Abstract Art

Abstract Art is also commonly referred to as “concrete art” or “non-objective art.” The idea behind abstract art is to separate or withdraw something from something else. It also represents a form of art that is not so realistic but more up to interpretation of the artist and viewer through the use of geometric shapes and marks. Some claim that there is not purpose behind abstract art but others argue that it’s just for the aesthetic pleasure of the viewer. Abstract art began between the first and second world war and was used as an escape for one to express themselves. Abstract art can defer from just geometric shapes and lines on a 2D canvas to conceptual sculptures that one must walk around and closely analyze to understand.

Hilma AF Klint

Example of Klint’s artwork

Hilma AF Klint was a Swedish artist whose artworks were among the first abstract artwork in history. She is considered one of the first abstract artists in history because she is from Sweden where women were allowed to study art freely even before women were allowed in France. As a result of being allowed to studying art freely, she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1882. She was member of a group called The Five, a group of women that shared the same belief in the importance of trying to make contact with “high masters.” Through her own artwork, Klint would paint diagrams, which was a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas. The Five was established in 1892 and were avidly involved in completely inventing a new system of mystical thought to form messages to the high spirit. In 1906 and 1907, Klint began to paint a series of small-format canvas entitled Primordial Chaos. These pieces depicted reminiscent of landscapes of a stormy sea with a mysterious light. This led to a series of 200 different abstract pieces completed by Klint in the following years. She also began the idea of free form drawing where she would use geometric shapes with lettering and symbols to express herself, which later came to be known as automatic drawing. Klint was known for drawing creating artwork through the use of geometric shapes and mysterious lighting sources. She became interested in the invisible force, which toward the end of the 19^th century became widely accepted.

Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings

Example of Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings’ artwork

Couple, Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings began to collaborate together in 2001. They now create paintings on intricate patterns. Most of their work is primarily exhibited in London. Emma Biggs studied at Leeds University in 1976 to 1980. She worked as a mosaic artist for about 25 years and was known for the mosaic workshops she would set up. The mosaic traditions that Biggs usually works with relate back to Roman and Byzantine art and she attempts to renew it with early modernism. She has many public works that can be found in Canary Wharf, Sheffield, Liverpool, and London. Matthew Collings was born in London in 1955. He studied painting at Byam Shaw Art School in 1974 to 1978 and also at Goldsmith’s College in 1990 to 1992. He began his career writing reviews for the UK magazine Artscribe and later became an art critic on BBC2’s The Late Show. Collings wrote Blimey! From Bohemia to Britpop: The London Artworld from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, which chronicled the rise of YBA (Young British Artist).

Robert Delaunay

Endless Rhythm

This piece is a prime example of how one must closely analyze an abstract piece. Although the piece appears to have a clear and simple purpose, each small detail plays vital role in making the piece come together as a whole. The use of color is extremely important for this piece because although the piece gives of a smoothing feeling there is still movement throughout the piece. The grey background makes the piece neutral and not so vibrant for attention. While the swirl in the center of the three discs creates the sense of movement and allows the viewer’s eyes to flow up and down the canvas. Although the discs appear to be symmetrical at first, upon further inspection, one notices that both sides of the discs are not actually connecting; each half is its own shape and size. Also one notices that the three discs are not perfectly centered on the canvas due to the line that is drawn splitting both discs causing one’s perception to conclude that the discs are not centered nor aliened. The tile of the piece also plays a major role in understanding Delaunay’s purpose. He created the sense of endless rhythm through the colors chosen to depict the swirl in the center. He used complementary colors, which attract ones attention, but most importantly none of the colors are more dominant than the other, they are well balanced.

Dame Barbara Hepworth

Pierced Hemisphere II

This sculpture is purely geometrical as its name suggests. Hepworth’s skill has a sculpture is shown through his ability to crave the spiral on the outside of the sculpture, which begins with a sharp edge and gradually softens as it proceeds to finish as a curved edge. One must walk completely around the sculpture to fully take in the artwork. The surface of the stone appears to be extremely soft and even the sharp indent towards the bottom of the sphere has a delicate touch to it. A major difference between 2D abstract art and 3D is that the dimensions and depth are much easier to achieve through sculpture with the use of lighting and the shadows that are casted. The stone itself has a texture to it due to the spotting and different shades of grey, brown, and pink that come naturally with the stone. Hepworth establishes the sense of depth through the fully carved hole towards the top of the sphere. The viewer can clearly see the precision that is needed to accomplish such a smooth transition from a flat surface to one deep hole.

Cubism

The purpose of Cubism was for the artist to break down objects or figures and to put it back together in different views in order to make the image appear fragmented. Having the ability to break down the same subject into distinct areas, the artist would aim to not only show different viewpoints of the same object but also emphasize the 2D flatness of the canvas instead of the creating the illusion of depth. Cubism can be interpreted in two phases, either analytic cubism or synthetic cubism. Analytic cubism is classified as the first Cubistic artworks while synthetic cubism was a technique developed later on, which involved the artist creating a collage of real elements (magazine, new paper) in order to create their piece.

Picasso

Picasso is still known today as one of the most influential artist in the 20^th century. He is mostly known of his works to introduction to Cubism along with artist George Braque, which was a completely knew concept in the artistic world and revolutionized modern art. Picasso influence to begin Cubism came from a lot of Cezanne’s work. Picasso’s first famous piece to introduce Cubism to the art world was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It depicted five naked women composed on a flat planes and their faces were inspired by African masks. Pablo Picasso was born on October 25^th 1881 in Spain. Picasso’s works are often categorized in to certain periods. His most well known periods are the Blue Period, Rose Period, African-influence Period, and Cubism. Picasso spent many of his last years in his career working with the techniques of analytic and synthetic cubism. Picasso focused on mostly using monochromatic or neutral colors when working with cubism. Another aspect that separated Picasso’s work from other artist at the time was the fact that many of his pieces demonstrated personal feeling. For example, in 1937 following the Nazi Germany’s bombings on Guernica, he created one of his most famous works. Guernica. This piece is still considered today one of the most powerful anti-war statements in modern art. When Picasso passed away at the age of 91 in April of 1973 he had become one of the most famous and successful painters in art history.

Head of a Woman 1909

              

Although Cubism was often recognized only by 2D paintings on a canvas, Picasso also incorporated the technique into his sculptures. In this sculpture Picasso explores the concepts behind analytic cubism, which its main purpose was to break down form into basic geometric parts. Picasso’s companion Fernande Oliver inspired this bust of a woman. The sculpture was completed in 1909. Fernande’s face is broken down into geometrical sections to the point where the viewer can understand the facial features without much detail. For example, the eyes are represented through indents under an elevated plain, which represent the sections of eyebrows. The most significant aspect of the sculpture is Fernande’s hair. Although the hair is not done in detail, more like broken down into elevated and deeper sections, the viewer still has a sense of movement when looking at the hairstyle through the use of different shaped plains.

Georges Braque

George Braque was a French painter who introduced the technique of Cubism along side Picasso in the 20^th century. He spent his youth at Le Havre where in 1899 he was apprenticed to a painter-decorator. He moved to Paris in 1900 where he continued to his studies in drawing and painting. Through influences of Raoul Dufy and Frisz, Braque began to paint a lot of landscapes around 1906. This made led Georges Braque to become a member of the Fauves. But between 1907 and 1908 he fell under the influence of Cezanne and Picasso and the idea of Cubism. He began to paint with a more restrained palette of greens, browns, and greys and simplified his form. Braque sought to find balance in his compositions specially when working with his technique, papier colles, which was creating collages by pasting paper. Papier colles was a different form of Cubism that Picasso and Braque invented in 1912, which later developed into Synthetic Cubism. He also had the revolutionary idea of bringing different mediums onto a canvas. He would stencil letters onto his canvas or blend sand, wooden pieces, or marble with the pigment. Unfortunately, during Braque’s war service between 1914 and 1916, he was severely wounded which led him to only be able to work on compositions of still life and interiors with contrasting patterns and more effective use of space. Braque passed away in Paris, France in 1963.

Bottle and Fishes 1910-1912

The composition of this piece resembles a disfigured still life of a table with a bottle and a fish. The image is completely distorted but one can identify the bottle on the left of the canvas the figure of the fish appears to be coming toward the viewer in the center of the tabletop. The painting resembles a lot of Picasso’s Cubistic work due to the monochromatic coloring and the complete distortion ofthe still life. The still life is painted in colors that are very neutral. Such as, greys, browns, blues, and whites. The highlights of the painting are done in white while the shading is demonstrated through the darker plains on the canvas. When one first looks at the painting, he or she focuses mainly at the center of the image because everything around the center gives off the appearance that it is blurry. At first one does not see the fish laying on the tabletop because it is the most distorted figure in the whole image. The different parts of the fish are painted in plains near each other but not completely connected. Braque’s main purpose in this still life is to take an everyday object and make it interesting. If the image was not distorted to the point where one need to concentrate to understand what object were drawn, the painting would not call for so much attention. One needs to look closely in order to completely understand what objects were presented in the still life.

Post – Impressionists

Paul Gaugin

Paul Gaugin worked in Brittany and the South Seas from 1883 until 1903, creating pictures with unusual, primitive subject matter and old coloration. These images encouraged a new generation of artists to believe that the expression of emotions, rather than appearances, should be their goal.

Gaugin was born in Paris in 1848 and began his career in the merchant navy and then in 1871 became a stockbroker but he also began to take up painting. Pissarro who he worked with in 1879 and 1881 influenced his early works. He showed works in Impressionist exhibitions, subsequently developing the style known as Synthetism during visits to Pont-Aven in Brittany. In 1888 he briefly had the opportunity to work with Van Gogh in Arles. Paul Gaugain was faced with increasing poverty after retiring from stockbroking in 1883 and in 1891 he left Paris to work in Tahiti. Most of his famous paintings were produced in Tahiti. He returned to Paris in 1893 but soon returned to the South Seas and moved to the Marquesas Islands in 1901 were he passed away.

Gauguin found great inspiration while living in Tahiti. He wrote in 1988, “Each day – my latest important paintings attest to this – I realize that I have not yet said all there is to say here in Tahiti … whereas in France, with all the disgust I feel there, my brain would probably be sterile; the cold freezes me both physically and mentally, and everything becomes ugly to my eyes.” – Tate

Faa Iheihe 1898

This painting was done will Gauguin was living in Tahiti after moving out of Paris. Faa Iheihe means, “to beautify” in Tahitian. It depicts a paradise where men and women are in harmony in nature. When one looks upon the painting, the viewer’s eyes are directly drawn to the women centered in the painting. Although the figure begins to blend into the rest of the painting, as one keeps analyzing it the women still calls attention due to her positioning. The woman is the most prominent figure the image because she appears to be the closest to the foreground. The women is looking towards the left which caused the viewer’s glaze to be drawn towards the other three figures which appear to be forth way than the women. The painting as a whole gives of a surreal feeling due to how each figure is not drawn to proportion. Although some figures appear to be further away, they are all drawn in the same size.

Edouard Vuillard

Vuillard was a founding member of the Nabis, which in Hebrew means prophet. It was the name adopted in about 1889 by a group of French painters, including Maurice Denis, Paul Serusier, Bonnard and Vuillard. The use of brilliant colors arranged in satisfying abstract designs is essentially the shared characteristics of their work. Inspired by the work of Gauguin, they abandoned their academic training and their experiments with Impressionism and painted simplified forms with patches or patterns of relatively flat color. Gauguin and Degas influenced the group, Nabis. It concentrated on pattern and distortion to emphasize psychological meanings beyond appearances in ordinary domestic subjects. By the end of his career, Vuillard returned to painting more naturalistic style.

Van Gogh

Van Gogh is today one of the most popular of the Post-Impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated during his lifetime. He is now famed for the great vitality of his works, which are characterized by expensive and emotive use of brilliant color and energetic application of impastoed paint. The term impasto describes areas of the canvas where the surface is heavily built up through several layers of paint creating the sense of texture when looking at the painting. The intention of using this style of painting is to make the light failing across the painting reflect in a particularly noticeable way.

Van Gogh was born in Holland on March 30^th 1853. By 1883 he had started painting and around 1885 to 1886 he attended the academy in Antwerp where Japanese prints and works by Rubens fascinated him. Once he returned to Paris in 1886 he met multiple artists such as Degas, Gaugin and Seurant, which led him to being to use lighter colors when he painted. In 1888 Van Gogh settled down in Arles in Provence where he had the opportunity to paint and work with Gauguin. His most famous work, Sunflowers, was completed there. In the following years of his life, Van Gogh suffered from nervous breakdowns, which led him to shot himself twice on the chest on July 19^th 1890.

Sunflowers 1888

One of Van Gogh most well known items is his painting are the sunflowers. He made up to seven different paintings of sunflowers. In this specific artwork the sunflowers are painted in all different shades of yellow. Yellow is meant to represent happiness; in Dutch literature the flower is a symbol of devotion and loyalty. In this painting the flowers are meant to represent the different cycles of life, from the stages of decay to the essence of beauty. This painting is also extremely significant because it is a perfect example of Van Gogh development with his use of color. He began to experiment with bright, unmixed colors. Once looking at the painting the viewer can notice the delicate flow between each flower painted in the vase. It involves an assortment of decaying flowers, depicted in more brown-yellow tones to radiant flowers painted in bright yellow and soft highlights, which is meant to represent life at its fullest. The painting as a whole gives of an earthy feel due to the hues of yellow, greens, and browns that Van Gogh used. Minor highlights were done with the use of white and outline was done with a darker green color to keep the earth-tone color scheme. Although the painting does not really have a certain perspective and seems to be flat on the canvas the detailed petals and outlines catches the viewer attention. Van Gogh does not use any form of shading to demonstrate that the vase is on a flat surface. One only notices the vase is separated from the background due to the change in color from light yellow to an orange-yellow below and the precise line drawn to divide the two sections and also the outline used around the vase itself. Van Gogh also uses color to separate the vase of flowers from the background by switch the opposite colors around. When the background is light yellow the vase becomes the orange-yellow used on the background below while when the “table” becomes darker the vase is light yellow.

Source:

Background information on artist came from The Post-Impressionists Worksheet

Impressionist

Cezanne

Cezanne was associated with the impressionists, but always had many other aims. He said that his ambition was to ‘make of Impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums.’ Many of his works were discovered in Paris during the 1890’s. Cezanne had a major significant influence on Picasso and the development of 20^th-century art.

He was born in Provence and quickly became obsessed with Provence’s dramatic landscapes. Cezanne’s main influences were Courbet and Manet in his early years. He began to imitate Courbet’s style of painting by applying thick layers of paint with a palette knife in his early years of painting. Later in the 1880s, Cezanne’s brush style developed to be increasingly systematic and ordered. He started to place more emphasis on structure through the use of color rather than light in order to convey form. He preferred to painting subjects that he could take his time working on rather than rushing himself.

Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) 1894-1905

In this art piece Cezanne main goal was reinterpreting a long tradition of paintings with nude figures in the landscape done by artists such as the sixteenth century Venetian painter Titian and the seventeenth century French artists Nicolas Poussin. This art piece is one of three paintings that Cezanne created involving female bathers. This exact painting is known to be the second on of the series, which Cezanne completed, in the last decade of his life. This artwork is known for Cezanne’s sole purpose to epitomize the movement towards abstraction. Main concepts that stand out when one first looks at the canvas are how the women’s faces are vague and not clearly defined in detail. Their bodies are also geometrically shaped with the background, landscape, which causes the perception that the women are blending in with the trees. Cezanne concentrated his central theme was the harmony of the women figures with nature. Cezanne even painted the women in earth-tone colors in order for everything on the canvas to be able to blend together. The image includes eleven female figures each lying away from the viewer towards the background. They are depicted sitting in a forest blaze. Each women is significant with their own pose; some are sitting while others laying and even some standing. The women are called the bathers, which is emphasized through their nudity, but also how some women are still slightly wrapped in white clothes as if they are beginning to dry themselves. The perspective of the painting allows the viewer to feel as if he or she is standing directly in front of the women but since there is no source of water drawn in the image, it could be inferred that the viewer is standing in the source of water close to where the women begin to dry themselves.

Sources:

Background on artist came from Impressionists and Post-Impressionists Worksheet.

British Artists 1750-1850

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds was an influential 18^th century painter who specialized in portraits. He was born in Plympton, Devon in 1723 and passed away in London in 1792 at the age of 68. Since a young boy, Reynolds showed interest in art and became an apprentice to famous portrait painter Thomas Hudson, who had also been born in Devon. After working with Hudson for four years, Reynolds returned to London in 1744 and lived with his three sisters at Plymouth Dock following his father’s death. In 1749, Joshua Reynolds met Commodore Augustus Keppel and was invited to join the Commodore on his ship HMS Centurion for a voyage to the Mediterranean. Reynolds spent two years travelling from Livorno to Rome after his ship voyage studying the “Grand Style.” Reynolds was one of the earliest members in the Royal Society of Arts and played a major role in founding the Society of Artists of Great Britain. In 1768 Reynolds was made the first president of the Royal Society of Art and held the position till his death. He also was a major contributor to establishing The Club, which involved wealthy well-known aristocrats coming together on Friday nights for dinner and discussing major events occurring in London at the time. Joshua Reynolds was forced into retirement when he lost vision in his left eye in 1789.

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter. What is most significant about Gainsborough was that all though, Reynolds and him painted around the same time and both belongs to the Royal Society of Arts, they were actually rivals. Thomas was born on May 14^th 1727 in Suffolk, England and passed away on August 2^nd 1788 in London at the age of 61. In 1769 he became known as a founding member of the Royal Society but his relationship with the organization was never stable and Gainsborough removed most of his work from the exhibitions. He became responsible for painting portraits s of the King and Queen of England but he never received credit. The King credited Thomas’ rival, Reynolds, as the painter of the portraits. Gainsborough became famous for his feathery brushwork and a sense of rich color in most of his paintings. He was noted for the speed in which he would apply paint to the canvas and unlike other painters; Gainsborough preferred to work directly from a landscape and not from earlier sketches.

Young British Artists

Young British artists first appeared on the scene in 1988 in London.hey are most well known for their shock tactics, use of disposable materials, crazy lifestyles, and a unique attitude or opposition, but also entrepreneurship. Many of these artists were initially sought out by Charles Saatchi. Some prominent artists include Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and Ron Mueck.

Damien Hirst

(notes from movie in class)

Growing up, Hirst always wanted to be a painter, but he was frustrated because it never came naturally to him. He struggled in school and did not receive great grades. He struggled to get accepted to college but finally went on his second try.

Growing up in Leeds in the 60s and 70s, abstract expressionism was all the rage. It was used as “a trigger to set something off in the viewer”. Damien believed that art was all about language and how to communicate through art. He liked artists who set out to change things a little bit each time in their work.

During college, Hirst moved to his own studio. One of his earliest influences for his unprecedented sculptures was one of his first neighbors to his studio. This man was an extreme hoarder; he had saved everything.  One day, Hirst realized he had not seen his neighbor for awhile so he went over to check on him and see if he was still alive. When he opened the door and saw everything the house was hiding, he was fascinated. He knew he wanted to make some form of art through this medium.

In July 1988, Hirst organized an independent student exhibit on the Docklands known as Freeze. Big names like Charles Saatchi visited this early art show for Hirst and got a taste of his artwork through his clusters of cardboard boxes painted with household paint.

In 1990, Hirst and his friends curated two “warehouse” shows, Modern Medicine and Gambler. At the Gambler, Saatchi showed up. He was astonished by Hirst’s A Thousand Years installment.

This piece was composed of a bleeding cow head, an incubator of flies, and a machine that killed the flies. It was meant to show how life goes on and the cycle of life but people did not take to it very well. It was extremely gory and graphic.

At this time, Hirst was quoted saying,

“I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say ‘f off’. But after a while you can get away with things.” (Spalding)

From early on in his career, Hirst was making enemies.

In 1991, he held his first solo exhibit In and Out of Love  in an abandoned abandoned shop. This helped to further his name and status.

One of the most famous works is the series of butterfly paintings on the wall. The paintings were made of a household gloss on canvases and butterflies. It was meant to look like the butterflies are flying off of the canvas. There are some dead butterflies stuck to the canvas, looking like they were trying to escape. To heighten this experience, Hirst added some extra live butterflies to the room and had them flying around free, liked they were a part of the butterflies that had escaped the painting. Shortly after this, Saatchi picked up Hirst and showcased some of his work in the Young British Artists exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.

Some of his other most famous works include “Mother and Child Divided” and “The Physical Imposssibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. 

Mother and Child (Divided) 1993

This installment is made up of a baby and mother cow split in half and suspended in formaldehyde solution. They are placed in two large white framed boxes that allow the viewer to essentially walk between the two figures. On the inside, you can see the complete inside of the cow and its organs. It was very appalling to audiences and many people did not think fondly of it. Hirst wanted this exhibit to represent “an emotional thing which you are dealing with in a very brutal, unemotional way” (Damien). The title was meant to represent the apparent “violence” “in any sort of relationship, like trying to keep a relationship together when it is falling apart” (Damien). Personally, I think this piece is intriguing to look at, but I do not like the violence it portrays. The cows were taken and killed off just for this piece. Hirst tried to justify this by saying “In a way, you understand more about living people by dealing with dead people. It’s sad but you feel more … my cows cut up in formaldehyde have more personality than any cows walking about in fields.”(Damien). I do not support this statement. Its interesting to see how differently some people view life and living creatures.

The Physical Imposssibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

This installation features a shark suspended in formaldehyde solution. Hirst commissioned a fisherman to find him a shark. He paid the Australian fisherman six thousand pounds to find him a shark. He then killed it and preserved it in a formaldehyde solution. This work was commissioned by Saatchi, who then went on to sell it for an unreal amount of money, rumored to be around eight million dollars.

All of Damien’s work has been sold for ridiculous amounts of money. On top of his controversial work topics, the amount of money he gets from these pieces that he often doesn’t even complete himself is insane. Damien Hirst is a topic of much controversy in the contemporary art world.

Tracey Emin

Ron Mueck

Sources

Spalding Julian. “Why it’s OK not to like modern art”, The Times (2nd page online), 8 May 2003. Retrieved 02 December 2014.

“Damien Hirst.” Mother and Child (Divided) –. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2014.

Art and Money

Globalization and Commercialization of the Art Market 

The saying “starving artist” has never been less true than it is now a days. With artists like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst, making hundreds of thousands and even millions of pounds on their artwork, its hard to picture these artists with a poor lifestyle. Similarly, many art collectors now a days have more money than they know what to do with and are able to continue to keep buying up more artwork for insane prices repeatedly. Soon, the rich collectors of the world and art institutions like Saatchi, are going to have a complete monopoly on the system.

In the art world, there are two intermediates between the artists and the buyers. There are the art galleries and the auction houses. Unlike in many other cultural industries of the time, the internet has had very little affect on the art buying industry. Many people still prefer to bet in person and live in auctions for their art. New York remains one of the most influential and expansive art dealers in the world.

Art dealers represent artists on an essentially permanent basis and try to make a market for their work in galleries and auction houses. Recently, the art dealers have been buying and selling artwork for ridiculous amounts of money and promoting the globalization of the art world (Velthuis). There are a lot of people who are against this system. They believe that “Commerce contaminates art” (Velthuis). However, it is important for artists now a days to have global fame and recognition. “Local artists” now a days is synonymous to “insignificant artists”. There is a common believe that unless you are a huge name in the art industry and sell your work for insane prices that you will never succeed or do well in the industry. Money has taken over.

Art galleries are where more of wealthy art fanatics buy their work. On the other hand, art auctions are where collectors who lack social networks or cultural credentials go. Until the 1970s, auction houses used to ignore contemporary art (Velthuis). Due to the lack of old and modern art for sale now a days, more auction houses are picking up contemporary art because their work has a much more steady and promising pool to choose from.

The use of money in the art world is changing the audience of those who can experience art. It has become a rich sport. Many of the people that could never afford those outrageous prices for the artwork are unable to ever see these works in person again. The whole business is very corrupt and needs reshaping.

Currently, it appears only the millionaires can participate in the art industry. Art is being mass produced, bought, and sold to warehouses to large collectors. It is a ridiculous cycle that defeats one of the main reasons art is produced in the first place, to be viewed and enjoyed by others. However, despite this criticism in the art selling world, art galleries are still very popular, especially in Great Britain. In fact, more people go to Art Galleries than football matches in Britain.

People are starting to get the misconception that the most expensive artwork is “the best”. Often, it is just because it is the most popularized, publicized, and made well known to the public. The art industry has gotten very twisted and commercialized like this.

Art buyers like Saatchi have transformed this art world into the commercialized business we know now a days. Saatchi is known for his impressive art gallery and for patronizing many Young British Artists (YBAs). His collection is always composed of many upcoming artists in the industry. He helps to get their name out there and thus receives some kind of profit. Businesses like this had sprung up all over the world.

People thought that the art market was immune from outside economic factors. They thought that buying art was an investment and that it would keep their money safe and if anything make them money. Its true, there seems to be very few rules about the market in the art world. “You can do things in the art market you wouldn’t get away with in other markets” (Movies). However, as time progresses and fewer and fewer people own these major art pieces, few will be able to easily control the prices for other art work, creating a monopoly on the industry. The “bubble” of acceptable prices in the art market has risen dramatically in the past year. It is extremely unethical and has caused, in some cases, a nearly 600% increase in the artwork’s original prices. The contemporary works, the newest and more chic, are often most susceptible to “the bubble”.

The amount of money that some people are holding onto via their liquid assets of art are unfair, as they are not paying any taxes on these large sums of investments. The rich continue to get richer and the less wealthy who can’t afford those extravagant art pieces are left to pay more taxes in return.

The art market has many flaws. The prices are too expensive for anyone other than the wealthiest of the wealthy to buy art. These people are paying less in taxes, hoarding these forms of art, and preventing others from viewing them. Large art galleries allow for the public to see artwork but also make a large sun off of the artist’s profits and visitors to the exhibit. The art industry is not as simple as it may seem on the outside. Money plays a major influential role.

Sources 

Velthuis, OIav. “Gtobat Tzation and CommerciaLtzation of the Art Market.”Contemporary Art 1989 to the Present (n.d.): 369-77. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

Pop Art

Pop Art the Movie

Pop art is prevalent in social media. Its influence can be found everywhere from facebook, to magazines, to ads, to even filters on macbook photobooth settings. It has helped to further iconize stars like Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. It emerged in the 1950s in Great Britain and eventually spread to the US. In Great Britain, pop art was inspired by American pop culture “views from afar” while in the US is was inspired by the experience of living alongside that pop culture. Pop art has mass appeal in pop culture. It is thought to be a dominant representation and expansion of ideas of abstract expressionism. Due to its use of commonly found objects represented in unusual ways, it can also be related to the Dada movement. It plays a lot on the idea of irony. Labeling and advertising are often common themes in Pop Art pieces. A lot of the production of Pop Art depends on the mechanical means of reproduction. They are thought to be the earliest examples of Post Modern Art.

Andy Warhol 

Warhol is one of the most well known pop artists. He has a museum with seven floors dedicated to his work. He is well known for his glamour, celebrity status, and decadence in his artwork. All of his work is detailed with bright, contrasting colors. Despite all of his fame and success, his story is very much a rags to riches encounter.

Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh during a rough period. He got sick as a child and was unable to attend school for a while and developed social anxiety. He spent much of his time as a child in his house with his mother. His mother always encouraged him to paint and make art. Even at a young age, he showed serious potential as an artist. He dreamed of growing up to be a commercial illustrator.

In his 20s, he was hired by a restaurant in New York, Serendipity, to provide small drawings for the ice cream parlor’s walls. Soon, others saw his work and hired him. He quickly became one of New York’s hottest commercial artists. His career completely took off.

One of his works displayed in Serendipity

 

Despite his huge commercial success, Warhol still longed to be a “real artist”. He went through a complete transformation and began to dress in costume and disguises. He created a brand of himself and made himself into his own piece of art. He created a whole new role for himself.

One of his most popular works was of the Campbell’s soup can. It was as far from traditional art that painting could get in a gallery. Many saw it as ridiculous and fraud. He responded by saying it was easier than making something new.

Despite all the hate, Warhol also had an enormous following. As a person, Warhol was very mysterious and closed off, which only drew the public more towards him. People could not get enough of him, his costumes, or designs. He was always cutting edge and would never fail to surprise or shock people.

Warhol referred to his studio as his “factory”. He used an expert silk screen printer to create a large number of replicas of his work. A lot of his work is more important and based off of the repetition of images and the meanings they hold than the images themselves. After reprinting them, he often layers his new prints with multiple layers of paint to get them that thick, impasto, highly contrasted look. There have been countless reproductions of his prints in different arrangements and different colors, all holding different meanings.

This print is meant to show the two sides of Marilyn. In one side is the masked, produced look the media gave her and she pretended she had. It is over glamorized and happy in tone and color. On the contrast, the other side shows the inner emotions of Marilyn; how she was lonely and sad and so much more than what the mask was portraying her to be.

 

One of the many reproductions of the Marilyn work

This popular technique can now be used on Mac’s photobooth by highly contrasting an image, repeating it in a grid, and adding different colors to it.

Warhol can be credited for creating a new style of multimedia and performance. He has since become an American icon. Throughout his time in the media, he refused to give a meaning to his work. He always said it was just art. It is most likely that he was just bluffing and did not want to blow his facade by giving these works meaning, for they are far too planned and craftily exported to be random. He believed that “death and disaster were the best works of art”. His mysterious personality will always remain a mystery to us, just as his work will continue to be imbued in popular society, culture, and fashion.

The influence of Warhol’s costume’s now a days can be seen in contemporary musical artist’s like Madonna and Lady Gaga’s crazy costume getups. The impact of Warhol will live on for years to come through pop culture.

Other works by Warhol

Self Portrait (1986)

 

Daisy Waterfall (1971)

 

Moonwalk (1987)

Sources

Pictures: “Art Collection.” Warhol:. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. and google

 

Visit to the Pop Art Exhibit 

 

 

 

Matisse

Henri Emile Benoit Matisse was a French artist best known for his use of color. He is known for significant developments in painting and sculpture and for defining the “plastic arts” of the 20th Century.

Many of Matisse’s paintings started off like the impressionists. They had the quick, fleeting, brushstrokes and interesting uses of color. What was the most different about his work was his use of color. He often used very bright and electric colors in his paintings, even on portraits and simple landscapes.

Woman with a Hat 1905

 

 

Luxembourg Gardens 1901

Matisse continued to paint like the impressionists until around 1887. By 1894, he was acting more on post impressionist influences. Around this time, he moved to South of France and became strongly inspired by the strong quality of light and the saturation of colors. He was “staggered by the intensity of what he saw and felt there”. He wanted to make the already bright colors more wild and intense.

He ignored the current movement of the time of an interesting use of light, shadows, and brushworks and instead stuck to his own methods. He thus created somewhat of his own style.  “freed color from simply imitating what we see”.

In “Music” and “Dance”, Matisse only used three colors. He painted about the joy of being alive with only these three colors. The bodies are portrayed very round and all interconnected. The forms of the bodies are all very loose and wave like. They are not life like. People were horrified by this development and first and felt that it went against all forms of established art. Matisse defended his style by claiming that “colors don’t work in isolation, but rather in relation with the other colors around them”.

Dance (1910)

 

Music (1910)

 

In doing so, he was the first abstract artists to not paint in dark colors. He only used primary colors and neutrals to balance them out.

Matisse painted in this style to balance the world around him. At the time, World War One was occurring. He couldn’t travel because it was too dangerous and couldn’t enlist because he was too old so he dedicated all of his time to painting.

Upset by his world and life, he started to paint in more dark colors. He used dark and oppressive color to touch on tragedy, despair, and happiness.

Les Poissons Rouges (1914)

The Conversation (1912)

 

After this dark period, Matisse moved to Nice and found new inspiration in the warm, light, fantastic views of the ocean. This period can be refereed to as the “return to order”.  He painted lots of women naked in sexual poses and returned to the successful painter he was a few years ago.

Odalisque with Arms Raised (1928)

 

In 1913 Matisse moved to America and continued his obsession with naked women. He loved the skyscrapers and crystalline light that filled the city. He returned back to Cassis years later and finished a mural he was commissioned to make inspired by the liberation and space of Southern France again.

Matisse’s influence on the art world will always be remembered by his ability to do so much with so few colors. Lots of his work is still valued highly in prestigious museums around the world and worth thousands of dollars. His legacy lived on through his son and daughter who both worked to catalogue and present his work to the public. Matisse’s use of color and form help lead to the cubism era from the post modernists.

 

Cezanne and Degas

Precursor to Cubism

Paul Cezanne 1839-1906

Cezanne is associated with the impressionists but his work was always quiet different. He aimed to “make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museum”. The avant-garde work he created during the late 19^th century had a significant impact on emerging artists in Paris at the time and influenced the Cubism movement.

“Landscape with Polars”

“Bathers” 

Edgar Degas 1834-1917

Degas was somewhat associated with the Impressionists, but he created a lot of his own kind of artwork, with an emphasis on the influence of photography on his work. At the time when he was starting to be interested in art, the camera had just been invented and the thought of creating a still image to keep with no painting or drawing was remarkable. Painters had to adapt to this new medium and design other ways to create art.

Degas had a wide range of somewhat controversy subject matter, from narrative paintings, to portraits, to ballet scenes, to female nudes. He also used color and composition in an unprecedented way. For these reasons, he was often referred to as “a lifelong experimenter”. His speciality in his paintings were scenes of contemporary life.

He was strongly influenced by new photos and Japanese prints. His paintings captured everyday accurately and in time as a camera would and had the colors and techniques of his paintings are reminiscent of the Japanese prints he often admired. The Japanese prints new motifs and color scheme ideas influenced many of the Impressionists. Their scenes of low lives and disregard for the elementary rule of European paintings was refreshing to the Impressionists and highly coveted. These Japanese prints were not valued in Japan and were often used for wrappings or paddings for cheap tea to be shipped to Europe. Impressionists soon got their hands on these prints and used them for inspiration of their own work. Their shadows, lack of perspective, bold colors, and off centered subject became apparent in many of Dega’s, and many other impressionists’, works.

After the Bath (1890-1895)

 

This painting by Degas depicts a woman drying herself off after a bath from behind. It was very controversial at the time because it showed so much of a nude woman in an unconventional way. This was not the first time a nude woman had been exploited in art, but it was one of the first times they had been depicted doing something so ordinary and mundane and so explicitly. The shadows of muscles on her back make the figure very life like and make her movements seem real. It is nearly blurry, like how in a photograph. In a picture, if the subject moves before the aperture is closed, the picture will be somewhat blurry due to the movement. This painting has a similar effect.The overall tone of the painting is dark and somber. It is extremely detailed like the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the past. The shadows on her back and wrinkles in the towel she is sitting on and using to wring out her hair give the picture movement. The immense details in the figure of the woman as she is shaking her hair dry with the towel were captured through the use of color and shade in this painting. Like the Japanese prints, the shadows and lack of perspectives can be seen.

This painting accurately depicts the photo-esque style many impressionists were beginning to take on.

Helene Rouart in her Father’s Study (1896)

This painting depicts a young woman standing in her father’s study behind his desk. The position the woman has behind the desk with her hands slightly hesitant on the back of the large chair show how she is submissive in this setting. It is evident that this office/study does not belong to her. It belongs to a man in her life, her father. In the late nineteenth century, women were not regarded as highly as men and were not allowed to work or studying in an office as a man would. Their jobs were more to look after the children, do chores around the house, and work to keep the family together.

Helene appears to be longing to have a position in the office like this one. She stands looking at the study with a sad and lonely look on her face. She wishes she had something to do in a place like this. She is longing of work of her own besides the domestic work she is stuck with. It was hard for women to be taken seriously in this time period as scholars. This girl appears affected sadly by this.

Hands lie hesitantly on the back of the chair like she knows she is doing something she should not be and that she should get out soon.

The formal aspects of this painting are in line with those of the impressionists. There are quick brushstrokes that can be seen from afar. The subject matter, a young woman in a man’s study, is similar to other impressionist subjects of ordinary life and a lack of focus on the upper class and rejection of fancy commissioned portraits of the past. The horizontal beams of the wall and verticals along the chair and mirror divert the eye to the main figure, the woman, of the painting. The woman is brought up again in the image as a reflection in the mirror on the left of the painting. The subject is easily defined and visible in this image. From up close, the painting does not have a ton of detail but from far away, the quick brushstrokes blend into similar colors and bring the piece together. The forms are outlined by dark black shadows, causing them to stand out. The full length mirror on the left hand of the image balances out the woman on the right side. The cluttered and illuminated desk help to draw the eye up to the woman’s hands, which are important to analyzing the meaning and theme of this painting. This painting is similar to the Japanese prints in that the subject is off centered, there are a lot of shadows and dark shading used, and through the bod colors of not only the walls, but also the floor and Helene’s dress. The aesthetic qualities help to draw attention to the main subject of the painting.

Degas and Cezanne were important Impressionists because they took less conventional approaches to the Impressionism technique but continued many of their trends. Both artists brought something new to the art field and inspired future designs in art.