Hey Gang !
Art history seams to have different paths, so let’s write about some aspects of it in order to find out what are the aesthethics we like the most and let’s study the old masters in order to start digesting the lessons that they provide on their artwork.
I know , old master’s “ouvres” are defenitely not easy to study, they’re oldfahion and distant but they are records that highly incredible levels of craftmanship can be obtained. These high levels of craftmanship are something to look foward however craft isn’t everything , it shows what Old masters were focused on , contextual history, how they thought but must important they share their personality, creativity, magic and soul.
Why should we study old masters?
At some point in my art developpement i found myself very financial pressured a.k.a survival mode and since i had no time, no money and no focus to loose I realized (or redefined) what was valuable for me, and i only spent time nd energy on what would bring me value in order for me to survive. Visiting museums was such a beneficial thing (still is) , it adds culture to people, it broadens the perspective and brings value to stay on the game
Depending on your location you might have available different art museums, if you live at a big city you may have hundreds of ‘em , at a small city maybe less but at least one , and i know they are not always the most stimulating thing to do, they force us to think, be quited, read a lot , all Good Stuff.
We might need to research the exhibition beforehand in order to have context of it, research who is exhibiting , what is the topic of the exhibition , is it figurative? , is it about sculpture , what is the artists story , etc. By working on reviewing this information we get to like certain museums more than others depending on our own taste , we probably not like some historical, antiquities, antropological museums and there´s always the contemporary one and that exhibits good “on my opnion ” new art.
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“we are all free to like whatever we like , the thing here is to developpe a taste and appreciation “
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Museums more than just showcase art they are institutions that hold the artistic historical heritage . So let’s review some of the art movements that we can find in them and what the movements were about.
By the way, they are not organized neither listed as a top somenthing thing , just what i consider the most interesting information about em. So let’s start.
French Impressionism
This is one of my favorite ones, here i identify myself with the colors they have, they are such a visual trip . Anyway.
The movement was started by artists that were rebelling against the Classical School “Le salon officiel” , the fact of not following the society was part of the novelty of the movement . The saloon was very opressive and they were like “my way or the highway”
Impressionists were not the most rich artists due to their revelty (they choosed the highway), they didn’t have the support and acceptance of collectionists , they were creating their own expositions despite.
Paul Durand Ruel was the art collectionist that always hold ‘em under his wings as well as Gustave Caillebotte , he used to provide artists with supplies.
Impressionists got the advantage of the invention of the camera and specially oil portable painting and since someone put colors into tubes, this allowed “Plein air painting”, meaning , painting into natural light situations, painting outside.
This created as well a technique based on getting the value correct and putting on many colorful brush strokes in order to create volumen. Not using black but blue.
Monet and Renoir were the leaders that kept pushing those aesthethics and technique after a decline of attention since the neo-impressionists emerged, Renoir was so hard that even after getting arthritis when older he kept painting until his last day of life. Due to this, Impressionists became one great movements everybody’s interested in art discover quickly, just like Surrealism.
Surrealism
This movement is very sensansional therefore easy to accept by the general public and specially to all youngserts.
Based on the 3 things
1. Dreams a.k.a The Oniric world – this includes the subconcious mind and sigmund freud theories.
2 Erotism – The Sexual world ( no love included)
3 Randomness – artworks based on compositions drawn with random elements that don´t have anything in common.
The movement started by the spanish poet Andre Breton , it lasted 40 years from 1880 to 1920 and had two manifest written and obviously Salvador Dali as the most popular artist of the scene.
Salvador Dali acted very crazy and obnoxiously and just created gnarly stuffs , sculptures, museums , paintings and so on, however by looking at his history we can see drawings that were very traditional , he spent A LOT of time learning the roots of the craft, taking it to an end degree after that, he started painting his surreal pictures .
Let’s review the old masters that certainly enough Dali studied from
Rennaissance & Manierism
The Renaissance word basically means “re – birth” and we are talking about the greek classical period re-birth. The traditional technique was lost from years and the italians turtles started bringing it back again . The most representatives names of the movement are the Ninja turtles Leonardo , Raphael , Michealangelo , Donatello
They painted with a singular color pallette, we can recognize the reds, the blues , the yellows and they certainly created the trail for future generations, starting by the “manieriests”
Manierism came after the renaissance at Florence, following the school of Michealangelo and Raphael , the idealized the beauty standar that was set by Raphael and the human anatomy mastery set from Michealangelo .
Aestheticaly speaking it was about an obssession with the style and technique in figural composition , over here the subject matter was not that important as showcasing an efforless solution of the visual problem . Focused on Elegance , pushing exageration , with queerly elongated limbs and small heads.
Jacobo Pontormo is one of the most re-presentative artists of the movement as well as Parmigianino , Giulio Romano , Perino del Vaga , Polidoro da Caravaggio and Bronzino which was the young pro .
Mannierism declined and was looked as an anarchic art due to it’s persistent psychological anxiety , the city was struggling to survive and that showed up at the artists . They also showcased spiritual intensity , experimentation in form.
So far we have seen rebels, anxious , crazy and sensionalists artists , and pre-raphaelites even though some have more soft aesthethics they were following similar principals.
Pre-raphaelites
Three guys started a brotherhood of painters , from the Royal academy in the london art scene in 1848 .They went back to medieval art and get inspired by the poetry , fairytales, muses , etc. always against industrialization and mechanization while leaning towards idealism.
Jhonj Everett Millais – Dante Gabriel Rosseti- John William Waterhoiuse
And let’s not talk about OP art …
OP ART
Victor Vassarrely he was the leader of the movement , he was a hungarian painter that focused his entire life to the optical art , creating outstanding abstract pieces that give you the feeling of being capable of entering the painting or watching parts of it spin while other areas of the image are not , all of this knowing that this is just a flat canvas.
He created his own fundation that is currently at the hungarian Capital , where we can find most of his canvases , variating the sizes from the most monumental to the the smallest one.
Now , let’s observe different values and aesthethics on other movements and other regions.
American golden age of illustration
There was a time when tv was not a thing and people were entretained by reading magazines, sinced press was on a spur of progress, image based stories we demand on to the american society .
That way the entraitement industry requiered more illustrators in order to represent visually story telling , these were three giants
Howard Pyle
Howard Pyle is considerated the father of the golden age of american illustration and he is recognized specially by emphazing the emphaty on the characters he painted and he was serious about emphaty since he never charged over than 200 students for the time they studied with him.
Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield was a genius of fantasy art .
Following a traditional approch of painting , he used to build complete set ups , little scenarios as real references
Norman Rockwell
Rockwell is such a renowed american illustrator , he was focused on telling the “truthly american history” , he has very shocking imagery , politically incorrect , usually depecting kids under adult situations.
And we can’t review american illustrators without observinf this lovely soft image illustrated by Beatrix Potter , Female artist from the movement, one of my favorites due those little rats that she paints with so much personality and alivement. They are just like some pictures from the art nouveaux movement.
Art Nouveau
THE WORK OF A FEW FOR THE FEW .
This movement was originated to fight the industrialized society that loose the influece of creative people. They were fighting the marketing based society ( which is heavy nowadays), It includes not only illustration and posters but mainly architecture .
Alphose Mucha was the leader of this movement, his work is based on shapes, lines is about not being predictable,not repeating the same style about re-viving the medieval craftmanship.
We can see that each old master and movement was biased with his or her technique , meaning they developped more some skills and we can study them for different craft aspects .
here a list of some masters and what we may look after each one of them
Cambiazo – Volumetric figures
Rubens – Gesture
Michelangelo – Anatomy
Monet – Color
Egon Schiele – Contour drawing
Rembrant – Lighting
Bernini – Shape
Alright gang , just to Wrap it up , we do have different likes, we may have difficulties to consume old master’s paintings but we can learn a lot from ‘em , we must get some mileage at looking at the past and reviewing some artists and their aesthethics in order to developpe ours.