PROJECTS
PROJECT 1
The thought process behind my collage was solely to place as many animals as possible. I wanted it to feel like you are looking at a thousand creatures. To make my gif, well I ended up making two, I had difficulty because this is my first ever project like this but I like how it turned out. I wanted the animals to because alive. I wanted it to look like you were in the wild with them. I also wanted to emphasize the lion because in the wild a lion is at the top of the food chain meaning it has power over all other animals. Lastly, I played around with color. hue, and saturation to make it look more blue. I did this for a the purpose of making them look like they were in water or the sky and a the gif progresses it turns less blue to make it look like the are back on the ground. My inspiration behind these is my passion for the outdoors and love for animals. I wanted people to be able to look at the animals up close and appreciate their beauty and movement. I also wanted people to understand how the animal kingdom works which is why again I put the lion in the middle and other animals surrounding him. I also liked how the other animals fly/ walk away in the gifs but the lion remains still, it gives a sense of truly how animals act.
Louise Lawler
American, born 1947
Louise Lawler was born in New York and went on to graduate from Cornell with a BA in Fine Arts. Now she lives in Brooklyn and is now either 77 or 78 years old. She started off by taking photographs of other artists' work to explore the social and economical factors of art pieces and the culture of its popularity and worth.
Some of her exhibits over the years have included Wexner Center (Ohio) in 2006, Dia Beacon in New York in 2005, and Museum for Gugenwartskunst in Switzerland in 2004. Also she participated in bigger exhibitions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Art in Oslo, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
She primarily focuses on remixing other artists' work in galleries or exhibits. Specifically, she will go to a gallery, art exhibition, or art event (even a collectors house) and she will take a picture of the piece of art, how it is placed for installation or how it looks as it is marked for sale. Her purpose: to re represent the art piece in a different way. She critiques the art in the way she sees it or wants it to be represented. She looks beyond the piece and at the sphere of influence it could have. She argues that pieces can be seen in many different ways depending on perception. She morphs works in many different ways such as stretching them onto a bigger background, twirling them, using props or changing artist names into song (this is a specific piece).
Her work draws attention to the afterlife of an art piece. It also makes people look at the piece in a completely different way. Her honest purpose is to critique the art system completely by reflecting on artists themselves or the art itself, how it sells, or who it sells to.
Some famous pieces from “WHY PICTURES NOW” “Pollyana” (Adjusted to fit) and “Birdcall.”
“Birdcall” is a famous exhibit for changing male artist names into different bird calls. Her purpose of this piece was to mock these men for the amount of privilege they were given at the time versus how women were given little to no privilege at that time.
“WHY PICTURES NOW” is a famous exhibition. Some people know this exhibit for her "Adjusted to fit” pieces. As most of the pictures are blown up and morphed into different shapes before being put up on the wall. Some other pieces not shown
Some ethical questions that can be raised by Lawler work is that if she is stealing others' work or not? Personally I would be a bit angry if I saw my art critiqued by her by it somehow being “morphed” into looking different. There is a broad spectrum of how much her pictures of their artists work is morphed. Some pieces look completely different and some look exactly the same. But, her work also begs the question, “why would she steal other art to only slightly alter it?” She does this because she is actually making a major statement. By critiquing others she is rerepresenting the work entirely.
Another ethical question raised by her work is if it is right to change the meaning of someone else's work. First it's one thing to steal the art and call it your own but its another to change the meaning completely. If I were to create a work of art that meant a lot to me and someone took it and made it a surface level meaning I would be angry.
But, the good thing about Louise’s work is that the art she remixes always has a very good symbolism behind it. Often she is standing up for something such as feminism or she is questioning the art system completely.
She has a large impact on contemporary art and culture. Her work appears to be simple and most is not even her own, but her remix of the pieces asks deeper questions. Often they look beyond the piece and her remix brings out questions that would otherwise be looked over. For example, with her piece “Birdcall” which is her most interesting piece in my opinion, she list out 28 male artist names in bird-calling chirps. This intriguing piece at first may be simple but her point, as stated earlier, is to mock the art industry and these artists for it being a male dominated field with the exclusion of women and people of color. This piece is also different from most of her pieces and instead of a visual representation it uses audio.
Overall, Louise Lawler is a renowned artist for remixing others' art to question or voice her opinion about the art world or state of the world itself.
Work Cited:
“Louise Lawler.” Metro Pictures, www.metropictures.com/exhibitions/louise-lawler15. Accessed 27 Oct. 2025.
Louise Lawler | Moma, www.moma.org/artists/7928-louise-lawler. Accessed 27 Oct. 2025.
“Louise Lawler.” Skarstedt Gallery, www.skarstedt.com/artists/louise-lawler/biography. Accessed 27 Oct. 2025.
“Louise Lawler at Moma.” Art Viewer, 16 July 2017, artviewer.org/louise-lawler-at-moma/.
slideshow:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1o2ZqbJG2Wff9DdIw_Ge4SlZFGdbWH_YaPVe1SJuyH9I/edit?usp=sharing
