#ArtKnowItAll

#ArtKnowItAll: Impressionism

Posted on by maya

The artwork above is called ‘Poppy Fields near Argenteuil’, by Claude Monet (photo courtesy of http://www.pixabay.com).

Welcome to the second post in my #ArtKnowItAll series. For those of you who are new to my blog, this is basically a series where I post about a different art movement on the first Monday of each month, along with some of my own artwork that was inspired by said-movement. After last month’s #Popart post, I decided to travel back in time to the 1860s, where the radical artists of Paris founded Impressionism.

What is Impressionism?

Often seen as the first ‘modern’ movement in painting, Impressionism developed in 19th century Paris, later spreading throughout Europe and the United States. Much like Pop artists did a hundred years later, Impressionists challenged traditional rules of academic painting, seeking to capture the momentary impression that objects and nature made on the naked eye.
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Features
  • The first characteristic that set Impressionism apart from conventional European art was that the focus was taken away from realistic depictions of scenery. Instead, artists tried to capture human perception and reflect the optical effects of light and colour in their canvases, particularly at twilight and dawn.
  • Impressionism was all about personal response to scene, a fleeting impression of a moment in time. To truly experience this, many Impressionists left their studios to paint ‘en plein air’ on the crowded streets of Paris and in the sunny french country side.
  • Impressionist work can be easily recognised by the looser, detached brushtrokes and pure, vibrant colours. Traditional linear perspective was abandoned, while unusual angles and open composition were incorporated into the artwork.

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Three Key Impressionist Artists
 
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    Claude Monet

    Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) was one of the founders of Impressionism. During the late 1860s, his artwork was rejected by the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts but, refusing to accept defeat, Monet and a few like-minded artists organised the ‘Anonymous Society of Painters, sculptors and Engravers’ to display their artwork
    independently. In 1874, they held their first exhibition, where the term “Impressionism” was coined by a harsh critic who derived it from the title of Monet’s ‘Impression, soleil levant’  (Impression, Sunrise). Monet’s best known works include a series of haystacks and cathedrals painted at different times of day and his late Waterlilies.

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was also a leading  french painter in the development of Impressionism. Also rejected by many Salon Juries, he too joined the Anonymous Society and slowly gained recognition as a true master of light, shadow and colour. His works typically featured nature scenes and large gatherings of people.
  • Berthe Morisot (1841 –1895) was the only female artist who managed to successfully integrate herself into the Impressionist circle. As the daughter of a bourgeois family (with a long history of successful painters) it was customary for her to have an art education. She exhibited regularly in the Salon de Paris, until she joined the ‘rejected’ group of Impressionists in 1974. Morisot paintings emphasised the cultural restrictions of her class and gender at the time, focusing on everyday domestic life.
Society’s reaction
 
During the mid-19th century, Paris was hugely renovated and transformed into a modern metropolis, including new railway stations, wide boulevards and massive apartment buildings. Times were changing and Impressionists saw this. They bravely rejected the official, government-endorsed exhibitions and were in turn rebuffed by powerful art institutions. Their new painting techniques gave their artwork an unfinished appearance which was at first hugely critised and labelled as ‘amateur’. Still, they soldiered on and eventually, Impressionism gained global recognition and respect, marking an enormous change in European painting.
My #Impressionism inspired artwork
paris impressionism 2

So I clearly I’m no Impressionist artist, but for this months #ArtKnowItAll artwork I tried to incorporate different elements of Impressionism into my painting, such as the detached brushwork, vibrant colours, bright lights and if you look closely, the eiffel tower’s silhouette in the background paying homage to the city where impressionism was born. I’m not gonna a lie, this artwork was a bit of a fail (let’s just say I grossly overestimated my artistic abilities when planning this article and did not give myself enough time), but I decided to share with you guys anyway because hey…you win some, you loose some 😉 Maybe you guys have some helpful tips you’d like to share with an aspiring artist who sucks at time management?

 

Let me know what art movement you want to see next in the comments below or on twitter using #ArtKnowItAll !

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#ArtKnowItAll: Pop Art

Posted on by maya

While on holiday in Germany this summer, I went to a lovely Pop Art exhibition at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. I thought the colorful, unusual paintings (including a large collection of Andy Warhol’s works) were intriguing. Young, flashy and sometimes just plain bizarre, they inspired me to kick off my #ArtKnowItAll series with the Pop Art movement.

What is Pop Art?

From the mid 1950s to early 1960s, a new form of art emerged in Britain and America reflecting a post World War II world of manufacturing and industrialization. Bold, brash, fun and outrageous, Pop Art took imagery from popular culture and successfully incorporated it into modern art. 

Features

  • Inspired by commercial art and the media, Pop Art uses striking colour contrasts to depict popart 2.jpgidentifiable objects and people. The globalisation of pop music and Hollywood at the time created icons such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe who were often featured in Pop artist’s work.
  • Pop art also reintroduced structure and identifiable images to modern art, which was a huge change from the Abstract Expressionism that had become so popular.
  • New mediums and techniques were also introduced; collages, multimedia and machine-produced art became commonplace. 
  • A new emphasis was placed upon repetition and the mechanization of art, imitating the mass production and consumerist times.

Three Famous Pop Artists

The majority of Pop artists began their careers in commercial art.

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was a successful commercial illustrator before becoming one of the most famous American artists of his time. Warhol’s art used a variety of media including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. His work was controversial, blurring the lines between fine art and mainstream culture.  In 1962, he exhibited the now-iconic paintings of Campbell’s soup cans which brought both himself and Pop Art national recognition for the first time.

James Rosenquist (born 1933), also one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement,  started his career as a billboard painter.  He later adapted this visual language of advertising to the context of fine art,  taking fragmented, unconventional images and juxtaposing them on canvases to create visual stories.

Another leader of pop art, was american artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). However, his main inspiration was the comic strip. His works often featured thick outlines, bold colors and the unique Ben-Day dot technique (small, closely-knit dots of paint applied to form a larger image) which became so popular.

A Cultural Revolution?

Though Pop Art was a prominent movement in the UK and USA, it was undoubtedly a global phenomenon. Activists, thinkers and artists were “rebelling” against the confinement of what they felt to be a conformist society. Art students believed that what they were being taught at school was unrelated to their lives and current affairs.

And so, Pop Art sought to shatter the division between traditional “high” art and popular culture by celebrating everyday life.

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I  hope you enjoyed the first installment in my #ArtKnowItAll series. As promised, I created some artwork inspired by the Pop art movement which you can see above.

Let me know in the comments below which art movement you want me to write about next month!

#ArtKnowItAll

Posted on by maya

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I hope you’re all having a good week! I have some exciting news. Last Tuesday, my art class went up to Dublin to visit the National Gallery and the National Museum of Ireland (that’s not the exciting news, but I’m getting to it). They’re both lovely museums that I would recommend visiting if you’re ever in Dublin (admission is free, which is a plus for us broke students 😉 ). The National Gallery holds the national collection of European and Irish fine art while the National Museum displays a broad range of decorative art, archaeological artifacts and historical items.

Anyways, whilst admiring all the beautiful exhibitions it did come to my attention that I actually know very little about both modern and historical art. Now for a lot of people this isn’t really a big deal, but the fact that I’m planning to go to Art College in less than two years makes me think it’s probably time to start doing some research!

So, I thought  of a fun way to learn more about art and share what I’ve learned with all of you Artsy Teens…

I’ve decided to start a series called #ArtKnowItAll. On the first Monday of each month I’ll post about a different art movement, telling you about it’s historical background, it’s most famous works, important artists of the time and how they influenced society. I’ll also include a painting/drawing/sketch of my own inspired by the said movement.

Of course it’s impossible to truly “Know it All” where art’s concerned. This series  isn’t meant to be a really in depth study of all the art movements in history, but hopefully it will be a fun and interesting way to learn a little more about art!

But I need your guys’ help… Comment down below which art movement you’d like me to start off the series with! Classical Realism, Expressionism, Cubism, Pop art? Anything goes!

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