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'Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life' is the pinnacle of representational art. It is painted with a remarkably realistic technique but it is more than just an example of skilled craftsmanship. Each object has a unique symbolic meaning and works together to create a moral narrative within the group. To discover more about the hidden secrets of this artwork: Harmen Steenwyck - Vanitas Still Life Painting.
Cézanne was not interested in the Impressionists' attempts to imitate the fleeting effects of light and color in nature. He called his paintings 'constructions after nature' [1] where the colors and forms that he observed were reconstructed as 'something solid and durable, like the art of the museum'.Abstract artists attempt to stimulate an emotional response by arranging the visual elements in a
harmonic or dynamic configuration, much in the same way that a musician uses sound, pitch, tempo and silence to compose a piece of music. A musical analogy has often been used to help describe the effect of abstract art on the viewer.
As a serious art form, pure abstraction is a rarified atmosphere. It requires the artist to look inwards with a rigorous discipline and to rely entirely on their own instincts and experience of the visual elements to inspire their creative vision. The representational artist has a far greater degree of freedom with both the natural and fabricated worlds accessible as the source of their inspiration, but the abstract artist has the unique opportunity to create something that has never been seen before. Perhaps the best art like 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' has a foot in both camps: it can create an idealized image that lifts the spirit but it also has a reassuring hold on reality.
There were two things that Davis loved which had a profound effect on his painting: New York and jazz. The title of this painting is a humorous reference to the ambience of New York as the inspiration for the shapes and colors of the work while acknowledging the European origins of its style. His love of jazz is reflected in the syncopated rhythm of his shapes as they oscillate between a positive and negative reading across the composition.
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Tribal masks were mostly used in ceremonial dances as a channel of communication between the natural and supernatural worlds. Wood, the most common material used for making masks, was chosen not only for its abundance in the forest but also for its quality as a spiritual medium. Some tribal artists would take time to pay their respects to the life-force of a tree, requesting its permission to be cut down and used to make a carving. They
felt that the tree had its own soul and that its wood was the natural host for the spirit of their work. This kind of holistic approach to carving invested the form of a mask with a certain integrity that reflected contemporary ideas about 'truth to materials' where the sculptor respects the natural properties of wood or stone and allows them to show through in the finished work.
'There are universal shapes to which everybody is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond if their conscious control does not shut them off.' [5] As you walk around Moore's 'Reclining Figure' you register an impression of the sensual curves of the female form: the angle of a shoulder as it balances above the prop of an elbow, the line of a back which glides into the swell of a hip and
the bulge of a thigh which flexes at a bulbous knee. On the same walk around the work, the ambiguity of these undulating forms may assume a geological metaphor where the figure adopts an Neolithic quality, like a stone that has been worn smooth and hollowed out by centuries of erosion. With another perceptual shift you may discern the configuration of a landscape where the form of the sculpture takes on the nature of hills, valleys, canyons, cliffs and caves. This synthesis of figure and
landscape is one of the major themes of Henry Moore's work.
In our detail of Rodin's 'Call to Arms', which was originally modelled in clay before it was cast in bronze, you can see the vitality and physicality of the artist at work in the energetic imprints of his fingers and hands as he pushes and pulls the clay over surface of the sculpture.
'Call to Arms' was originally designed as a competition entry for a monument to commemorate the defence of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war but the conservative jury rejected Rodin's sculpture as too radical in its concept and technique. However, the work was later cast in 1920 as monument to the French soldiers who fought at Verdun during the First World War. It comprises two figures emerging from a 'non finito' base and
back. The lower is a wounded soldier who represents the victims of war and the upper is a Génie ailé (winged genius) who symbolizes the liberty gained through the heroic sacrifice of those who died. Both figures also reference existing icons of sacrifice and liberty: the soldier is remarkably similar to the figure of Christ in Michelangelo's unfinished 'Rondanini Pietà' in the Duomo in Florence, while the winged genius recalls the 'Genius of Liberty' in Francois Rude's relief of
'La Marseillaise' on the wall of the Arc de Triomphe.
Giacometti's earlier work was first associated with Cubism, then Surrealism, followed by the influence of the spindly Etruscan bronze votive figures that contributed to his mature style. He claimed that his work of this later period was motivated by witnessing the death throes of his neighbour, Tonio Potosching, in the days before and hours after he passed away. He describes this traumatic event in ‘Le Rêve, le Sphinx et la Mort de T', a bizarre essay for 'Labyrinthe', the art journal published by Albert Skira in 1946: ‘Standing motionless by the bed, I looked at the head which had become an object, a little box, measurable and insignificant. At that moment, a fly approached the black hole of the mouth and slowly disappeared inside.’ This surreal encounter deeply affected his daily life as he experienced disturbing episodes where he envisaged all those around him as lifeless. The existential gap that he perceived between the state of 'Being and Nothingness' became the theme of his work for the rest of his life. He tried to exorcise his psychological trauma by pursuing the elusive spirit of his subject matter rather than simply describing its physical presence. When Giacometti started a work like 'Grande Tête Mince' he worked from both the model, in this case his brother Diego, and from his imagination. He would eagerly shape and reshape the head in his search for that ephemeral spirit of 'being'. Giacometti always worked directly in front of the model, so intensively fixed on a perpendicular perspective that his observation and insight concentrated his vision into the pinch-edged form that we recognize as his style. He later tried to explain the artistic struggle that he experienced in this approach, 'The more I looked at the model, the more the screen between his reality and mine grew thicker. One starts by seeing the person who poses, but little by little all the possible sculptures of him intervene. The more a real vision of him disappears, the stranger his head becomes. One is no longer sure of his appearance, or of his size, or of anything at all. There were too many sculptures between my model and me. And when there were no more sculptures, there was a complete stranger that I no longer knew whom I saw or what I was looking at.' [9] There comes a point in this process where Giacometti exhausts all configurations and possibilities and has to accept a conclusion that is subjectively felt as much as it is objectively observed. The elusive spirit of Giacometti's work is discovered when he achieves that point of balance.
Oldenburg has an amusing sense of irony in the contradictions between his medium and its subject. He subverts the expectation of our senses by making soft objects like the gym shoes out of a hard material like plaster, and hard objects like a drum kit out of soft vinyl cloth. He also plays with the scale of his subjects which lifts them out of context, forcing us to reappraise their form.
The spatial language that Gabo used to create works like 'Head No.2' was derived from the type of 3-dimensional models used by mathematicians and architects. Gabo constructed the work using a framework of planes that penetrate and organize the space that exists within its mass. The edges of the planes delineate the form of the head and unite its internal and external space.
Turrell is known for his 'Skyspaces'. These are architectural installations on specific sites around the world that frame an expanse of sky on a ceiling by masking the surrounding area. With a careful balance of proportions, transitional ambient lighting, comfortable seating and no visible edge to the opening, Turrell creates an intangible portal to the heavens that stuns the observer with a mystical vision of 'the spiritual side of light.'
'The Spiral Jetty' by Robert Smithson is probably the most famous and most influential earthwork in modern art. It is 15 feet wide and projects 1500 feet into the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Smithson built this structure in three weeks using a bulldozer and dump trucks. He chose the site for its magical ambience as the lake changes color from a pink to lilac to red due to the build up of beta carotene in the high salinity of its shallow
water. What he particularly sought was 'landscapes that suggest prehistory. As an artist it is interesting to take on a persona of a geological agent and actually become part of that process rather than overcome it.' Not only does the work look prehistoric but the symbolism of its spiral also incorporates the myth of the lake: the early Mormon pioneers believed that the Salt Lake was connected to the Pacific ocean by an underground channel that influenced its
fluctuating water levels. The torque of Smithson's spiral is a metaphor for the ebb and flow of this force. In actuality, the lake is fed by three rivers but has no outflow to the sea and its water level rises markedly in wet years and falls during dry years. It is also affected by evaporation and the volume of water that is diverted for agricultural and urban uses.
At the start of the 1930's Alexander Calder brought a sense of humour and playfulness to art in America with the introduction of his constructivist influenced 'mobiles' - painted metal sculptures with moving parts that were incorporated as elements of their construction and composition. Naum Gabo had previously explored the concept of kinetic sculpture with his 'Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave)' of
1919-20 which was operated by an electric motor. The great advantage that Calder's 'mobiles' had over Gabo's 'Standing Wave' was that they were naturally propelled by air and did not need a separate power source. Their elegant construction technique allowed Calder more scope to focus on their aesthetic form, unhampered by the necessity to find a wall socket or disguise a cumbersome battery. VALUE
See images below that have been chosen because they all use value in an inspirational manner. Each art work has been analyzed to demonstrate how great artists use line as a creative force in their work: COLOUR
See images below that have been chosen because they all use colour in an inspirational manner. Each art work has been analyzed to demonstrate how great artists use line as a creative force in their work: TEXTURE
See images below that have been chosen because they all use texture in an inspirational manner. Each art work has been analyzed to demonstrate how great artists use line as a creative force in their work: SPACE
Negative space is also a key element in many abstract paintings. Many times a composition is offset to one side or the top or bottom. This can be used to direct the viewer's eye, emphasize a single element of the work, or imply movement, even if the shapes have no particular meaning. Piet Mondrian was a master of the use of space. In his purely abstract pieces, such as 1935's Composition C, his spaces are like panes in a stained glass window. In his 1910 painting Summer Dune in Zeeland, Mondrian uses negative space to carve out an abstracted landscape, and in 1911's Still Life with Gingerpot II, he isolates and defines the negative space of the curved pot by stacked rectangular and linear forms.
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Which element of art that refers to the degrees of lightness or darkness of an artwork masterpiece?
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