<aside> 📌 Artists portray themselves and the people they encounter in a variety of ways.

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<aside> 👉 Portraits may range from a literal record of a person’s features to a representation of the character possessed by a group or individual.

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<aside> 🦚 Many artists also seek to represent human relationships, conveying through their artworks the emotional nuances that underlie the complexity of these bonds.

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<aside> 🥶 By studying different artworks that encapsulate the themes of identity and relationships, students appreciate the insights provided by the artist to the sitter’s persona and social orientation

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<aside> 💜 Students would be able to interpret such artworks and make informed comments about them

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👨‍🎨 NG ENG TENG

(1934 - 2001) Singapore - Human condition and experience, Relationships, Human figures, Humanity and life

<aside> 💏 explore the themes of identity and relationship in his sculpture

→ he portrays different aspects of the human condition, its emotions and states of mind

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CONTEXT

Influences

• learned painting under first-generation masters such as Georgette Chen and Liu Kang, and furthered his studies in ceramics in England
• reflection of thoughts & experiences in visual form
• family upbringing, faith, education
• Jean Bullock → exposed him to material ciment fondu
• admires the emotional and powerful elements in Jacob Epstein’s works → technique: direct carving

Personal events

• studied in NAFA under pioneer artists
• studied pottery in with North Staffordshire College of Technology/Stoke-On-Trent School of Art, UK.
• 1963-64: Studied studio pottery at Farnham School of Art in Surrey
• concerned with the welfare of society (he participated in charity exhibitions and programmes for inmates)

KEY IDEAS AND IMPACT

Approach

• Use of human figure as expressive device
• Structure of the body as a powerful symbol of emotion and feeling
• Investigates the formal aspects of sculpture while ascribing symbolic meaning to the figure
• Engages notion of sculpture as a monolithic entity

FIGURES = have the capacity for movements to interpret emotions and convey stories

HEAD = viewed as the convergence of the complex psychological and physiological features that distinguishes humans - on par with how the head is esteemed in European art

TORSO = viewed as a powerful symbol of emtoion and feeling, when used as a whole or in parts like appendages and torsos

IMAGINATIVE in using the above elemets to create humanoid looking sculptures

imagery that departs from representational accuracy via selection, exaggeration or simplification - abstraction

Key Ideas

= reflection of thoughts and experiences in visual form

BIG IDEA

• humanity and life
• human condition/experience
• compassion for human suffering, in our environment of poverty, over-population and strife.

SMALL IDEA

• of individual alienation, pain, poverty, loss of life as well as justice and love
• works are from and of life and humanity
• large-scale sculptures gracing many public spaces as well as his introspective and whimsical interpretations of humanist themes in 3D

Visual Analysis

• rounded biomorphic forms based on the human form;
• angular or geometric forms that may be “abstractions of the human form”

Human Condition/Experience

• detailed features - cheekbones, hair, wrinkles, cupid’s bow
• distinct facial features

Social and psychological issues.

The good and bad side of life.

The achievements and downfall of mankind.

“The experience of humanity- love, hope, the joy of living as well as dejection, rejection, despair, fear and sorrow”

Familial Relationships

• Asian context- mother (idea of inspiration and dedication & motherhood and fear) plays a nurturing role and thus more physically intimate with the child,
• details capture everything including small ones → she is worth the struggle of subtraction and addition (techniques) to capture everything
• while the father plays a supportive role and thus more distant.

Technique + Materials

• ciment fondu → cheap, hard, tough, durable
• bronze → resist corrosion & metal fatigue better, and conducts heat and electricity better + malleable & durable
• works preliminary with drawings and marquettes in clay before proceeding to the final sculptures
• clay → direct and immediate manipulation
• worked on terracotta figurines using kilns

VISUAL ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

Mother and Child, 1980

Declining Man, 1969

Theme: human suffering

• Empathy for human suffering, such as poverty, old age and ill-health.
• Heart-rending personification of old age – man crippled by infirmity and loneliness. Vulnerable, contorted and distressed
• Some exaggeration of the posture, proportion and facial expression to highlight misery
• Spherical form of head corresponds with swollen abdomen and knobbly knees

Sorrow, 1959

Theme: Tortured, tragic figures that signify physical  and mental distress

• Use of partial figure for intense and dramatic purposes
• Limbless , bust-length figure seeking to release itself from state of entrapment
• Outstretched neck, hair swept back – heighten emotive expression

Head of St. John the Baptist, 1960

Theme: Tortured, tragic figures that signify physical  and mental distress

• Possible source of inspiration – carvings on French Gothic cathedrals
• Life appears frozen, terminated abruptly
• Mouth gaping, eyes askew, skin deeply furrowed
• Tormented expression vividly captured

Flat Torso, 1971

• light-hearted, whimsical phase

👨‍🎨 MARC QUINN

(b. 1964) UIK artist - Human body, human condition, materiality, science and tech, individual vs society, majority vs minority

<aside> 🫁 explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media.

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CONTEXT