The concept that I am delving into is Time, and how it is represented in art through the use of hidden codes and meanings. I am investigating how time can be portrayed through art, this question was born when I was walking around Beaudesert I saw how much time had changed everything in the town and how much people waste time. The artists I decided to look into further was Pink Floyd and Pawel Kuczynski, who both delve into wasted time and the aspect of life and death. I assume that both of these artists will have both their similarities and differences while still exploring their own outputs and experiences as a stimuli.
Pink Floyd were an English progressive, acid rock band in 1965 that wrote ‘psychedelic’ rock songs distinguished for their extended compositions, sonic experimentations, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd was the band that came to mind whenever someone mentioned rock and roll in the 60-80s. Pink Floyd quickly became one of the most commercially successful and influential groups in popular music history. Their top selling album dark side of the moon was released in 1973 which refers to lunacy (Lunatic: an antiquated term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy - conditions once attributed to lunacy. The word derives from lunaticus meaning 'of the moon” making the tittle of the album read something along the lines of ‘the dark side of Lunacy.’ From that album the song Time which is a 7 minute song that sheds light on wasted, passing time and being in the centre of time. For the creation of the song, time they used unpopular song pattern of verse, solo, verse end, the songs use of lack of chorus erases the repetition in music
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The song Time represents the deep concept of passing time, this is done through the use of hidden metaphors and meanings. The song feel like it could be similar to the story the traveller which talks about a traveller hanging on a single branch over a pit where a dragon lay beneath him waiting for its meal on the branch is a honey supply that the traveller has access to, while two mice nibbling at the roots of the branch. The symbolism behind this is that the dragon is death and the mice is passing time, day and night. The honey represents pleasures that distract us from death. The first verse talks about wasting your time waiting for something to show you your future and what you have to do, it could also be seen as wasting away your life waiting for someone to tell you how to live by giving you the answers or ‘spoon feeding you.’ This is seen by its use of “no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” Passing time is represented heavily throughout the piece of music, much like it would be in other art outlets.Figure 1 Lyrics from the song 'time'
Pawel Kaczynski, a satirical and philosopher artist who is against war and who uses the modes of drawing and painting. Kuczynski is known for his artworks that linger in your mind and get more elaborate the more you look at them, such as his piece Clock.
This piece shows a grandfather clock morphed into a grave stone, the pendulums’ tip resembles a shovel, showing a semi-dug hole, this could represent that as time goes by we’re closer to death, this piece leaves you pondering and scared at the realisation that the tick tock clock is what will make you inevitably drop, mind the morbidness of the piece and your left with a beautiful peace behind life and why we’re here. This piece not only accurately represents time but also life and death, which is quite closely related to time itself. Figure 2 Clock by Pawel Kaczynski
For my experiment I thought I should write a song using pink Floyds’ Time as my inspiration to experiment, I thought to include the thoughts of life or death which was heavily focused on in Pawel Kaczynski’s piece Clock which represents life and death through the broad topic of time which is quite similar to pink Floyd’s Time which briefly touches on the idea of life and death.
After looking at Clock and Time, I’ve realized that time can be quite closely linked to life and death so I have narrowed my research question down even further than before to then include the aspects of life and death while also looking at the broad topic of time in art as I believe that it can be narrowed down in other ways such as narrowing it down to the idea of space. Both pieces successfully portray their ideas of time in their own respective ways while both having similar aspects and scaffolding ideas, I would like to further my research to find artists who use completely unique styles of work but still representing the idea of time through life and death and space.
In conclusion, I’ve come to the revelation that time can be related to other topics such as life and death, space through the analysis of two time related pieces, Time and Clock. Time in art can be represented through hidden meanings and symbols that make the audience ponder about the meaning of the pieces that are viewed. This can be done through different mediums, one of the analysed pieces being a song and the other a satirical painting
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