Ming Dynasty Paintings

Chinese history, a subject that I have always been interested in but had limited knowledge in. Thankfully an important part of the Chinese history and culture is the artwork; otherwise it would be even more difficult to put together the history of the Chinese. Many of their traditional art styles are fading, such as the longstanding tradition of paper cut art (china.org). The one style that caught my eye while searching over the class website was the paintings from the Ming Dynasty, specifically the paintings of Chen Hongshou.

Chen Hongshou lived from 1599 to 1652 and is most noted for his paintings of ancient personalities at the end of the Ming Dynasty (Britannica.com). Chen did not always enjoy success during his life. He failed examinations twice before receiving official status in 1645 but had to shortly afterward to avoid the Manchus. At this point in his life he decided to become a Buddhist monk but struggled most his life between the ideals of Confucian government and his newfound Buddhism. This internal clash can be seen when reflecting on his paintings.

 

Magnolia and Erect Rock, Date unknown, Chen Hongshou

An example of this struggle between Buddhism and Confucian ideals is found in the painting above. Magnolia and Erect Rock was completed early to mid 17th century and is one my favorite paintings of Chens. In the painting it is easy to see how Chen’s skills in calligraphy translated over to his painting style. This is the main reason in that I am attracted to this style of painting. The elegant lines of decorative color surrounding the magnolia combined with the exaggerated sharp contrasts of the rock in the background make for an appealing image.

 

 

Sources:

http://www.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/html/en/24Arts222.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_Dynasty_painting

http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/227627.htm

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/109133/Chen-Hongshou

http://my.opera.com/JohnWilliamGodward/albums/showpic.dml?album=4438912&picture=68483172

African Art

For the first non western post I have chosen the subject that I am the least familiar with, African art. In searching through the choice of African artists, El Anatsui is one of the only ones that appealed to me. His recent explorations in installation art are the most intriguing to me. In the video below Anatsui talks about naming the artwork in his native language because one word can have so many different meanings. This leads to the ambiguity that he strives for in his artwork and is often why he chooses to name the pieces in his native language. If he were to name them in English, it narrows the ability the piece has to evolve to more than one specific meaning. This is especially seen in his installation artwork that blends without context to let your imagination fill with whatever thoughts come from only the artwork in front of you and not the meaning behind the name of the artwork. To me this is a very intriguing idea that allows for the art to be solely judged what is presented rather than a preconceived thought based on associations with familiar objects and names.

http://www.art21.org/videos/short-el-anatsui-language-symbols

A good example of this theme presented by Anatsui is the piece below. The piece is made out of aluminum and copper wire meshed with fabric. It is called Adinkra Sasa, which just looks like a jumble of letters to a monolingual English speaker such as myself and has no specific meaning. Initially this piece reminded me of flowing ashes of a burnt log and reminds me of stoking the fire during camping trips.

El Anatsui, Adinkra Sasa 2003

When examined in its native language the word adinkra describes a dyed cloth with imprinted designs made in Ghana by the Akan (africa.si.edu). The second part of the name sasa comes from the Ewe and it loosely translates to patchwork.  This patchwork word was chosen by Anatsui to mourn the carving up of Africa by European colonial powers (africa.si.edu). Now knowing the meaning behind the words and why the artist named the cloth Adinkra Sasa completely changes my view on the piece and proves the point that Anatsui was making in the video above.

Sources:

http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/gawu/artworks.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Anatsui

http://www.art21.org/artists/el-anatsui

http://www.thehighline.org/about/public-art/anatsui

Street Art

To most people urban buildings and streets are just a path to travel on their way to work, the grocery store, and entertaining events, but to others they represent a vast expressive canvas for all ideas. Street art is what changes a mundane morning walk to work into a stroll through an ever changing art exhibit. Street art gives a city a sense of character and allows visitors to more accurately feel the emotions of the city. It is not limited to sidewalk paintings or graffiti but encompasses everything from full commissioned building murals, to small patches with sidewalls of buildings.

Kurt Wenner is one the best known street artists on an international level. He began working for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator but left in 1982 to pursue a career in art (kurtwenner.com). In 1984, Wenner invented an art form all his own that has come to be known as anamorphic or 3D pavement art (kurtwenner.com). This has come to embody what most people think of as street art. I personally enjoy most all of his pieces, especially Office Stress. This artwork conveys a powerful message about the industry that many of us will find ourselves in at some point in our life.

Office Stress, Kurt Wenner 2007

There is always a strong emotion conveyed in his pavement art. Another example of this strong sense of emotion is in Gluttony.  This piece of artwork is a perfect visual example of what I think of when I hear the word gluttony. The overconsumption of food until complete physical uselessness is far too commonly accepted and I feel as if this piece exemplifies the idea that gluttony should not be an acceptable practice in any aspect of life.  

Gluttony, Kurt Wenner 2008

Another internationally recognized anamorphous painter is Julian Beever. A favorite quote of Beever’s I found was “My work appeals literally to the man (and woman) in the street and is not confined in galleries or limited by the gallery system”. This is what I like most about this style of painting; it must be viewed in its natural environment from a specific perspective. Beever is a British artist who began pavement art as a busker, drawing in different countries including the USA, Australia and Europe to fund his travels (julianbeever.net). As a result of his early travels and the rising popularity of anamorphous paintings in the 1990’s, Beever began doing commercial commission in the mid 2000’s (julianbeever.net). One of my favorite paintings of his is Batman and Robin to the Rescue. It is an incredibly realistic painting that is appealing to me because of the hours I spent as a young kid watching Batman TV shows and comics.

Batman and Robin to the Rescue, Julian Beever 2006

Another interesting piece by Beever is What Lies Beneath… This pieces creates good imagery and the optical illusion is done so well that it is hard to tell what is real unless you look into the distance where the painting ends. This was painted for Terryglass Arts Festival in County Tipperary, Ireland (julianbeever.net). 

What Lies Beneath…, Julian Beever 2011

Up to this point most of the artwork shown has been commission street art or artwork done by artists that are already famous. The last two pieces were designed purely for the message they convey and not a paycheck at the end. The first is very well known but there is no artist to take credit for it; this is the West Berlin side of the Berlin wall. It was almost entirely covered with street art and was the largest canvas in the world when it was completely intact. To me this is the place of ultimate unregulated expression of ideas in an appealing artist manner. There were no restrictions on what artists could put on the wall because it was open to everyone but over the past 30 years much of the controversial artwork has been removed (Wikipedia.org). The only places where artwork exists anymore are Potsdamer Platz, Mühlenstrasse, and Bernauer Strasse (Wikipedia.org). Below is my favorite section I was able to find. This picture was taken in May 1989 about 6 months before the wall was taken down (berlinwallart.com). The reason I enjoy this painting is because you can see the different layers of things painted both before and after the main painting. Also I enjoy looking at this painting because it doesn’t remind me of anything and I can just enjoy it for the beauty of the artwork.

 

Berlin Wall 1989 (Artist Unknown) 

The last piece in this exhibit is an interesting picture that I found while doing research on street art and also ties into the Berlin Wall messages about war. The Moebius band mural shows the endless stupid destruction and construction of cities at the Gaza Strip with tanks and bulldozers in an infinite loop (mural-guide.com). To me this moebius strip concept combined with the artwork of it represents an interesting message to passersbys on their way to work rather than just a dull grey wall to look at.

 Gaza Strip, BLU 2012

Sources:

http://kurtwenner.com/images/PDFs/Artist_Statement.pdf

http://www.julianbeever.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall_graffiti_art

http://berlinwallart.com/

http://mural-guide.com/murals/prague/gaza-strip

Early Modern Art

When I began searching for pieces for this blog piece I started with looking at looking at various visual artists I wrote about in the writing assignment such as Jean Crotti, Salvador Dali, and Pieter Mondrian. After deciding that none of these artists struck a particular interest of mine, I began looking over the artists listed on the course website and saw Georgia O’Keeffe. Perfect! I was just at an art exhibit in the Denver Art Museum two weeks ago that had a showcase highlighting some of her works from the early modern era. This assignment would be so much more interesting using pieces that I have actually seen in person, but now the problem was how to connect one of them to topic listed for the assignment. This will be covered later in this post.

The exhibit presented in Denver focused on Georgia O’Keeffe’s time in New Mexico after her husband Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946 and New Mexico became her permanent home (pbs.org). The showcase consisted of American Indian artworks, such as katsina tithu figurines, to provide viewers with an up-close look at the various cultural artifacts that O’Keeffe was exposed to during her time in New Mexico (denverartmuseum.org). These paintings provide a great insight for the start of the Precisionist movement that O’Keeffe was such a prominent part of (Wikipedia.org). If you would like to view more of the paintings from this exhibit they are listed available on the Denver Art Museum website that is listed below under the sources.

Precisionism was born as a result of the country experiencing a psychological reaction to the mass destruction wrought overseas by the First World War and the economic hardships of the Great Depression (Metmuseum.org). This reaction resulted in the United States starting to create its own sense of nationalism and isolationism to increase war moral and support for the cause of the wars overseas. Precisionism itself was the result of critics pointing out that the United States had no cultural identity of its own, but aided by the arts, the expansion into the west and increasing interest in American folk art that became the focus of Americans during the time. These branching interests of the American public and the natural beauty of the surrounding environment pushed O’Keeffe’s influences and help broaden her success as an artist.  

Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory, 1938 New Mexico

I have never actually been to New Mexico, but just from the exhibit and paintings by O’Keeffe I was able to gather just how desolate and plain the expansion into the West really had been. Yet at the same time O’Keeffe was able to show the desolation, she enhances the natural beauty of all things around her through her painting style. To me this painting embodies the ideas surrounding Old West, influences of the depression and WW1, and the cultural American Indian art work. It incorporates culture of the American Indians because of the importance of spiritual domain of things that are long gone, while at the same time integrating the American need to shape its own identity through artifacts and traditions.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/georgia-okeeffe/about-the-painter/55/

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prec/hd_prec.htm

http://www.denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/georgia-okeeffe-new-mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz#Last_years_.281938.E2.80.931946.29

http://whitney.org/ForKids/Collection/GeorgiaOKeeffe

http://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2012/02/georgia-okeeffe-1887-1986-precisionist.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisionism

 

 

Impressionism Style

The start of impressionism is based on a satirical remark about a painting done by Claude Monet but out of that came so much more. The impressionism art laid the foundation for most of the art for the 20^th century. I thoroughly enjoy the artist’s renditions of beautiful scenery and still life.

One of the main features of Impressionism is its focus on plunging perspective, and asymmetrical balance that have little to do with implied meaning, religious subjects, or emphasis on morality. The painting below shows a women just sitting on a couch in what appears to be her home, a perfectly natural and mundane event with very little implied meaning. While there is little implied meaning in the painting from my perspective, the painting definitely still evokes emotion and draws attention with its shapeless edges and blurred style of brush strokes.   

 

Edouard Manet, Le Repos, ca. 1870-71. (Location unknown).

Another feature I enjoy from the Impressionism era is the exquisite landscapes. The effect created is similar to that of looking out a door or window at a small town in a valley, and it captures the effect of the light and color a specific point during the day. This is sometimes described as captured moments and most often characterized by short quick brushstrokes (theartgallery.com). The interesting part of these style of paintings for me is that from farther away they look to be detailed and realistic but when viewed close up they are actually messy and surprisingly unreal looking paintings.

Camille Pissarro Côte des Jalais, Pontoise, 1867

In contrast with the impressionism style of art was the Baroque era that has already been studied. Unlike Impressionism, Baroque art was designed to evoke a deeper implied meaning, use of religious subjects, and an emphasis on sending a moral message. These were accomplished by using dramatic lights and darks, so if a picture looks like there is a spotlight such as the one created in the painting below. I personally prefer the impressionism era art because to me most of the paintings create a lighter mood and simplistic style. The darker mood and thought provoking paintings such as The Dream of Saint Catherine of Alexandria are less appealing largely due to my lack of understanding of the historical references incorporated into the painting. Overall Impressionism art focuses on light and loose form while infusing the light throughout the painting, while Baroque style is closely controlled and focused on the distinction between dark and light.

 

Lodovico Carracci.  The Dream of Saint Catherine of Alexandria  1593 (Location Unknown).

Sources:

http://arthistory.about.com/od/impressionism/ig/impressionism/03_people.htm

http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/pissarrobma/pcil07_02.htm

http://www.theartgallery.com.au/kidsart/learn/impressionism/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/carracci_lodovico.html