December 29th, 2008
Immanuel Kant, a famous German philosopher who published a very influential work called Critique of Pure Reason, which was an investigation into the nature of reason itself. He felt that only by understanding the true limitations of human understanding and knowledge could one begin to pose valuable metaphysical questions. Kant posed that a mind can only think about things based on its own experience with them and that since the mind is wired toward the idea of causality, everything that we encounter comes to be thought of as either a cause or an effect. This, however, stops man from understanding some basic things, such as the nature of the world itself. It can only be experienced during the span of a man’s life and therefore, one will never know if the world has indeed existed forever and, if not, what might have actually caused it.
His views on fine art stretch to the idea that it must be intentionally produced. Additionally, art is something, which must be experienced through intuitions and sensations instead of concepts, which are already known. Therefore, each work of art is meant to be experienced as a completely unique piece, independent of every other work of art in the world.
Kant believed that art needed to be beautiful and pleasing because good works of art would stimulate the mind into reacting to that beauty. This viewpoint is rather limited in today’s art world, however, for modern art will often produce works, which are neither. Instead, Kant believed that to truly be successful, a work of art has to be judged immediately, in the form, as it exists to the viewer.
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December 22nd, 2008
Learning how to draw is one of the earliest activities that children are generally given in an art class. Drawing is one of the most basic forms of art as most works of art will either include the representation of an image on the paper or canvas, or will work from sketches of the artwork. Teaching children to draw, however, will provide them with a number of benefits which aren’t solely related to the world of art. When being encouraged to draw, children will learn firstly how to make choices. They will be presented with a landscape that will encourage them to view everything before them, weighing the positive and negative aspects of what they see, before they begin to draw.
Additionally, when they are encouraged to begin drawing what they see without ever taking their eyes off of the subject, they not only begin to learn hand-eye coordination, but to study their subjects carefully. These children will learn to begin how to make comparisons between different aspects like shapes, proportions, tones, textures, and sizes. This begins to shape their constructive view, allowing them to make assessments.
Finally, the children will learn that, as with anything in this life, drawing ability will improve with practice. If they keep a portfolio of their work, after a few months they will be able to look back and see how much their work has improved since the earlier attempts. This is a vital skill to instill in children, that with hard work, success will come. This is why, beginning at an early stage, encouraging children to explore their drawing ability can set them up for great success.
Photo: Chunker
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December 15th, 2008
“If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.” - Michelangelo
While some people can be preternaturally talented artists, knowing immediately how to draw a stunning likeness or paint using a vivid color arrangement, this is not the case for most people, including some of history’s best artists. For an artist is only as good as the tools that they have to work with for those tools are what shape the art into being what it is. If the tools are shoddy or the artist doesn’t know how to properly use them, the artwork will suffer.
The artist will have their vision held firmly in their head. To get that image out to share with the world, however, they will need to use a physical medium to express themselves. Exploration of this physical medium is a great way for artists to come into themselves, but only though lots of study and practice will they be able to use these tools and this physicality to take the vision from their head and shape it, paint it, or express it for the world. Only by proper study, dedication, and eventual mastery will an artist be able to take a vision from their head and share that vision with the world.
Posted in Quotes, What is Art | 6 Comments »
December 8th, 2008
Widely regarded to be one of the leading influences in the world of Pop Art, Roy Lichtenstein was a famous artist who helped to usher in the Pop Art period of the Modern Art movement. His works were often incredibly stylistic, based on different panels, which he took from comic books and adapted into his paintings. Lichtenstein felt that his work was not representative of American art, however, but was of a more industrial nature. One of his aims was to find art where it already existed in the world and if the piece was particularly striking to him, to reproduce it through his own eyes, giving it his own interpretation and vision. There are many critics out there who feel that Lichtenstein merely copied works of other artists, but this is simply not true. By representing the image through his own eyes, with his own interpretation, Roy Lichtenstein makes a commentary on what exactly it is in art that speaks to us.
Born in New York City in 1923, Lichtenstein was exposed to art during his school years, at an early phase. He took a quick interest and studied art all through his early school years. He went to Ohio State University for its studio courses in fine arts, pausing partway through his studies to serve in the Army during World War II and after. Later, upon graduation, he was granted an MFA and began teaching off and on, while working as a painter experimenting in Cubism, Expressionism, and Abstract Expressionism.
In 1960, he began to teach at Rutgers University and a fellow professor ignited his interest in Pop Art. Lichtenstein began to make his paintings, using images that he derived from cartoons and commercial advertising. His artworks as well as his technique are very expressive, as Lichtenstein often used Benday Dots to express color. His paintings have since become highly recognizable, as they make bold statements about Pop Culture, often presenting their ideas through the image of pulp comic art.
Posted in Creativity, Famous Artists, Pop Art | 3 Comments »
December 1st, 2008
When talking about what inspires artists, we realize that many have taken their inspiration from previous periods, but, which period influences them all? I was recently able to visit the Roman exhibit that is traveling throughout the United States from the Louvre. As I walked through the exhibit rooms and was awed by such impressive and monumental work, I finally understood why artists from all eras have been influenced by these great works.
If you look at work done during the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Neoclassical period, the Victorian age, you realized that they have all been influenced by this one great era, the Roman era.
So then the question arises where did the Romans get this great interest or this great artistic influence from? We know that they were fascinated with the human body and worked to portray it with such infinite precision. We know that they studied muscle and bone groups and then used them in art, but where did they get their inspiration to portray such knowledge with such beauty? This may be something we never know.
What I do know is that I walked out of this exhibit with thousands of ideas rolling around in my head. I was truly inspired by the work of these unknown artists and I can truly see why so many artists are influenced by the Classical Roman style. If you have a chance to get to this exhibit, it is truly one you don’t want to miss.
Photo: ArtCulture
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November 24th, 2008
Many people believe that all the arts revolved around male artists but in actuality there were many renown artists throughout history, Even some that inspired political change, such as Marie-Guillemine Benoist. She was a Parisienne born to a civil servant and taught by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.
This painter was a true feminist and portrayed her beliefs through her work. One of her paintings ¨L’Innocence entre la vertu et le vice¨ shows her mythological abilities but in it she portrayes vice as a man, and traditionally it had always been represented by a woman.
Another very famous painting of hers was “Portrait d’une Negresse” which became a symbol of women’s rights and black peoples freedom. This painting was done just six years after slavery had been abolished in France and was acquired by Louis the XVIII.
Her work was commissioned by many notable people including Napoleon Bonaparte and was even awarded the cogl medal in the Salon of 1804.
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November 17th, 2008
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher most active during the middle 1800s. His work set about to examine whether reason could answer any questions about the world and his primary target of concentration was on man’s motivations, which he referred to as the “will.” His studies led him to conclude that man’s basic physical, emotional, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled and that abstaining from trying to fulfill these desires was the best possible course of action. He consequently greatly supported art as a way of being able to escape an oppressive servitude to the will as it allowed an artist the means to stop lusting after the earthly desires they were feeling and to enter a realm of purely mental satisfaction.
Schopenhauer believed that the will was not something to be indulged for failed attempts to fulfill the will only led to sorrow in man. If man succeeded in fulfilling the will, they were only led on to either boredom or new desires. An endless cycle would be started that would leave man being unsatisfied for the majority of his life. Art could, however, save everyone by providing a place of escape. Salvation could be attained through aesthetic experiences.
Schopenhauer was responsible himself for the eventual movement of the Symbolists. Art was accomplished for art’s sake, therefore rejecting the idea that good art was something, which could be capitalized on. Through Schopenhauer’s beliefs, art was something, which could remove much of the pain and sorrow from the world, as it was something, which could remain elevated over it all.
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November 10th, 2008
Roy Lichtenstein produced a number of works that he interpreted from various sources, many of them found within the pages of comic books. These pieces have come to be known as a standard for Pop Art, seeing one will immediately evoke thoughts of Pop Culture and the place where it stands in our society. There are any numbers of Lichtenstein pieces, which can do this, but Drowning Girl seems to be one of the most identifiable and beloved pieces of the general public today.
The piece is popular both because it is colorfully and texturally rich, as well as the content. The image, in which a young, beautiful woman is sinking under the water during what appears to be a turbulent storm, thinks to herself that she would rather drown than call for Brad to come help her. The image is humorous because of the statement that it makes about drama in our culture. The situation is ludicrous with someone preferring death out of feelings of spite. However, this is a situation that one would all too easily find in the dramatic presentations of the day. Drowning Girl serves as a statement about Pop Culture, both the ridiculousness as well as the entertaining, melodramatic quality about it.
Lichtenstein put a great deal of effort into the mechanics of the painting as well. He took liberties with the original piece, which depicted the boyfriend clinging to a capsized boat in the background as well as different text. By narrowing in heavily on the drowning girl and slightly changing the words in her thought bubble, Lichtenstein was able to take the one particular element of the original drawing and place all emphasis on the melodrama of the situation. Additionally, Lichtenstein made heavy use of Benday dots, a form of coloring, which was also frequently used in comic books. By using these strong colors and textures to highlight the melodrama of the situation, Lichtenstein ensured that Drowning Girl would remain an excellent example of Pop Art.
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November 3rd, 2008
Martin Heidegger was a famous German philosopher from the early to mid 20th Century. His philosophical views were largely based on investigating not what it mean to be a being, but what being in itself means. He believed that all of the questions which philosophy had attempted to answer over the preceding 2,000 years were about all the beings which could be found in the world, but that no one had bothered to question what “being” itself implicated. Heidegger believed that philosophy got started on the wrong foot and as a result, most of the discoveries made in philosophy were erroneous.
His views on art took the approach that a work of art not only defined the way that a culture understands art, but it actually creates that same truth to a degree. The truth, which a work of art represents, will actually become the way that a society will understand that truth. Furthermore, at any time that an artist introduces a new work of art into society, the entire definition of truth behind the meaning of existence is slightly changed.
Heidegger believed that both artworks and the artist could not exist without each other. While artworks would not exist without an artist, it was the work itself, which made one into an artist. At the same time, art itself was something, which is separate from both artworks and artists. The concept of art is something, which needed to be understood to appreciate artworks, but without artworks, the concept of art did not exist. Heidegger fully explained that his beliefs were a paradox, which could not be appropriately answered, but that his responsibility was in describing the riddle.
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October 27th, 2008
Expressionism is an intensely popular art form which lasted the span of the 20th Century. Its roots began in Germany in the very early 1900s, born out of the desire to place more emphasis on the emotions and feelings that a piece of art can produce in the viewer over an attempt to recreate a reality on the canvas. German Expressionism gave way into Expressionism around the world, which eventually took root in New York City after World War II with the dawning of Abstract Expressionism. All three forms use bright primary colors to evoke emotion and all will usually depict simple shapes and dissolved, unclear forms of images that will better capture the emotional angst which is felt about the issue rather than a clear definition of what the issue actually is.
Abstract Expressionism, unlike the earlier German Expressionism, places a large emphasis on the use of action paintings, which capture the artist’s mood and feelings at the time of painting rather than painstakingly making a portrait of an idea. These paintings are often loud and vibrant and grab the viewer, much as the famous No. 5 by Pollock. At any rate, these Expressionist paintings seek to take the viewer on an emotional journey by experiencing them, rather than merely inspiring an admiration for the technical skill that goes into creating the art.
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