Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Funk Art: One lumpen object shot frontally, filling the frame, with nothing composed around it
- Type
- Set in Funk Art's manner (Hand-pushed uneven lettering, left slumped and never cleanly typeset), and let Neo-Dada's lettering (Mixed sizes and mixed faces from whatever was to hand, some stencilled, some torn out of existing print.) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Funk Art's material (Bright running glazes over bare clay, with drips, thumbprints and firing accidents kept); bring in exactly one thing from Neo-Dada (Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible.).
- Colour
- Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Postwar American Art, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Funk Art Aiming only at vulgarity and making it rough removes the base, which is the knowing misuse of craft materials, and the result reads as merely careless.
- Neo-Dada Pasting readymades alone never shows why they were chosen, and it becomes a shelf of knickknacks. Arranging it tidily strips the dirt and scale the work depends on, and leaves clean decoration.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from Funk Art (Style, 1960s–1970s) and its accent from Neo-Dada (Style, 1953–1965). Structural cues: Garish glaze colours; Bodily, off-colour motifs; Craft materials deliberately misused; Finishes that keep their handmade roughness. Accent cues, used sparingly: Ready-made objects brought onto the picture; Printed matter transferred by silkscreen; Forms halfway between painting and object; Traces of erasing, layering and soiling. Composition: One lumpen object shot frontally, filling the frame, with nothing composed around it. Type and lettering: Hand-pushed uneven lettering, left slumped and never cleanly typeset. Let one material quality come from the second style: Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible.. Mood: Play, Rebellion, Exhilaration, Technology. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Funk Art 1960s–1970s / Style / Postwar American Art
A movement in ceramics and sculpture around the San Francisco Bay Area that deliberately soiled good taste and the authority of abstraction alike. Garish colour, bodily humour and the wilful misuse of craft materials laugh at the hierarchy of art itself. An early precedent for treating coarseness as a strategy.
- Neo-Dada 1953–1965 / Style / Postwar American Art
A postwar current that answered the inwardness of Abstract Expressionism by bringing household objects, printed matter and taxidermy onto the picture, working in the gap between art and life. It inherited Dada's gestures while making the materials of consumer society into structural components. The branching point immediately before Pop art.
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