The Art Docent
Color Coded History of Art
for Docents
Color Key:
Art of the Caves – Red
African Art and Culture – Brown
Ancient Egyptian Art and Culture – Blue
Art and Culture of Ancient Greece – Gold
Art and Culture of The Middle Ages – Dark Green
Art and Culture of Ancient Rome – Purple
Art and Culture of The Renaissance – Bright Red
“The Age of Impressionism” – Bright Green
Hispanic and Latin American Art and Culture – Orange
(Please Note: Early Latin American Art is included in Lesson Plan 10 Part 1)
**Native American History is not included in this History of Art.
All Native American history is included in Lesson Plan 3 Parts 1 and 2.
Art of the Caves
All cultures throughout history have produced art. The impulse to create and to realize form and order out of mere matter is universal and perpetual. We begin with Prehistoric Art.
The meaning of the word “Art” derived from the Latin word “Ars,” meaning “skill.” The first art, known to have been created by man, was found on the southern coast of the continent of Africa at the Blombos Cave. This art was a piece of red ocher with diagonal lines carved into it, sea beads, with a hole in each to make necklaces or bracelets, and a sharp pointed tool called an awl. Note these art objects are found in the caves. They are not cave paintings.
32,000 years ago, Cavemen would engrave or paint on their cave walls in Southern France and Northern Spain. These late Stone Age people were early modern humans, otherwise known as Homo Sapien, which means “smart human.”
They painted horses, aurochs, bears, hyenas, rhinoceros, woolly mammoths, bison, wild cattle, lions, deer, panthers, and mountain goats. They paraded across mountain walls, sometimes leaping or running. They were drawn in black, brown, red, yellow, orange, some white and even lavender.
Most caves lie in Southwest France (Lascaux and Chauvet) and Northern Spain (Altimira); some are found elsewhere in Europe and on almost all other continents.
As early man learned to preserve food, they dried fish in the sun, smoked it over fires, and even dug pits in the frozen soil for preservation purposes. The pits became freezers to store woolly mammoth and reindeer meat, and even fish, etc.
Now that early man did not have to hunt for food all the time, thanks in part to early freezing methods, he had some free time on his hands.
Using a sharp tool, called an awl, artists engraved bones, antlers, pebbles, and slabs of stone that were used to pave cave floors. They made small clay figures of animals and women, and hardened them using kilns.
Handprints are common in caves; some are even created by a palm coated with paint, a positive handprint. Most were stenciled by blowing paint from a tube, or perhaps from the mouth, a negative handprint.
Few human figures appear in cave art, but a number of figures appear to be part human and part animal; perhaps these were humans wearing animal masks and skins. Sometimes, humans are portrayed hunting and dancing. Most humans are portrayed as stick figures.
Cave art includes many dots, circles, rectangles, zigzags, grids, and other signs as well as stencils and prints of hands.
Q: What did the art mean?
A: Scientists think that possible meanings are as follows:
Because the art shows mostly animals, some people have thought that the paintings were hunting magic. The moderns almost certainly believed in powerful spirits. A Shaman, who is a person with spiritual power, may have done some paintings while in a trance. The painted caves may have been places where ceremonies were held, and where young people were accepted as adults in the community.
Another meaning is that the cave paintings were aids to memory. People who cannot read and write must depend on memory. The history of the group, its beliefs and myths, rules, and its hunting methods and places are all stored in memory. To keep memories alive, people must pass them down. Cave paintings may tell a story or remind the viewer of a story. Perhaps this is how young people learned about history.
Some caves served as dwellings from about 60,000 BC to 10,000 BC, ten times the period, which separates us from the first Pharaohs and pyramids of Egypt. And yet the lines of the cave men and even their paintings changed very little, for early man’s start was a slow and painful one. Note that these caves had been preserved until fairly recently because they were up to 4 miles into the caves and most times their openings were closed off by natural occurrences such as earthquakes.
The four general categories for Western Art are Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern. We will begin with Ancient Art.
Ancient Egyptian Art
Many thousands of years passed between the days of early man and those of the Pharaohs, the kings of Egypt who built the great Pyramids. During this time man learned to grow food on the land and join together to form tribes and nations. It is with Egyptians, that the story of art really begins. For the art of the cave men was already long buried and forgotten, but the work of the Egyptians remained for many cultures as a model for later artists.
The Egyptians inhabited a long thin country stretching along both sides of the river Nile. It is located in Northern Africa and was kept fertile by its regular flooding every year and kept together by communication and transport along the river. On both sides lay desert and mountains, and for the rest there was sky, where the sun born anew every morning and traveling across the sky to die in the west. The Egyptians learned to measure time and to measure the earth and sky, as well as the common factor in all that is what we call mathematics.
The sun and the Nile were worshipped as gods. The Pharaoh was semi-god and intermediary between men and gods. When he died and entered the “after life” his body and spirit had to be kept safe and supplied with all necessities so that he could enter paradise and befriend the people he left behind. For this, the Egyptians made pyramids and statues, as well as the paintings that went inside the tomb; paintings were used as dignified formal images of the Pharaoh and those close to him in standing and more informal images of servants and animals.
Like the pyramid, the perfect human image was governed by mathematics. The dimensions of the whole figure and its parts were determined by means of a grid line: so many squares for the height, so many from foot to hip, so many from shoulder to elbow, and so on. A drawing on a board could easily be transcribed on a larger scale on a block stone by means of an enlarged grid.
In paintings, we see uncomfortable looking figures with heads in profile, shoulders as seen from the front, and legs as seen from the side; the Egyptians also found it difficult to draw a side view of a face. Strangely, women were always painted a lighter color than men and important people were made much larger than those around them.
In many ways, their painting is not very lifelike to our eye; it does not attempt to suggest space nor has figures moving and existing in it, but it spreads them out on the surface of the painting, combining a profile presentation of head, arms, legs, with frontal treatment of shoulders and eyes. Eyes, more than anything else, give life to an image.
Painting, for Egyptians, was just another way of telling a story, and so they worried little about showing things as they were. With Ancient Egyptian art, there is an introduction of the colors blue and green, because of the influence of the Nile River, which was the Egyptian’s “life source.”
Only with the reign of young Pharaoh Akhenaten, did art change briefly. The young king tried to break all the rigid old customs that had been held in his country for 1,500 years; he wanted art portrayed more like true life. The statues of Akhenaten himself, with his long jaw and heavy lips, are not all that flattering, but we see the true beauty of his wife Nefertiti. This was the only time an Egyptian Pharaoh worshipped one god, which was the god of the sun, “Aten.” Unfortunately after Akhenaten’s death, the Egyptians returned to their old ways, and there was little change for another 1,500 years. Control rested in the hands of the kings and queens, as did military power, religious and civil law and communication with the gods.
Ancient Greek Art
The Greeks got many of their art ideas and methods from the Egyptians. What is most important about the Greeks is that above all, they loved art and poetry and greatly admired skill in athletics. The Greeks believed in a large family of gods who sat in golden palaces on Mount Olympus. They believed their gods to have human qualities and emotions that led them to quarrel and to fall in love.
Their medium for art was poetry, sculpture, and paintings. The Greeks, unlike the Egyptians, tried to show the bones and muscles of their figures beneath their clothing in a more natural way. Their statues became more and more lifelike. Unfortunately, Greek paintings have been lost, and so we must judge Greek’s skill as painters from their decorations on their vases. A band around these vases allowed for paintings, which usually was a scene. It is at this time that the artist wanted his skill at telling the story credited to him just as much as he wanted the story or scene to be understood. When the Greek artist decided to portray a god or goddess, a mortal man, an athlete or a citizen of Athens, he did not choose some person he knew as a model, but rather to sculpt the most beautiful person he could imagine. When an artist does this and portrays only the most perfect or “ideal figure,” we call it “idealization.” Of all the artists in history, none idealized their subjects more than the Greeks. Most Ancient Greek art that survived is not very colorful; however, it is believed that this art was very colorful, using bright yellows, red, blues, greens, etc. It is also believed that the Ancient Greeks were the first people to have signed their artwork.
Around 334 BC, after Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world, art had changed. Alexander died at age of 32 and his generals then became rulers of the countries he had conquered; after that time, they brought with them Greek nobles for their courts as well as Greek artists. So it was at this time that Greek art was spread throughout the Middle East. Now the most important Greek art might be produced at Alexandria in Egypt or Pergamon in Asia Minor, and no longer in Greece itself; because of this, it was called Hellenistic art, which means art in the style of the Hellenes (the word the Greeks used for their own people). Artists were now called on to decorate their homes and gardens, and for this purpose they no longer needed to make statues of beautiful gods and athletes alone. Now sculpture tried to portray real people as they actually looked. Along with the new way of showing people as they really looked, eventually decorating homes became the new portraiture. Many of the greatest paintings of the ancient world came from this period. These works which were generally murals painted on walls of private homes and public buildings, have all disappeared with the ages. Fortunately though, there are some later Roman wall paintings that are copies of these, and from them we can judge what Hellenistic models were like. One example is “The Battle of Issus.” Here we can see the Greeks under Alexander meeting the Persians under Darius, the descendant of the king who was defeated at Salamis. Although it appears to be a painting, this Roman work is actually a “mosaic,” which is made of tiny pieces of colored stone set like a painting. Mosaics were very popular in Hellenistic and Roman times.
Ancient Roman Art
The Romans were brilliant planners of war, law, and cities. Their contribution to art was secondary to this and is in most respects a contribution to Greek practice; it is often said to be in fact the work of Greek artists in Roman employment. Among the Roman works they knew were several portrait sculptures, often in the form of busts, which is a sculpture of the head and shoulders only. This type of sculpture had been developed by the Greeks. Busts and portraiture as we know it, as a matter of producing a recognizable likeness and giving it artistic value, is their chief contribution to art. Roman artists also produced reliefs and mosaics, which are small pieces of colored stone put together to make a picture.
Romans brought an extraordinary degree of realism to their sculpture. The Greeks would not have thought it sensible to use art to show a wrinkled old face, but the Romans delighted in it.
The Roman painter had two problems. The first was that his perspective was such that it was not always possible to tell how far away an object was meant to be. The second was though his figures were modeled and shaded, the artist did not paint a scene so it would appear that light was coming from one direction only. These problems were not solved for another 1,000 years. The Romans had decorated their public places with scenes of their conquests and their homes with colorful scenes in the most true way of life.
The term “Classical” art refers to Greek and Roman art together.
Art of the First Christians
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of Europe no longer believed in the gods of the Roman state, and they needed another religion to take its place. In the 1st century AD, Christianity came to answer this need. This was a religion that followed the teachings of Jesus Christ. The most important change of all was that, with the coming of Christianity, art had a new purpose. Fewer and fewer private people could afford works of art, and there were no more temples of the gods of Olympus to decorate. But the first “Fathers of the Church” felt it was important to decorate churches with pictures of scenes from the Bible, to explain Christ’s teachings to those who could not read and be a constant reminder of them for those who could.
Byzantium
In the 4th century AD, one of the emperors, Constantine I, became Christian and made Christianity the religion of the state, thus bringing about the conversion of the whole Roman Empire. Constantine established a new capital for the Empire, named Constantinople after himself, on the site of the Greek city Byzantium. He left Rome and set up his tribe in this city far to the east. Constantinople was too far away to rule the western part of Europe, which had spread as far as France and Spain and so, after years of warfare, the Roman Empire split in two, one emperor ruling the east half with its capital Constantinople and another ruling the western half with its capital at Rome. Art in the east differed greatly from that of the west. In Constantinople or Byzantium, the court of the empire took on the richness and splendor of the orient, for there was constant trade with the east and the Byzantines copied ways of the nearby Persian Empire. Byzantine artists never even tried to capture the realism of Greek or Roman art, but made works famous for their rich color and lavish use of gold. Mosaics were colored chips of colored glass rather than marble used in mosaics that decorated Roman houses. In Byzantium, as well as throughout the Christian world at this time, the chief subjects for works of art were scenes and persons from the Bible.
The Middle Ages
Medieval Art or “Middle Ages,” means many centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. From the time of Charlemagne in 800 AD, many tribes in Europe were converted to Christianity. Art of this time was centered on the church, the Bible. Inside monasteries, some monks busied themselves with the illumination of manuscripts; others were sculptors, highly skilled at working with stone and bronze and precious metals to decorate the interiors of the churches or cathedrals. Their work was in the Romanesque style; the Romanesque period was followed in 1200 AD by the Gothic period. This new age was named after the Goths, one of the tribes of barbarians who came many years before from the north, because its style of art and architecture came from the north. The gothic style of architecture is tall, thin, and pointed. Its soaring towers and arches carry the eye and the spirit toward heaven. Gothic cathedrals are rich with stained glass windows and many other ornaments. In The Middle Ages, all of Europe was united under the church. All educated people could speak and write the same language, which was Latin, and the style of art was the same everywhere one went. Artists traveled from place to place and copied one another. Their work was for the church and the church was everywhere the same.
The Renaissance
Giotto, born 1270-1337 AD, who was a young shepherd boy, was discovered when a stranger, who was an artist named Cimabue, discovered him drawing on slabs of stone as he guarded his flock. He took the boy home as an apprentice and taught him painting. The pupil soon outshone his master, becoming the most famous painter of his time, and totally changing the nature of art. People often say that the art of modern times starts with him. Giotto is in fact the first artist who might be called a revolutionary genius. The change associated with Giotto is that from the Byzantine tradition to that of Renaissance Italy, from flat, symbolic images, to much more lifelike images. Men were beginning to look for the realistic representation of human beings and Giotto was the first artist to breathe such life into his figures. He was also responsible as one of the artists who represented figures large and small showing perspective, which is a way of showing things closer or further away. Giotto is known as “The Father of the Renaissance.”
The Renaissance in painting began with Giotto. In the Middle Ages, life was simple and peasants lived in villages around the castles of their noblemen. They made what they needed at home, and the needs of their noblemen were filled by their surfs. But now there were expert spinners, weavers, and cabinet makers who sold their merchandise to all buyers; for at this time in history, a town was needed as a center to trade and sell their wares. These towns became centers for artists. The followers of a great master would come and live in the town where he worked, and it was the people of the towns that ordered work to be done. During the Middle Ages, it was the church who was the patron (any person or group of people who pays an artist to produce a piece of work). Now although the church was still the most important patron, the many nobles of the town wanted paintings of themselves and their families. Portraiture had been forgotten during the Middle Ages, but now it was revived. Above all this was a great age of learning. Men were suddenly finding out about the world around them and their curiosity and spirit of adventure led to voyages of Marco Polo to the east and Columbus to the west. The printing press was invented so that books no longer had to be copied by hand. People read more books and thought for themselves. They began to read literature of Ancient Greece and Rome. They began digging up the remains of the buildings and statues of these great civilizations that had been buried for thousands of years and the artists tried to copy these works and achieve their realism. It is from this return to Classical culture that we get the name “RENAISSANCE,” which means “rebirth” in English. The Renaissance had its true beginning in Italy. Although the people spoke the same language throughout Italy, they were not united under one king but divided into many city-states. These cities fought bloody wars between themselves, and within the towns the ruling families were always fighting one another for leadership. But, of all the towns of Italy, none has a history more full of bloodshed and strife and great works than Florence. But for all their violence the Florentines loved art and the artists of Florence were very important men. An artist was not only a painter and sculptor but also an architect. A young boy became an apprentice to a master painter.
He had to learn carpentry to be able to construct altarpieces and prepare panels, and he learned how to grind the color for paints. Paintings were generally of two types; one was called a fresco and the other was tempera on wood. Frescoes are wall paintings in which the paint has been put on while a coat of plaster on the wall is still wet. The paint seeps in, and when the plaster dries, the picture is part of the wall itself. If the picture was not to be on a wall but was to be a separate work, such as a portrait or altarpiece, it was generally painted on a wooden board or panel; that was called a tempera, which is sort of a water color thickened with egg yolk. After an apprentice had mastered his skills and learned enough to complete works of his own, he set up a studio and took on his own apprentices.
The High Renaissance
The three greatest artists of the greatest period in the history of art – the 16th century in Italy:
The first of these artists is Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 AD) from the little town of Vinci near Florence. At the age of 17, he became the apprentice of Verrocchio. He remained with his master until the age of 25, when he set-up his own shop. By this time he was famous not only as a painter, but as a man of science. Although he was one of the greatest scientists of his time, it is as the greatest painter of his age that we think of Leonardo. He made art a kind of science, by studying the way the eye sees things, and he filled his notebooks with sketches of everything from the expression on the face of an angry man to the running water of the river. Unfortunately, Leonardo undertook very few works, and several of those he left unfinished. His most famous painting is the “Mona Lisa,” which is a portrait of a beautiful Florentine lady. This picture seems to be more real than anything we have ever seen before, because the figure seems half hidden in deep shadows, and we cannot quite see its outline. We see the shape of a form and not its hard outline. This technique is called “sfumato.” Many people feel that Leonardo was the greatest artist that ever lived.
The next artist is Raphael (1483-1520). He was 31 years younger than Leonardo, and when he came to Florence from his native town of Urbino, Leonardo was considered the greatest painter of the day. The young Raphael soon became known, however, and because he was agreeable and sweet natured, he was a favorite. He was asked to execute many altarpieces, frescoes, and portraits, and he had a large workshop with many assistants and apprentices to help him. Raphael was famous for the beauty of the people he painted. He said he had no one model for any one figure, but he had many models in his mind, and tried to take the best from each. He did not try to copy nature, but like the Greeks, he idealized it. When Raphael died at the age of 37, he was mourned by all of Italy.
The third of these great artists was Michelangelo (1475-1564). He was the son of a noble family that had come upon bad days, and his father was very angry when Michelangelo insisted on becoming an artist. In the end, however, he gave his consent, and at the age of 13, young Michelangelo became the apprentice of a successful painter. At this time, Florence was ruled by the family of the Medici, who were crafty statesmen and great patrons of art. Lorenzo the Magnificent asked Michelangelo’s master to send two of his brightest pupils to study the Greek and Roman statuary he had assembled in his gardens. Michelangelo was one of the students chosen, and from that day forward, his greatest interest was in sculpture. Lorenzo the Magnificent was so impressed with Michelangelo’s work, that he invited him to live in his palace and treated him as a son. By the time Michelangelo reached his early twenties, he was the most renowned sculptor in Italy. He did not open a shop like other sculptors, and he did not allow assistants to touch his work either. Rather, he traveled around Italy working on statues and paintings for which his patrons asked. Some of his finest work, however, was not on sculpture, but in painting. The Pope of the time wanted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome covered with frescoes. He asked Michelangelo to paint them, but the master said that he was a sculptor and not a painter. The Pope insisted, and eventually Michelangelo agreed to the task, although it was a very difficult one. For four years (1508-1512), he lay on his back on a scaffold sixty feet above the ground and painted on a surface above his head. All the same when he was finished, his decorations were among the greatest works of all time. He covered the huge ceiling with scenes from history of mankind as told in the Old Testament, creation, and the Garden of Eden. In everything Michelangelo did, through whatever medium, he sought a super human beauty and energy. Even while he was still alive, Michelangelo was called the divine artist. We are clearly at a climax in the history of art; this is known as the High Renaissance. It was marked not only by the extraordinary talents and creative intellects of these three artists, but also by great opportunities offered to them by appreciative patrons. The work of these artists provided models for other works to form, but also standards of beauty and grandeur.
Renaissance comes to the North
Thus far, we have been speaking of the artists from Italy alone, but their new discoveries, soon spread across the Alps to the Netherlands, then called “Flanders,” and Germany. The first true painters of the Renaissance in the north were the Van Eyck Brothers (1380-1441). The most important revolution in the technique of painting is also attributed to the Van Eyck’s. They were the first to mix powdered color with oil instead of egg, thus inventing the slow drying oil paint used by the great masters since the Renaissance.
At the end of the 15th Century, there was born the greatest German artist. Durer (1471-1528) was a contemporary of Michelangelo. Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci in Italy. Durer was famous for his wood cuttings and engravings. The artist would cut lines he wanted into the plate and then fill them with ink, the reverse of what is done in woodblock, and press this plate onto paper, making a more detailed picture. This system is called “engraving,” and both woodcuts and engravings became popular in the north, and were widely used to illustrate the Bible.
The next great painter in Germany, Hans Holbein (1497-1543) was famous for his portraits. Holbein settled originally in Switzerland but later moved to England where he became court painter to King Henry VIII. Probably the greatest painter of everyday Dutch life was Jan Vermeer (1632-1675). Vermeer painted quiet indoor scenes with one of two figures going about their daily chores, a woman kneading bread or sewing, or a painter at his easel. There is not much motion in these scenes, but never before or since has a painter achieved a photographic likeness of reality. Vermeer is famous for transferring to canvas the surface texture of things and the effect of light and air. Vermeer probably used a device called a camera obscura to be as accurate as possible in his paintings. It would throw a flat image of the scene it was pointed at on a ground glass screen.
The Dutch Rubens (1577-1614) paintings were huge decorations full of sunshine and life. Rubens loved to paint figures full of action and beautifully grouped.
The Dutch Rembrandt (1606-1669) more than any other artist brings out the ordinary human value. He had a great sense of the unhappiness in men. He found beauty in faces of old people and those who had suffered. He seems to care for us all and this irradiates his pictures like a sort of invisible, spiritual light, complementing the rich and sometimes dramatic light he uses in his paintings.
From Spain is El Greco (1541-1614). His colors are such as had never been seen before in painting “colors of the moon” – pale and steely grays, purples, bright blues and lemon greens, and his pictures often appear rather frightening. He often painted his figures to make them appear longer. He did so in order to gain a most dramatic effect, particularly, when the painting had a religious meaning. El Greco was the first artist to distort his figures.
From Spain is Velázquez (1599-1660) He was famous for his perfect likenesses of his models. Velázquez liked tones of silvery gray, soft brown and darker colors. This suited the taste of the day, when men and women in Spain usually wore black, or other quiet and somber colors.
Art in the Service of the Church
(1674-1679) – The church of Jesus in Rome, The Gesu, is the main church of the Jesuit Order which was at the forefront of the catholic campaign to overcome militant Protestantism from northern Europe.
Gaulli (1639-1709) His work was a demonstration of faith and confidence in Catholicism.
Art in the Service of the Court
An example of this in France in the late 1600s and early 1700s is the Palace of Versailles.
France at the end of the 18th century – so it was at the court of the Louis’ the dark revolution spread over France. The nobility seldom thought of sharing their wealth with the rest of the population and the peasantry became violently jealous. The middle class was only now beginning to develop, and was also displeased with the rules and regulations imposed by the court. In 1789, the storm broke. The people arose to the cry of revolution already successful in America, and marched on the palace of Versailles. Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were hauled off to Paris and beheaded along with a great number of nobility.
The French Revolution was not only a political revolution, but brought with it a revolution in art. Many of the beautiful palaces and chateaus of the gold regime were destroyed and the leisurely life of aristocracy was gone forever.
After Napoleon, a more truly democratic government was established in France. The new patrons of the art were businessmen and members of the middle class, who wanted paintings for their simple but tasteful homes. And so, during the 19th century in France, we often find paintings of quiet country scenes and of the life of the peasants. Works of the “Barbizon School” Corot (1796-1875) – A colony of artists, a group of painters worked together, in the quiet country village of Barbizon a few miles from Paris. This taste of scenes of peasant life was part of a desire felt by many in the 19th century to “escape” their humdrum city lives and this movement called “Romanticism.” There arose in literature and painting another kind of “escape” as well and interest in strange and faraway places, and in little known corners of history. People were fascinated by North Africa and the East, which were now for the first time open to the visitors to adventurous travelers, as well as ambitious colonists. The greatest of the French Romantic painters was Delacroix (1799-1863). His pictures, such as “The Magyar Horseman” are usually full of gusto, color, and motion with quick brush strokes very different from the cold, hard lines of David’s (1748-1825) Portraits.
In art, France was the most important country in the world in the 19th century, as it had been in the 18th century, and it was here as we shall see, that one of the most important revolutions in the history of art took place.
Art from different countries had been going on for many centuries, however, due to new adventurous travelers, this art was newly discovered and influenced other art of the day.
Chinese Art
The earliest art of China dates back many years before Ancient Egyptian art and architecture; it also continues in an unbroken succession to this very day. Our awareness of this kind of art goes back to the earliest days of trade with the east. It was in the late 13th century when the Venetian Marco Polo traveled to China and other parts of the Far East and then sat in a Genoese jail dictating back the story of what he had seen. However, an awareness of Chinese painting did not come until much later, around the 18th century. To the Chinese, painting was the art form associated with poetry and valued as a private possession of particular spiritual value as well as taste. Chinese painting goes hand in hand with Chinese writing or calligraphy. The masters of each art form often double-up on their crafts; these people can be scholars, poets, and philosophers but never craftsmen. Anyone who becomes adept in the art of Chinese writing is also a potential painter. Calligraphy means to let go. A person wishing to write must first release what is in his heart (2nd C.).
“I am most afraid of producing a painting that it too competent … Less is more, which is the advanced stage of the painted … to be clever is not as good as being simple. Too skillful a rendering can be read at a glance. Simplicity incorporates dark mystery (17th C.).”
Japanese Art
The Japanese received their culture from the Chinese much as the Romans got theirs from the Greeks. They also adopted Chinese methods of writing and painting and the Chinese view of painting as an object of contemplation. The Japanese also adopted Chinese forms of scroll painting and went on to add to the art form. The hanging scroll was taken over and turned into the chief object of decoration and significance in the traditionally very bare Japanese interior. The lines and proportions of the room were allowed to speak without the clutter that the west finds normal and quite necessary. To enhance the effect of this simplistic mindset, the Japanese invented the sliding partition, which is a doorway that becomes part of the wall when it is closed. For larger rooms, they invented the painted folding screen; a folded screen is a two to six-panel hinged together, and often made and used in pairs. This 17th century screen shows Oriental love of flatness, and yields a convincing sense of space that many figures and their boats and the buildings are easily accommodated. Everything is clean, crisp, and firm as well as delicate; nothing is obscure or vague. Such screen paintings were done for palaces and the houses of the wealthy. Again, we see kinship of painting and calligraphy; these images and word images are so strange to the westerner. An example showing pilgrims on their way through a bleak landscape is of particular interest because of its pre-echoing of the diagonal tree used by Gauguin and Van Gogh in the 1880s when Japanese prints of this sort were all the rage in Paris. Kuniyoshi’s skills included capturing the likeness of his fellow man but not in any great detail in order to bring out each man’s individual looks. His details of landscape even seem to be of a general characteristic rather than capture a particular bit of nature.
Islamic Art
The religion called Islam was founded by Mohammad in the 7th century AD. Within a century, it had spread from Arabia along North Africa and through Spain to the Pyrenees. It also spread to India and from the end of the 14th century until the early 20th century; it dominated the Balkan states of South Eastern Europe. In 1529 and again in 1683, the forces of Islam besieged Vienna. To summarize it, Islam was the chief beneficiary of Greek civilization after the collapse of the Roman Empire. While barbarians brought chaos to much of Europe, the Arabs preserved and in some respects, developed the scientific and philosophical heritage of Greece. Western astronomy, medicine, and mathematics are directly indebted to Islam (the fact that we use Arabic numerals is a telling symbol of this) but to Islam, we also owe our knowledge of the key texts of antiquity. Culturally, Islam mingled its traditions with local ones. The result is that there was Spanish Islamic culture in Spain, Persian Islamic culture in Persia, as well as Byzantine Islamic culture in Turkey and Istanbul. Those of Chinese background certainly influenced Islamic miniature painting, and it also shows in Islamic textiles, mingling there with Near Eastern traditions that existed before Islam was born. One small example serves here to represent a rich and important part of Islamic art production in the form of knotted carpets and woven and embroidered textiles. The design of this embroidery is typical of carpet designs of the Caucasus area, a geometrical pattern and a rotating device derived from a dragon motif that may remind us of motifs of the Chinese Yu. Islamic carpets and other objects were known in Europe from at least the 15th century forward. Around 1900, Islamic carpets began to be studied seriously as major works of art, and a vast exhibition of Islamic art shown in Munich in 1910 is very much part of the history of modern art. It gave positive encouragement to abstracted and fully abstract painting.
The Art of Africa
Most African art is made for religious ceremonies; the tribesmen call on spirits and attempt to control supernatural powers. The ceremonies are closely connected to daily life, along with planting, harvesting, rearing children, and hunting. Some African art was made to praise powerful kings and tribal chiefs.
Five hundred years ago, the Yoruba kings – otherwise known as Oni – were ruling the capital city of Ife in Nigeria. Ife artists were masters at casting, or forming bronze sculpture. Later on, kings in Nigeria – otherwise known as Obas – lived in the city of Benin. The kingdom of Benin in Nigeria lasted more than five centuries. Its art was almost unknown to the outside world until 1897, when a British expedition captured Benin City and took many of the masterpieces back to England. Soon, people everywhere came to know the beautiful bronzes and ivories. Ancient Nigerian art now ranks with the great art of the world. Pillars and walls of Benin royal palaces were decorated with hundreds of bronze reliefs showing heroic deeds of the kings and life in the palace. Benin bronzes are casted by the lost-wax method of bronze casting.
Masks are very important in all African tribal ceremonies. Most masks are worn by members of secret societies, groups that run the affairs of the tribe. The main purpose of a secret society is to train boys and girls for their duties as adults. Other tribes such as Bosange and Balbua from the Congo used masks and sometimes the same mask on many different occasions.
Ekoi headdresses in the grasslands of Cameroon and Nigeria were used for dances held in connection with great festivals and funerals. Ekoi heads are startling, the masks painted on the faces represent tattooing to show the wearer’s rank in a specific secret society. Bone teeth make the mask look real. The heads were carved of soft wood with antelope or monkey skin stretched over it. Female masks are white and male masks are black.
Colors have a special meaning in African art; for most tribes, white is a sign of death. Some masks are gigantic and weigh up to as much as 80 pounds. Women’s and children’s masks are petite; some hide just the face and others are carved with great care. The Senufo tribe of the Ivory Coast has a secret society whose purpose is to drive witches away from the village. The tribesmen wear wooden masks called fire-spitters. It is said that during the dances, which are held at night, tinder is placed in the mouth of the mask and set on fire. Each individual Senufo tribesman puts a mask over his head and dresses in a raffia costume. He leaps out as he cracks a whip, to the noise of horns. He bellows like a bull and blows sparks out through the jaws. Many tribes carved different wooden statues which had special meaning to that tribe.
Thousands of years ago, men painted pictures in caves or on rock walls of cliffs. These paintings have been preserved when over-hanging rock formations protected them from natural elements. One such cave is the Mtoko Cave in Rhodesia. The figures of men are simple; they have large bodies with tiny heads – there are even animals painted ever so carefully. Ancient artists added new pictures over the older ones; the Mtoko Cave has several layers to it. Prehistoric men believed that pictures were magical and would bring them luck in the hunt. In the rock painting at Naukluft in Southwest Africa, the hunters with their bows and arrows are seen closing-in on a small, helpless deer. Suddenly in another scene, a large rhinoceros charges in and frightens the hunters who in turn run away in all different directions. The colors of rock paintings came from the earth; minerals and colored stones were ground into powder and then mixed with animal fat. Black paint was made out of soot or charcoal. Hollow bones made workable brushes. In the past 100 years, Bushmen in Southern Africa made rock and cave paintings in the same style as these ancient hunting scenes. Bushmen also painted battles, dances, various animals, as well as scenes of daily life.
In the 17th century, the fierce warriors of the Fon tribe fought many battles against their neighbors. They became famous for their corps of women warriors as well. The Fon tribesmen honored a god of war called Gu. The figure is life-size and it the largest iron statue ever found in Africa.
Three hundred years ago, the Ashanti lived in Ghana where there were some of the richest gold mines. The king and queen mother were allowed to use gold weights and later Ashanti people used them to carry on trade.
Congo women sleep on neck rests made of wood.
Baule carvings are sometimes made as portraits or likenesses.
Wood is the most important material used by the Africans. To the African tribesmen, wood is a living thing, cutting and chopping cause it pain. So they beg the spirit of the tree for forgiveness. Almost all carvings are made from a single piece of wood. The most important tool is the adz, which is a kind of chisel; a small knife is used to finish the surface.
African smiths, or metal workers, have known how to forge iron since ancient times. Iron is forged by heating it in fire and hammering it into shape, then reheating and hammering it repeatedly. The Basonage tribe in the Congo made their ceremonial axes from forged iron.
African pottery makers use simple methods that have been handed down since early times. They shape their pottery by hand. The pots are left in the shade then baked in an open oven. Most pottery is made by women, but, the Mangbeta tribe pots in the form of people are made by men. A gourd is a large fruit with a very hard skin. The gourd is picked when ripe and soaked in a stream. When the insides rot, the gourd is opened and cleaned out. After the rind has been dried in the sun, it can then be decorated. A vessel made of gourd is called calabash. Gourds are carved with a hot knife.
The Baroste in Zambia make baskets solely for household use; the fiber of these baskets is coiled around multiple times to build up the overall shape. Black fiber is then woven in with the natural fiber to create an animal pattern.
Cowrie shells, originally found approximately 100,000 B.C. in the Blombos Caves in South Africa, were strung together to form necklaces or bracelets; these have been valuable to chiefs and kings in Cameroon. The shells are used for ornaments and decorations, and at one time they were strung together and used for money. When Europeans settled in Cameroon, they brought glass beads to sell to the tribesmen who admired them for their bright colors. Kings and chiefs used them to decorate their robes and crowns.
Unlike most African art, Dahomey brass figures have no religious or ceremonial purpose. Until about 1900, they would only be made by special artisans for the royal court. Now, they are made by many different artists for the world. Dahomey brass figures bounce with life and excitement. Household scenes, royal parades, and animals are favorite subjects.
Music is an important part of all African ceremonies. During religious dances, tribesmen shake rattles and beat drums. Horns and harps have been played in royal courts since golden times. At the courts of Mangbetu sultans, troubadours sang and plucked string instruments. They moved about reciting poetry and playing bow harps with five strings. Some of the strings were made of giraffe hair.
The forms and styles of African art are centuries old. The arts had been carried on by the different tribes for a long time. Yet until approximately one hundred years ago, African art was almost unknown to people outside Africa.
Art in America
No matter where men are, they always want to paint and sculpt the life they see around them and what they feel within.
The very earliest settlers in America had very little time to think of art. Making a livelihood in the wild new country was struggle enough. There were no schools of art and Europe was very far away. All the colonists had to remind them of the art they left behind were a few paintings, which were mainly family portraits.
And yet among the early comers to the eastern colonies and the pioneers who pushed further west, there were men who wanted to paint the new and exciting world around them, things never before seen by white men – the strange dress and customs of the American Indians and the stampeding buffalo of the plains.
Then too, families in America, as in Europe, wanted portraits by which they might remember their loved ones. These early painters in America were self-taught. They had very few models from Europe, and they had to struggle with many of the problems that the painters of Europe had solved centuries before. So it is that their painting, like that of “Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary,” a typical colonial woman and her child, may seem flat and stiff and their proportions and perspective incorrect. For this reason, they are called “American primitives.” Their work often looks like that of primitive people who are just learning the art of drawing. By the end of the colonial era, America had come much closer to Europe; there was regular travel, and a young person who wanted to be a painter in America could study with some master, preferably in Europe. Until the Revolution, the American colonies were under British rule in art as well as politics. Young Americans went to study with the great English portraitists and copied their style. In fact Copley (1738-1815) was one of the first painters in the colonies; he was a loyalist and fled to England at the outbreak of the Revolution.
The best known of the American painters of the day and one of the finest portraitists of his time was Gilbert Stuart (1755-1838); he remained in the United States after the Revolution and painted many portraits of George Washington.
After the Revolution, the artists of America turned away from England and toward France. Among the American painters most influenced by France was Morse (1791-1872); he was the very same man who invented the telegraph.
Romantics in America loved to paint the typical scenes of their new country as they saw them. Homer (1836-1910) was a great artist of the new wilderness and the people who inhabited it.
But the greatest American romantic was Ryder (1847-1917); he captured the magic of moonlight-familiar subjects which seem to be in a hazy dream. He loved to paint mysterious shadowy figures.
Whistler (1834-1903) was a great American portraitist and famous throughout Europe.
Toward the end of the 19th century, a great change in European art took place; this was called “Impressionism,” and it had some influence on Whistler.
In Paris, France, David (1748-1825) was the father of propaganda art. Once the Revolution started, he used his art in direct support of its principles and its leaders.
In England, Turner’s (1775-1851) dream landscapes of ideal beauty with misty golden haze had a great influence on later artists.
In Spain, Goya (1746-1828) believed that reason was the light by which human affairs including art must be conducted. Goya used his art both to portray and protest against the evil of his day. Goya, like Rembrandt, was famous for his etchings. His portraits are mostly caricatures (mocking portrait that exaggerates the features of a face). Goya, in both his portraits and etchings, seems to be criticizing a wicked world. Although there was no revolution in Spain, the age in which he worked was an age of revolution throughout Europe.
Pre-Impressionists
In France, Manet (1832-1883) and Courbet (1819-1877) believed that the real world, caught at a glance is the only subject for painting. But Manet was particularly interested in capturing the bright sunlight that we see outside – no one painter had ever done this before. Now, have you ever looked at a tree in the sunlight? Do you see every separate leaf? No, in fact you do not; you see many tiny blotches of color and the total effect is green. This is particularly true of everything we see in bright light. What is more is that the blotches of color are not necessarily what we expect. Shadows are not merely darker shades of the same color, but different colors and often filled with colors reflected from other objects. Manet was very successful at the effect of depth in his new style of painting, “Impressionism.” Manet, along with his friends and followers, experimented with the painting of light in this way, were called “Impressionists” because they tried to paint a moment’s impression of light and color on the eye.
The impressionists were certainly aware of other prominent painters and even wanted Manet to be seen as their leader; Manet was not keen to be associated publically with a group of artists so loudly mocked by the press. They were also aware of Delacroix’s methods, especially the value he placed on leaving brush strokes distinct and infused. “The color thus gains in energy and freshness,” he had written.
The Age of Impressionism
In the middle of the 19th century, painters began to look at reality with a new alertness. Academic conventions had become so solidified and entrenched that artists such as Courbet could see no point in them. He painted peasant life as it truly was, thereby shocking and alienating the art world establishment.
The label for this reaction was realism, but the next generation of artists ultimately found it too material a vision. Like the realists, they rejected idealized and emotional themes – they sought to go much further. Studio paintings in itself seemed unnatural to them when the real world was “out there.” So it was there that they painted outside, seeking to capture the fleeting effects of light and to give the real impression of a passing moment. They were known as Impressionists, and their most characteristic figures were Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, who captured the poetry of here and now.
The real identification of a new grouping of painters came with the decision of these artists to exhibit work together independently of the Salon de Refuse’s.
In 1867 the idea of an independent exhibition was discussed seriously by Monet and Pissarro, but it was not until 1874 that it became a reality. It was decided that each painter would contribute one tenth of any income from sales of paintings and Renoir became the treasurer. The founding charter was drawn up in December 1873, witnessed by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, and Berthe Morisot.
The exhibition was a disaster. All of Paris laughed and the public poked-fun at the independent painters. It was from a press review that the title “Impressionism” was born. The critic Louis Leroy, in a scathing article, seized on a title of one of Monet’s paintings, “Impression: Sunrise” and headed his review “The exhibition of the Impressionists.” This was the beginning of Modern Art.
Aside from the common desire among certain artists to shake the rigidity of the art establishment, there were various factors, which contributed to the development of a new movement in painting at that particular time.
One of the basic preoccupations of Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley was the idea of painting directly from nature – taking canvases into an open air location and completing a picture on the spot, as opposed to the traditional practice of making sketches of a subject which could then be developed and refined into a large composition painted in the studio. In a simple technical sense, outdoor painting had been made much easier by the 1840 invention of soft metal tubes for carrying paint in; instead of mixing paints in the studio, an artist could carry prepared colors to the site of the subject and work in oils on a full-scale canvas.
The attempt to capture the effect of light and full vibrancy of nature was made possible also by new advances in color chemistry during the 1860s and the continuing development of color theory, which between them made new synthetic paint colors available and suggested alternative ways of using them.
The academic practices of working on a dark ground, building up a tonal interpretation before color was added and using heavy blacks to create shadow were all dispensed by Impressionists. They placed their bright colors on a pure white surface and attempted to manipulate the hues to suggest light and shade in colorful ways using small dabs of paint thickly amassed, not tamed by the academic habit of blending and smoothing the colors on the surface.
Claude Monet’s career as an artist spanned several decades, from the caricatures he sketched and sold as a teenager to the monumental water lily murals he painted at the end of his long life. Throughout his life, Monet followed one principle, that was to paint what he saw on the spot, and exactly as he saw it. It was the essence of a fleeting impression – the color and light enveloping a subject that Monet pursued. As Monet advised a fellow painter, “Try to forget what objects you have before you – the exact color and shape – until it gives you your own impression of the special scene before you.”
The introduction to France in the 1860s of Japanese art, particularly clear-colored prints with their formalized compositions, gave western artists a whole new way of perceiving pictorial forms.
Neo-Impressionists or New-Impressionists
Following in the path of the Impressionists were other famous painters called Neo-Impressionists or New-Impressionists. These artists were Seurat 1859-1891) and Signac (1863-1935). They experimented with painting small dots of pure color intended to combine and blend instead of brushstrokes. This technique of painting is called “Pointillism.” (approx. 1883)
Natural Expressionists / Post Impressionists
Gauguin (1848-1903) and Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Gauguin described a painting he had just finished as “wholly Japanese by a savage in Peru.” The following month as he was writing to a friend and painter, he offered the advice, “Don’t paint too much directly from nature. Art is an abstraction! Study nature, then brood on it and think more of the creation which will result.”
In October of 1882, Gauguin went down to Arles in the south of France, accepting Van Gogh’s invitation to live and work together. He knew the Impressionists and had spent time in Seurat’s studio, but close contact with nature continued to be essential to Van Gogh. Both painters were natural expressionists, in that they used art to convey feelings both through the images they used, which tended to have symbolic meaning while also relating to the world around them and through their use, above all of color. Gauguin’s example taught not only the virtues of turning inwards away from nature, but also the virtue of feeding that imagination on barbaric images.
Expressionism
Munch (1863-1944), a Norwegian and Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish, painted pictures that portrayed feelings. A group of young painters soon felt strongly that it was not necessary to paint any subject at all. If we look at a gray sky with a huge thunder cloud in it, we might feel sad, or perhaps frightened, as we do when we look at the sky in Munch’s “The Cry.” What may make us feel this way as humans? Surely it is nothing more than the shapes and colors we see in the sky. And so shapes and colors alone can give us feelings, even if they represent nothing that we can name.
One of the first artists to think this way was Kandinsky (1866-1944). From his compositions we may see exciting and interesting shapes that make us feel a certain way – perhaps happy, although we cannot actually say why. Some of Kandinsky’s works are representational and later on became art called “abstract” because the artist has abstracted the lines and shapes he has seen in nature to create a pure pattern of color.
Fauves
Matisse (1869-1954) in France: In 1905 in Paris, Matisse was a leader of a young group of amazingly rough and rugged-mannered painters. They were known as “Fauves” (wild beasts) and Matisse was by far the wildest. They were called Fauves because of the use of bright colors in their paintings. This gave Matisse prominence, but also deprived him of it later on in his career, when his art became much more obviously careful and calm. In fact, it was never wild or extravagant, but it was capable of great energy at times, and at others it had a gentler sort of strength. Yet in his last years, Matisse produced some of the most vigorous art of the 20th century in terms of boldness and novelty. Yet the pleasure given by his work is always energetic rather than sweet. His colors tend to be strong and his linear organization had to work in harness with direct experience of nature, but most importantly for Matisse, was the development of the work itself, always changing as each touch on the canvas produces a new organization of colors and forms.
His subject was always pleasurable, women, flowers, fruit, interiors, gardens, etc. And his aim was harmony. He can be quoted saying, “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling of depressing subject matter, an art which might be for every mantel worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.” (essay, 1908)
These quotations all come from an essay Matisse wrote in 1908 entitled Notes of a Painter; they represent what the essay is about – that art is a matter of order and sensation brought into unity, not about an order derived from rules.
Cubism
Picasso (1881-1973) Spain – This artist painted and sculpted in many different styles. He and his friend George Braque (1892-1967), a French artist, experimented together, breaking down the objects which they painted into angular planes. Placed one on top of the other, these planes which are sometimes transparent, seem to create patterns that move in space. Braque’s painting entitled “Still Life: Le Jour,” portrays a table with a copy of the newspaper and a jug. But we can scarcely notice any of these things. What we see is the powerful composition itself, made up of planes that look like many blocks of cubes. This manner of painting became known as “cubism.”
Der Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider) German Expressionism (1911-1914)
This was a new art that rejected the material world in favor of emotion and the spirit meant to express our preconscious self by dematerializing the exterior appearance of the subject without eliminating all visual references to it. Kandinsky (Russian) and Marc (German) were the founders – Klee (Swiss) advent of “abstract expressionism” – strong influence on American artists.
Abstract Expressionism
Kandinsky and Mondrian (1872-1944) Dutch – If we compare “Broadway Boogie Woogie” by Mondrian with Kandkinsky’s painting, we notice how different abstract painters see the world in very different ways. Mondrian’s painting is made up of all squares, right angles, and clear, flat surfaces.
During the First World War, a group of artists and designers formed in neutral Holland, and their ambition was not only to change art and taste but also to guide the world, through their work, toward the peace and harmony which at that time it so blatantly lacked. Mondrian was the most important artist in the group; he was most famous for a series of paintings between the years 1921 to 1944, using primary colors, vertical and horizontal bands, and white canvases. Mondrian was not only concerned with making nice modern-looking pictures; he had a message, and roughly it was that each of us lives in a state of inner conflict – we live in the present but dream of the past – we live in cities but long for nature – we live amid dirt and confusion and dream of clarity and peace. Alright then, shed the negative, the nostalgic, the painful – seize the permanent and the positive in order to shape the future.
If we stand in front of a Mondrian and give it our full attention, the following happens: the vertical-horizontal structure of the painting seems to take possession of the wall on which the picture hangs. It addresses itself to us, drawing from us a physical as well as spiritual response. The viewers may instinctively stand more upright, straightening one’s back becoming a taller, better, and more balanced person.
We do not read a Mondrian the way we read a David of even a Cezanne work of art; we receive it like sunshine or a splendid composition of music. And if you still ask what the place of human image is in this kind of art, the answer of course is that you are it. We ourselves are the figurative component in Mondrian’s world.
As we can see, artists have had great freedom in the 20th century, to paint and sculpt in new and different ways. The “Surrealists,” “Super-realists,” for instance, painted objects with the absolute realism we have seen in art of centuries of old. And yet, paintings like “Time Transfixed” by Rene Magritte (1898-1967) from France look very strange to us. The Surrealist community wanted to recreate the strange world of our dreams. We all know that when we dream, we see objects that are familiar to us in everyday life. What is unfamiliar is the setting in which we find them, or the role they play in our dreams. They are the key to our deepest thoughts and imaginings.
During the 19th and early 20th century, France led the world in art. Paris remained the center of ideas – a home where artists congregated, even though France was shaken by World War I. But at the time of World War II, many artists fled Europe and came to America.
Working in the United States, they were a great inspiration to young American painters. During the 1940s and 50s, these artists developed a new movement of their own, and America became a leader in world art.
These young Americans were sometimes called “The New York School” because many of them lived and worked in New York. They were also called “Abstract Expressionists” because their paintings were “abstract” and also “expressed” intense feelings. Each artist had his own style; they did not resemble each other; however, they all had one thing in common – the way they painted. They did not plan their works. Pollock (1912-1956) felt that each painting has a life of its own. Pollock would place his canvas on the floor and paint on it, letting each pattern that was formed suggest the next; each one was a gesture of emotion from his hand. The painting called “One (Number 31, 1950),” suggests one united whole. It is a pattern of light and shadow that seems very deep so that we feel if we plunged into it we could not find the end.
Rothko (1903-1970) was a Russian artist; a typical Rothko work of art is a vertical image consisting of two or three color areas hovering around each other before a ground of another color.
The American Calder (1898-1976) brought something new to the abstract sculpture movement. He discovered that by suspending his abstract shapes on wire from the ceiling or from a support, he could fashion mobiles, sculptures that could be made to move by the force of gravity and motion of air alone.
Mr. Hamilton wrote a letter to his friends in 1957; he even dared to offer a definition of what he, Peter Blake, David Hockney, and other Britons were up to. He can be quoted writing, “Pop art is: popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short-term solution), expandable (easily forgotten), low cost, mass-produced; young (aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business,” He concluded, “This is just the beginning.” It most certainly was.
Pop Art
The “Pop movement” got a lot of publicity from the media who saw that it was news, easy to enjoy and easy to write about. It was time when pop stars like Elvis Presley and The Beatles were emerging, and this art in many instances was responding to that world rather than the world of deep human feelings and problems. This came from commercial art to reach the whole consumer society.
Warhol (1928-1987) was the leader of making Pop art in his glory days. Warhol delivers images of stars and of soup cans alike, in multiples; rows upon rows of the bust of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy Onassis or even the artist himself can be seen pristinely plastered across canvases. Out of a long series of Elvis images, Warhol made a triple image, copied from a film still. Film stills are endlessly multipliable according to need, and so the star himself is multipliable and a mass produced commodity whose true personality is the more hidden, the more famous he is. Warhol works from photographs. He seeks the unreality of the glamour shot. When he adds color, it is essentially theatrical hiding the subjects individually even more.
Cottingham (1935- ) Brooklyn, NY – uses photo realism merely as a way of holding an image in a more or less objective form.
Graffiti
Graffiti means writing on walls, in its simplistic form; it also translates to drawings or writings that are scratched, painted, or spray painted on walls or other surfaces in public areas.
The inner city youth inspired by the current of energy which continued to flow from an explosion of “pop culture” during the 1960s brought this extension of “popular culture” whose roots go as far back as possibly prehistoric times into the forefront of Modern Art.
Keith Haring (1958-1990), Jean Basquiat and Kenny Scharf became part of the graffiti movement that flourished in the east village in New York in the late 1970s and 80s, which was part of the emerging street culture. Keith Haring made imagery on the streets OK – he made it real and acceptable; more of his famous works were “The Baby” and “The Dog.”
It is difficult to give notoriety to the many writers and artists involved in the early years of this medium. They emanate from the subsections of the city of New York, and from the Bronx and Brooklyn, as well as Pennsylvania. Some of these graffiti artists are Julio 224, Taki 183, Larry 936, Supercool 223, Dondi, Henri Chalfant, Futura, Zephyr, Lady Pink, Revolt, Duro one, FCEE, Rascal, and newcomers such as Kip Frace. After meeting and speaking with numerous graffiti artists in the New York metropolitan and tri-state areas, it seems a common denominator that this form of art has given many of these artists an outlet to colorfully express their feelings of rebellion, repression, prejudice, isolation and, in many instances, has acted as a stepping stone to developing a career in the fine and commercial arts industries.
Digital / Computer Art
Digital technology is the study and development of devices that store and manipulate numbers. Digital devices can translate words and pictures into numbers for a computer to process and then translate the numbers back into pictures or words.
Computers and digital technology are rapidly expanding to influence every aspect of human activity. As we enter the new millennium, man’s timeless urge to produce works of art are no exception. Artists are able to manipulate image, or generate complex digital collages and exhibit both digital and non-digital art via the internet. Quoting the New York Times columnist Matthew Merapaul, “Just as film emerged as the dominant artistic medium of the 20th century, the digital domain – whether used for visual art, music, literature or some other expressive genre – will be the primary medium of the 21st century.”
Digital art technology is changing how artists, especially young ones, make all types of art, and in turn we experience it. Some have compared today’s artists using computers to cave artists of prehistoric times, using the latest means of communication to express their feelings.
Today’s artists have the ability to use various methods, hardware components, and software linked to a constantly expanding and quickening capacity, which is speed and the ability to complete a task or transaction and doubling that capacity every 18 months (this is known as Moore’s Law).
Digital technology can also be used to create traditional forms of art, which we are conditioned to seeing. However, there are many traditional artists experimenting with the new technology. It will be interesting to see if this art can stand up to the test of time, as did the work of our early ancestors. Or will this technology be condemned to obsolescence synonymous with both its hardware and software. Much of this digital medium based on new technological advances encompasses mixed media – visual interaction along with aural and interactive pieces, which are shaped by the viewer as a participant. This medium will be shaped by scientific development as well as creative ability.