Photography and Sculpture

 

 

Maine Pump by Walker Evans. This photograph is considered an instant collage. The definition of collage is objects in a particular "scene" or photo that normally arent associated with one another. This is considered a collage because the water pump is placed right in front of a door blocking the pathway. Realistically this scene would never take place.

 

 

 

 

Bob Dylan by Annie Leibovitz. This type of photograph would be considered a Portrait Photograph. Annie is most known for her photgraphs of celebrities. She started doing this type of photography for the magazine The Rolling Stone. Most of her photographs are of people either standing still or doing random things.

 

 

 

 

Untitled by Cindy Sherman. In many of Cindy's photographs she is trying to dipict a sense that the photograph is part of a film reel and she is capturing a moment in the film. This is called stage photography. Cindy will use different people and props to make it look like the photograph was shot of a movie giving the sense of more events taking place.

 

 

 

 

Pieta by Michelangelo. This statue is a carving sculpture. the carving process is when an artist takes a big block of wood or stone and starts to chip away at it using different tools. This is a very skilled line of work but once mastered the results are stunning such as the statue above. The artist that take this line of work can visualize different forms and scenes in a blank chunk of material.

 

 

 

 

The Myth of the Western Man by Robert Arneson. To achieve this type of sculpture the artist must use a technique known as modeling. The base material for this process is clay. Clay is known for its maluability and durability. It is very easy to mold clay and keep it in the shape you want it while working on the entire piece of art. Once finished the artist puts the clay into a kiln and fires the clay with rising temperatures to harden the clay.

 

 

 

 

Storm King Wall by Andy Goldsworthy. This type of art is extremely interesting and can be completed on different scales. This is considered Earth art. the artist uses the landscape and material found on the earth to create their piece of art. These walls are smaller scale forms of earth art but some other pieces of art can span miles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prints and painting

 

 

The Blindness of Tobit by Rembrant van Rijn. This work created by Rembrant is pretty amazing because it is an etching. An etching is where the artist applies a ground, a substance he/she can "carve" into, to a metal plate. after applied and hardened they can start etching the picture out of the ground exposing parts of the metal plate. An acid solution that was applied before hand starts to eat away the metal where the artist carved out resulting in a plate that will produce a picture when printed.

 

 

 

 

Artist's wife by Emil Nolde. This type of artwork is similar to etching in a way. This is known as woodcut or wood engraving. This form of artwork is done by cutting grooves in the end grain of the piece of wood. the purpose is for the grooves that are cut out and the narrow fisures made by the artist are not going to hold any ink, then once pressed to paper will create the image desired.

 

 

 

 

Peasant woman by Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera is known for making pieces of art by using plaster as a canvas. This process is called Fresco. The artist will apply plaster to a surface and depending on the artist they will start paining right away while the plaster is still wet, Buon Fresco (true fresco), or will wait till the plaster is dry before painting. If this process is done carefully and by a skilled artist the painting can be preserved for a long time.

 

 

 

 

Oleanders by Vincent van Gogh. This artist is very well known through many generations and his style of art is easily recognizable. Many of his works of art are completed by using oil paint. By using oil paint the artist can blend colors on the canvas itself and create a variation of hues and tones. Oil paint dries very slow so the artist can rework and "edit" the painting through out the entire painting process.

 

 

 

 

March Wind by Charles Burchfield. In this piece of art the artist used pigment and added it to a water solution with a binder before puting it on paper. After achieving the right color desired they then brush the pigment water directly to the paper. This causes the paper to become damp but still hold the color. This type of art is called watercolor for reasons explained above.

 

 

 

 

Tombstones by Jacob Lawrence. The process to make this form of art is very similar to watercolor except there is an additional step. Once the watercolor is created the artist then adds chinese white chalk to make the color opaque (light can not pass through it). once mixed with the chalk it is nearly impossible to blend colors as you can see above. It also makes the image appear two dimensional. This is known as Gouache painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aspects of design

The Portrait of a Lady holding a Rose by Thomas Dewing . This piece of art is a great example of an Asymmetrical design. if you notice at the bottom half of the painting it is taken up by most of the lady's dress. The same could be said for the left portion of the work. The artist put more of the weight of the painting in the bottom left hand portion.

 

 

 



 

The Painter and his model as klio by Jan Vermeer. The artist did a great job at bringing your attention to a certain object in the room in the painting. If you couldnt tell it was the book that the model was holding. It is brighter than its surrounding making it the first thing you look at. this is known as Emphasis.

 

 

 

 

 

Nixes Mate by Larry Poons. It may be hard to focus on any single point of this painting but that was the purpose of it. Poons uses Repatition of the tiny ovals and places them in a pattern across the entire painting in different colors. Repatition uses many patterns and same colors.

 

 

 

 

The Penitent Magdalen by Georges De La Tour. In the middle of the painting there is a fine line where you can see two seperate images by the use of light and dark. This is known as contrast and is shown very well by the ladys arm and the darkness behind the mirror. It is the most noticable element in this painting.

 

 

 

 

 

Untitled by Katsushika Hokusai. When you look at a painting where do you look first? then where do your eyes move next? This is known as visual movement. In this painting I  found to start in the left top corner moved right to the women on the rocks then down to the drowning people. where do your eyes go?

 

 

 

 

 

Mojo Office building by Cleas Oldenburg. Our normal expectations of the scale of binoculars on average are about the size of a small dinner plate. In the work of art the size of the binoculars is blown way out of proportion. Other than visual pleasure this work of art is also being used as a functional part of a building.