Introduction to the Artistic Style of Cubism

Cubism is an avant-garde movement of art history that surfaced in the early 20th century in the decade before Europe became embroiled in the First World War. Some say that Cubism was a natural outcome of earlier movements like Impressionism and Expressionism.

Pablo Picasso and his contemporary Impressionists, including Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and Cezanne, were already known for avant-garde paintings. These brilliant artists worked in the creative explosion in Paris, the cultural capital of the West, and responded to each other with new paintings. Who would create the painting that started a new movement in art even if it lasted only a few years before the next one surfaced in Paris?

Although the first artists labeled Cubists were different, the real source of Cubism stemmed from works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. For example, Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) is a beautiful oil painting on canvas that shows the visual principles of Cubism, including irregular human figures and shapes and forms that are very geometrical instead of realistic.

Hugh Honour and John Fleming, editors of “The Visual Arts: A History,” describe the change in Picasso at the onset:

“So, abandoning the single viewpoint and normal proportions, reducing anatomy largely to geometrical lozenges and triangles, he [Picasso] completely re-ordered the human image.”

In the first stage of Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, Picasso and Braque showed evidence of geometrical forms in Picasso’s “The Three Women” (1908-1909) and “Female Nude” (1910) and Braque’s “Houses and Trees” (1908). Cubist paintings break up figures on canvas, which lends them more depth and life on a two-dimensional surface. Art history lovers can also find written notes by Braque, his aphorisms or expressions of love on the subject of art. These writings were first published in 1917, and they reveal his thinking as a Cubist. For example, Braque wrote, “To be pure imitation, painting must make an abstraction from appearances.”

The second stage of Cubism called Orphic Cubism was a side journey from Picasso and Braque. Notable artists were Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, and Francis Picabia. Paintings which exemplified this branch of Cubism are Sonia Delaunay’s “Simultaneous Contrasts,” and Robert Delaunay’s “Circular Forms,” and Leger’s “Contrast of Forms.” Duchamp and Picabia would soon become key members of the Dada movement; however, Dadaism focused heavily on multiple art forms, including stream-of-consciousness writing and publication and radical performance art.

In 1911, an assortment of artists displayed their works in a Paris exhibit. Written accounts of these works labeled them as the first “Cubists” even after Braque and Picasso had already created several Cubist works. In 1912, other Cubist exhibitions swept Europe, but Braque and Picasso did not participate. Two artists, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, even published “Du Cubisme,” a book on the subject. Although Picasso’s work spanned almost a century, when people think of Picasso they often conjure up an image of one of his renowned Cubist paintings.

Introduction to the Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

Born on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe was a female artist and icon of the twentieth century. She was an early avant-garde artist of American Modernism. Her life spanned 98 years, and her portfolio includes many works of American landscapes. She received early art instruction at the Art Institute of Chicago (1905-1907). In 1907, she moved to New York City and studied under William Merritt Chase as a member of the Art Students League. Her early career led her to further studies at Columbia University Teacher’s College and educational posts at the University of Virginia and Columbia College.

In her New York years, O’Keeffe created works described as examples of avant-garde Modernism, abstract, Minimalist, and color field theory. Two of her paintings demonstrate her lifelong skill with color regardless of the subject matter. In 1919, O’Keefe created “Blue and Green Music” and became prominent with support from Alfred Stieglitz. This abstract piece is a beautiful work of rhythm, movement, color, depth, and form. She echoes this work again in 1927 with “Abstraction Blue.” When O’Keeffe painted in watercolor or oil, she also captured beauty and emotion. In later works, O’Keeffe continued this tradition, including famous pictures of flowers and New Mexican landscapes.

O’Keeffe developed a powerful relationship with the wealthy and famous photographer, Alfred Stieglitz. The two were quite a power duo. Stieglitz is remembered as the first photographer to be exhibited in American museums, the power behind Modernist artists with his gallery 291 in New York City, the person who brought Modernism (ala Picasso) to America, and an artistic influence on artists like Ansel Adams. Although their friendship began in 1917 while Stieglitz was still married to his wife, O’Keeffe married Stieglitz in 1924.

When Stieglitz died in 1946, O’Keeffe moved from their home in Manhattan’s Shelton Hotel to New Mexico. She divided her time between a home called Ghost Ranch (frequented since the mid-thirties and purchased in 1940) and a Spanish colonial at Abiqui (purchased in 1945 and occupied in 1949). In her “Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II” (1930), O’Keeffe again depicts movement, beauty, volume, and depth, especially in brilliant blue forms of New Mexican mountains. O’Keeffe’s work reflected other travels and influences, including a friendship with the Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s cultural impact is preserved by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This museum offers the only research center in the world devoted to scholarly study in American Modernism. A visit to this museum or another venue where her work is shown suggests why she was the first woman to have a solo exhibition in 1946 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. O’Keeffe died on March 6, 1986.

Introduction to the Artist: Georges Seurat (1859-1891)

The tall, reserved and distinguished-looking gentleman in a business suit must have appeared more to be a banker than a groundbreaking Post-Impressionist painter, but Georges Seurat was a bookish introvert who chose to pursue his studies on color theory rather than participate in the conviviality at the local pub with fellow artists.

Seurat was born into a financially comfortable family in Paris in 1859. Because his father was rarely at home, Georges spent much time with his mother at the nearby Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, which history would prove to have had a considerable influence on his paintings.

Initially Seurat adhered to the style and techniques of the Impressionists, with short soft brush strokes of mixed colors, often depicting scenes of bourgeois entertainment. After studying at Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1878, which was followed by a brief stint of military service, he set up his own studio near his parents’ home on the right bank, where he intently studied color optics and the overlap of painting and science.

Seurat spent much of 1883 laboring on his first large-scale project, “Bathing at Asnieres,” into which he introduced a new technique that came to be called Pointillism: painting with pure unblended colors in tiny precise dots on white which, from a suitable viewing distance, appeared as a blended composition that seemed to shimmer with light.

Seurat was insulted when the Paris Salon rejected “Bathing at Asnieres,” so he in turn rejected the Salon and started an association of young independent painters that came to be called Société des Artistes Indépendants. He became closely allied with another painter in the group, Paul Signac, who eventually wrote a definitive book on Neo-Impressionism, including a section on Pointillism.

Seurat’s greatest and most recognized painting is “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” now a part of the Chicago Art Institute’s permanent collection. This painstaking work is 10 feet wide and took two years — 1884 and 1885 — to complete. Sixty oil sketches, or studies, show his meticulous preparation for the completed work. Stephen Sondheim created a Broadway musical, “Sunday in the Park with George,” based on Seurat’s masterpiece.

About three years after “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” was unveiled, Seurat moved to a quieter part of the city, where he led a secret life: He lived with a woman named Madeleine Knobloch, who was the subject of his painting “Young Woman Powdering Herself” and gave birth to two sons. Georges revealed his young family to his mother two days before his death from meningitis or, some say, diphtheria at age 31.

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Tempera: The History and Development of a Medium

A widely available commercial paint, tempera is often found on elementary paintbrushes in school art rooms and on the messy hands of the youngest finger painters. However, tempera is far from elementary, and its significant role in the development of an art form is anything but child’s play. In its earliest form, tempera paint was an emulsion, created through the process of mixing and thinning an oil and water blend with pigment until it reached a pasty, almost gelatinous, state. Tempera painting dates back to 12th-century Europe, and the period’s artists cultivated methods for improving both formulas and artistic techniques.

Used for medieval panel paintings, tempera evolved with the addition of egg yolks to the formula. Cennino Cennini described the egg yolk technique in an early 15th-century exposition on painting. Until the development of oil painting in the late 16th century, tempera was the principal medium of easel painting and other visual arts endeavors. However, artists found tempera’s consistency difficult to handle. Coupled with a limited number of colors, artists relied on their skill and technical knowledge to compensate for the paint’s lack of subtlety and its inability to produce the natural effects they sought.

To coax the temperamental medium into producing the desired results, a complicated technique was used, which involved priming the surface, sketching with charcoal, adding watercolor highlights and applying any underpainting. After these steps were completed, then began the slow and calculated process of building layers of tempera to produce the desired tone, depth and quality. Examples of these early works signal the necessity of artists to possess more than just ability and passion to create. Artists were now required to become experts in the techniques and processes of manipulating the very materials, which served as the conduit for their inspiration.

Galleries around the world exhibit examples of these tempera works. Two pieces that demonstrate the early technique of tempera panel paintings are the wooden panels Duccio’s “Madonna and Child with Saints Polyptych” and Botticelli’s “Madonna with Child and the Infant St. John the Baptist.” “The Crowning of the Virgin” by Raffael is an excellent representation of egg tempera on canvas. By the late 16th century, with the advent of oil paints and advancements in synthetic materials, tempera fell out of favor. Still, it holds a significant place among the many milestones in the development of painting. In contemporary times, tempera is still important as it is frequently used to spark the imaginations of young artists, who swirl its vivid colors and discover the freedom, excitement and power found in the art of painting.

Watercolor: The History and Development of a Medium

The evolution of watercolor painting began in antiquity when prehistoric humans painted cave walls with mixtures of ochre, charcoal and other pigments found in nature to create visual representations of the wild beasts encountered in the world around them. From this primitive beginning, innovations, such as the development of paper, the improvements in pigments and the awareness of aesthetic techniques, contributed to the growth of watercolor as a fine art medium.

By the 12th century, advancements in Chinese papermaking and the decorative use of watercolor spread to Europe, and a century later, European artists were preparing their own watercolor mixtures by grinding pigment and chalk for fresco wall paintings. The Sistine Chapel is the most famous example of the early use of watercolors as a fine art. Once used only for fresco painting on wet plaster, watercolor evolved into a medium used to convey powerful, striking images when applied to paper.

The advent of ready-made paints and synthetic pigments influenced watercolor’s growth as a medium. During the 15th century, printmaker Albrecht Durer developed methods that improved the paints’ appearance. Once artists realized its potential, they explored techniques that enhanced the luminous, transparent effects of the colors. English painter, J. M. W. Turner experimented with both the expressive nature and technical aspects of the medium. His work influenced the separation of watercolor into transparent and opaque colors, which today are referred to as watercolor and gouache, respectively. By the 1800s, watercolor was viewed as a serious and expressive artistic medium.

Artists have used watercolor painting to crafts works reflecting their gifts and passions. John James Audubon used watercolors to document the wildlife to which he was so devoted. Winslow Homer recorded the scenic beauty of the natural world, as evidenced in his seascapes of Maine, the soft colors of the Bahamas and the splendor of the Adirondacks. French master, Paul Cézanne’s technique of overlapping watercolor washes provided his distinctive use of color and tone, as shown in his piece “Still Life with Watermelon and Pomegranates.” Vincent Van Gogh, best known for his oil paintings, developed his watercolor techniques to create over 100 pieces, such as “Boats on the Beach of Saintes-Maries” and “Scheveningen Women and Other People Under Umbrellas.”

Other artists of the past, like Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Burchfiueld and Andrew Wyeth, have used this medium to create striking works of art, while contemporary artists continue to use watercolors to convey their visions. Whether possessing rich, vivid tones or offering soft, soothing compositions, artists’ work with watercolor demonstrates the power, development and versatility of this celebrated medium.

Oil Paint: The History and Development of a Medium

As evidenced by the innumerable masterpieces exhibited on gallery walls of the most prestigious museums worldwide, perhaps it is the medium of oil that has created the most significant impact on the development of painting as visual art form. Painting with oil on canvas continues to be a favored choice of serious painters because of its long-lasting color and a variety of approaches and methods. Oil paints may have been used as far back as the 13th century. However as a medium in its modern form, Belgian painter, Jan van Eyck, developed it during the 15th century. Because artists were troubled by the excessive amount of drying time, van Eyck found a method that allowed painters an easier method of developing their compositions. By mixing pigments with linseed and nut oils, he discovered how to create a palette of vibrant oil colors.

Over time, other artists, such as Messina and da Vinci, improved upon the recipe by making it an ideal medium for representing details, forms and figures with a range of colors, shadows and depths. During the Renaissance, which is often referred to as the Golden Age of painting, artists developed their crafts and established many of the techniques that provided the medium of oil to emerge. The refinement of oil painting came through studies in perspective, proportion and human anatomy. During the Renaissance, the goal for artists was to create realistic images. They sought to represent all that was caught by an artist’s detailed eye, as well as capture and present the intensity of human emotions.

Giovanni Bellini’s work from 1480, “St. Francis in Ecstasy,” captures oil’s ability to create an accurate, complex composition with the soft glow of morning light and the detailed perspective of the natural landscape. Oil became a useful medium during the Baroque period, when artists sought to display the intensity of emotion through the careful manipulation of light and shadows. Rembrandt’s use of oil in his piece, “Night Watch,” from 1642, displays the concerns of the night watch with a dark, yet detailed background and the crisp brightness of the golden garments. In the mid-19th century, as painters explored new approaches and developed new movements, oil as a medium followed. In the 1872 painting “Impression, Sunrise,” for which the Impressionist movement was named, Monet used oil to provide an evocative view of the harbor, silhouettes and sun as reflections danced on the water. Into Modernism and beyond, oil has been used by artists, such as Kandinsky, Picasso and Matisse, to further their experimental approaches in the early 20th century.

Easily removed from the canvas, oil allows the artist to revise a work. With its flexible nature, long history and large body of theories, oil painting has created a most significant impact on visual art. New developments in oil paints continued into the 20th century, with advent of oil paint sticks, which were used by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Anselm Kiefer. Since the Renaissance, the masters used oil to create works that continue to inspire, intrigue and delight, and today, artists continue to use this significant medium to express their visions, goals and emotions.

Pastel: The History and Development of a Medium

Unlike other artistic media, pastel offers the experience of painting with dry colors. Pastel is made from pure pigment in powdered form, which is bound together into sticks, similar to chalk. However, unlike colored chalks, pastel is composed of the same pigments found in oil paints. As pastel colors are applied dry, artists know immediately what effect a color will have on a composition. With techniques, like blending and scruffing, artists control tones and shading. One disadvantage of pastel is that the image is never secure, and the slightest touch can compromise the composition. Liquid fixatives, such as those used for charcoal, are apt to reduce the brilliance of the color. Therefore, the protection of glass and gentle handling are often the best means of preservation.

By the 15th century, pastel was used in studies for paintings or murals. Da Vinci is believed to have used it in his “The Last Supper” studies. Through the ages, many artists have created in pastel. From the 17th century, as artists used it to further their own crafts, their work contributed to the development of the medium. Venetian artist, Rosalba Carriera popularized pastel in the late-1600s. Her works possess a delicate feeling and soft look, which results from her rubbing and blending techniques. In her 1721 work, “Young Girl Holding a Crown of Laurel,” pastel produces a gently refined image with discreetly elegant effects.

A century later, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, strongly influenced by Carriera, took pastel in new directions with brilliant color, crisp detail and clarity never before seen in pastel works. One of his celebrated portraits, “Henry Dawkins,” illustrates the artist’s agile hand in capturing the subject with remarkable clarity, such as the chromatic effects of the golden buttons and the soft sheen of the velvet coat. La Tour’s work provided pastel with a new range and respect equal to that of oil painting.

Edgar Degas’s work with pastel also contributed greatly to the medium. Experimenting with combinations of pastel and other media, such as gouache and watercolor, he created luminescent colors. Using a variety of surfaces, such as paper, canvas and cardboard, he created a range of effects. With a variety of tools and techniques, such as wet brushes and hatching, he manipulated pastel colors with expressive grace. His 1888, pastel-on-wood, “Race Horses” captures a moment frozen in time, with the racehorse’s raised leg, while still evoking the vibrancy of swaying grass with his hatching technique. Pastel is a delicate craft, and its colors are easily swept off the page. However, with the major developments made by the pastelists of the past, its significance is firmly affixed in history of art.

Ink: The History and Development of a Medium

The development of ink truly revolutionized human life. Long before Gutenberg simplified the printing process, ancient cultures in Egypt, Greece and Asia used ink for creating handwritten manuscripts, religious and political documents and works of art. Ink provided people with a permanent means to keep records, create manuscripts and document the world around them. Ink as a sophisticated artistic medium developed sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries in China, where a range of subjects, from religion, history and daily life, were illustrated using brushes fashioned from animal hair and feathers. Applied to scrolls of paper or sheets of silk, these detailed works of art were forerunners to the approaching development of pen and ink drawings.

By the Renaissance, new tools were developed to enhance the precision and detail afforded by ink, such as wooden styluses and sharpened metal shards, known as metalpoint. Because of its permanence, ink drawings demanded practice and perfection. For this reason, many artists used this medium for their studies. Leonard Da Vinci created many detailed studies of human anatomy, mechanical inventions, as well as figure drawings, which exemplify the range of results possible with fine ink drawing. Nicolas Poussin’s “Bacchanal” and Honore Daumier’s “The Connoisseur” illustrate the shades, highlights and precision possible in ink drawings. Ink was also used with other media, such as pencil, graphite, watercolor and chalks, and soon washes and highlighting techniques developed, providing additional effects to ink drawings, whether quick sketches or elaborate compositions.

Along with watercolor, ink was one of the mediums used for block printing. Printmaking began through the process of relief, in which a design or image was carved into a surface, and a liquid medium was applied to its raised surface. Then a piece of paper or fabric was positioned on the carving to create a print. Eventually, metal plates joined wooden blocks as carving surfaces, as their metal surfaces offered sharper images. Some artists created numerous prints from the same base. However, many others chose to create single prints of a work. Albrecht Durer brought a renewed attention to woodblock printing with his many wood block sequences, which include the detailed and dramatic compositions of “Apocalypse.”

Ink has been used for centuries to create meticulous compositions. In addition, realistic diagrams of the anatomy helped early doctors in the study of the human body. The printing of books advanced literacy and promoted language arts. As an artistic medium used by masters, such as Rafael, Rembrandt and Picasso, ink is a versatile medium that provides a permanent record of an artistic statement.

Gouache: The History and Development of a Medium

With deliberate use of color, painters compose nuanced images that captivate, compel and challenge viewers. Color, one might argue, is the foundation of artistic painting, and improvements in techniques and materials allowed for a more striking and sophisticated application of color. The continual enhancement of methods and materials gave artists greater freedom and purpose. One such improvement was the recognition of gouache, the opaque form of watercolor. Simple watercolor mixtures, first used in primitive cave paintings, ultimately emerged as a visual art form. Gouache resulted from the eventual distinction between transparent and opaque watercolors. However, gouache techniques were used long before any acknowledged distinction.

In ancient Egypt, the binding of pigments with honey or traganth glue created a form of gouache, and by the Middle Ages, it appeared on illuminated manuscripts. Without formal recognition, gouache continued its growth. In the landscapes and nature studies of Albrecht Durer, such as “Pond in the Woods” from 1496 and “The Large Turf” from 1503, gouache proved effectiveness in providing compositions with a deep finish and a soft glow. In 18th-century Europe, gouache became popular with artists seeking its pearly, pastel tones. François Boucher’s “The Birth and Triumph of Venus” from 1743, captures the radiant glow of gouache, and a century later, in J. M. W. Turner’s “Fish Market on the Sands” from 1840, gouache created the soft canopy of fog in the morning sky.

Also known as body color, gouache is not only significant because of its long history and continued use, but also because it reveals the connection between art and science. The early uses of simple chemistry formed new, improved materials, which allowed for increased precision and purpose by artists in express their intentions. In this way, gouache is an example of art’s evolution. Even into the 20th century, it suited many artists’ needs. In George Rouault’s “Circus Trainer” displays the material’s affect on a piece of art, as the gentle incandescence of the color clashes with the grotesquely abstract figure of the performer.

By the mid-20th century, Henri Matisse used gouache to create his renowned series of Blue Nudes, and today, artists still use gouache, sometimes in concert with materials like oil, ink or watercolor. Throughout artistic painting’s history, better materials have been sought and embraced to produce the precise effects that artists were seeking. With the continual development of new materials, from oils to acrylics to even latex primer and paint pens, gouache serves as a reminder of the important connection between art and science in meeting the creative needs of visual artists.

Acrylic Paint: The History and Development of a Medium

Developed in the late 1940s, acrylic paint has only a brief history compared to other visual arts media, such as watercolor and oil. Polymer-based acrylic entered the market as house paint, but its many benefits brought it to the attention of painters. By the 1950s, artists began using quick-drying acrylic to avoid oil paint’s considerable drying time. These artists found that the synthetic paint was very versatile and possessed much potential. As time passed, manufacturers improved methods by formulating artistic acrylic paints with richer pigments. Although it has proven versatile in artistic endeavors, acrylic as a medium is still in its infancy.

For many contemporary artists, acrylic became the perfect vehicle to drive their crafts. Offering a range of possibilities, acrylic can produce both the soft effects of watercolor paint and sharp effects of layered oil paint. In addition, acrylic can also be used in mixed media works, such as collage, and its versatility lends itself to experimentation and innovation. Acrylic does have some limitations. Its quick-drying plasticity discourages blending and wet-on-wet techniques, therefore creating boundaries for artists. Still, those who embraced acrylic in their work created fresh, new approaches reflecting all that this medium can offer.

Pop artist Andy Warhol explored acrylic’s range of effects. His famous “Campbell Soup Can” demonstrates the sharp, bold clarity possible with acrylic, while the stark and eerie “Little Electric Chair (Orange)” shows the grim subject in a faded and almost gentle light. Other artists’ works also demonstrate the possibilities of acrylic. In David Hockney’s “Three Chairs with a Section of a Picasso Mural,” acrylics provide the softness of watercolor, while in “Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians,” they create a sharpness similar to oil paints. This is not to imply that acrylic works should be viewed only in terms of other media. Acrylic is its own medium with its own possibilities.

Robert Motherwell used acrylic with pencil and charcoal to achieve striking effects, and contemporary Op artist Bridget Riley also took advantage of its ability to set easily on support mediums, such as wood, canvas, paper and linen. Mark Rothko’s series of untitled acrylics, on both canvas and paper, demonstrate its ability to enhance formal elements, such as tone, depth, color and scale. His colorfield paintings allowed audiences to approach the medium on its own terms. Acrylic’s future as a medium continues to unfold with each new work by the skilled hands of artists. Perhaps its full potential and possibilities have not yet been developed. However, it is clear that acrylic is an important medium, demonstrating the continual power and evolution of visual art.

Charcoal: The History and Development of a Medium

The dramatic, rich markings left by charcoal appear in the earliest primitive cave painting of early humans, which are believed to have been drawn with the charcoal created from burnt sticks. Currently, three kinds of charcoals are used in art. Powered charcoal, compressed charcoal and vine charcoal. In its powdered form, charcoal is used to achieve a desired shading and tone. Charcoal pencils consist of compressed charcoal powder and a gum binder, which produces a fine, sharp line, while vine charcoal provides a smooth, softer line. Charcoal is sometimes viewed as a preliminary medium for sketching or drawing before painting.

Able to produce lines with either a soft or strong quality, charcoal is rather versatile, allowing the artist to approach texture, shading and tone with ease. Charcoal is easy to apply and does not adhere to the grooved surfaces of canvases, giving artists the freedom to create smooth drawings that are easily corrected.  However, without a fixative, charcoal illustrations are vulnerable to smudges, which could explain why so many artists use it as a preliminary tool. Throughout the Renaissance, most artists used charcoal to prepare their panel paintings or fresco murals, and many used charcoal in their drawing studies. However, some masters used charcoal alone or with chalks and ink to create stunning masterpieces.

Michelangelo’s “Study of a Man Shouting” illustrates, that in a skilled hand, charcoal could capture both emotion and detail, and produce subtly in both shade and tone. Charcoal’s use continued beyond the Renaissance, sweeping through the Romantic period and into the modern 20th century. In the Romantic period, French sculptor, Antoine-Louis Baryen used charcoal to create "Dead Young Elephant." His depiction of the fallen giant is another example of the depth and emotion possible in charcoal drawings. With a variety of dark and light strokes, and his shading and detail, the elephant’s image slowly fades between stark realism and gentle, sorrowful abstraction.

German expressionist Ernst Barlach created many dramatic charcoal drawings. His “Self-Portrait,” from 1928, clearly captures the weariness and frustration of a pacifist at odds with his homeland’s Nazi wartime regime. Still another example of charcoal’s ability to evoke delicate, yet stirring emotion is found in Robert Blackburn's "Man With Load” from 1936. Blackburn’s mixture of darkness and shadow portrays the emotional drudgery and physical exertion of the laborer. As one of the world’s longest surviving artistic media, charcoal has provided a means to sketch and draw with increased attention to quality, tone and subtly. Artists continue to employ this medium because of its versatile ability to capture both gestures and emotions with an intuitive mixture of the soft and the dark.

Introduction to the Artistic Style of Conceptual Art

Beginning in the 1960s, conceptual art was described as anti-establishment. First, picture the commercial images of Marilyn Monroe popularized by Andy Warhol. Realize that some artists were opposed to the concept of getting rich through commercial art sales. Conceptual artists wanted to make the masses think instead of giving them plastic art to consume.

As a movement, conceptual art creates disharmony in society, jarring people out of their traditional understanding of art. According to the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” “Conceptual art, it seems, is something that we either love or hate.” A piece of conceptual art challenges the viewer to defend the work as a true piece of art instead of something masquerading as art. Thinking about the artist’s deeper meaning in a conceptual art piece helps the viewer understand an important statement about society.

George Brecht (1926-2008) was the son of a flutist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 1961, Brecht performed his conceptual art piece entitled “Incidental Music.” This performance art can only be described as Brecht stacking up toy blocks inside a grand piano. In his obituary, George Brecht was described as a “provocateur” by the “New York Times.” He belonged to an international collection of artists called the Fluxus, mainly conceptual artists like him. Brecht died at the age of 82.

A different consideration is the artist Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945). His composition, “One and Three Chairs” (1965) consisted of a plain, beige wood chair sitting next to a life-sized photograph (black and white) of a wood chair. Taken out of historical context, “One and Three Chairs” does not appear to be art at all. However, taking something as plain as a chair captured on photo paper and positioning it next to a real chair suggests simplicity or absurdity depending on your point-of-view.

The peak of conceptual art occurred from 1966 to 1972. Artists reacted to the art critic, Clement Greenberg’s narrow definition of Formalism. According to Honour and Fleming (2005), Greenberg “saw the art object as being essentially self-contained and self-sufficient, with its own rules, its own order, its own materials; independent of its maker, of its audience; and of the world in general.”

Even the artist, Marcel Duchamp, a young friend of Dadaism and Surrealism decades earlier, created a piece of conceptual art in the final twenty years of his life – “Given: 1. The Waterfall 2. The Illuminating Gas.” This piece included part of a nude woman made of leather and other pieces of found art. The viewer had to look through a peephole to see this shockingly erotic composition. In “Given” (1968), Duchamp bridged the thirty-year chasm between Surrealism and conceptual art. While conceptual art occurred in the U.S. in the context of civil rights, the same movement abroad bucked all of the traditional notions of the art establishment.

Introduction to the Artistic Style of Contemporary Art

Contemporary art includes more than fifty types of art that have surfaced since the end of World War II. An important shift in the art world occurred when New York City replaced Paris as the center of the art world. In the 1950s, artists like Jackson Pollock led the movement toward abstraction with Abstract Expressionism. By the 1960s, Andy Warhol and other artists broke away from traditional art to commercial art, making considerable sums with Pop Art.

In the New York art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, there was also a split between artists ascribing to Formalism and Anti-Formalism. Formalism focuses on formal achievements of visual art, including the design elements of direction, size, texture, line, shape, color, and value. Anti-Formalism debunks the importance of design elements and introduces new forms of art such as installations, videos, and performance art.

Understanding contemporary art requires the study of many “isms” in six decades of art. The common denominator is that artistic talent must be recognized formally by the art world. Some contemporary artists reflect the influence of Modernism, including Impressionism, Surrealism, and Cubism, and others break away with Post-Modernism, including no connections to past art movements.

Lyrical Abstraction, with features of abstraction, movement, emotion, and design, moved away from Minimalism and Conceptual Art, abandoning geometry and hard lines. Dan Christensen offers a good example of Lyrical Abstraction. Born in 1942 in Cozad, Nebraska, Christensen completed art training at the Kansas City Art Institute. He painted for over forty years and died in 2007. In Remembering Dan Christensen – Forty Years of Painting, a summer 2009 exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, artist Ronnie Landfield describes Christensen: “Like Henri Matisse and Jackson Pollock, two artists who Christensen greatly admired, his work embraced change and movement.”

Landfield notes that before moving to New York, Christensen painted figurative works. In PR (1967), you can see the shift to abstraction. Christensen’s PR uses synthetic polymer paint on canvas to create powerful spirals of rainbow colors on a white background. The work moves through a lyrical pattern of spirals in bright colors, uniting colorful lines in an emotional way. The observer also sees traces of Abstract Expressionism and Pollock’s style. In Ray (1998), witness how Christensen’s style evolves over thirty years. This acrylic painting uses large circles in black and white. They seem to spin forth from the picture. Color changes the mood of Ray with the rainbow paint spatters at the bottom.

While contemporary art represents formal recognition by collectors, museums, galleries, art schools, and public organizations, artists have produced many art forms under this classification. In the post-Information Age, you can decide if newer media like digital and video works are true forms of contemporary art.

Introduction to the History of Body Art

Body art has a long history. From the anthropologist’s perspective, decorating the human body dates back to the earliest times. Humans use art to communicate powerful messages. In late 2000, the American Museum of Natural History created an exhibition called “Body Art: Marks of Identity.” Dr. Enid Schildkrout described the modern practices of body art as “tattooing, piercing, body painting, body reshaping, henna, and scarification.” The virtual tour of a historical museum’s interpretation of body art provides one view of this diverse subject. Another view is from the post-Minimalist artists in the U.S. after Pop Art.

Throughout history, body art has captured the way that humans relate their experiences to their physical body. Examples of body art are recorded in many formats, including photographs, drawings, engravings, books, films, sculptures, and paintings. Schildkrout explains:

“Whether with permanent marks like tattoos or scars, or temporary decorations like makeup, clothing, and hairstyles, body art is a way of signalizing an individual’s place in society, marking a special moment, celebrating a transition in life or simply following a fashion.”

Two decades after World War II ended, American artists were still reacting to Minimalism and other Modernist styles like Surrealism, Dadaism, and Cubism. The new body art of the late sixties and early seventies represented the artist’s feeling about the commercialization of art. Honour and Fleming (2005) note that artists debunked the concept of objects and places associated with the new art system; “they hoped to find a way of eluding the system – especially the system’s elaborate structures for endowing their work with an exclusiveness, rarity value and luxury character they did not want it to have.”

Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) has been historically concerned with the artistic inspirations offered by ordinary life experiences. In 1966, the same year he graduated with an MFA from University of California, Davis, Nauman created a work of body art called “Self-Portrait as a Fountain.” His body formed the body of the fountain and his mouth served as the fountainhead from which water sprinkled.

In this period, body art was closely associated with performance art. In Europe, the use of human bodies as art forms emerged even before “Self-Portrait as a Fountain.” In 1960, Yves Klein (France), Lucio Fontana (Italy), and Gilbert and George (UK) created “living sculptures” with the assistance of live human models.

Whether you look to ancient history, Modernism, or twenty-first century art, you can find examples of adorning the human body or using the human body as a solid medium for artistic expression.

Art Nouveau: Introduction to an Art Movement

Art Nouveau, or the French term for “New Art,” is a colorful movement in the arts that captivated Europe during the transition from the 19th century to the 20th century. In other languages, Art Nouveau had other names, such as “Stile Liberty” in Italy and “Jugendstil” or “youth style” in German.

Right before art lovers would begin riding in motor cars, watching moving pictures, and bracing for the First World War, they would flip through bright magazines of Art Nouveau styles. This cultural movement included decorative and applied arts, architecture, and painting during the years 1890 to 1905.

An early example of the paintings of Art Nouveau is Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” This painting was created in 1893 and later displayed during the artist’s first Paris show at La Maison de l’Art Nouveaux gallery. This location was the interior design house for which Art Nouveau is named. Now “The Scream” hangs in the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway.

Photographic images of paintings, prints, architecture, interior design, and decorative works were displayed as photographic images in Art Nouveau publications. These magazines, including “Art Nouveau” magazine, were distributed around Europe due to advances in printing.

The print manifestations of Art nouveau are important for understanding the movement. The lithograph “Tropon” by Henry van de Velde (1898) shows the distinct color choices of an Art Nouveau Print with brilliant ochre, dull green, and orange, combined with the letters of the word “tropon.” This simple composition combines a new style of color choices with the curvy lines.

According to the “Grove Dictionary of Art,” Art Nouveau also served as an important link between Neoclassicism, which focused on classic art periods including Greek, Roman, and Renaissance themes, transitioned art to the modernist movements. Art Nouveau ended at the same time as Cubism and Surrealism were beginning.

What sets Art Nouveau apart from the Neoclassicist forms of art is the attempt by its artists to create a truly new form of art that did not mimic the past. The movement also sought to create an international style. When tourists visit Paris in the 21st century, it is easy to look around and see the lasting impact of Art Nouveau designs, including prints, pictures, signs, and wallpaper in public places and in the windows of cafes and brasseries. In European hotels preserved from this time period, architecture and interior design examples survive today much like the boutique hotels of Miami’s South Beach preserve the Art Deco style of buildings and interior design.

The Art Nouveau movement produced new themes in architecture. Curvy lines known as curvilinear in art, asymmetrical shapes and forms, surfaces with leaf and vine decorations, and other patterns characterize Art Nouveau buildings.

Architect Hector Guimard’s work shows how Art Nouveau produced works for the public enjoyment. Guimard designed decorative entries to Paris Metro subway) stations still visible today. In another expressive form, Victor Horta created ornate staircases in Brussels homes, especially the “Maison and Atelier” staircase. In Barcelona, Spain, Antoni Gaudi created La Casa Mila in 1905 to 1907. His free forms are asymmetrical and reflect the absence of straight lines.

The Casa Mila shares the absence of symmetry that soon found new expressions in other art forms. For example, in the first Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, symmetry is noticeably missing. In Picasso’s “The Three Women,” human forms lack geometric proportions and breaks with tradition in the same way as Gaudi’s architectural style.

The brilliant interior design that started in this time period is evident today in the United States of America. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) is the son of Charles Tiffany. Louis began creating his famous lamps at the turn of the century. He performed commissions for noted Americans such as Mark Twain and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Tiffany’s work is preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. As an artist and designer, Tiffany was very prolific in the creation of lamps, drawings, paintings, stained glass windows, mosaics, ceramics, and jewelry. The famous jewelry house, Tiffany & Company, founded by Charles Tiffany, is the same firm for which Louis became the first design director in 1902 in the middle of the Art Nouveau period. Today, Tiffany & Company sells magnificent pieces of jewelry and other collectibles to the rich and famous.

Introduction to the Artistic Style of Baroque

In each period of art history, there is a story. For Baroque art, the story is why the period has been classically misunderstood. In the early 1600s, artists and intellectuals worked in academies to explore humanism begun in the Renaissance, classical thought (i.e. Plato and Aristotle), and new trends in human thought and expression. But why does the word “Baroque” have a negative history? The original translations of this word include Italian for “tortuous medieval pedantry” and Portuguese for “deformed pearl” (Honour and Fleming). In other accounts, Baroque is associated with strange, bizarre, and spectacle.

The biggest contributions to Baroque art were made by its greatest sculptor, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Born the son of an Italian sculptor, Pietro, he worked with his father and produced a bust at the age of ten. He was a child prodigy much like Dali and Michelangelo. Bernini enjoyed immense popularity and networked with the powerful elite of Europe, contributing important works of architecture and sculpture, especially for the Church. For example, Pope Urban VIII hired him at age 26 to craft the Baldacchino (1624-1633), a 95-foot high canopy decorating the main altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. This exquisite bronze work can still be viewed on a Vatican tour.

Writing at the end of the 19th century, Johann Georg Heck recalled the famous quote—“It would have been better for sculpture had Bernini never lived.” The controversy of this period is reflected in Bernini’s outrageous departure from the Renaissance. In a marble statue, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1645-1652), Bernini revived a Catholic theme with his own interpretation. Here is Vernon Hyde Minor’s description of the artist’s portrayal of divine mysticism:

“For Bernini and the Baroque, mysticism was not just an inward and hidden experience, but one that involved a direct intuition of the divine, one so clear and palpable that it could be described with vivid language and concrete, visual forms.”

In the Baroque period (1600-1790), artists continued religious and secular themes in portraits, paintings, busts, church ceilings, churches, sculptures, and other works. Realism abounds in Baroque figures, combining realism with spectacle and fierce independence. Great artists included Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), his assistant, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), and Simon Vouet (1590-1649).

The outright, provoking sexuality in Baroque art is not only found in The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. Other Baroque artists also sought to captivate audiences. Peter Paul Rubens captured voluptuous women on canvas in The Rape of Lucretia (1610) and The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1616-1617). Anthony van Dyck captured the muscles and sinews of the male form in The Mocking of the Christ (1620). Interestingly, Rubens owned this painting until his death in 1640.

The Baroque period offers deep perceptual experiences through vivid realism and symbolism. From Bernini’s diagonals to the soaring churches of Europe and the New World, Baroque challenges the idea that this period is best described as Early Modern.

Art Deco: Introduction to an Art Movement

The story of Art Deco occurs against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties in the U.S. and a scarred Europe recovering from World War One. While the U.S. wasn’t faced with rebuilding after the war, it did have to rebuild its economy after the Great Depression of 1929.

Art Deco is a form of Modernism that flourished in the United States and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The origins of Art Deco began two decades earlier in Paris. “La Societe des artistes decorateurs” or the Decorative Artists Society was founded following the Universal Exposition of 1900. Early members, including architect Hector Guimard, believed in the importance of France’s decorative arts and marketing their achievements for business purposes. These artists also displayed their creations at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Art in Paris in 1925.

The Decorative Artists Society inspired the name “Art Deco,” but the term did not become popular until the publication of “Art Deco of the 20’s and 30’s” by Bevis Hillier in 1968.

A founder of the Decorative Artists Society, Hector Guimard (1867-1942) was a French architect famous for designing modern facades for the entrances to Paris Metro stations during the Art Nouveau movement (1890-1905). His style was curvilinear, characteristic of Art Nouveau.

Among many examples, two American buildings represent Art Deco—New York’s Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall. The Chrysler Building was designed by architect William Van Alen between 1928 and 1930. He initially worked for William Reynolds (cigarette tycoon), but his plan was later acquired by Walter P. Chrysler (automotive tycoon). For a short time, this 77-story skyscraper dominated the Manhattan skyline and enjoyed fame as the world’s highest building.

Radio City Music Hall is a landmark in New York City’s theatre district. The site was leased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and was not ideal for his dream to construct a new Metropolitan Opera House because of the 1929 stock market collapse. In a partnership with Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and S.L. “Roxy” Rothafel, Rockefeller constructed the Radio City Music Hall. An unknown designer named Donald Deskey, specialist in carpets and furniture, got the job of decorating the new entertainment hall. His Jazz Age furniture theme is an extant example of Art Deco design.

Other Art Deco style furniture adorns the lobbies of the boutique hotels of South Beach in Miami, Florida. This hotel district was refurbished in the 1980s and has become a hub of international culture. When you walk into a hotel in the Art Deco district, the interior design and the furnishings are true to Art Deco style.

Another memorable example of Art Deco architecture in the Big Apple is the 10-building complex of Rockefeller Center. This massive complex takes up six square blocks between Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas and Fifth Avenue, home of world class shopping. Rockefeller Center is also the home of the annual Christmas tree lighting in New York City.

A three-dimensional example of Art Deco is found in the glass creations of the Frenchman, Rene Lalique. While he was a classic artist of Art Nouveau, he produced a special series of Art Deco glasses and bowls with geometric, floral, and stylized bird decorations.

The Art Deco style is evident in many places in the U.S. of the 21st century, especially in buildings and homes which retain the authentic decor of the 1920s and 1930s.

Introduction to the Artistic Style of Abstract Art

Abstract art is a form of modern and post-modern art that focuses on the power of each individual work to express compositions in a new way. Works in this genre are often non-representational (which means that the artist’s forms may vary from a small degree of inaccurate representation of images to total abstraction with no recognizable imagery). Abstract art includes the movements of Cubism, Neoplasticism, and Abstract Expressionism. With the Cubist works of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, abstract art appeared regularly in the West by the early 1900s. Artists often mirrored changes in science and technology in the twentieth century with abstract art forms.

Born in 1914 in the Siberian town of Chelyabinsk, abstract artist Esphyr Slobodkina offers a glimpse of abstract art in the first half of the twentieth century. In Composition (1940), oil on gessoed masonite, she creates forms using solid colors, including blue, purple, red, brown, grey, white and black. With simple shapes, the observer sees the importance of line. The abstract artist might intentionally use vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines or simple shapes in a particular pattern to create movement or another visual effect. When shapes are not clearly defined in abstract art, other elements like color and line might become more important.

Color choices were important in another work, Abstraction with Red Circle (c. 1938); the artist uses a simpler combination of colors, including black, muted grays, yellow, red, and green. The last three colors are used to make small shapes stand out on the otherwise black and gray work. In these two works, we see that the subject and the specific shapes are not individually important. Rather, shapes combine to achieve balance. The great thing about Slobodkina is that she did not just paint. She wrote and illustrated children’s books, including the famous title, Caps for Sale, a Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys, and Their Monkey Business. She died at the age of 93 in 2002.

Mark Rothko, an Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker, was born in 1903 in Dvinsk, Russia. His original name was Marcus Rothkovich, and his hometown is now part of the modern state of Latvia. Rothko was a pioneer of the style of the 1950s and 1960s called color field theory in which large areas of color decorate the whole canvas. The field of color implies that the forms move beyond their borders into infinity. In “Untitled Work” (1955), the artist uses three rectangles (red, black, and white on yellow) to create a color composition on the picture. Rothko painted many rectangle compositions, and in his final years he painted contemplative murals at Houston’s Rothko Chapel. Rothko died in 1970.

Abstract art offers many more examples of the artist’s partial or complete departure from representational technique, and it thrives in the post-Modern world.

Introduction to the Artist: Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

Circumstance and irony would lead a young girl who once suffered from polio to become one of Mexico’s most illustrious artists and famous women. Born in 1907 on the outskirts of Mexico City, Frida Kahlo has frequently been associated with the surrealist movement, but her art is equally a reflection of her homeland. The folk art of Mexico inspired Kahlo’s work and it was her unique style that led to her world-side fame.

As a young girl Frida suffered from a weak leg, an effect of polio. Her slight handicap induced her parents to encourage her to study science and the natural world as she could not participate in many physical activities. Her use of a cameral and early bout with photography would eventually have a profound impact on her later art. Frida was not an art student when she first met Diego Rivera who visited her high school to paint a mural. However, they would later remember an early meeting there.

In 1925 Kahlo was involved in a serious bus accident that would result in lifelong pain and many operations. It was this event and its necessary stays in bed that led Kahlo to take up art. While her initial works reveal an influence of great European artists like Botticelli and Modigliani, her admiration of Rivera and similar nationalist artists as well as her innate passion for folk art would lead her to become one of Mexico’s most celebrated artists.

Early in her development as an artist, Kahlo visited Rivera in his studio. Their mutual admiration led to a tumultuous marriage with a brief interlude caused by infidelity on both sides. Rivera, twenty years her senior, had significant influence on Kahlo’s development, but art historians credit her work as far more personally evocative. Kahlo’s many self-portraits reveal her bouts with physical and emotional pain. Her marriage, miscarriages, and personal events in her life often appeared in work that also reflected her profound preoccupation with Mexican indigenous life.

Kahlo was believed to have many liaisons including one with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Her association with a famous husband and national and foreign revolutionaries has made her a legendary figure of her nation. Yet, Mexico and the world know her best for her works and singular artistic style. Some of her most famous paintings include Frida and Diego Rivera (1931), The Two Fridas (1939), and Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940). These are just three of the more than forty self-portraits that Kahlo painted.

Official records indicate that a pulmonary embolism was the cause of her death in 1954. Because Kahlo was viewed as the wife of a famous artist, she did not obtain critical fame in her own right during her lifetime. In fact, critical acclaim would not find her work until the early eighties when it was rediscovered during Mexico’s Neomexicanismo art movement. Her life was recently depicted in the award-winning film Frida (2002) that starred Salma Hayek. An extraordinary artist, Kahlo’s work can be found in the world’s great museums such as Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Arte, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Musee National d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Introduction to the Artist: Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

You can find a glimpse of important influences in the early life of artists. This is the case for the architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Richard Lloyd-Jones was the Unitarian “firebrand” preacher and grandfather of the architect. Frank was the son of another preacher, William Wright, and Anna Lloyd-Jones.

In the “The Journal of American Culture” (Sept. 2009), Ingrid Steffensen notes religious influences developed young Frank’s poetic side. In the autobiography published in the Depression period, Wright described himself in the third person:

“As a listening ear, a seeing eye, and a sensitive touch had been given naturally to him, his spirit was now becoming familiar with this marvelous book-of-books, experience, the only known reading—The Book of Creation.”

A genius in design and the architect of his public image, Wright was born during Reconstruction in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He became the most influential architect of modern history. In the late 19th century, Wright left the supervision of Louis Sullivan to design homes for Midwestern clients. His trademark became the “Prairie Style” home, duplicated in many locations around the U.S. with decidedly non-prairie landscapes. Many homes are preserved in the Oak Park district of Chicago, also notable as the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway.

Oak Park also includes another Wright achievement – the Unity Temple. He designed this commission at age 38. In 1971, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated this temple as a National Historic Landmark. It is currently undergoing an extensive restoration.

A man with a distinct vision of building design, Wright believed the inside of a building was most important. “The building is no longer a block of building material dealt with, artistically, from the outside. The room within is the great fact about building-the room to be expressed in the exterior as space enclosed.” His world-famous home design, Fallingwater, challenges the idea of indoor and outdoor space. Fallingwater was built into the face of a cliff near Pittsburgh.

Wright also designed large buildings that have not survived in the 21st century, including the Larkin Office Building in Buffalo, New York, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum worked with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to celebrate Wright’s achievements. The 2009 exhibit was called “Frank Lloyd Wright –From Within Outward.” The Guggenheim is an exquisite piece of Modernism – an ascending spiral he lovingly completed during the last decade and a half of his life. In 1959, six months after his death at age 92, the Guggenheim opened on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Wright architecture is preserved by his self-created institution – the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. This organization maintains his former residence, Taliesen, in Wisconsin, and Taliesen West in Arizona. Wright also leaves the important legacy of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, which awards bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Introduction to the Artist: Filippino Lippi (c. 1457/58-1504)

Although many of the Italian Renaissance artists worked in Florence, artists like Filippino Lippi flourished in Venice, a powerful city-state populated by rich bankers and merchants. Born in Prato, Tuscany, about 1457, Lippi arrived into the world in an unusual manner. He was born of the illegitimate union of Fra Filippo Lippi, a Catholic monk, and Lucretia Buti, a nun.

Fra Lippi was an early Renaissance painter who trained his son until his death in 1469. Filippino learned much from his father and also studied under another Renaissance great, Sandro Botticelli. Art historians classify Filippino Lippi’s early pieces as reflective of Botticelli’s style. In the beginning, Lippi completed a fresco cycle at the Brancacci Chapel in Florence’s Santa Maria del Carmine. His efforts were a continuation of an unfinished project by Masolino and Masaccio. Lippi was also hired by Filippo Strozzi to paint works in the Strozzi Chapel, but he did not complete these works until after his patron’s death.

Lippi completed other works with Catholic themes besides frescoes, including the Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard (1480), an altar piece, and Madonna and Child (c. 1485). The former was created as a commission for a Florence merchant, Piero del Pugliese, to adorn the altar in his family chapel at Santa Maria alle Campora. A beautiful work of landscape and human figures, Lippi creates a realistic rendering of the Virgin and Saint Bernard. Mary is surrounded by angels at the foreground of the painting with St. Bernard. In the background, a rocky mount rises up behind them with the hint of a town in the upper right corner.

Permanently housed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Madonna and Child is a vivid depiction of the Virgin Mary. She wears a brilliant scarlet dress and a black cape. Her dark blonde hair is held back by a delicate blue scarf. The baby she holds is creamy and plump with an old man’s face. Baby Jesus studies the Bible. In the upper left corner of the canvas, there is a view of a loggia which shows the impact of Flemish painting on Lippi. Madonna and Child contrasts nicely with his father’s similar painting, Madonna and Child Enthroned With Two Angels. Mary has a lighter, rounder face, wears a red blouse and flowing blue skirt, and looks sadly away from the observer. Jesus and the two angels are also fair-haired and somber. While both works are serious in tone and keeping with the Catholic art of the Renaissance, they reflect how a father and a son could interpret the classic Madonna and Baby Jesus work differently.

As a tribute to the social climate of the Renaissance, the younger Lippi was able to achieve considerable success despite his illegitimate heritage. He died in 1504.

Introduction to the Artist: Diego Rivera (1886-1957)

Born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico, Diego Rivera is one of his country’s most eminent artists along with wife Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). His murals that celebrate Mexican heritage are world famous and his life’s works have been inspirational to artists at home and abroad. Linked to revolutionary movements, Rivera’s paintings also reflect the political and industrial reality of his times.

Rivera began studying art at a young age; at ten years old he was enrolled in Mexico City’s Academy of San Carlos. His promising portfolio led the governor of Vera Cruz to sponsor his continued study in Madrid. Rivera’s tutelage in Europe also included an influential stay among the Montparnasse artists of Paris where he became friends with Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. Art critics often point to the Picasso influence in some of Rivera’s paintings like the 1913 Woman at the Well which shows marked elements of the cubism style.

But it was the very old church frescoes of Italy that had the most dramatic influence on Rivera. Through these, Rivera became convinced that art should belong to the people—all the people, not merely the wealthy. He believed simply that the poor and working people needed art the most. His empathy for workers and the impoverished would become more pronounced with his temporarily joining the Mexican Communist Party in 1922. Eventually he would even help obtain asylum for the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Rivera’s enchantment for revolutionaries and their ideas was often evident in his work. He frequently painted Mexican leaders who were fighting for change in their country. His exuberance for his countrymen was usually at the core of his art that, indeed, celebrates the working men and women of Mexico in colors and styles that would give the nation a truly nationalist art. Rivera also incorporated elements of Mayan art which supported his depiction of the real Mexican character.

Rivera’s prestige would earn him invitations throughout the world to paint murals and speak. One of his most famous murals abroad is Detroit Industry located in the Detroit Institute of the Arts. This mural, that includes twenty-seven frescoes, is an imposing depiction of factory workers and modern machinery. While much of Rivera’s art is in his homeland, many examples of his work can be viewed at such places at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, Chicago’s Art Institute, and the Buenos Aires Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

Rivera’s personal life was considered tumultuous. He had several marriages that produced several children and it is believed he fathered more than one illegitimate child. His most famous union was, of course, with the artist Frida Kahlo which ended at her death. Rivera died in 1957. He is best remembered for his establishment of the Mexican Mural Resistance and his subsequent murals that continue to celebrate the Mexican spirit.

Introduction to the Artist: Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Did you know that the Impressionists favored the elimination of the color black from their painter’s palette? According to Wilkins et al, Impressionism encouraged this:

“The new color theory emphasized the presence of color within shadows and, in asserting that there was no black in nature, inspired the Impressionists to ban black from their palette.”

The founder of Impressionism is Claude Monet (1840-1926), a French painter born in Paris. He was a close associate of the French painter, Edouard Manet, who helped art move away from Realism in the nineteenth century. Monet served along with fellow artist Edgar Degas and author Emile Zola as a pall bearer at Manet’s funeral in 1883. Degas later created ballet scenes including 1874’s Ballet Rehearsal which showed some qualities of Impressionism.

Early in his career, Monet created a style of painting that focused on the light in the shadows. This study of natural light is the focus of his landmark painting, Impression – Sunrise, completed in 1872. This work is the source of the term “Impressionism.” Impression – Sunrise is full of powerful shades of blue, gray, and orange, and a few fishermen in small boats float in the foreground as the sun rises at the top of the painting.

Art historians note that Impressionist paintings such as Impression – Sunrise were rejected by the Paris Salon, leading the painters to hold their own autonomous shows. Monet first exhibited this work in Paris in 1874 in a non-Salon-approved exhibition. Honour and Fleming note that the independent exhibitions by the Impressionists showed how the artists were trying to escape the “tyranny of the official art-world.” In other words, if an artist could not get accepted by the Salon, he or she would have no method of becoming a professional artist in France.

Monet contributed many other paintings to the art world over the remainder of his career. He consistently explored how the human eye sees landscapes or scenes in the outdoors. He wanted to capture real events and watch how they related to the light. In Gare St.-Lazare (1877), Monet showed that a Paris train station could be the center point of the natural light shining through the glass roof on a sunny day.

The Impressionists also painted “a typically middle-class vision of happiness” in keeping with their bourgeois backgrounds, according to Honour and Fleming. The authors use the example of Monet’s sketch for The Picnic which predates Impression – Sunrise by six years. It was never finished, but it shows middle-class ladies and gentleman at a picnic beneath a beautiful canopy of trees.

As the founder of this a new style of painting, Monet left a huge mark on the art worlds of the 19th and 20th centuries. He died of lung cancer in 1926 and was buried at the church in Giverny, France.

Introduction to the Artist: Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Andy Warhol is often remembered as the father of Pop Art. He was trained as a commercial artist and worked for years for “Vanity Fair.” However, he also made films, screen tests, portraits, paintings, photos, and other works.

Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Warhol tells a lot about his essence in portraits. In “ArtPress” (April 2009), Leydier et al published an interview with curator, Alain Cueff, regarding the exhibition “le Grande Monde d’Andy Warhol” (The Grand World of Andy Warhol). Regarding the 2009 exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Alain Cueff notes the importance of portraits in Warhol’s record.

When many think of Warhol art, they think Pop Art. Cueff notes that the Pop Art part of his career was only a small piece, consisting of works created between 1961 and 1963. According to Cueff, “Already, at the end of 1962, his ‘Suicides’ and, in early 1963, his ‘Car Crash’ works had broken with the dominant imagery. From this point onwards, right to the end, the most important thing in his work was the question of the face and the possibility of representing it.” Cueff goes on to reflect how Warhol portraits (i.e. the Marilyns) suggest a delicate balance between life and death. Beginning in the 1960s, Warhol created prints of famous celebrities, especially Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Cueff notes Warhol’s process for making silkscreen and paint portraits in the 1960s used the powerful concept of negative space. He began with a photograph and cropped it to get the right close-up of the subject’s face. Next, he transferred the photograph image onto acetate (a clear plastic film). On this film, he corrected the person’s face. Using carbon, the facial outline was copied onto canvas. He then traced the image and underpainted the canvas with bright paint. Finally, he applied the silk screen and black ink by matching the image on the screen to the canvas image. The result was a beautiful dark image with brilliant colors beneath.

More than just a brilliant printer, photographer, and painter, Andy Warhol was a huge public icon. It was later in the 1960s after Marilyn’s death that he began to be mobbed in public. When he worked on portraits for celebrities, Warhol got what Cueff calls the “economic question” settled in the early part of a portrait session, rattling off how many thousands a client would be required to pay for the work.

Warhol led an illustrious life, crossing many social boundaries in the changing society struggling with civil rights and war. He died from the complications of gallbladder surgery in 1987 at age 59.

Art History Appreciation

Art history spans the entire history of humankind, from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century. Whether you like to observe caveman paintings or Botticelli angels, you can find visual arts that challenge your creative side and inspire you to find beauty in manmade forms.

In modern times, art history has emerged as a discipline that specializes in teaching people how to evaluate and interpret works of art based on their own perspective. Art history has frequently been criticized for its subjectivity because the definition of what is beautiful varies from individual to individual. Learning to evaluate what you see by building on the art forms you already know can develop your aesthetic understanding.

Claude Monet once said, “It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

In keeping with Monet, consider how to observe as many works of art as possible. You will develop a sense of your favorite styles and time periods, and you will be able to use the vocabulary of art to discuss your appreciation of art with others. If you love Botticelli, you will be able to recognize the theme he chooses for each painting and which symbols and figures he uses most often during the Renaissance.

Combining exposure to art history with the desire to foster art appreciation in others represents a happy medium. The art teacher or art historian can inspire you with a survey of the many time periods in art history. For example, you can become a huge fan of the Renaissance because, like the French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish masters, you share the same desire to reconcile humanism with human religion.

Art history requires you to study and describe what you see in terms of the design elements of line, shape, color, value, and texture. Once you write a response to one work of art, you can compare it to another work of art. An alternative is to make comparisons and contrasts between artists and their artistic works with the mind’s eye. As you explore the fascinating world of art, a beautiful collection of thousands of years of human experience, you will want to travel farther from your home to see works of art in person.

The great thing about the Internet is that the world’s art repositories bring famous works of visual art to you through online exhibitions and virtual tours. However you decide to develop your sense of art history and appreciation, look for every opportunity to enrich your life with paintings, prints, mixed media, sculpture, and drawings.

Don’t forget to share your art appreciation with others because art makes every ordinary life just a little bit more exquisite!