All of art started with simple either intentional or non-intentional pieces of art in caves, in which it is thought people used these images to communicate or even use them as some sort of storytelling to pass down stories. Information was then passed down by monks who acquired information and news and inscribed it onto slabs, or early on paper. The industrial revolution then brought with it the invention of the printing press, which allowed information to be passed out and seen by more and more people as it got more popular and easier to make; with some changes, the Letterpress was also designed as another method of communication. However, once advancements were more affordable a digital version of this was created which took out the manual portion of this process, allowing for the computer to basically do the job for you. As times changed and got even more technologically advanced with the invention of photography, which allowed people to have the easiness to capture a moment instead of having to describe it or paint it. WIth photography getting popular around the world after being invented scientists and inventors were trying to figure out a way to make the way a picture was taking less time consuming and allowing the photographers to be able to be more flexible to situations and emotions that are trying to be captured. With many different styles that were acquired from all kinds of photographers and how they uniquely capture, from coloring to composition and perspective. In 1888 the most significant tool that was invented was the Kodak #1 which came with 100 exposure.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Post #9 - Reading and GRQ - Renaissance and Modern Art
Guided Reading Questions
3 But the more revolutionary “breakthrough” in Renaissance painting was the invention of linear perspective, an ingenious tool for the translation of three-dimensional space onto a two- dimensional surface.
4 Masaccio's application of one-point perspective provides spatial unity to the three separate episodes, while tonal unity is provided by means of aerial perspective —the subtle blurring of details and diminution of color intensity in objects perceived at a distance.
5 The first artist to master Brunelleschi's new spatial device was the Florentine painter Tommaso Guidi, called Masaccio, or "Slovenly Tom" (1401-1428)
6 Brunelleschi projected the picture plane as a cross-section through which diagonal lines (orthogonals) connected the eye of the beholder with objects along those lines and hence with the vanishing point.
7 The immediacy of the material world is enhanced by the technique of oil painting, which Jan brought to perfection.
8 Leondardo 's belief in a universal order led him to seek a basic correspondence between human proportions and ideal geometric shapes, as Vitruvius and his followers had advised.
9 The School of Athens advanced a set of formal principles that came to epitomize the grand style: spatial clarity, decorum (that is, propriety) and good (taste), balance, and grace (the last, especially evident in the subtle symmetries of line and color).
Botticelli executed Birth of Venus in tempera on a shading, so that they seem weightless, suspended in space.
10 In relation to subject matter, Courbet's political stance meant depicting ordinary laborers and other unidealized aspects of peasant life, as he did in his Stonebreakers.
11 Michelangelo's David is a defiant presence-the offspring of a race of giants. While indebted to classical tradition, Michelangelo deliberately violated classical proportions by making the head and hands of his figure too large for his trunk.
12 The paradigm of the modern artist as a thinker of unexpected thoughts, expounded upon in the
metaphors of visual form, has its origin in the mid nineteenth century.
13 "Avant-garde" originated as a French military term, referring to the small group of soldiers that went out ahead of the main forces to scout for the enemy.
14 Clement Greenberg, the American heir to Fry and Bell, took this to an extreme in portraying the avant-garde as being chiefly engaged with the purification of art as an autonomous abstraction.
15 Greenberg defined this as “high art,” which attempts to expunge all references to the world, as opposed to "kitsch," or popular culture.
Post #11 - Reading and GRQ - Margot Lovejoy - The Camera as Artificial Eye and the Influence of Tools
As people began to change the ways in which they created art through painting and sculpting, the revolutionary invention of the camera completely change the course of art. Through the early 1800's and early version of this capture concept was used by painters by using a mechanism in which the artist had an eyepiece in which they could see whatever their reference was and allowing them to keep a consistent perspective. However even though this was a great idea, other variables were not being considered. Such as weather, time of day and even the fact that although the eyehole in which the artist saw out of stayed the same , it is still a person utilizing it, meaning they will never try keep a consistent placement of perspective. Once the first camera was introduced these outside variables were no longer causing a problem as artists could either just capture what they wanted in an image and invoke emotions to who ever was the viewer, along with the fact that these images were used as reliable references for those who still continued to pursue art in painting. From photography stemmed out different type of styles, just as their painting counterparts also evolved along the years with the popularization of collaging and cinematography for photography. And cubism and illusionists in the painting world. In my opinion art throughout the centuries has not gotten better or worse, its a matter of how it has evolved and changed expanding what we consider to be art.
GUIDED READING QUESTIONS – GRQ
Lovejoy, Digital Current pp. 20-35
1 In the Low Countries, Italy, and France, the camera obscura enjoyed widespread continuous use throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries as a convenient tool for artists. The natural phenomenon of the camera, in which light, passing through a lens (in the simplest case, through a pinhole) onto transparent paper can reflect, upside down, the image of nature captured and focused by the lens.
2 it was an artist/printer, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who made the first real breakthrough in the link-up between the optical principles of the camera obscura and light-sensitive chemistry.
3 When the invention of the daguerreotype was announced in 1839, the critic Paul Delaroche declared, “From today, painting is dead.”
4 But it was the British artist/inventor Henry Fox Talbot who succeeded in producing (in 1840) the first truly viable photographic process – the negative/positive system.
5 Technological reproduction collapses what Walter Benjamin termed the "aura", the ritual aspect of the original, the one and only.
6 The social function of art as opposed to its commodity is brought into focus as soon as reproduction or copying of originals becomes possible.
7 Art that is enlarged, reduced, printed as postcards or posters, and widely disseminated for enjoyment of the public at large, reaches a broader audience, an expanded one beyond the confines of art institutions and the gallery system. As a consequence, the cultural sphere is broadened, enriched, and democratized. The emphasis was now absolutely on the exhibition of the work.
8 Portraiture is perhaps the last aspect of the photographic image which still has cult value in the sense that remembrance of loved ones, those absent or dead, is invested with a cult value.
9 photomontage was essentially a way of outraging the public and destroying the aura or market value of their work by revealing it as appropriated reproductions.
10 By reassembling and recontextualizing appropriated elements of Victorian engravings and changing the relationships between their parts, Max Ernst created disturbing, sometimes nightmarish effects.
11 Walter Benjamin identified cinematography as an entirely new aspect of visual representation, one which shattered all existing traditions. The movie camera created an entirely new aspect of representation by adding movement, edited views, and large-scale projections of imagery with sound.
12 Photomechanical reporduction raised questions about the “uniqueness” of copies as works of art, thus undermining the existing function for art not only because it could provide visual reportage but because it threatened the aura of the handmade object which relied on the specialized skills of the artist.
13 Eadweard Muybridge’s stop-motion photographs captured images of rapid movement through time which, up to then, had not been available for detailed analysis and study by artists.
14 Jules-Etienne Marey in 1882 invented a “photo-graphic gun” which could capture linear trajectories of moving objects in a single image which he called chronophotography.
15 The Dadaists chose authentic fragments from everyday life because they believed these could speak more loudly than any painting.
16 the Russian Constructivists chose photomontage as an art form that was powerfully evocative, with expanded possibilities for the communication of his ideas.
17 Max Ernst was one of the first to use the new form of collaging photographic images and illustrations from many sources—including magazines, letters, and newspapers.
Post #8 - Lecture - Renaissance Modern and Abstract Art
Renaissance
Impressionism-Modern
The Industrial Revolution changed the way of life in America as more technological and manufacturing advancements continued to develop. Major changes in the economy were seen more and more with the incredible outrage in influx. With societal changes, new outcoming artists started to show up with styles such as Surrealism and Impressionism. Destroying the idea as to which painting had to follow a specific set of rules for things to be art, artists such as Salvador Dali created these incredible and unique pieces of art that we can enjoy in the present. Using more simplistic and relaxed strokes in paintings this style brought a brand new look to art, with lighter colors and happy scenic moments. Impressionism was created and popularized by Claude Monet. The name impressionist was originally used for those who did not follow the rules of art at the time, as a derogatory nickname. The impressionists wanted to show women and people in more day-to-day life, capturing the moment in a loose and relatable way, and not only laying on a bed naked in some type of motionless pose. From this then came the abstract era, in which artists completely broke down the barriers of what art can be, and the man who brought it to light was Jackson Pollock. Upcoming on the 20th-century Fauvism brought another new look to paintings, in my opinion giving it a more pastel feel with a thick oily texture. Van Gogh was one of the most well-known post-impressionist artists, bringing more emotion to painting instead of just trying to have an expression from people. Genre painting brings the Impressionists way of showing a candid and realistic moment in someone's life and the Renaissance style is very smooth and photorealistic paintings. Surrealism began in the early 1920s and started to truly create a new definition of what art is and how creativity and perspective a=can be used in different ways to express many new things.
Discussion Update
The picture has a lot of stand-out words, especially with the dramatic contrast of the black and white. It is also seen in the picture the prices of the things that are being displayed in the picture you can categorize the picture into an older setting because of the low prices. Along with the fact that the woman is not clearly seen maybe giving a nod to the fact that at the time women were not important people in society and were hidden, just like how the woman is not fully seen, mean while the man is presented straight on and is clearly "spotlighted" in the photograph.