CUBISM ESSAY – Kate Ward Picasso once said “ I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them”. Discuss this statement with reference to his Cubist work “Still Life with a Chair Cane” In this statement “I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them” Picasso is referring to his personal way of thinking when concerning his ideas towards creating his unique artworks. He is saying that he has no desire to copy a snippet of reality onto a canvas like most traditional artists do. He wants to express his ideas about the modern world around him and how it can be interpreted. This presents a deeper, more truthful interpretation of reality through the practice of both synthetic and analytical cubism that reflects an avante garde style.
The transition between an early modernist painting and abstract expressionists can be seen by looking at many different artists. In this essay I am going to look at work from Picasso, Gorky and Pollock to shed some light on some paintings and make the transitions more easily understood. Pablo Picasso takes abstract to the extreme in his painting “The Guitar Player”. You can barely see the figure in the artwork. He uses very little color and outlines in black.
The distinctive brush strokes and vivid colors found in Impressionism continued in Post Impressionisms art, but geometric forms, unnatural color, and a distorted form of expressive effect were emphasized. (Voorhies, 2004) British artist and art critic Roger Fry, coined the term Post-Impressionism as he prepared for an art exhibition
However, White and Greens in Blue is a painting of large scale, displaying two huge green rectangles and one white rectangle on the blue background. This is referred to as Color Field Painting. Color Field Painting is the abstract painting “characterized by large expanses of barely contrasts of tone or obvious focus attention”. (Thesis:) White and Greens in Blue embodies Rothko’s revolutionary painting method, which allows the viewer to experience the tragic feeling through its shape, texture, flatness, scale, and color. Rothko compares the shapes in his pictures to actors and his pictures to dramas.
The colors in this painting are overall darker than those in The Yellow Christ which changes the mood of the painting. Even though The Yellow Christ and Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ have the same central theme, I believe that the two paintings have contrasted meanings. While the colors in the paintings have some similarities, the colors in Self-Portrait are generally darker and more sinister than the colors used in The Yellow Christ. The primary colors in The Yellow Christ are yellow, and orange. Jesus’s skin tone is painted the same color as the ground in the painting.
Although the flowers are asymmetrical, the artist has tried to create an element of balance by placing them almost at the middle of the painting, and through the mixing of intense and dark colors. This makes the flowers to stand out clearly in the painting. The artist uses a variety of colors to make the painting beautiful and reduce a sense of monotony (Buster and Crawford 31). The viewer is looking at the flowers from a distance thus their medium size. This brings the effect of realism generated by the painting.
He is also one of the leading painters of landscapes in the history of art. Claude painted the variations of lights and shadows that are brought on by the changes of time throughout the day and the seasons. Monet’s style of art was unique because it was his style of art was different than other artists of his time. He painted with globs, streaks, smears and bright colored brush strokes. He mixed different colors together.
Although he briefly trained as a Naval Surgeon, Ferguson soon realised that his ambition was painting and he spent some time travelling in Spain, Morocco and France to develop his artistic knowledge and experience. The first painting I am going to discuss is 'The Pink Parasol' which is a portrait painted in 1908 of a fellow artist and friend Bertha Case, when they were both in Paris. In this painting Ferguson adopted much stronger colours than in his other paintings and like Matisse used green paint to represent shadows in the face. He emphasised pattern by merging the pink parasol with the background of his picture by blending it with the cold colours. The painting is of a woman peering over her shoulder, she is wearing a hat with a pink bow and is also wearing a scarf, in the background there is a pink parasol around strong blocks of cold colours.
Turner use of vivid colors through watercolor techniques with oil paint brought both mystery and emotion to his work as he was able to show nature as a beautiful and awesome force to be dealt with in his paintings Slave Ship (1840) and Dutch Boats in a Gale (1801). Biblical,
Abstract expressionism is also known as Action Painting, Colour Filed Painting or Gestural Abstraction because the strokes of the painting brush revealed the artist’s process. The painting technique is the subject of art itself. According to Harold Rosenberg, Abstract Expression became an event and therefore dubbed it “Action Painting” in 1952. Art historians however, review that his definition of the art as Action painting leaves out the aspects of control and chance. Abstract Expression therefore, comes from three major sources: Kandinsky’s abstraction, chance according to Dadaist, and the Surrealist’s endorsement of Freudian theory which embraces, sexuality, the relevance of dreams and the authenticity of ego, which abstract expressionism express through “action”.