Abstract Art Work – A Popular Movement
November 22, 2009 by Portrait Painter
Filed under Abstract & Cubism
By Bryon Zirker
Abstract art work is becoming very popular as a way of owning affordable modern art.
Although abstraction was becoming evident in the impressionist, neo and post impressionist movements began during the latter part of the 19th century. A separate identity in the early 20th century called non-objective or non-iconic art started to become apparent.
In this movement, artists created marks, signs or three-dimensional constructions that have no connection with images or objects in the known visible world and are completely abstract. In its purest form within Western art, abstract art is without a recognizable subject or object, which relates to nothing external and does not “imitate or mirror” anything. Instead the color and form are the subject of the abstract painting. It is without a doubt, 100 percent non objective or non representational.
A further distinction is made between abstract art which is geometric, like the work of Mondrian, and abstract art that is more fluid (and where the apparent spontaneity often belies careful planning and execution), for another few examples look at the abstract art of Kandinsky or Pollock.
As seen Western art history, breaking away from the notion that a painting had to represent something happened in the early 20th century began to progress quickly. Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism art movements of the time, contributed by breaking away from the norm or rules of art followed since before the great Renaissance period. Within Impressionism we see painters not completing their paintings. Most Fauvists used color in a unrealistic way. Cubism introduced the idea of painting an object from many points of view. Out of all of this came the ideas which developed color, line, form, and texture that could be the “subject” of a painting.
The abstract impressionistic style is an exciting and very vibrant style that allows the representation of life images or reality impressions, in some different simplified ways using abstract shapes, forms and fresh and vibrant colors.
Abstract art works that gives the viewer a sense of being somewhere else in time or place are pre-planned and created on an interesting surface of texture before the artist begins to paint. Many layers of paint are applied in a special process, for the purpose of creating a feeling of nature, space and place.
Things You Should Know about Pop Art Paintings History
November 21, 2009 by Portrait Painter
Filed under Abstract & Cubism
Pop art was an artistic movement that represented a strong shift from the influence of the abstract expressionism. Pop art paintings brought an original form of making art by introducing techniques of commercial art and everyday life illustrations.
This movement first occurred in Great Britain in the late 1950s and it was meant to be a redefinition of the metaphysical gravity of the abstract expressionism. Pop art paintings were mainly characterized by the insertion of everyday life images of soup cans, comic strips, Coke bottles or even stuffed animals into the artistic expression. The expressed aim of the pop art paintings was to provide a meeting point for artists and public. Inserting commercial art symbols in their work, the artists intended to blur the boundaries between art and common people in order to make art ideas accessible for everyone.
The birth of this art movement during the 1950s-1960s wasn’t a coincidence. Artists were getting tired of the inwardness and opacity of the abstract expressionism; the American society (and the British one, but on a less extent) was enjoying deep changes in terms of economic revival after the constraints of the Second World War. Therefore, the artist community mocked the shallowness and the materialism of the Americans, employing symbols of mass culture (Coke cans, magazines or comic strips) in their pop art paintings.
The artists who had embraced this art style used different symbols: American flags (Jasper Johns), comic strips (Roy Lichtenstein) and soup cans (Andy Warhol) or stuffed animals (Robert Rauschenberg).
Pop art paintings also represented icons of the artists’ reaction against the dullness and complexity of the abstract expressionism. Abstract techniques were replaced with more accessible ones like humor or surface appearance. The central idea of this art movement was to express messages to the mass by transforming the ordinary things into art objects.
Although the pop art stream was very popular among the layman public, it was highly controversial among the art critics community. Some considered pop art paintings as cheap, tacky imitations of everyday life symbols; others regarded them as icons of the shallow American society at mid-century.
Nevertheless, this art movement represented a breath of vivid, fresh air in an art characterized until then by opacity and seriousness.