American Illustrator Gil Elvgren Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

American Illustrator Gil Elvgren - Coursework Example His career spanning four decades from the 1930s to the 1970s encompassed different types of art work including commercial advertisements for Coca Cola and other products, and creating illustrations for magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping. Elvgren as an artist continues to be remembered till today, mostly for his pin-up paintings for calendars commissioned and produced by the promotional firm Brown and Bigelow. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the work of American illustrator Gil Elvgren, particularly with reference to his pinup art. Gil Elvgren’s Distinctive Pinup Art Style â€Å"Although most of Gil Elvgren’s work was created for commercial use, it has been increasingly recognized as fine art by many private collectors, dealers, galleries and museums† (Meisel & Martignette:12). As the most important pinup and glamor artist of the twentieth century, Elvgren’s expertise in portraying the feminine form was extended beyond the calendar pinup industry. He was greatly influenced by the early â€Å"pretty girl† illustrators such as Charles Dana, Gibson, Andrew Loomis, and Howard Chandler Christy. The Brandywine School founded by Howard Pyle also influenced his work. Besides being a successful commercial artist in various fields, Gil Elvgren was also a professional photographer of repute. He had amazing energy and talent, and was considered as a respected and even revered teacher of students, some of whom went on to become famour artists in their own right. Elvgren’s personally rendered instruction and support was responsible to a great extent, for his students’ success (Meisel & Martignette: 13). Although Elvgren was best known for his pinups, his advertising work â€Å"depicted typical Americans, ordinary people doing everyday things† (ElvgrenPinup.com, 2010). Further, the women that the artist painted were not the femme fatale, the female adventuress, or somebody’s mistress. They reflect the girl next door whose feminine charms are innocently revealed in an unexpected instant, in what might be an embarassing situation. The artist’s supporters agree that Gil Elvgren portraying that fleeting moment when a girl is caught off guard is not only unusual, but has a sexy quality about it. Several of his paintings from the 1940s to the 1960s feature a woman doing an ordinary task such as barbecuing, watering the lawn, or shopping, when she is unprepared for a sudden gust of smoke (Fig.1), jet of water from a hose (Fig.2) or other effect which raises her skirt to reveal her stockings and garters. The woman’s expression is one of shock but never horror, with a hint of a smile â€Å"in the O of her perfectly painted lips† (Taormino: 125). Fig.1. Smoke Screen by Gil Elvgren, 1958 (The Pinup Files 1, 2011) Fig.2. A Near Miss by Gil Elvgren, 1960 (The Pinup Files 2, 2011) It is evident that the context for the scene is created by Elvgren as a pretense for the viewer to get a glimpse under the girl’s skirt. It is both voyeuristic and innocent, because it tells the viewer that he just saw something that he was not supposed to. Though occasionally, the artist has uncovered the upper part of the body, there is very little nudity in his paintings which portrayed an old fashioned naughtiness (Taormino: 125). The Contribution of PInups to World War II Wartime imagery was an anomaly, deviating from the usual norms, and more decorous due to military control over the images. Gil

Organisational change management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 2

Organisational change management - Essay Example The positive energy approach will help to build the organisations on the strengths (Cooperrider and Whitney, 2001; Cooperrider, et al., 2008). The first step in this process is identifying and describing the problems which are needed to be solved. The approach can be described in five steps: (Source: The Eye Health Summit, 2013) Definition Definition is the first phase of the Appreciative Inquiry process. It is the phase where the organisations try to find out the underlying issues of the current business process, which require immediate attention of the management. In this phase, the management makes a flow map of those factors which are creating problems in the present business process and require external enquiry. In today’s business environment, the importance of organisational change management has been one of the most widely investigated areas. The organisational change management has gained attraction to a great extent from the researchers all around the world. Accordin g to Harigopal (2006), the organisational change is an essential process associated with the growth and expansion of a particular business. It is considered to be a complex process because a change which was successful for one organisation might not be so for other organisations. Thus, it becomes necessary to check that the change is congruent to dynamism, complexity and finally the uniqueness of the respective organization. The changes taking place in the political, economic and social environment also has an effect on the individuals and the organizations. Even if the change has been a constant process but its rapidity and swiftness have always been different. It is because of this reason that the external environmental changes have forced the organizations to make certain changes in their operational systems. We find a large number of companies implementing various strategic changes for coping up with the existing challenges. In case of strategic change, the companies restructure their business or marketing plans in a wider context. The main intention of performing strategic changes in an organization is for achieving the organizational goals and harmonizing the organizational activities along with the business environment. Organizational change management is one of the most crucial activities of an organization (Chen, et al., 2013). According to Jones (2004), there are two reasons responsible for the changes in the organizations. One is the response to the changes in the external environment. Another reason is the response of the companies to a specific crisis situation. The organizational change also becomes evident when various companies undergo any change in their executive power (Haveman, Russo and Meyer, 2001). The present study deals with the investigation of the problems in D2, which is an automobile components manufacturer. The company is facing a large number of problems associated with the cost of operations. The economic downturn has resulted in the worsening of the scenario in the company. D2 had to struggle for surviving in the market. The company planned for formulation of new strategies in order to achieve the economies of scale. The new strategy which has been taken into consideration is yet to be conveyed to the employees and only the senior managers are informed about the strategy