ‘commissioned by local tourism authorities’ (Tablang, Forbes, 2016) and completed its development in 2016. I sourced the image from a Forbes...

Widely known for his controversial and anime-inspired artworks, Japanese artist Mr. , aged 49, returns to Hong Kong for his new exhibition titled “People misunderstand me and the contents of my paintings. They just think they are nostalgic, cute, and look like Japanese anime. That...