Rachel Whiteread/Eadweard Muybridge

   On Friday January 7th we went back to the Tate Britain to see the Rachel Whiteread and Eadweard Muybridge shows.  The Rachel Whiteread exhibition of her drawings was the first time her "retrospective" works had been on display.  The show included many drawings that were Whiteread's studies and ideas worked out on paper and revealing her "creative process."  I really enjoyed this exhibition because of the simplicity of it.  Her sketches and drawings were not accompanied by the finished pieces or sculptures, in this show they were essentially finished pieces of their own.  The basic contour line drawings and watercolor on graph paper created their own style of architectural plans that I found appealing.  I always enjoy when artists have their sketches and unfinished pieces displayed alongside their work however I liked how these sketches were the only focus of an exhibition for a change.  I also thought the pieces were all cohesive as a show, and I liked how some were even shown in duplicates as different angles of the same work as in Six Stairs (1995) or the collection of white-out on photos in House Study (1992).  Her successful use of mixed media to produce such visually simplistic objects was my favorite aspect of her work.
    Eadweard Muybridge's exhibit displayed his photography of the natural scenery of Yosemite and his ground-breaking studies of stop motion pictures.  Muybridge's photography of the Yosemite area were a technical success due to his use of double negatives and overlapping different photos to produce a new image.  I can also appreciate this aspect of his work since I just took Basic Photography and I understand how difficult it is to develop double negatives.  His lighthouse photos display his use of this technique and it explained how he used clouds in the background of the landscape from different images, sometimes using the same set of clouds more than once which I found very interesting.  The effect was really beautiful, as portrayed in Lighthouse at Punta de los Reyes, Coast of California  (1871), and his landscape shots are very serene and calming.
    Most of the exhibition was composed of Muybridge's studies of moements.  This technology provided a whole new insight on the motions of moving animals and people that could not be seen with just the human eye.  The use of a trip wire that was triggered by the horse to get the shot was considered a technical break-through in Stopping Time:  Horse in Motion (1878).  He proved that a horse lifted all four legs off the ground at once while running, something that was thought as inconceivable.  Muybridge also invented the zoopraxiscope which was used as the earliest form of animation and "short moving sequences."  I have always been interested in animation since I created a stop motion hand-drawn animation for my drawing class.  I therefore have a high appreciation for Muybridge's work and can imagine how amazing it would have been to experience it being discovered in the 1800s for the first time.  While the photos and negatives were used as studies, displayed in frames in a gallery they also have a strong visual appeal as their own individual pieces that also create a whole body of art.  This seems to be a common theme both Muybridge and Whiteread have throughout their exhibitions which is a reason why I really like both of them.