1. Mueck's sculpture is described as 'hyper-real'. Define the meaning of this term and apply it to his work.
Involving or characterised by particularly realistic graphic presentation.
Mueck's artwork is hyper-real because the sculptures that he made are incredibly life like, every little detail is perfect, the baby girl looks like how a new born girl would look, from the face, body, expressions etc. And the mask sculpture looks like a mans head on its side, looking as if its lying down. He shows this by giving the part which is on the ground kind of squashed look to give it the lying down effect.
2. Mueck is not interested in making life size sculpture. Find out why he is more interested
in working with the scale of the figure which is not life size, and mention 2 works which use
scale that is either larger or smaller than life.
Ron Mueck prefers making huge or small scale sculptures because he likes to play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images
Some of his works that use small and large scales include, 'Mask', and 'A Girl'. 'Mask' is the front of a mans face and 'A Girl' is a new born baby girl which is extremely over sized.
3. Define Renaissance Humanism , and analyze the term in order to apply it to an example of Mueck's work. Note that the contemporary definition of Humanism is much broader than the Renaissance definition.
Humanism is not the study of humans. "The term umanista was used, in fifteenth century Italian academic jargon to describe a teacher or student of classical literature and the arts associated with it, including that of rhetoric. The English equivalent 'humanist' makes its appearance in the late sixteenth century with a similar meaning. Only in the nineteenth century, however, and probably for the first time in Germany in 1809, is the attribute transformed into a substantive: humanism, standing for devotion to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and the humane values that may be derived from them" (Nicholas Mann "The Origins of Humanism", Cambridge Companion to Humanism, Jill Kraye, editor [Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 1–2).
4. Research and discuss one of Mueck's sculptures that you might find challenging or exciting to experience in an art gallery. Describe the work, upload an image of the work, and explain your personal response to the work. Comment on other student blogs to develop the discussion around the variety of our own personal and individual responses to art and design.
'IN BED'
I think this work of Mueck is one of my favourites. I just love how well its done, its so realistic, like all of his works, but this one just seemed to stand out to me. I also wondered when I saw this one, if underneath the blanket was done in detail too. I like how it shows a woman in bed alone and thinking to herself.
(Nicholas Mann "The Origins of Humanism", Cambridge Companion to Humanism, Jill Kraye, editor [Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 1–2) -
wikipedia information reference for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism#cite_note-0
