Process Zine from the FMP by Helena Sanchez

ROMANTICS

From the research gathered douring the process of making the FMP magazine: ALEGORÍA by Helena Sánchez BA (HONS) Graphic Design, Vissual Communications at London Metropolitan University. 2020/2021

CONTENTS RESEARCH Travis Chantar Quil Lemons Ordinary Fragments Scanderbergs Jefferson Fouquet Michelle Du Xuan Hikari Shimoda Romanticism Typography PREVIOUS WORKS Photography Illustration Collage PRACTICE Dreaming in gold, photography Boys, collage photography Silouetes, photography. INVESTIGATION Google form, answers and thoughts Typography and Illustration

STATEMENT OF INTENT For this project I intend to create a publication in order to improve and develop further different design skills. At the memento I don’t feel very confident in different areas of Adobe assets, such as after effects and illustrator. I struggled in the past with branding, maybe because of the weight of different tasks that I didn’t really feel confident about, because of the situation or because I didn’t push myself enough. So this time I want to make it up and push the limits of what I already know, to be able at the end of the year to be proud of what I’ve accomplished and have a portfolio rich in content and skill. I want to produce something that I would be proud of, not just because of the skills but because of the content and that’s why I would be researching different areas and aspects that I feel connected with. I will start with romanticism and portraiture, as the stile of this particular movement kind of reflects what I’ve been doing till now -with the identity project last year, but also the projects that I did for Level 4 and foundation too-, also masculinity because I find interesting -and sometimes disturbing- the way that this society has evolved to define it. Social problems, but also problems within the country that I’m from, as is always a touchy subject every time the question comes up ‘what’s going on in Spain?’ and I can get really carried away trying to explain the situation. I have always complained and expressed to people why I’m here and not in Spain but I have never taken those problems that I feel Spain has and put them together into a project in order to express myself and try and get to others, so this is a good opportunity to keep that in mind. I’m interested in publishing and art direction, so putting together a project that involves both of them sounds interesting. Is hard to do shoots in order to explore these things and put them to practice, but I will find a way to be creative and reach a social-distancing solution to it, but it would be fun if possible to have a proper day of shooting in the daylight studio. But for now I’m focusing on the contents of this publication/magazine.

DIVINE FATE Deon Hinton, Dan Osahon & Znere Grace by Travis Chantar for FGUK Magazine #5

RESEARCH The beginning of this research was strongly influenced by the name of my dissertation studio ‘Paths of Desire’. I started my research looking for articles, exhibitions and art pieces with the keyword desire, but also gender, masculinity and identity as I was strongly influenced by my last project and the different ideas that I got through the process of making it. I also looked into nature and flowers

and how different artists represent them in the different mediums. The different ways of using nature to express different emotions or ideas never stops to amaze me. In small groups we discussed the project and what we were expecting from it, the ideas that we had and how we thought we were going to develop them.

I did not make my mind on what I wanted to do or how I wanted it to look like, but I was quite sure on doing a project in relation with masculinity and gender identity. How things developed, however, is different.

GLITTERBOY by Quil Lemons, Personal project.

Inspired by Frank Oceans video ‘Nikis’, Quil Lemons explores masculinity and identity in this series of portraits. The shameless use of glitter and the expressions captured on this series is what caugh my attention the most.

ORDINARY FRAGMENTS by Tyrone Williams & Jean-Christophe Recchia.

Ordinary Fragments is a photographic publication, a collaboration between two artists that look into the details of everyday life, giving us a distorted image of the reality that is taking place in that moment. We can just imagine what it is that we’re looking at, even though sometimes it can be obvious, we will never know the context of each of the images. It caught my attention because of the use of color and the infinite possibilities that those images hold. Stories can be told or shown, and sometimes let to the imagination of whoever is on the other side of the picture. I felt like I was in hundred different places with each image.

The bold use of colour and light that Stefano and Alberto always put into their work makes them one of my favorites. The composition and use of bodyexpression for it is just wonderful.

SCANDEBERGS Stefano Colombini and Alberto Albanese (various works).

JEFFERSON FOUQUET for Officiel Chine. Photoography by MICHELLE DU XUAN.

TAMUKERU #3 By Hikari Shimoda Acrylic and oil on canvas, 20.9” x 17.9”, 2019

CHILDREN OF THIS PLANET #38 By Hikari Shimoda Acrylic and oil on canvas, 20.9” x 17.9”, 2018

CHO GI SEOK Photography

MANTRA TYPEFACE By Cynthia Torrez

NUE WORLD By Pangram Pangram Foundry

ROMANTICISM Romanticism was born between the 1750 and the 1780. The romantics brought a new set of ideas to society to counteract the excessive insistence on logical thought and industrialization. They see nature as something sublime and beautiful and idealized the past and its ways of living. Romantics promoted justice, freedom and equality.

LAS ROSAS DE HELIOGÁBALO (1888) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Detail)

As they idealized nature and rejected the new industrialization of cities, we try to solve the problem that industrialization and mass production has caused. Is not something new that we are at risk, approaching the no return point and no one seems to listen while the younger generations talk about this. I feel like this project has to be something personal that gives a reflection of myself and I feel deeply connected to this issues. I also thing that is what everyone should be talking about, but no one complains in Spain, at least they don’t complain about what they should and people seem to be motivated just to make a huge deal about famous gossips and reality shows. Is a new and an old country at the same time and there’s a lot of voices that can’t be heard because no one listens.

EPISODIO DE TRAFALGAR Francisco Sans Cabot 1862. Óleo sobre lienzo, 310,5 x 424,5 cm.

UN PAISAJE DEL GUARDARRAMA Martín Rico y Ortega 1858. Óleo sobre lienzo, 69 x 100 cm.

Romanticism was born during the second half of the eighteen century. The romantics brought a new set of ideas to society to counteract the excessive insistence on logical thought and industrialization. They see nature as something sublime and beautiful and idealized the past and its ways of living. Tragedy, death, depression, injustice and barbarity were also romanticized in paintings, poems and stories. The artist was this doomed character living a life of misery, not following the standards and ways of living, seeking love instead of just a matrimony. Today’s social problems and environmental issues are not far from the ones that romantics faced. They’re not the same, obviously, but there’s some main points that, looking at Spain and

Even though Spain is seen as a liveral country advancing in a lot of social issues, seeing it from inside gives you a different perspective on what’s going on. Fascism is rising in young generations and no one is scandalized. Art The identity crisis comes from is seen as what lazy people social ideals and structures. do, not as a respectful job, The idea that you have to theatres struggle to stay open form a family during your and cinema has to fight its way twenties and gender roles are through a society that feeds still sitting in peoples minds mostly in american comedy strongly. How you look and and the absurd, instead of the what you do is being judged quality of the stories. for everyone, especially the people that don’t know you. Romatics idealized the past, There’s this strong belief that as we sort of do now as fashion people who do art or arts are trends come back from all doing so because they’re lazy, decades from the 1900’s. can’t do anything else or are Nostalgia plays an important dumb. Art is the easy way of role in everyone’s lives and getting a degree. aesthetics is something that everyone can relate to. We live in an advanced era, one that struggles even now with equality and freedom. its society, especially my generation, can relate to; equality, environmental issues, new style of life that does not fit the norm, new found nationalism, identity crisis.

PREVIOUS WORKS

Some of my previous works include collage, photography, double exposure on photoshop, illustration, layout design and light animation.

MAKING

Even though I always find it hard to get my head and reflect on what I’ve being doing, I can proudly say that this time I’ve been doing a good job. I have been focusing too much on the making part of things when it came to projects and that always made me feel stuck, as I was looking for the final outcome straight away, wanting to skip all those steps that come beforehand and jump right into the making phase. Now I realize the importance of writing it down. Talking to Sara about it, she said that I fear to get things wrong or what others may think about what I do or my thoughts and she’s completely right. I fear of not doing the right thing, of getting too carried away or saying silly things. But nothing is silly and reflecting is getting carried away from one thought to the other in order to find order in your head. So I think that this particular project has helped me organize my thoughts and ideas and get them out to produce work that I’m proud of and I feel a connection to. Not that I don’t for the project that I’ve done before, but this is taking a huge personal point of view, as I’m getting in to a subject that has always been touchy for me. I don’t want to get too carried away with the touchy part, as it can be dangerous to get too personal and take it as a declaration of war to the system that I so much feel annoyed with, because that’s not my intention. My intention is to get to people, to make them rethink the concept of the arts/and art being something that isn’t essential, because it is. Is important for self expression, for culture, for mental health, for history and for memory and it’s really sad that a country like Spain that has so much culture, variety and history, is not more recognized for it. Not even for the people from there either.

GOLDEN DREAMS

I started this project with the focus of Romanrticism and so I decided to experiment with some art direction in a tiny set at home. As I was more focus on flowers and the concept of feminism and beauty, I tried to represent the concept of nature as the sublime and portray the natural beauty of the flowers, adding glitter to represent the force concept of beauty on society.. Making the fakeness super obvious in the previous pages.

One of the last things thta I did based on this concept while figuring out what to do for the FMP was mixing collage with photography, using the cut outs to recreate a set with giant flowers and delicate but strong boys.

The very last before steping back from the flowers and the boys and realizing that the focus of my passion was in another direction, was this series of photographies based on some negatives I wanted to do last year. I used kitchen paper and some LD lights to take the pictures of the dried flowers.

Joe Keery in Death to 2020 (2020) Sorce: IMBD

After some thinking, and a movie I’m not going to lie, I think I got something. I was watching ‘Death to 2020’ when it came to me, I started thinking about what happened and how the documentary was only based on what happened in America, Uk and just a few more places. Is impossible to fit in a documentary movie every single country, but it made me ask myself what happened in Spain during 2020 that wasn’t covid-related.

(Right) Death to 2020 (2020) Sorce: IMBD

and rethinking all the Romanticism related project, I got questions about why I was in the UK if Spain was so great. That made me realize how idealized the country is for someone that has never lived there or know what’s going on.

Also the news. Lost of things have happened in Spain, but the news here seem to be more focused on the snow and how people is out and about because of it. I’m not saying that is not news, or that covid is not important, but I complain a lot about the situation we tend to forget all the rest or just in Spain and around the same skip it because we get a ton of the time that I was watching the movie same; covid. So i figured that this

could be a great opportunity to try and do something that It could be helpful in the future, the present, to Spanish people and to the world, to see my point of view but also the facts, of what happened on 2020 in Spain. Not a text book, but a publication that can make you think about what the fuck is wrong with this world -and eventually this (Spain) country-. I used kitchen paper and some LD lights to take the pictures of the dried flowers.

GOOGLE FORM I want to do a publication with news, stories and all sorts of things that happened in Spain during the 2020, but I didn’t want to make a publication just based on what I wanted or what I remembered. So I decided to create a google forms questionnaire and send it around to ask friends and family to fill it up and share it. Today, 14 January 2021 at 11.40, after two days, it has 83 answers of people born between 1964 to 2005. I asked what they remembered from the news, from social media, what make them angry and scared, but also if they lived outside the country what did the people from that country thought about Spain.

What I got from it was that people didn’t remember much a part from covid-19. I specify in some of the questions for the answer to be non covid related and most of the replies I got where ‘I don’t know’ or, even though I asked specifically to reply with news related to Spain- people answered with news from USA, the bomb in Beirut, Maradona’s death, the Australian fires… A few remembered that on 2020 euthanasia became legal in the country, one mention how the major of Madrid did the opening of a hospital with no quirofans, doors or doctors to work in it.

Which story from the news caught the most your attention? (non covid related • A man commited suicide at his own bar because he couldn’t affor to keep it, or his family. • Maybe that so many people is still dying on the mediterranean sea on small boats and no one’s doing anything about it, we all have normalized the situation. • In a few years some parts of the planet would be so hot that it would be impossible to live there. • The lies and fake acts by the Spanish monarchy. • The amount of puppies bought during quarantine and abandoned afterwards. • 2000 plants witnessed a concert at Barcelona’s Opera House. • The legalization of Euthanasia.

What's the idea that people from other countries had about Spain? • Most of them they only knew Spain as the country of paella and that’s about it. (USA) • Lazy, overrated, party lovers. • An exhotic country like Thailand! But also beautiful and a rich gastronomy country. • I traveled to Dominican Republic during the 2000 and for them Spain was the golden dream. They begged to us for a contact to get to Spain. • Is always hot, a country for party and cheap prices. • Lazy and dirty. • A tambourine country.

THE CONTENT The next logical step was for me to look through online newspapers and social media platforms in order to find content from 2020 that fitted for my projects. Based on the ideas of romanticism and also to keep the structure organized, I thought of dividing it by themes/ sections. I was looking at the culture section of one of the newspapers when I came across ‘#Vuelve a la vida’ (come back to life), a movement to promote the world of the arts and get to more people, born during the pandemic due to the lack of support that sector received. The movement asks companies to join and participate, giving them access to exclusive events and content in order to help promote the culture via social media. Culture in Spain has always been overlooked. Theatre, cinema, books, magazines, painters, asculpturers, designers. The idea of being an artist for a living

is a synonym of laziness, the path of the people not clever enough to be a doctor or a lawyer. I’m passionate about cinema and theatre as much as I am about illustration, graphics and photography so this is something that touched me personally. I consider myself lucky as my family and friends have always pushed me to pursue my goals no matter what and have always being really supportive. My mum was the first person who I talked about focusing the theme of the project to the arts and art in Spain as i really infravalorated and people doesn’t take culture as something important in life for everyone and even she told me ‘’It’s because it’s not really necessary’’ and kept on going about not being important and even said ‘’normal people needs to pay the bills’’. Two things that really hurted that made me think how bad the situation could really be.

THE PEOPLE AND THE QUESTIONS Some of the questions might be: • What do you think about the actual climate regarding the art community? • Do you feel supported? • While at school, did you always know this is what you wanted to do? Why? And did you had support at school and at home? • Have you ever been in trouble for doing what you do? • Are you scared of saying or doing something that might not be right for the government? •

Was it easy for you to study?

• How many times have you been asked to do something for free? I want it to be more of a conversation than planned questions, but I understand that sometimes it will not be possible to have one and I’ll need to plan ahead.

One of the most important things in order to develop the publication about art and artists in Spain is people. I need to get in touch with artists from all backgrounds and fields in order to get a general idea of the feeling of the art community inside and outside the country. Just my thoughts and ideas won’t work by itself as I’m trying to prove a point with this and to reach more people. I want this publication to be something that Spanish people can relate to, something for them to find inspiration and people to relate to and to look into. I also want this magazine to be some kind of window for other countries and communities.

productor and I’m really excited to hear back from him after sending some questions and a more in depth explanation about my idea for the FMP. He recently replied offering to have a meeting on the 30th of March via zoom, so we can have a chat and cover things quicker in half an hour.

So I have been sending emails to my Spanish colleagues from university, to graduates and to people that I know in Spain as well from my baccalaureate. I’m contacting family that had been doing theatre, my theatre director from when I was in a group, and exiliate artists who run away in 2018 to avoid jail for his rap lyrics, teachers, etc. I’m also planning on contacting agencies, studios and known artists. I know that most probably won’t get an answer from the last grup but is free to try and it would be a huge difference to have opinions of people from different levels of recognition.

I bumped at work wit Ona. She’s a film editor from Barcelona who’s been working as a freelancer in London for a few years. I met her at work and she’s happy to have a chat about everything and talk to me about how was her experience as a freelance in Barcelona and then here in London.

After some emails and chats I heard back from Coté Soler, CEO of the initiative #VuelveALaVida to improve relationships with companies and culture and to help out the arts, specially theatre and cinema, but also literature. He’s also an actor, director and

Elena was a colleague from baccalaureate that studied sculpture and participated in exhibitions, museums and events, she told me that she hasn’t been doing art for a while now and I replied with some more questions and offer a video call.

I had my first interview with David today (15 March) and it was very interesting. Thanks to him I also have a more boarder idea about what question I want to include, also a perspective from another part of the country. We agreed in most of the situations and had the same struggles through the secondary school years too. It was a nice chat and at the end I asked him for a message, story or something that he wanted to share or people to know.

BEHIND THE NAME

Alegorías de las Artes, la Literatura, la Industria y las Ciencias TABERNER MONTALVO, LUIS Madrid, 1844 - Madrid, 1900 Hacia 1880. Óleo sobre lienzo, 39 x 47 cm.

ALEGORÍA

Similar to a metaphor or a symbol, an allegory represent an idea, theme or meaning representing them with human forms, animals or objects. In the art world everything has a meaning or a significance behind it. The context, the color, certain objects or materials, could have a whole history or ideology behind them without the spectator noticing. I remember studying this therm in school and the spanish teacher giving examples of it. My last spanish teacher would reference Dante a lot through the course to use it as an example. I think is a good term in order to represent the whole idea behind making this magazine. The word comes from the greek, allos (another) and agora (assembly, talk).

Las Artes (boceto) TABERNER MONTALVO, LUIS Madrid, 1844 - Madrid, 1900 Hacia 1880. Óleo sobre lienzo, 37 x 67 cm. No expuesto

Un viejo alado, personificación del Tiempo aparece caído junto a sus atributos, la guadaña y el reloj de arena. La Belleza, supuestamente un retrato de la mujer del pintor, Virginia da Vezzo, le sujeta por los cabellos, mientras que la Esperanza le amenaza con un garfio. El Tiempo es desafiado por el Amor, intercambiando sus papeles tradicionales. A winged old man, personification of Time, appears falling with his attributes, the scythe and the sand clock. Beauty, supposedly a portrait of the painter’s wife, Virginia da Vezzo, grabs him by the hair while Hope threatens with a hook. Time is challenged by Love, exchanging their traditional roles.

El Tiempo vencido por la Esperanza y la Belleza VOUET, SIMON París, 1590 - París, 1649 1627. Óleo sobre lienzo, 107 x 142 cm.

IMAGERY

Using the painting from the museum El Prado, who gives high quality images on its website, I tried first to give a riso printed feeling, but realized that there was printing implied on the colors I want to use for the magazine CMWK. Also, the grain was working really well, adding that old film style to it, and I think that is a good way of representing that sector too. The traditional oil paintings that I used were also catalogged as allegories by the museum, which work with the name of the magazine too.