Themes in Art


Themes in Art from the Museum of Modern Art (great site!)
Investigating Identity
Combinations and Alliances
  • ​You and the one thing that defines you;
  • Twins;
  • Siblings;
  • Mismatched couples;
  • Unfortunate combinations: drugs and celebrities; childbirth and pain; cats and water; sugar and tooth decay;
  • Discipline and being cruel to be kind;
  • Combinations of exercises / sets / routines;
  • Mixing of light (light streaming through coloured glass windows etc);
  • Lock combinations;
  • Combinations of numbers – gambling, addiction;
  • An uneasy alliance: a dog about to break its chain;
  • Things that depend on each other for survival: a plant growing in dirt trapped in a hole in the rocks; tiny creatures that live in on the fur / skin of others – ticks on cows / hair lice / germs;
  • Vaccinations and the alliance of ‘good’ germs fighting against bad…
  • Eco-systems – the interconnection of water / life etc;
  • A trusted alliance: horse and rider; blind person and guide dog;
  • Business networks that rely on one another;
  • Uniting against a common enemy.
  • A young child holding the hand of their mother;
  • Bad influences (combinations of friends) and peer pressure;
  • A family unit, in alliance against the world;
  • The butterfly effect (how a combination of actions / behaviours leads from one thing to another until every tiny moment in a life is interwoven with all the moments that came before);
  • Political alliances;
  • How ‘good’ people can complete horrific acts when lead on by the wrong situation and the wrong company;
  • Still life combinations: salt and pepper, sweet and sour, fish & chips, apple and cinnamon; peanut butter and jam; the literal combination of ingredients used to make a meal;
  • Unpleasant combinations we would rather not be reminded of: chocolate and obesity; that cute lamb and the juicy steak;
  • The legal binding (combination) of lovers: marriage / civil unions;
  • Combination of genes: Darwin’s theory of evolution – how traits are passed on etc;
  • A study of two people (or animals), or people who care about each other;
  • A person and something that they use to embellish their identity (i.e. fast car, makeup, fashion accessories, label clothing, iPhones);
Encounters, Experiences and Meetings
  • The meeting between mother and child / adoption / birth;
  • The clashing of those who despise each other;
  • Friends in a bustling and crowded restaurant;
  • The shields we put up in our brains: the filter between ourselves and those we meet;
  • The joining (or meeting) of two halves;
  • Meetings between strangers…The million people we pass on a daily basis, but never connect with;
  • Drunken encounters;
  • Encounters with god;
  • Online encounters and the changing social landscape of the world;
  • The clashing of cultures;
  • Meeting someone who has suffered a great loss;
  • Shameful encounters / those you regret;
  • A meeting room, filled with business people who go about their daily lives in a trance;
  • A boisterous meeting between children;
  • A birthday party;
  • Meeting at a skateboard park;
  • Reunion at an airport;
  • Meeting for the last time;
  • A life-changing moment;​
  • Focus on the senses (an event experienced through sight / audio etc);
  • Something that made you cry;
  • A deja vu experience;
  • Remembering an experience a long time ago: the passing of time / generations;
  • The meeting of truth and lies;
  • The meeting of fiction and reality;
  • Encountering animals: the interaction between human and animal kind and our influence upon them (for good or bad);
  • Meeting your childhood self or yourself fifty years in the future;
  • The meeting of land and sea;
  • Physical meetings between two things: the boundaries and edges, perhaps at a cellular level (plunging into / stabbing / tearing apart);
  • The meeting of theory and practicality;
  • How our own biases, backgrounds and modify/influence every experience we have: the influence of the mind;
  • Truly seeing yourself as you really are;
  • Conception;
  • The aftermath of a meeting that never happened;
  • Meeting temptation: the battle of wills;
  • The meeting of technology and nature;
  • Ancient man meeting the modern world: the conflict between genes and the modern environment;
Facades
  • Deceptive facades, and the walls we put up to hide our true emotions;
  • Decaying wall surfaces / peeling away;
  • Reflective windows, mirroring a busy street or some other interesting scene (fragmented reflections);
  • A decorative facade – old church walls etc;
  • Old fashioned shop fronts / signage;
  • Secrets hidden behind facades / the things nobody talks about;
  • Sunshades / light streaming through facades / window openings;
  • Masks / dress-ups;
  • Abstraction of a building facade
Harmony, Discord
  • Love and hate relationships / fighting between families and loved ones;
  • The human mind, swinging from joy to misery and despair / schizophrenia / the meddling mind: our own worst enemy;
  • A whole lot of similar things, with one different thing that clashes with the rest;
  • Disturbing of the peace: a beautiful scene which is rudely interrupted (i.e. a hunter firing a bullet into a grazing herd of animals or someone pulling out a gun in a crowded shopping mall);
  • Musical interpretations: jazz bands / instruments / broken instruments;
  • Money: the root of good and evil;
  • The broken family / divorce / merged families;
  • The clashing of humans with the environment;
  • Something beautiful and ugly;
  • Meditation to escape the discord of modern day life;
  • Prescribed medication (happy pills) to minimise the discord in life – but eliminates the harmony?
  • A visual battle: a mess of clashing colours;
  • Things in the wrong environment: placing objects unexpectedly in different locations to create discord (or at least alertness and aliveness) a scene of apparent harmony.


Icons
  • Symbols in airports with crowds of people of multiple ethnicities (i.e. icons communicating without language);
  • An absurd aspect of a pop star’s life;
  • The worship of a pop star by an ordinary teen (posters peeling off a crowded bedroom wall etc);
  • Religious icons – relevance in a modern world;
  • Someone using icons to communicate;
  • The lie of the icon: a pop star with a public image that is nothing like they really are;
  • Sex symbols: the disparity between ‘real’ bodies and those portrayed in magazines…


Inside, Outside
Sectional views through a landscape (i.e. showing a slice through the ground / inside the earth): mines / slips / erosion / quarries, with trucks and machinery taking soil and rocks away;
  • The soul: inside / outside – leaving the body;
  • Plays upon storage and scale, i.e. miniature ‘scaled down’ items inside other items, like large wild animals stored inside tiny jars;
  • Castings of the insides of objects – things you don’t normally think about – that are then exposed for all to see;
  • Walls / divisions / outsiders;
  • Deterioration that has occurred to something as a result of being left outside (i.e. an ice sculpture that is left in the sun or a decayed, rusted, weathered structure showing the long term effects of the elements);
  • Light streaming in a window from outside;
  • Kids in a daycare facility looking longingly outside;
  • Animals in a small enclosure: a sorry life in comparison to those wild and free outside;
  • Looking outside from an unusual perspective, i.e. as if you are a mouse looking through a small crack into a room;
  • Inside a bomb shelter;
  • Inside is meant to equal haven / shelter: what if inside is not this at all: a crime scene / an inside that has been violated;
  • In the palm of your hand;
  • The contents of something spilling out;
  • Shellfish or snails inside their shells.
  • The human ‘outside’ – an exterior presented to those around us. The fixation we have on creating the best exterior possible: weight control/dieting; makeup; cosmetic surgery; latest fashions;
  • Inside the earth: minerals / geology / the underworld;
  • Framing / windows;
  • Blurring of the boundary between inside and out;
  • Prisons / loss of freedom;
  • Breaking in the exterior barrier of things i.e. injuries in flesh resulting in the spilling out of insides;
  • Autopsy;
  • Opening a can of preserved fruit;
  • Pregnancy /birth;
  • Shelter from the rain;
  • The inconsistency between what is going on in the outside world and the inner turmoil of someone’s brain;
  • The change in state as something moves from outside to inside the human body (i.e. food > energy);
  • An environment that is devoid of ‘outside’ i.e. fluorescent lights / poor ventilation…lacking in plant life…unable to see nature outdoors…the dwindling human condition etc;
  • Apocalyptic future: what will happen if humans destroy the outdoor conditions; or a wall is erected to keep an infected virus-ridden population ‘outside’;
  • The peeling back of interesting things to expose what is underneath (inside)…i.e. banana skins, seedpods, envelopes.
  • Vegetables or interesting fruit sliced through to expose the insides (things with lots of seed / pips / bumpy skin etc);
  • Something opening to reveal something unexpected (i.e. inside a cardboard box);
  • The Impossible Staircase: indoors blending into outdoors in an indeterminable fashion / a blurring of dimensions;
  • Inside the human body: complex, organic form: the miracle of life (human anatomy drawings / x-rays;
  • Inside an animal carcass;
  • ​
Journey
  • ​A miniature journey  (i.e. walking down your garden path – with viewpoint at your feet etc; brushing your teeth in the morning – the journey from arrival at the sink to bright white smile);
  • Achieving a goal;
  • An academic journey – through school etc (ambition / academic goals / failure / success / test papers / assignments / grades etc…as in the hurdles you need to get to university);
  • On a bus or a plane or a train;
  • Memorabilia related to a particular journey (i.e. an overseas trip);
  • A still life made from tickets, maps, timetables;
  • The journey of an animal (i.e. a bird or fish, swimming upstream);
  • The journey of an insect walking a short distance over interesting surfaces;
  • Terrorism and the journey you will never forget.
  • A physical journey from a particular destination to another (i.e. the mundane drive between your home and school…seeing beauty in the ordinary etc; your first visit to see something that moved you);
  • The transformational journey from old to new (old structure demolished for something new / old technology making way for new etc);
  • A journey through time, such as a person aging / physical changes, or a record of memorable occasions in a life;
  • Childhood to adulthood;
  • Getting through an emotional circumstance, such as a loved one passing away or overcoming illness;
  • Conception/pregnancy/birth;
Rites of Passage
http://remezcla.com/lists/culture/photos-quinces-in-colombia-delphine-blast/
Society Today
  • Modern diet / processed food;
  • Digital technology and the impact it has on our lives;
  • Soaring depression levels / the psychiatric torment of modern man;
  • Soaring caesarean rates;
  • Drugs and mind-numbing forms of escape;
  • Slowing down;
  • More, more, more: ever increasing consumption;
  • The mechanised processes involved in the production of meat: pigs in tiny cages / battery hens / images from an abattoir;
  • Disconnection from the whole: i.e. a factory worker who spends his/her whole life assembling one tiny part of a product, without having any input into the big picture: disillusionment with life purpose.
​http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/a-level-art-exam-paper