Response to Lecture 11-8-11 "Presentation Night"

In class last Tuesday we had to catch up on our "artist of our choice" presentations. Usually only 4 people present each night, but we ran out of time for presentations after watching the "Terminal 5" documentary last week. This week we were supposed to watch 6 presentations but only 5 of the 6 people that were supposed to present showed up for class. I am presenting next week so was one of the four students who had to grade the presentations after class.
The first presentation was on a cartoonist that became famous in the 80's named Keith Harring. I found some of his art interesting, but overall I was not impressed with his work. A lot of his work was controversial during his time, and if I lived during his time I wouldn't have like his work either. I thought trying to make the AIDS epidemic more known was a good idea of his, but I really didn't like the art with the drug needles, and also thought that his drawings were rather simple.

The second artist presented was Claude Monet, often called the father of impressionism. I like his art and think it is very pretty. I did not know that he was such a controversial artist in his time.

The third artist presented was Francisco Goya. I liked his later, darker, art better than the art that he did when he first became an artist.

The fourth artist presented was Magritte. I thought his art was entertaining and also intriguing. I enjoyed our discussion of his painting of a pipe that said this is not a pipe.

I don’t remember the name of the last artist that was presented, but I thought that his story was interesting.  This “artist” was a photographer a long time ago. I thought it was interesting that he accidentally invented a camera that shot a photo in only 8 minutes, versus the previous 8 hours it took to take a photo, and I thought it was interesting to see the first photo ever taken of a person.