Week 8- Artist- Joseph DeLappe & Micol Hebron

Artist: Joseph DeLappe
Media: Online gaming performance, sculpture, and electromechanical
Website: http://www.delappe.net/bio/biography/
Instagram: @josephdelappe
Artist: Michol Hebron
Media: video and performance
Website: https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/micol-hebron
Instagram: @unicornkiller1

1. About the Artist
   First and foremost, Joseph DeLappe is a professor at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He is much interested in electronic and new media which consists of working with online gaming, different types of sculptures, and electromechanical arts. On the other hand, Michol Hebron is also a professor; however, she is a lot more closer to the Long Beach area compared to Joseph DeLappe. She is a professor, artist, and activist based in Los Angeles. She teaches a lot of studio art as well as professional gallery practices at Chapman.
2. Formal Analysis
   For artist DeLappe, I noticed a lot of lines and using interesting color tones. One example of DeLappe’s art that was different from other artists was that his chess set up was very different. Most commonly, chess has two different colors typically white and black with a wooden board. However, for DeLappe’s chess, both of the teams were colored brown. Additionally, his board was also brown. The board also seemed unbalanced and a little bit more rigid than typical boards which made it very appealing to the eyes. For the second case, I looked at his virtual painting and it was very interesting how he portrayed his art piece. It looked like a drawing done through a computer, but as I was reading the description, DeLappe mentions how he has always been color blind and until he got glasses for his color blindness, he perceived the world very differently. This allowed me to understand his painting better because the colors he chose were very bright and then very neutral. And the way he added watercolors made the vibe of the painting very appealing. There were very specific strokes, and there were also moments when the watercolors seemed very free. For Hebron, I noticed a lot of art pieces that were correlated to the women’s body. One particular poster that Hebron created was the Whitney Biennial Tallies. The poster portrayed a women’s body from below the chest to the knees. The whole poster was mostly different shades of gray, but then the scroll that the person was holding was boldly white and her genitalia area was colored with a shade of lava red. Secondly, it was a picture of Hebron of her at a restaurant enjoying her cup of coffee, but completely topless. The interesting part of this picture was that it was black and white. The brightest part of the picture was her breasts and the cup. I am not too sure if it was supposed to be like that, but that is what made the picture stand out more.
3. Content Analysis
   For DeLappe he talks about how in the late 1900’s he used a lot of traditional oil paintings; however, as time and technology improved, DeLappe believed that he could also create his art where it can be modernized yet portray the authentic atmosphere. He quotes, “I wanted to utilize the first wave of virtual reality technologies” as a way to be with the “trend” with the rest of the world. Secondly, for his chess art piece, the shades of brown represent, “adapting and growing rightward/racist shift of white Americans”. Without context, it may have been very difficult to see the goal and message DeLappe was trying to express. Thanks to his description, people are able to fully understand and grasp the goal he was trying to achieve through the game Chess. On the other hand, Hebron focused a lot on the body figure of a woman. Not only does she draw paintings and drawings of women, but she also uses her own body to portray what she supports. Another very interesting and unique thing that Hebron does is that she collects data and sees the statistics of her art for genders. And for her Whitney Houston Biennial poster, she reported that the majority of her viewers were men. Furthermore, for her black and white self-portrait, she is bolding dining in what seems to be a breakfast restaurant. Without context, some may view and think about all sorts of things, but for Hebron, she wanted to normalize and help people know the power of feminism.
4. Synthesis/ My Experience
   As I got to learn and see the many different art pieces from these two artists I learned that art cannot simply be put inside a box. Like DeLappe, he likes to express art through digitally, while Hebron likes to use her and other female bodies to empower females. I was able to gain more knowledge and learn more aspects of the different types of art and how these artists think while doing their projects. Art is positively subjective and art can build someone up or bring someone down. I learned how to view art differently, and not to be too closed-minded.