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PAINTINGS and some details |
Painting is a form of art. It, meant literally, is
the practice of applying color to a surface
(support) such as paper, canvas, wood, glass,
lacquer or concrete. However, when used in an
artistic sense, the term "painting" means the use of
this activity in combination with drawing,
composition and other aesthetic considerations in
order to manifest the expressive and conceptual
intention of the practitioner.
Painting is used as a mode of representing,
documenting and expressing all the varied intents
and subjects that are as numerous as there are
practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be
naturalistic and representational (as in a still
life or landscape painting), photographic, abstract,
be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion
or be political in nature. A large portion of the
history of painting is dominated by spiritual motifs
and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from
artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to
biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and
ceiling of The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the
human body itself as a spiritual subject.
Overview:
What enables painting is the perception and
representation of intensity. Every point in space
has different intensity, which can be represented in
painting by black and white and all the gray shades
between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes
by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by
using just color (of the same intensity) one can
only represent symbolic shapes. Thus, the basic
means of painting are distinct from ideological
means, such as geometrical figures, various points
of view and organization (perspective), and symbols.
For example, a painter perceives that a particular
white wall has different intensity at each point,
due to shades and reflections from nearby objects,
but ideally, a white wall is still a white wall in
pitch darkness. In technical drawing, thickness of
line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an
object within a perceptual frame different from the
one used by painters.
Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch
and rhythm are of music. Color is highly subjective,
but has observable psychological effects, although
these can differ from one culture to the next. Black
is associated with mourning in the West, but in the
East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians,
writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky,
Newton, have written their own color theory.
Moreover the use of language is only a
generalization for a color equivalent. The word
"red", for example, can cover a wide range of
variations on the pure red of the visible spectrum
of light. There is not a formalized register of
different colors in the way that there is agreement
on different notes in music, such as C or C# in
music, although the Pantone system is widely used in
the commercial printing and graphic design industry
for this purpose.
For a painter, color is not simply divided into
basic and derived (complementary or mixed) colors
(like, red, blue, green, brown, etc.). Painters deal
practically with pigments, so "blue" for a painter
can be any of the blues: phtalocyan, Paris blue,
indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on.
Psychological, symbolical meanings of color are not
strictly speaking means of painting. Colors only add
to the potential, derived context of meanings, and
because of this the perception of a painting is
highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite
clear - tones in music (like "C") are analogous to
"shades" in painting, and coloration in painting is
the same as the specific color of certain instrument
- these do not form a melody, but can add different
contexts to it.
Rhythm is important in painting as well as in music.
Rhythm is basically a pause incorporated into a body
(sequence). This pause allows creative force to
intervene and add new creations - form, melody,
coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of
information is of crucial importance in the given
work of art and it directly affects the esthetical
value of that work. This is because the esthetical
value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom
(of movement) of perception is perceived as beauty.
Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other
forms of "techne", directly contributes to the
esthetical value.
Modern artists have extended the practice of
painting considerably to include, for example,
collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting
in the strict sense. Some modern painters
incorporate different materials such as sand,
cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of
this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm
Kiefer. (There is a growing community of artists who
use computers to literally paint color onto a
digital canvas using programs such as Photoshop,
Painter, and many others. These images can be
printed onto traditional canvas if required.)
In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the
mid to late 19th century, photographic processes
improved and, as it became more widespread, painting
lost much of its historic purpose to provide an
accurate record of the observable world. There began
a series of art movements into the 20th century
where the Renaissance view of the world was steadily
eroded, through Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Dadaism. Eastern
and African painting, however, continued a long
history of stylization and did not undergo an
equivalent transformation at the same time.
Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the
historic value of craft and documentation in favor
of concept; this has led some to say that painting,
as a serious art form, is dead, although this has
not deterred the majority of artists from continuing
to practice it either as whole or part of their
work.
Recently, painting has been used in paint-on-glass
animation.
History of painting:
The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet
in France, claimed by some historians to be about
32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted
using red ochre and black pigment and show horses,
rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often
hunting. There are examples of cave paintings all
over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China,
Australia, etc.
In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor
painting are the best known media, with rich and
complex traditions in style and subject matter. In
the East, ink and color ink historical predominated
the choice of media with equally rich and complex
traditions.
Aesthetics and theory of painting :
Aesthetics tries to be the "science of beauty" and
it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th
century philosophers as Kant or Hegel. Classical
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized
about art and painting in particular; Plato
disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his
philosophical system; he maintained that painting
cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a
shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a
craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting.
Leonardo Da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura
est cousa mentale" (painting is an intellectual
thing). Kant distinguished between Beauty and the
Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the
former. Although he did not refer particularly to
painting, this concept was taken up by painters such
as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.
Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a
universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic
essay wrote that Painting is one of the three
"romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music for its
symbolic, highly intellectual purpose. Painters who
have written theoretical works on painting include
Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Kandinsky in his essay
maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and
he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or
concepts, something that Goethe and other writers
had already tried to do.
Iconography has also something to say about
painting. The creator of this discipline, Erwin
Panofsky, tries to analyze visual symbols in their
cultural, religious, social and philosophical depth
to attain a better comprehension of mankind's
symbolic activity.
Beauty, however, a concept to which painting is
essentially linked, cannot be defined as an
objective matter, purpose or idea. Much aesthetics
and theory of art is connected with painting.
In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously
asserted: "Remember that a painting – before being a
warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is
essentially a flat surface covered with colors
assembled in a certain order." Thus, many twentieth
century developments in painting, such as Cubism,
were reflections on the means of painting rather
than on the external world, nature, which had
previously been its core subject.
Julian Bell (1908-37), a painter himself, examines
in his book What is Painting? the historical
development of the notion that paintings can express
feelings and ideas:
"Let us be brutal: expression is a joke. Your
painting expresses – for you; but it does not
communicate to me. You had something in mind,
something you wanted to ‘bring out’; but looking at
what you have done, I have no certainty that I know
what it was...."
Painting media :
Different types of paint are usually identified by
the medium that the pigment is suspended or embedded
in, which determines the general working
characteristics of the paint, such as viscosity,
miscibility, solubility, drying time, etc.
Examples include: Acrylic, Encaustic (wax) ,
Fresco, Gouache, Ink, Oil, Heat-set oils, Water
miscible oil paints, Pastel, including dry pastels,
oil pastels, and pastel pencils, Spray paint
(Graffiti), Tempera, Watercolor
Painting styles :
'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the
distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods
that typify an individual artist's work. It can also
refer to the movement or school that an artist is
associated with. This can stem from an actual group
that the artist was consciously involved with or it
can be a category in which art historians have
placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter
sense has fallen out of favor in academic
discussions about contemporary painting, though it
continues to be used in popular contexts.
Abstract, Abstract expressionism, Post-Abstract
Expressionism, Art Brut, Art Deco, Baroque, CoBrA,
Color Field, Constructivism, Contemporary Art,
Combined Realism, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism,
Figuration Libre,
Folk, Graffiti, Hard-edge, Impressionism, Lyrical
Abstraction, Mannerism, Minimalism, Modernism, Naïve
art, eo-classicism, Op art, Orientalism, Orphism,
Outsider, Painterly, Photorealism, Pluralism,
Pointillism, Pop art,
Postmodernism, Post-painterly Abstraction,
Primitive, Pseudo realism, Realism, Recto version,
Representational Art, Romanticism, Romantic realism,
Socialist realism, Stuckism, Surrealism, Tachism. |
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