(information collated by Unifrog) might be very conceptual, involving cracking an egg or a sexual act. Art Successful performance artists include Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, Serbian Marina Abramovic or American Anya Liftig. The medium has Some specialist areas also been adopted by celebrity actor Shia Labeouf. Life drawing Every art degree will offer some amount of life drawing, intended more as training for your eye and line than a particularly creative Some influential academics practice. Life drawing can also be a good place to experiment with John Berger England, United Kingdom, 1926-2017 new techniques, free from having to find and defend your own Berger's 1972 book Ways of Seeing examined Western cultural meaningful subject. You will draw from the figure for poses from 30 aesthetics, offering radical takes on elements of painting like seconds to an hour long, mixing up the size and methods used in photography, nudity, and gender that are largely taken for granted your work (pencil/ oil paint/charcoal), helping you grow into your owntoday. In particular, Berger's observation that the male authorship of mature style. most paintings means we see 'Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at'. This was Printmaking revolutionary, written three years before feminist film critic Laura The most accessible form of printmaking is monoprint, whereby you Mulvey first coined the term 'male gaze' in 1975. ink up a sheet of plastic or metal, wipe your drawing from it and press it onto paper (see Degas' bathtime monoprints), or rest paper on an Jean-Michel Basquiat United States, 1960-1988 inked up sheet and draw onto it, leaving reversed marks when you Basquiat was the ultimate 'enfant terrible' of art. His difficult peel it off. Facilities on art degrees are likely to also allow older background - he failed high school - meant he spent his time doing printmaking forms like etching and woodcut, that involve heavy tools life drawing, practicing graffiti and painting on found doors and and chemicals (see Drurer's Rhinoceros and Goya's Disasters of War). windows when he couldn't afford canvas. This led to him becoming These forms were historically widely used for producing maps and one of the most successful painters of all time. He was a mentee of pamphlets but are now very specialist. Andy Warhol and subscriber to the Pop Art movement that condemned the nerdy/exclusive attitude of the contemporaneous art Hot topics world and wanted to make work that everyone could feel and What is 'art'? understand. He was also the first highly successful black artist and What should be classified as art and who decides? This question was was driven by wanting to put black people in art and portray them infamously raised by French-American Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp truthfully. A lot of this idealism is undermined by the hype and prices in 1917 when he signed a common urinal, called it 'Fountain' and put his work now fetches - Basquiat's scribbles on napkins sell for prices it in an exhibition. 'Fountain' caused much outrage at the time, but its comparable with those for Renaissance masterpieces. replicas are now displayed in important public collections from Tate Modern to the Pompidou. Softened by Fountain, we're now very Podcasts happy to make pilgrimages to see Jackson Pollock's paint-splatter The Modern Art Notes Podcast https://manpodcast.com/ canvases or Malevich's plain white squares, but where is the line Tyler Green, USA drawn - what can, what should, we classify as 'not art'? A weekly, hour-long interview program featuring artists, historians, authors, curators and conservators. Award winning art critic and What is the purpose of art? historian Tyler Green updates you on the shows and characters of the Historically, art existed for its religious purpose. The Greeks believed contemporary art world. in neoplatonic love, and that making beautiful tributes to the gods would raise them towards godliness. In the Renaissance, political Tate Events https://player.fm/series/tate-events powers like Florence's Medici patronised (sponsored) artists like Various, UK Leonardo and Michelangelo to tell religious stories and inspire The ever current Tate galleries' podcast has wide ranging themes subservience from the lower classes. What is art's role now? As from The Black Subject to Matisse to happening exhibitions and western faith in religion has been replaced by humanism, art has symposia. taken on a political purpose, but there aren't sponsors for political art as there were for religious art, the artist is making for only themself. Relevant films Why make an installation about war or oppression when the money Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry that goes into it could go towards a scientific or politicaleffort? Alison Klayman, US, 2012 What's the use of making art today? Never Sorry follows multidisciplinary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei from Klayman's first meeting with him in 2008 through to his release from detention by Chinese authorities in 2012. The film documents the Cross curricularideas various angles of Ai's artistic carreer, from installing shows to getting Environmental art beaten up by police for their social commentary and is praised as a Environmental art aims to complement/make a statement about its piece of visual artistry in itself. natural surroundings (see Christo and Jeanne Claude) or to have an ecological purpose (see renewable energy sculpture). It is a sort of Frida descendent of landscape painting, of the tradition of Monet or Julie Taymor, US, 2002 Turner, with a contemporary twist. Some art schools such as Glasgow This biopic tells the story of Mexican surrealist artist Frida Kahlo teach it as a stand-alone course. (Salma Hayek) and her husband Diego Rivera. It explores Kahlo's tragic personal life - her traffic accident that both crippled herand Performance art made her an artist, her passionate marriage, her bisexual affairs - as Performance art exists only as a passing experience, usually acted out well as her career. It also looks at Diego's superior success at the by the artist themself, but otherwise using hired actors or dancers. It time, plus painting as a means of convalescence. might take on elements of circus or dance-like performances, or it (information collated by Unifrog) Interesting articles Biology U.S. Scientists Use CRISPR to Fix Genetic Disease in Human Embryos For the First Time https://time.com/4882855/crispr-gene-editing- Some specialist areas human-embryo/ Neuroscience Alice Park, United States, 2017 Neuroscientists are concerned with studying the nervous system and the brain. Their interests include how information gets transmitted 11 terrifying climate change facts and stored, how to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and how to Libby Plummer and Cara McGoogan, United States, 2017 model brain functions. The brain is an incredibly complex system that https://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-change-facts-2019 changes continually over one's lifetime, so neuroscientists don't have it easy! Podcasts Environmental Biology The Infinite Monkey Cage Environmental biologists study the organisms that make up the world https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w/episodes/downloads around us (microbes, plants, and animals) and how they interact with Brian Cox and Robin Ince, United Kingdom each other. Contemporary problems such as climate change, habitat Consistently topping the UK's science and medicine podcast chart, conservation and decreasing biodiversity are all studied by this extended version of the Radio 4 programme features expert environmental biologists. guests and more irreverent contributors discussing big scientific Hot topics questions or news. Witty, fun and informative, it is presented by The decrease in global biodiversity physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince. The International Union for Conservation of Nature found that 75% of genetic diversity in agriculture has been lost. 6 out of 7 marine turtles face extinction, and 75% of the world's fisheries are over-exploited. The Life Scientific https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sqc7 The ever-increasing consumption of humans and climate change bothJim Al-Khalili, United Kingdom contribute to the severe decrease in biodiversity seen over the last Host Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life few decades, which leaves biologists to wonder what's more and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking important: producing more food or conservingspecies? what their discoveries might do for humanity. Manipulating genes: the possibilities and the ethical considerations Relevant films With the introduction of CRISPR and related technologies,widespreadEarth gene editing seems more feasible than ever. As gene mapping efforts Mark Linfield, United Kingdom, 2007 continue, scientists will soon be able to detect not only which gene is Based on the BBC show Planet Earth, this film takes the viewer on a responsible for serious hereditary diseases, but also which genes are journey from the North Pole in January to the South inDecember, responsible for bad skin and brown hair. The ethics of gene editing revealing how plants and animals respond to the power of the sun are murky at best - where does one draw the line between preventingand the changing seasons. The film focuses on three particular serious illnesses and eugenics? species, the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale. Cross curricularideas Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret Quantum Biology Kip Andersen, United States, 2014 Quantum physics and biology seem to have little to do with each Follow the shocking, yet humorous, journey of an aspiring other - bozons and orbits are far removed from cells and plants. environmentalist, as he daringly seeks to find the real solution to the However, many biological processes involve the conversion of energy most pressing environmental issues and true path to sustainability.