Mark Rothko is recognized as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and during his lifetime was touted as a leading figure in postwar American painting. He is one of the outstanding figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the creators of Color Field Painting. As a result of his contribution of great talent and the ability to deliver exceptional works on canvas one of his final projects, the Rothko Chapel offered to him by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, would ultimately anchor his name in the art world and in history. Without any one of the three, the man, the work on canvas, or the dream, the Rothko Chapel would never have been able to exist for the conceptualization of the artist, the creations on canvas and the architectural dynamics are what make the Rothko Chapel a product of brilliance.
Mark Rothko, born as Marcus Rothkowitz, was born September 25, 1903 in Gvinsk, Russia and by the age of ten had emigrated to the United States with his parents. He attended Yale University in the early 1920's, but never completed his formal education there. In 1925 he entered studies at the Art Students League in New York City where he started painting under the instruction of Max Weber. Although he studied under Max Weber he still considered himself as basically a self-taught painter. In the 1930's and 1940's he went through phases influenced by Expressionism and Surrealism, but from about 1947 he began to develop his own distinctive style for which he is known for today. Critics labeled Mark Rothko as an Abstract Expressionist, but defiantly he argued this association by his peers, because he did not want to be known for a certain style. When Rothko started painting, his work was more symbolic than...
... middle of paper ...
.... For some it is a place that holds fourteen large paintings that represent darkness, mystery and contemplation and for others a place where one can go for self examination and to question one's own existence. Rothko achieved his goal and without any one of the three, the man, the dream, or work on canvas the Rothko Chapel would never have been able to exist. The conceptualization of the artist, architectural dynamics and the creations on canvas are what have made the Rothko Chapel, after forty years of existence, a product of magnificence.
Works Cited
Chilvers, Ian. Dictionary of Art & Artists. Kent, England: Grange, 2005.
Hess, Barbara. Abstract Expressionism. Taschen. 2005.
Lopez-Ramiro, Miguel. Writings on Art: Mark Rothko.
Nodleman, Sheldon. The Rothko Chapel Paintings: Origins, Structure, Meaning. Austin, Texas: University Of Texas Press, 1997.
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the world’s greatest and most well-known artists, but when he was alive he considered himself to be a complete failure. It was not until after he died that Van Gogh’s paintings received the recognition they deserved. Today he is thought to be the second best Dutch artist, after Rembrandt. Born in 1853, he was one of the biggest artistic influences of the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh created a new era of art, he learned to use art to escape his mental illness, and he still continues to inspire artists over 100 years later.
January 28, 1912, Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. He was the youngest of five boys, and began taking an interest in art after his oldest brother, Charles Pollock. He later enrolled at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, first doing sculptures, and then later doing paintings. After getting kicked out for starting fights, he moved to New York and shadowed Thomas Hart Benton, attending the Art Students League. Benton’s family took Jackson under their wing. But after his father died suddenly, Pollock became depressed. This lead to excessive drinking and the threatening of Charles’ wife with an ax that he threw at one of Charles’ paintings scheduled for an upcoming exhibition. He was then kicked out, and the Great Depression started to take place.
Raymond Johnson, most famous for his collages in the days of early Pop art was simply never a household name. Instead, the movie How to Draw a Bunny proclaims he was "New York's most famous unknown artist.” The movie explains this and so much more as the people “closet” to Raymond reflect how disconnected and different he was from society in his lifetime. The movie captures this and so much more as the director thouroughly investigates the enigma of what Raymond was and his mysterious death that baffled both friends and the public by interviewing people th...
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA as it is commonly known, is among the world’s largest art collections in North America, and to be specific enough the most prevalent artwork in the western United States (Compton 165). This massive art museum has a collection of over 100,000 artworks, which extends from the ancient times to present days (Gilbert and Mills 174). These collections, which are mainly from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin-America and America itself, are grouped into several departments within the museums buildings, depending on the region, culture, media, and time period. This paper analyzes the different genres of art and explains the main features that make the Islamic artworks distinguish themselves as historic masterpieces, by using stylistic and interpretive analysis methods.
Many might have been working on Good Friday, but many others were enjoying The Frist Museum of Visual Arts. A museum visitor visited this exhibit on April 14, 2017 early in the morning. The time that was spent at the art museum was approximately two hours and a half. The first impression that one received was that this place was a place of peace and also a place to expand the viewer’s imagination to understand what artists were expressing to the viewers. The viewer was very interested in all the art that was seen ,but there is so much one can absorb. The lighting in the museum was very low and some of the lighting was by direction LED lights. The artwork was spaciously
Artists are masters of manipulation. They create unimaginably realistic works of art by using tools, be it a paintbrush or a chisel as vehicles for their imagination to convey certain emotions or thoughts. Olympia, by Manet and Bierstadt’s Sierra Nevada Mountains both are mid nineteenth century paintings that provide the viewer with different levels of domain over the subject.
Jackson Pollock was an American abstract artist born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He was the youngest of his five brothers. Even though he was born on a farm, he never milked a cow and he was terrified of horses because he grew up in California. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and proceeded to move to New York City with his older brother, Charles, and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Thomas Benton was already a great artist at the time in which Pollock studied with him. Benton acted like the father figure in Pollock’s life to replace the original that wasn’t there. Benton was known for his large murals that appear on ceilings or walls. “Jack was a rebellious sort at all times,” recalls his classmate and friend, artist Harold Lehman. He grew his hair long and helped pen a manifesto denouncing athletics, even though “he had a muscular build and the school wanted to put him on the football team,” says former teacher Doug Lemon. Pollock always was upset with himself in his studies because he had troubles drawing things like they were supposed to look. From 1938 to 1942, Jackson joined a Mexican workshop of people with a painter named David Siqueiros. This workshop painted the murals for the WPA Federal Art Projects. This new group of people started experimenting with new types of paint and new ways of applying it to large canvas. People say that this time period was when Jackson was stimulated with ideas from looking at the Mexican or WPA murals. Looking at paintings from Picasso and the surrealists also inspired Jackson at this time. The type of paint they used was mixing oil colors with paint used for painting cars. Jackson noticed that the shapes and colors they created were just as beautiful as anything else was. Jackson realized that you didn’t have to be able to draw perfect to make beautiful paintings. Jackson started developing a whole new way of painting that he had never tried before and his paintings were starting to look totally different from before.
The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly debates with art historians and researcher, and objecting to how they claim there is a general state of how art is read. She structures her paragraphs in ways that allows her to present different kinds of evidences from a variety sources while using a formal yet persuasive tone of voice to get her point across to the reader.
For the New York School, as they came to be called, art was personal, and displayed the artist’s own expressive gesture. Though they were considered a group, rather than adhering to a unified, cohesive style, Abstract Expressionists strove to create their own, individualized form of expression. Two Abstract Expressionist groups developed. For Action Painters, such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, art was all about the gesture and the process. No preparatory sketches were made, rather, the art flowed out of the artist’s brush, often by means of non-traditional painting techniques. Color Field painters like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman created canvas surfaces to evoke emotion and mood through the use of all-over color. With the advent of Abstract Expressionism – Jackson Pollock in particular – art critic Clement Greenberg argued that the art world had finally achieved true modernist painting with Abstract Expressionism’s all-over, flattened image that drew attention to the canvas and the paint itself, rather than portraying illusionistic
Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. Jackson Pollock does an amazing job creating art. Pollock’s works are not as big as some of the other artists like Monet’s paintings but his works are still large enough to engulf the viewer.
In the early twentieth century, the Russian born painter Wassily Kandinsky, was well known as the leader of the abstract movement. Kandinsky was born in Moscow on December 4, 1866, in which he discovered his love for drawing and painting. Kandinsky was inspired by Monet which resulted in the desire for him to experiment different ways using color on canvas. Kandinsky’s love for art started when he was just a young boy. His parents were both interested in music; however, their marriage ended in divorce leaving five-year-old Kandinsky with his aunt in Odessa. With his aunt he learned to play the piano and cello in grammar school and also studied drawing with a couch. Kandinsky followed the wishes of his parents and went to law school at University of Moscow. After he realized that a career in law wasn’t for him, he decided to abandon his career and move to Munich to devote his time and effort to art (Bio.com 1).
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. Vol 2.13th ed. Boston: Wadsworth/ Cengage Learning, 2010.
Barnett, Peter. “The French Revolution in Art”. ArtId, January 7th 2009. Web. 5th May 2013.
The Spiritual in Art : Abstract Painting 1895 – 1985 (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Abbeville Press, 1985)
Stone, W. F. (1897). Questions on the philosophy of art;. London: Printed by William Clowes and Sons.