In 1912, artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner completed his painting Two Woman. Two Woman was a painting that had much depth to it, meanings that one does not notice upon first glance. Thirty years later in 1942, famed American artist Edward Cooper was placing his finishing touches on his masterpiece Nighthawks, which was a painting that expressed both the general feelings of the time as well as Cooper's overall life experience. Both Two Woman and Nighthawks have much in common due to their personalities and experience with isolation and loneliness, which are reflected in their art.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German artist, a painter, and a print maker. Born in 1880, Kirchner was an expressionist artist. He would paint subjects from a sole perspective, often changing them drastically to bring across a viewpoint or message, which he wanted conveyed. He was a founding member of an artist’s group named 'Die Brücke' or 'The Bridge'. Originally based in Dresden, the group later moved to Berlin where they would have the ability to draw from the city's fast moving pace into their art. Nudes played a large part in their paintings. The group often engaged in casual sex, as well as walked around their studio naked. Spontaneity played a rather large part in paintings. Kirchner often painted subjects in fifteen-minute sessions in order to preserve the spontaneity of the moment. Shortly after the group moved to Berlin, some arguments broke out, which later lead to the dissolution of the group. The many diverse artistic viewpoints which were to be found in Berlin, led to rifts in the group.
Kirchner's life was not an easy one. He attempted to start an art school, but failed miserably, which showed in his art. Through his artwork in Berlin, he at...
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...ainting; Nighthawks and Two Women do not seem similar in the least, upon a second deeper look one begins to notice their similarities. Similarities which are found both in the actual paintings; as well as in the places in their lives which the respective artists found themselves. Both were going through a period of isolation, which was taking place in either their personal lives, society around them, or both. These feelings were passed on to their paintings, leaving us, the viewer to gaze at them, study them and hear the message which they speak.
Works Cited
Scholarly article used: Lucius Grisebach. "Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 29 Nov 2011.
Levin, Gail. Edward Hopper : an intimate biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter was born of peasant stock, in Mensenschwad, a small village in Germany’s Black Forest. His early training, as an apprentice in a studio in Freiburg, began when he was thirteen. He learned engraving and he supported himself as a lithographer, while he studied painting in Munich (nga, par.1). Even though he is known to be an academic painter, this seems to be a contradiction, as Webster’s Dictionary states that an academic painter followed rules and conventions, while a painter from the Romantic Movement broke away from convention and painted more by feeling and freedom of form, which is what Winterhalter did.
Claes Oldenburg was born in 1929 in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a Swedish Consul General, and because of his job they moved to Chicago in 1936 where he became an American citizen. When he graduated Yale University in New Heaven, he took up the job as working as a reporter in 1946. Later on in 1952 Oldenburg attended Chicago Art Institute. While he was there he published some drawings in magazines and started to paint pictures. He was inspired by Abstract Expressionism. Then in 1956 he moved to New York and met Jim dine, two years later he met Alan Kaprow and a couple other artists. All of them were interested in art and pushed the question “What is art?” They started to stage “happenings”. That was the start of the Pop Art Movement. Pop Art is the products of mass media. From 1958 -59 he arranged and designed his first sculpture. After that he started to replicate food, like hamburgers, ice-cream and cakes. Oldenburg’s first exhibit was in 1958. There was a selection of his drawings that were included in a group show at the Red Grooms’ City Gallery. A year later, Oldenburg had his first one-man show. He had sculptures at the Judson Gallery. Then in 1962 he had his art work in the “News Realist” which helped define the Pop Art Movement. He also had other exhibitions in 1964, a one man show at the Sidney Janis Gallery and also in 1968 at the Museum of Modern Art. In the mid-1960s he also began making creation for huge monuments.
Osborne, Harold. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
As the German painter and sculptor, Kathe Kollwitz conveyed in her statement that the art she created held the burden of transfiguration. The fixation of sorrow and hardship that occurred while she sat huddled with the children was the driving force of her drawings. Her realization that art could not only be an escape from the horror happenings in Germany such as the rationing of food and the starving-to-death children at that time was also a way to voice her opinion of change and revolution. It was the quest, in which she enamored in her drawings and it is this feeling that I value from it. I choose this artist because she delineated the various circumstances surrounding the human individual, she took into account perspectives that involved life with its tragedies, and the lives of little angel children. Her drawings and sculptures were prepared to emulate and capture what her eyes had seen while she was in Germany and this is why I had taken a likening to her drawings. The two artworks that I am specifying in this research paper is the drawing labeled “Germany's children starve!” and”Self-Portrait, Hand at the Forehead (Selbstbildnis mit der Hand an der Stirn)”.
Maurits Cornelis Escher was born on June 17,1898, in Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Friesland, located in the northern Netherlands (Locher, 7). He spent the majority of his youth in the town of Arnhem, where he attended a public high school. There, he was encouraged by the drawing teacher, F.W. van der Haagen, who early on recognized Escher’s propensity for becoming an artist. After having completed secondary school, Escher followed his father’s advice and enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. Here, another faculty member...
On display at the Art Institute of Chicago, Nighthawks is an oil and canvas work that represents Edward Hopper at his most iconic and popular. Hopper more than often drew on his immediate surroundings for in...
Kleiner, Fred. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History. International ed edition. Wadsworth, January 2008.
Renner was born in 1878, and grew up in Wernigerode, Germany. He was a teacher, graphic designer, type designer and author. In 1926 he was a director at Munich’s Graphic Arts College, Later in 1927 he went on to become the director of the Munich Master Printers in 1927. He then wrote a book called Typography as Art in1922, he also wrote cultural Bolshevism in 1932.The Cultural Bolshevism later caused him dismissal from his directorship, because of the National Socialist Party. In his early studies Renner went on to explore different aspects of letterform that varied from the traditional roman form.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. N.p., 2014. Print.
He uses extreme methods to attract attention to his artwork and in doing so, challenged the social norms. In his early life, Sagmeister had been keeping a running list of life-learnings in a diary titled ‘Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far’. Eventually, he translated these private thoughts into a series of typographic artworks and public installations that shocked society, exploring everything from obsession, confidence and love; the list of quotes was influenced by the personal experiences he gained throughout his life. However, the hidden message behind these works was left open for
Bayer, Herbert, Walter Gropius, and Ise Gropius. Bauhaus, 1919-1928. Boston: Charles T. Branford, 1952. Print.
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
John Heartfield was born as Helmut Herzfelde in Berlin on June 19, 1891. Heartfield parent’s abandoned him and his siblings and they spent their childhood with other relatives. He worked at a bookstore in Wiesbaden before going to school in Munich. Heartfield had a passion for painting so he went to school at the Royal Bavarian Art and Crafts School in Munich. He had a chance to learn from two commercial graphic designers Albert Neisgerber and Ludwig Hohlwein. After graduating from the Royal Bavarian Art and Crafts School in Munich he gained a lot of experience. Heartfield decided to have his own career as a commercial artist, starting off with designing book covers in Mannheim. Heartfield was still active in a school; he did most of his studying with artist Ernst Neumann in Berlin.
In conclusion, the pieces have a variety of similarities as well as differences. Both pieces are double portraits that show the difference in time periods in which they were created and the way artistic tastes change over time. Both works of art seem to express differences between light and dark. Though both pieces have similar subject matters they vary in the use of medium and technique to create stark contrast with each other.
Similar to many of the van Gogh’s paintings completed close to the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows is a representational painting depicting nature around him. This piece is showing the wheat fields surrounding the graveyard of the Church in Auvers-sur-Oise - the graveyard where both van Gogh and his brother, Theo, were buried. The artist shows his interpretation of the wheat field on a stormy day, with three paths converging in the center of the painting's foreground. The center path disappears into the distance with an “abrupt termination” on its way to the horizon, creating a true sense of depth, while the other two ...