Josef Albers was a well-known and influential artist of the twentieth century. He was known for his use of vivid colors and interesting and abstract shapes. He was instrumental in ushering in the Modernist movement as he was a teacher to many of the great artists of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1963, Josef Albers released a book surrounding a series of paintings he did, The Interaction of Color. This book was crucial when it came to art education and various applications in his and his student’s works. His final series was his Homage to a Square that only used squares and rectangles with varying colors to demonstrate spatial relationships between the shapes and the colors. Albers use of shape and color, particularly in his Homage to the Square …show more content…
For one, the viewer can find similarities between Albers’ Homage to the Square, Robert Rauschenberg’s work, and a few of Eva Hesse’s Metronomic Irregularity works. Rauschenberg likes to use bright colors and often times a collage of images to make up his works. Albers’ classes at Black Mountain College focused on color, line, texture, as well as looking at everyday objects, all things that are quite prominent in Rauschenberg’s works. Rauschenberg was greatly influenced by Albers’ class, particularly his “belief in the usefulness and worth of any material.” Rauschenberg began to look at everyday objects in a different light, as Albers had previously suggested, and began to respect the importance of them by making them into pieces of art. Albers’ influence on Eva Hesse was a bit different. In Hesse’s work, there seems to be less about color and more about shape and form, much like Homage to the Square. In her Metronomic Irregularity series, there are many square and rectangular shapes hung up on the wall with a more muted or monochromatic palette. Many of the pieces in this series consist of a complementary, monochromatic color scheme taking on square and rectangular shapes. Much like Albers, many of her pieces within that series focus solely on squares, cubes and rectangles and how their forms interact. Like Rauschenberg, Hesse was also influenced by Albers’ use of different materials in her pieces. She often used polyester and fiberglass to achieve many of her works of art. Hesse was inspired by Albers’ teachings when she was a student of his at Yale University. Albers’ class allowed his students to experiment with different colors as well as different materials to see what they came up with. Albers encouraged his students to work with low materials and sometimes, even without tools. He wanted them to be able to experiments with
Throughout the vast history of visual art, new movements and revolutions have been born as a result of breaking past conventions. This idea of moving past traditional styles was done by many artists in the 1950s and 1960s, including those artists who participated in the many different abstract movements. These artists decided to abandon old-fashioned techniques and ideas such as those of classical Renaissance, Baroque, or even Impressionist art. One of these new conventions, as discussed by art historian Leo Steinberg in his essay, “The Flatbed Picture Plane,” is the concept of a flat and horizontal type of plane in a work that does not have a typical fore, middle, or background like that of the traditional art from classical periods previously mentioned. The flatbed picture plane that Steinberg refers to is similar to that of a table in which items can be placed on top of, yet they are merely objects and do not represent any space. In his article, Steinberg explains that the opposite of this flatbed plane is the
Riopelle received professional training in fine art at the École du Meuble from 1943 to 1946 and was one of the students of another important Canadian artist, Paul-Émile Borduas. Borduas was known as the father of abstraction in Quebec. Borduas encouraged his students to discover a form of freedom and reject all academic constraints, invited them to think “painterly” rather than “literally”. This ideology had laid foundation to Riopelle’s oeuvre. Later, Riopelle joined a group of young abstract artists that led by Borduas, which lately was known as the “Automatist”. He adopted a stance in clear opposition to geometric abstraction. In Riopelle’s works from the late 1940s, he developed the spontaneous expression which favored by the surrealist painters. By Automatism, it means that allow the hands to work freely, that is no particular result in mind. The Automatism encourages total openness, the artist who draws unconsciously and repeat indefinitely the same shape. There is no metaphysical interpretation hides behind the works. According to Riopelle “painting is never the reproduction of an image, it always starts with a vague feeling… the desire to paint… Not a clear idea. The painting starts where it wants, but after, everything falls into place. That’s the important
Spending time looking at art is a way of trying to get into an artists’ mind and understand what he is trying to tell you through his work. The feeling is rewarding in two distinctive ways; one notices the differences in the style of painting and the common features that dominate the art world. When comparing the two paintings, The Kneeling Woman by Fernand Leger and Two Women on a Wharf by Willem de Kooning, one can see the similarities and differences in the subjects of the paintings, the use of colors, and the layout
Spanish painter Salvador Dali was undeniably one of the most eccentric personalities of the XX century. He is well known as a pioneer of surrealist art whose production has had a huge influence on media and modern artists around the globe . By bringing surreal elements into everyday objects he pushed surrealism forward. It is partly to his credit that surrealism is this popular today. In "M...
Often artists can express complex emotions in a form of a single subject matter. For example, the movement of abstract expressionism originating in the middle of the twentieth century was an approach to modernism/ post-modernism accentuating the uninhibited expression of emotions. The products of this genre are characteristically free and loosely structured, stylistically. They tend to focus the emotions that could be derived from the artworks rather than clear representational imitation of reality. In this artwork, ‘Red, Brown and Black’ (1958) by Mark Rothko, all consist of soft, rectangular bands of color stretching horizontally across his canvas. The artist views color as the most powerful communication tool. Through his blocks of color, which are representative of the simple components in the artwork, are meant to provide a contemplative, meditative space in which to visually investigate one's own moods and affiliations with the chosen palette. ‘He sought to distill an essence, or true nature, out of codified hues’
There is a great deal of critical influences which John Tenniel brought to the field of illustration and to explore this, one must look into his work and his life to acknowledge how this impacted on Illustration and society in general.
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.
With Malevich's Red Square a peasant woman is depicted. Here Malevich is not trying to depict a pretty picture of a woman. Instead, he reduces the woman to a simple square and transmits her essence. The color red perhaps could represent anger and the slightly unsymmetrical lines of the square could represent unbalance.
The use of symbols in surrealism and the meaning within these paintings by Max Ernst played a significant influence on the notion of my experimental art making. He was a German painter, sculptor and a graphic artist but also considered as one of the primary pioneers of the Dada and Surrealism movement. They aimed to revolt against everyday reality by exploring the construction of the unconscious mind. By exploring the mind and transforming reality by surveying the desires of the human nature, it allows one to contemplate on the actuality and the realities of our world. Uniquely, Ernst created his own set of techniques such as collage, frottage, grattage, decalcomania and oscillation in order to convey his symbolism of his art making – but it also later incentivized artists such as Jackson Pollock and William De Kooning, revealing his such influence and impact in the art world.
I addition, the painter ability to convince portrays fabric of different types of the marks to make him a great painter. In a dimensional work of art, texture gives a visual sense of how an object depicted would feel in real life if touche...
Diaz begins her article with the immigration of Josef Albers and his work in geometric abstraction at Black Mountain College. His teaching methods are thoroughly examined along with the concept that anyone can benefit from the investigation of form and materials. By showing examples of Albers works she justifies that by learning new ways of looking at things student can carry out the same idea into their daily lives. Diaz considers Albers models, unlike the traditional route of teaching by repetition, will aid in producing more creative and inventive society thus improving society.
The use of materials to complement a design’s emotional reaction has stuck with the modernist movement. His implementation of these materials created a language that spoke poetically as you move through the structure. “Mies van der Rohe’s originality in the use of materials lay not so much in novelty as in the ideal of modernity they expressed through the rigour of their geometry, the precision of the pieces and the clarity of their assembly” (Lomholt). But one material has been one of the most important and most difficult to master: light. Mies was able to sculpt light and use it to his advantage.
The Spiritual in Art : Abstract Painting 1895 – 1985 (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Abbeville Press, 1985)
In his book Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation”, Gombrich examines the history and psychology of pictorial representation, drawing on various other historians and thinkers, such as Karl popper. He seeks for a rational explanation regarding the changing styles of art. He mainly refutes the notion of art as imitation, and rather sees art as representation of reality. He uses the example of impressionist and post-impressionist painters and applies Popper’s methodology to the development of this particular
Emmer, Michele. “Intoduction to the Visual Mind:Art and Mathematics.” The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics. Ed. Michele Emmer. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1-3.