Online Art Exhibition

Today, I went to a Alastair Gray Solo Show in 6 Burnsall Street, London, all the way from my comfy house, online. Here's a brief introduction to the exhibition:

Following the success of his previous show Gray returns to the gallery with an equally exciting new collection. In these strong abstract canvasses the artist's imagination has been captured by the contrasting landscapes of Switzerland and New Mexico.

In this body of new works Gray also pursues another interest - man's intervention in the landscape. Industrial scars in the form of pylons and cables lend themselves perfectly to Gray's imagery. The scoring of the canvas, layering of the paint and the oily glazes help create and reinforce the mood of the places he paints.


Here are some of the works presented in the exhibition


Rio Cuale
mixed media on canvas


Bandillo
mixed media


The Peninsular at Dawn
mixed media on canvas

The paintings of Alastair Gray gives me a warm. fuzzy, cosy sort of feeling through his warm and rather cool colours. I really like his style of painting, I want to learn how to paint like that.

Artist Review : Andre Derrain

André Derain




Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Île-de-France. In 1898, while studying to be an engineer, he began to attend painting classes at the Académie Camillo[1] and studied with Eugène Carrière. In 1900, he met and shared a studio with Maurice de Vlaminck and began to paint his first landscapes; Vlaminck also introduced him to Matisse.

Derain made his first impact on the Paris art scene in 1905, when he and Matisse displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. This exhibition led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to dub them les Fauves (the wild beasts).

In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to compose a series of paintings with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain put forth a portrait of London that was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With bold colours and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These London paintings remain among his most popular work.

In 1907 he experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre to be near his friend Pablo Picasso and other notable artists. His work increasingly showed the influence of Paul Cézanne and of African art. Derain supplied woodcuts in primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of poetry, L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909), and illustrated a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.

At about this time Derain's work began overtly reflecting his study of the old masters. The role of color was reduced and forms became austere; the years 1911-1914 are sometimes referred to as his gothic period. In 1914 he was mobilized for military service in World War I and until his release in 1919 he would have little time for painting, although in 1916 he provided a set of illustrations for André Breton's first book, Mont de Piete.

After the war, Derain won new acclaim as a leader of the renewed classicism then ascendant. With the wildness of his Fauve years far behind, he was admired as an upholder of tradition.[2] In 1919 he designed the ballet La Boutique fantasque for Diaghilev, leader of the Ballets Russes. A major success, it would lead to his creating many ballet designs.

The 1920s marked the height of his success, as he was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1928 and began to exhibit extensively abroad — in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and in New York City and Cincinnati, Ohio.

During the German occupation of France in World War II, Derain lived primarily in Paris and was much courted by the Germans because he represented the prestige of French culture. Derain accepted an invitation to make an official visit to Germany in 1941. The Nazi propaganda machine naturally made much of Derain's presence in Germany, and after the Liberation he was branded a collaborator and ostracized by many former supporters.

He died in Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France in 1954.
Today, paintings by Derain sell for as much as US$6 million. The London paintings were the subject of a major exhibition at the Courtauld Institute in 2005-06.

Art Techniques

Impasto



The word "impasto" is actually an italian word which means "dough" or "mixture". This style of style of painting refers to a style by which paint is laid on an area of the surface thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting knife strokes are obvious.

Italian usage of "impasto" includes both a painting and a potting technique. According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, the root noun of impasto is pasta, whose primary meaning in Italian is paste.

Oil paint is most suitable to the impasto painting technique, due to its thickness and slow drying time. This enables the artists to have sufficient time to manipulate the paint to his desired style. Acrylic paint can also be impastoed. Impasto is generally not possible in watercolour or tempera without the addition of thickening media such as Aquapasto™, due to the inherent thinness of these media.

Impastoed paint serves several purposes. Firstly, it makes the light reflect in a particular way, giving the artist additional control over the play of light on the painting. Secondly, it can add expressiveness to the painting, the viewer being able to notice the strength and speed applied by the artist. Third, impasto can push a painting into a three dimensional sculptural rendering. The first objective was originally sought by masters such as Rembrandt and Titian, to represent folds in clothes or jewels: it was then juxtaposed with more delicate painting.

Much later, the French impressionists created entire canvases of rich impasto textures. Vincent van Gogh used it frequently for aesthetics and expression. Abstract expressionists such as Hans Hofmann and Willem De Kooning also made extensive use of it, motivated in part by a desire to create paintings which dramatically record the "action" of painting itself.

Still more recently, Frank Auerbach has used such heavy impasto that some of his paintings become almost three-dimensional.

Because impasto gives texture to the painting, it can be opposed to flat, smooth, or blending techniques.

Some artist include Montecelli and Aja

Mixed Media



Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium ( or technique ) has been employed.

There is an important distinction between "mixed media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media. For example, a work on paper or canvas that combines paint, ink, and collage could properly be called a "mixed media" work - but not a work of "multimedia art." The term multimedia art implies a wider scope than mixed media, combining visual art with non-visual elements (such as recorded audio, video) or with elements of the other arts (such as literature, drama, dance, motion graphics, music, or interactivity).

When creating a painted or drawn work using mixed media it is important to choose the layers carefully and allow enough drying time between the layers to ensure the final work will have integrity. If many different media are used it is equally important to choose a sturdy foundation upon which the different layers are imposed.

An old rule good to remember is "Fat over lean." In other words, don't start with oil paints. Plan to make them the final layer.

Many interesting effects can be achieved by using mixed media. Often, found objects are used in conjunction with traditional artist mediums, such as paints and graphite, to express a meaning in the everyday life. In this manner, many different elements of art become more flexible than with traditional artist mediums.

Some famous mixed media artists include Miriam Schapiro, Dieter Roth and Lorne Beug

Art Styles

An art style ( also known as as art movement ) is a drift or style in art with a specific shared philosophy or objective. It is followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement more or less strictly so restricted.

They were especially imperative in modern art, where each consecutive movement was considered as a new avant-garde ( french term used to refer to people or works that are new or fresh, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics )

As scores of art movements use the -ism suffix, they are sometimes referred to as isms. The list of art styles are aplenty, and I chose these three art styles to cover on.

Naive Art

I'm sure everyone were once a artist before, when they were young. Taking that brush in your hand and just painting random, innocent strokes and scribbles. It looked like nothing, but that kind of style is a kind of art too.

Ivan Rabuzin: Dawn, 1963

Fresh, childlike style of painting, employing bright colours and strong, rhythmic designs. It is usually the work of self-taught artists with no formal training, and is less technical in approach.

The characteristics of naïve art are an awkward relationship to the formal qualities of painting; for example, difficulties with drawing and perspective that result in a charmingly awkward and often refreshing vision; strong use of pattern, unrefined colour, and simplicity rather than subtlety are all supposed markers of naïve art. It has become such a popular and recognisable style that many examples could be called pseudo-naïve.


Franjo Filipovic: Winter

Outstanding naive artist include Henry Darger (1892-1973) and Camille Bombois (1883-1970).


Pejzaž: Landscape,1939

The term is also used todescribe the work of qualified artists who utilize naive techniques and effects. One such example is L S Lowry (1887-1976). Over time it has become an acceptable style.

Naive artists are also known as primitives, although primitive painting should not be confused with primitive art or Primitivism (the artworks of indigenous African, Oceanic, and American cultures, or Western folk art).

Pointillism

Another style of painting is Pointillism, the method of in which small distinct points of primary colours create the notion of a wide variety of secondary and intermediate colors. It is an outcome of Impressionism, and is usually categorized as a form of Post-Impressionism.

This technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the colour spots into a fuller range of tones and is related closely to Divisionism, a more technical variant of the method.

The term "Pointillism" was first coined with respect to the work of Georges Seurat, and he is the artist most closely associated with the movement. It is a style with few serious practitioners and is particularly seen in the works of Lemmen, Signac, and Cross. Pointillism is considered to have been an influence on Fauvism.

The practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the more common method of blending pigments on a palette or using the many commercially available premixed colors. The latter is analogous to the CMYK or four-colour printing process used by personal color printers and large presses; Pointillism is not analogous to the colors and process used by computer monitors and television sets to produce colors; the latter uses green and no yellow at all to produce colors from green through orange as well as gray, brown and black.

There is also an advanced level of Pointillism called Hyper Pointillism ( excessive pointillism ). There is currently only one known artist in the world who practices this - Niall Young.

Some of his works,

Niall Young: Reflections - Elvaston Castle

Niall Young: Derby Arboretum - In the Snow

It looks just like two normal paintings, but indeed, those two were created by dots!

Last buy not least, we have...

Street Art

Any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" is known as street art though the term usually refers to art of an illegitimate nature, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives.

The term can include traditional graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting and street poster art, video projection, art intervention, and street installations are all categorized as Street Art. Naturally, Street Art is used to distinguish contemporary public-space artwork from territorial graffiti, vandalism, and corporate art.

Techniques

Whereas traditional graffiti artists have primarily used free-hand aerosol paints to produce their works, "street art" includes many other media such as wheatpasting, stickers, stencil graffiti, mosaic tiling, video projection and street installations.

For these reasons street art is sometimes considered "post-graffiti" and sometimes even "neo-graffiti". Street art can be found around the world and street artists often travel to other countries foreign to them so they can spread their designs.

Street Artists
Street artists such as Banksy, Swoon, Judith Supine, Neckface and Os Gemeos have warrented global attention for their work and in turn migrated the showing of their works to the museum or gallery setting as well as the street. It is also not uncommon for street artists to achieve commercial success doing graphics for other companies or starting their own merchandising lines.

Key Locations
Melbourne (Australia) is home to some of the world's best street art. There are a number of important sites across the Central Business District (CBD). One of the most colourful being Hosier Lane near Federation Square.

Below are some street art:

Charcoal wall drawing by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada

It's wonderful how the artist can maintain his skill and style in such large-scale drawings. Not only that, the final work really looks real and living, almost breathing.

And finally, take a look at these amazing things

Now I would't want to accidentally fall into that hole.

And what's a laptop doing here in the middle of a street?

Those two pictures above are drawings, real 2 dimesional drawings.

Artist Review : Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns

This is my second artist review. I got to know this atist when I was Secondary two, whilst I was doing an art research for Pop Artists.

Jasper Johns grew up in Allendale, South Carolina, and recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in."

Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at Parsons School of Design in 1949. While in New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.

In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Robert Rauschenberg's studio.
Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut.

Work

He is best known for his painting Flag (1954-55), which he painted after having a dream of the American flag. His work is often described as a 'Neo-Dadaist', as opposed to pop art, even though his subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture. Still, many compilations on pop art include Jasper Johns as a pop artist because of his artistic use of classical iconography.



Jasper Johns craeted texture in this flag painting by using a teachnique of painting with viscous, dripping encaustic over a collage made from recycled materils. This rough construction is rarely evident in reproductions of the work as a whole.

Early works were composed using simple schema such as flags, maps, targets, letters and numbers. Johns' treatment of the surface is often lush and painterly; he is famous for incorporating such media as Encaustic (wax-based paint), and plaster relief in his paintings. Johns played with and presented opposites, contradictions, paradoxes, and ironies, much like Marcel Duchamp (who was associated with the Dada movement). Johns also produces intaglio prints, sculptures and lithographs with similar motifs.

Johns' breakthrough move, which was to inform much later work by others, was to appropriate popular iconography for painting, thus allowing a set of familiar associations to answer the need for subject. Though the Abstract Expressionists disdained subject matter, in the end it could be said that they simply changed subjects. Johns neutralized the subject, so that something like pure paint--painted surface--could declare itself. For twenty years after Johns painted "Flag," the surface--in Andy Warhol's silkscreens or Robert Irwin's illuminated ambiances--could suffice.

In contrast to the concept of macho 'artist hero' as ascribed to Abstract Expressionist figures such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, whose paintings are fully indexical (that is, standing effectively as an all-over canvas signature), 'Neo-Dadaists' like Johns and Robert Rauschenberg seem preoccupied with a lessening of the reliance of their art on indexical qualities, seeking instead to create meaning solely through the use of conventional symbols, painted indexically in mockery of the hallowed individuality of the Abstract Expressionists. There is also the issue of symbols existing outside of any referential context; Johns' flag, for instance, is primarily a visual object, divorced from its symbolic connotations and reduced to something in-itself.

In 1998, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid more than $20 million for Johns' White Flag.[citation needed]
In 2006, private collectors Anne and Kenneth Griffin (founder of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel Investment Group) bought Johns' False Start for $80 million.

Other works

Map



3




Jasper Johns once guest-starred on The Simpsons as himself. In the episode "Mom and Pop Art", Homer Simpson accidentally becomes an artist, and Johns attends one of his exhibitions. Johns is portrayed as a kleptomaniac, stealing items of food, lightbulbs, a motor boat, and a painting Marge is working on.

Artist Review: M C Escher

M C Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher (June 17, 1898 – March 27, 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints ( print making process ) which feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

He was an artist, but not your typical one. He wasn't a Monet, working with watercolors and painting flowers. Neither was he a Michelangelo, studying the human anatomy and sculpting exquisite examples of a human being. Though he was originally trained as an architect, M.C. Escher was no Frank Lloyd Wright; he never designed magnificent houses and buildings. Though much of his work was based on the periodic designs of ancient Moorish mosaics, Escher broke the most fundamental of their rules–the representation of living objects in art.

Escher was a individual artist. He incorporated the fantasy of Monet, the logic and precision of Michaelangelo, the perspective and three-dimensional vision of Wright, and the patterns of the Moors, into his own woodcuts, lithographs, and drawings. He created impossible worlds and outlandish creatures. His inspiration, the Moors of Alhambra, Spain, lead him to create wonderful tesselations of people, animals, and geometric shapes.

Some of his Famous art Works :

Relativity



( Hint: Try finding the landings for the stairs )

People were so fascinated by it that LEGO company started a project of doing a rendition of this artwork , not in paper not on canvas but in Lego. Daniel Shiu and Andrew Lipson embarked on this project and after 4 days of hard work, this was the finished piece.



Cute huh?

Links: http://www.andrewlipson.com/escher/relativity.html

Not only does he do lithographs, he also has artworks of tessellation, like the one below, Air and Water I.



Rind



Drawing Hands



Take a look at this artwork where M C Escher incorporates both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensionals together. It's simply amazing how he does that.

After looking at all this artworks, I believe your already starting to get dizzy. Hahas

To me, M C Escher is a master of tessallation and very proficient in his view of dimensions. Its simply remarkable how he can play tricks on the eye through his artworks. Talk about illusionist. And my favourite artwork of his would be "Relativity".

Intro

Hello all you fresh visitors! Before I start my posts, a self - intro would be necessary.

And so Hello I'm Samuel ( the not-so-good Artist ), and I will be posting reviews, sysnopsises and comments on all those Arty Farty stuff, including exhibitions, artists reviews and the analysis of artworks by artists.

Be prepared for Picasso, Van Gogh, Escher and many many more infamous artists.