Wednesday, November 29, 2006

How do they judge Art?

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by Ron Mueck, just featured!

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by?

 Then trying my hand at it? hehehe Keep those thoughts to yourself I did this for a living even!!!! LOL I found it is not as easy as it looks, if you don't have the Great talent for it. But we all have different talents in what we love to do and do well;) Like research?:)

My mixed medium Zebra
 
 
 
 
 
A painting by me called The Wave:)
my painting White faced Calf
Snow on Evergreens with a knife
Little Running Deer
by Ann

 

 

Art criticism is the study and evaluation of art. Though art criticism can be applied to any artistic field (e.g. theater, music, dance), this article references only painting and the genres of that medium. This criticism usually involves the use of aesthetics or the philosophy of beauty although there are other techniques, objective andsubjective. A great art critque must contain a thesis sentence in the body of the part. Part of the purpose of art criticism is to have a rational basis for the appreciation of art and avoid subjective opinions of taste but this is not always achieved.

Art critics have probably existed for as long as there has been art and some people may argue that art is pointless without criticism. Usually, though, art criticism refers to a systematic study of art performed by people dedicated to that task rather than personal opinion. Throughout history, wealthy patrons have been able to employ people to evaluate art for them in jobs similar to the art critic but it's probable that only from the 19th century onwards criticism had developed formal methods and became a more common vocation.

The variety of artistic movements, particularly in the late 19th and 20th centuries, means that art criticism is frequently divided into different disciplines, using vastly different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation - really a form of art history - and contemporary criticism of the newwork by living artists. Though it has been said that art criticism is a much lower risk activity than making art, opinionsof current art is always liable to drastic corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past are often held up to ridicule for either favoring artists now debunked (like the academic painters of the late 19th C.), or debunking artists now venerated (like the early work of the Impressionists). Some of the art movements themselves were named in a spirit of disparagement by critics, with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists themselves (e.g. Impressionism and Cubism), the original critic being forgotten.

Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. The artist usually needs positive opinions from the critic for their work to be viewed and purchased but it may be some time before a new form of art is properly understood and appreciated. Some critics are unable to adapt to new movements in art and allow their opinions to override their objectivity, resulting in inappropriately dated critique. John Ruskin famously compared one of James Whistler's paintings to "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

Art critics of the post-World War II era

In the 1940s there were not only few galleries (The Art of This Century) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman who functioned as critics as well.

As surprising as it may be, while New York and the world were unfamiliar with the New York avant-garde, by the late 1940s most of the artists who have become household names today had their well established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the Color field painters like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann. Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of Art News, championed Willem de Kooning who was an illegal alien and did not become a US citizen during the 1950s.

The new critics elevated their proteges by casting other artists as "followers" [1] or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal.

As an example, in 1958, Mark Tobey "became the first American painter since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Biennale of Venice. New York's two leading art magazines were not interested. Arts mentioned the historic event only in a news column and Art News (Managing editor: Thomas B. Hess) ignored it completely. The New York Times and Life printed feature articles." Mark Tobey by William C. Seitz, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962).

Barnett Newman, a late member of the Uptown Group wrote catalogue forewords and reviews and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery. His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in theprocess of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." [2] Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter in April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: ---It is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it." [3]

Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was a New York Trotskyist, Clement Greenberg. As long time art critic for the Partisan Review and The Nation, he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. Artist Robert Motherwell, well heeled, joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era.

Clement Greenberg proclaimed Abstract Expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value. It supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet, in which painting became ever 'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface. [4]

Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value--political, aesthetic, moral."[5]

One of the most vocal critics of Abstract expressionism at the time was New York Times art critic John Canaday. Meyer Shapiro, and Leo Steinberg were also important art historians of the post-war era who voiced support for Abstract expressionism. During the early to mid sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert Hughes (critic) added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around Abstract expressionism.

Other people, such as British comedian/satirist Craig Brown, have been astonished that decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian and Velazquez.

What is Modern Art, what does this mean?

Modern art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art

Modern art is a general term used for most of the artistic production from the late 19th century until approximately the 1970s. (Recent art production is more often called Contemporary art or Postmodern art). Modern art refers to the then new approach to art where it was no longer important to represent a subject realistically — the invention of photography had made this function of art obsolete. Instead, artists started experimenting with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature, materials and functions of art, often moving further toward abstraction.

History

 Roots in the 19th century
At the Moulin Rouge: Two Women Waltzing by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892
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At the Moulin Rouge: Two Women Waltzing by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892
The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893
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The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

By the late 19th century, several movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: Impressionism, centered around Paris, and Expressionism, which first emerged in Germany.

The influences were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the colouristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for more depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. At the time, the generally held belief was that art should be accurate in its depiction of objects, but that it should be aimed at expressing the ideal, or the domestic. Thus the most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions, or through large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official government sponsored painters' unions, and governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts.

Thus, breaking with idealization and depiction were not merely artistic statements, but decisions with social and economic results.

These movements did not necessarily identify themselves as being associated with progress, or personal artistic freedom, but instead argued, in the style of the times, that they represented universal values and reality. The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects, but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light rather than in studios, and should capture the effects of light in their work.

Impressionist artists formed a group to promote their work, which, despite internal tensions, was able to mount exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits: establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption, would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.

Early 20th Century
I and the Village by Marc Chagall, 1911
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I and the Village by Marc Chagall, 1911
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917
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Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, 1917

Among the movements which flowered in the first decade of the 20th century were Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism.

World War I brought an end to this phase, but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of Surrealism. Also, artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus were seminal in the development of new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design and art education.

Campbell's Soup Cans 1962 Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm), by Andy Warhol, Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Campbell's Soup Cans 1962 Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6 cm), by Andy Warhol, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Modern art was introduced to the United States with the Armory Show in 1913, and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I. It was only after World War II, though, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Op art and Minimal art; in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Land art, Performance art, Conceptual art and Photorealism emerged.

Around that period, a number of artists and architects started rejecting the idea of "the modern" and created typically Postmodern works.

Starting from the post-World War II period, fewer artists used painting as their primary medium; instead, larger installations and performances became widespread. Since the 1970s, new media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art.

Criticism

Modern art was heavily criticised (some would say misunderstood) while it was being produced. People complained that modern art was indistinguishable from non-art (such as a solid-coloured canvas, a pile of assorted objects, random cacophony (in the case of music) or, in the case of performance art, a mentally ill person). Although some works of modern art received critical acclaim, disapproval was the most common reaction among the general public. Much of the work produced could only be appreciated by other artists, or could not be understood without reading the artist's statement, a text that explained what the art "meant". This era was not the first time that the public could not understand contemporary art (for instance, the works of Mozart were considered challenging to listen to when they were first introduced), but it is the most notable. Modern art may have received a boost from an unlikely quarter: the Nazis set up public exhibitions to mock modern art as "degenerate", and when it became popular to eschew any behaviour that was similar to that of the Nazis, censorship and intolerance decreased throughout the Western world.

Artists have often had an uneasy relationship with their critics. The artist usually needs positive opinions from the critic for their work to be viewed and purchased but it may be some time before a new form of art is properly understood and appreciated. Some critics are unable to adapt to new movements in art and allow their opinions to override their objectivity, resulting in inappropriately dated critique. John Ruskin famously compared one of James Whistler's paintings to "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

 

What is Abstract Art?

What do YOU think?
'Boat' by Pablo PicassoAbstract art could be described as art which is not a realistic representation of something concrete. It often is composed of colours and swirls; it may suggest something real, but in a primitive fashion.
Some people have a low opinion of this type of art. A common description is 'If it looks like my three year old son could have painted it, it's not art!' Yet the last century has seen many famous abstract artists; their works hang in museums around the world, and are worth millions of dollars.

What's your opinion? Are abstract paintings valuable because they are good art, or because the person who painted them was already famous?

Here are some things to ponder:

A behavioural scientist once took some paintings done by a chimpanzee, and hung them in a gallery along side works of respected abstract artists. Some of them received rave reviews from art critics.

Pablo Picasso is probably the most famous modern painter. He enjoyed success early in his lifetime. He produced works in painting, sculpture, prints, murals, and ceramics. Picasso's paintings are often classified into periods. The Blue period often showed images that expressed poverty and sorrow, and the Rose period included paintings of circus performers and acrobats.
During his Cubist period, Picasso and his friend Georges Braque produced works that impacted on many of the artists who were a part of their circle of friends in Paris. Picasso's work not only influenced the artists of his time but also each generation of artists who came after him. Art historians often state that Picasso did more than any other artist to change the course of art in the 20th century.

Here are some of his works:

'Seated Woman'

'Studio'
Now a very revealing quote from Picasso himself:
"In art ... those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessence, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I, myself, since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, puzzles, rebuses, arabesques, I became famous, and that very quickly. And fame, for a painter, means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated. I am rich.
But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, were great painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries.
Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere."
Pablo Picasso 1952
Now that should make you think a little!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

D is treating tonight;)

Picture from Hometown

Artist Jane Dingwall

The art of
Jane Dingwall

 

Welcome to my website.  I hope you enjoy browsing the next few pages.  For any expressions of interest please click here to email me.

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The magic of the Bay Area captured by Fred Larson.

                      Getting Up
 

Getting up on Nov. 18 and then getting up over the fog paid off with wonder as the sunrise melted its way through bands of clouds hanging over the Golden Gate Bridge.

I shot vertically and very tight with a 500mm lens and set my camera on manual with everything metering off the highlights of the sun.

 

Mystical Photography http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/photoblogfl/index


Photoblog: the magic of the Bay Area captured by Fred Larson.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Ron Mueck Exhibition by the Brooklyn Museum

  Ron Mueck sculpts amazingly lifelike figures, the Huge ones.

 

Now a real person is sitting in the chair! LOL Ann:)

Mask II

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958). In Bed, 2005. Mixed media, 63 3/4 x 255 7/8 x 155 1/2 in. (161.9 x 649.9 x 395 cm). Private Collection

 

Painted Hands

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Friday, November 10, 2006

Artist Heide Presse

"Morning Bath"

"Rushing Stream"

Heide Presse

Heide E. Presse was born in 1958 in Heidelberg , Germany , and grew up in Louisiana . Born with a natural artistic talent into a family with no other artistically inclined members, Presse had no formal art instruction until college. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches , Texas in 1980. She worked as a commercial artist in Texas , but now calls Florida home with her husband and son. In 1990, she decided to focus exclusively on painting, working in watercolor first, and more recently oil..


Fred Joy photography

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"Aquarius Sculpture"
Duotone

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"Avawatz"

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"Canyon de Chelly"

"Canyon"

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"Cascades"

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"Desert Varnish"

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"Dusk Mojave"

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"Escalante"

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"Jade Pool"

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"Monuments"

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"Pinnacles"
Duotone

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"Shadows ofthe Winds"

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"Sky's Embrace"

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"Swirls"

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"Watercourse 8"

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"Watercourse 9"

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"Watercourse 9"
Duotone

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"Agave"

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"Corn Lily #2"

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"Corn Lily"

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"Orchid"

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"Sea of Flowers 3"

Frederic Joy

Frederic Joy acquired his interest in photography via family tradition, his grandfather C. L Joy having been a professional photographer in <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />Utah in the early 1900's.  After college, Frederic attended Brooks Institute of Photography in California .  At this time, he took two seminars with famed nature photographer Ansel Adams. This influence lent him a tradition of fine photographic printing technique and a passion for large format nature photography.  Notable elements of his work include a strong ability to reveal and abstract, and a keen sense of light.

His images have appeared in many gallery exhibits including juried shows at the Nicolaysen Museum and Joslyn Art Museum where he has work in their permanent collection.  In 1997 the Wyoming Arts Council awarded him a fellowship for excellence in the visual arts.  He works wherever he can find great locations but still favors the deserts of the Southwest.  Many years spent in the desert has led to a passion for things wild and the remaining great open spaces in the world.  Fred is a board member of the Amargosa Desert Land Trust in California , a general member of the Glen Canyon Institute and a 30 year member of ASMP.

Frederic Joy has been featured several times in Outdoor Photographer Magazine, having written an article for them, had an appearance in a cover article and most recently in the July 2003 issue as one of the world's Landscape Masters.  Images have also appeared in Mountain Living Magazine, Sierra, Wilderness, Bon Appetit, Travel and Leisure, the L.A. Times.  His corporate client list has included Life of Montana Insurance, Jackson Hole Ski Corp, Real Estate of Jackson Hole, Delcon, Granite Seed Co., Country Walkers and Qwest Communications.

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"Moran Reflections"

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"Elegant Tree"

"Aspen Grove"

n Cabins"