Biographical Artists Research part 1- R.B. Kitaj

Hi everyone! This term my class and I have been doing some biographical artists research for our final major project. So I'am now going to showcase my evaluation on some of the artists I have researched and talk a little bit about them, their work and what I think of them as best as I can.
So here are the artists and my full opinion on them.

1.) R.B. Kitaj

Ronald Brooks Kitaj (Ki-TIE) was an American Pop artist, born in Chagrin, Ohio from 29th October 1932, Moved and lived most of his life in England during the 1950's onwards, and died on 21st October 2007 (8 days before his birthday!) from possible suicide.
This artist's pictures are drawn and printed to seem like they were actually collages, because of his use of "line and overlapping planes". He tends to add in bright colours sometimes even when the subject matter displayed in his pictures is supposed to convey a serious topic because his pictures convey allusions to real life subjects such as his Jewish heritage, political history and trivial subjects like art and literature. Kitaj has  had a bit of an influence on Pop art in Britain, which has been said to have had some significance. sometimes his pictures are more "slice of life" meaning that they are just doing normal things in a picture.

Now here are some of his pictures and my full critiques on everyone of them.

The Refugees

I think in my opinion that this picture is about people just going about their day, though there are several things unfortunate about this piece as well, such as the lady in the background not wearing any trousers and just lying down in the street, this could imply that she may be a prostitute. there is also the man in red, right in the centre of the picture, sitting on a chair in the middle of the alleyway for some reason. He seems like the kind of person who's just sitting in a strange place that he is not supposed to while having a picnic. Also the colours are vibrant (the red and yellow in particular!) it has that nostalgic feeling going on there, it is very nice to look at.

Apotheosis of Groundlessness

Now for this picture, it appears to be either a bus or train station of some sort.(though a bus station seems very likely!) The colors have a very retro feeling, but they also have bit of an Eric Carle (author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar) style as well due to the artist making it look like he used construction paper (though who's to say that he probably did because we are talking biographical art after all!) Once again I like the use of colours, but this time there is more yellow and orange in this picture. The rest of the colours only seem to be use sparingly for the other bars, and the rest of the picture. (Like the light blue sky through the window that as stated before, looks like construction paper.)

Artists for Peace

This picture may seems simplistic, but I think the theme that Mr. Kitaj was going for might've been to support other artists around the world or basically just artists from England, but every artist in general should have all the support that they need but I digress. Anyway the colours in this picture are very limited, with red being the brightest colour of them all. The content seems to contain little people, a man with a beard, standing in the middle wearing red, a few squares and rectangles  taking some of the space in the white void, a red piece of paper with scribbles on it, a vase, a green rectangle in the top right corner containing a flower facing horizontally, a potato with a flower with multicoloured petals sprouting out of it and plenty of other stuff that would take forever to talk about. So yeah it's surrealistic, but that probably indicates that this picture also encourages artists to use their imagination.(It would seem very likely to me anyway.)

The Autumn of Central Paris 

This is apparently a picture that is set in Central Paris. There seems to be people gathering around to watch a show, but they don't seem to be happy. On the bottom centre, there is a red man (literally all red.) holding a red pick axe and it looks a bit like he is stabbing the nearest man with it.(Unless of course it's just a figurine, because due to the art style we'd be sure that a person would kill someone in Central Paris for no given reason, because other wise it would come off as being genuinely creepy out of context. But then again, R.B. Kitaj's other pictures have very dark subject matter, so it probably wouldn't seem out of place for him, but at least not to over the top.) The colours are once again bright and vibrant, with red once again being the stand out colour. The use of yellow, blue and orange adds to the picture very well as it compliments the picture very nicely.

Friendship and the Shadow of Betrayal

Now in this picture, there are a group of people on a day out, and there is a dark figure on the right lurking next to the person with the white coat, blue scarf and cream hat. This picture is notably a bit more cruder than some of Kitaj's other pictures, though that's mostly with the bottom half of the picture. As always the colours are rather vibrant, and they all stick out from one another. Those people look like they are looking out or through a window. (It doesn't look like it's really indicated though.) However it does look like they have luggage, so they must be either catching a train to go on holiday or they are already on a train and they are already on their way to their destination. Back to the shadow figure, I think he might be either a criminal or someone who puts all of the four friends into a conflict. (Probably the former, he might've been a friend who's about to betray his friends by murdering one of them, and then he would get himself arrested for murder. That would've been an interesting conflict that probably could've happened in Kitaj's life at some point while he was on a trip to somewhere for a holiday or a visit to family.)

Do you Know the Country

Now for this last picture, it might be based on what might've happened during the second World War from the artist's perspective. It could also possibly have a connection to the Jewish Holocaust that was happening around during his time, which by the time he was 7 years old had just started, and by the time the war ended in 1945, he would approximately have been 13 years old. So World War II might've made a huge impression on him as he got older. There is very limited colour in this picture this time around, but what little colour this picture has is still vibrant as always. Anyway the lack colour gives this particular artwork a sense of sadness and danger that you know that something doesn't even seem right.

Mr. Kitaj's pictures in general are sometimes abstract and semi-abstract, they can be  surrealistic at times through a visual perspective, they can more often than not feature bright vibrant colours while sometimes satirizing serious subjects like the Holocaust of the second World War, but all in all, they are very pleasing to look at. They can also be very vague, but then again, lots of artwork can tend to have vagueness in them to leave viewers to use their imaginations and come up with their own interpretations to draw their own conclusions.

Now onwards to the next artist: Gilbert and George (a duo!)