Art History & Art Appreciation

Impressionism:
Let there be color and light

• Began in the Renaissance era
• Born in Paris, France in the early 1860s
• It’s purest form lasted only until 1886
• Departed from tradition by rejecting the renaissance (balanced composition, idealized figures, and chiaroscuro). • Represents immediate visual sensation through color and light • Created with a distinctive short, choppy, brushstroke. Creating a mosaic of irregular strokes. • Style is called impressionism because artists weren’t trying to make a realistic painting. • Paintings aren’t focused on the center but more so the main subject to the side.

First Impressionism
Period: 1862-86

Original artists: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Cassatt.

Subjects: Outdoors, seaside, Parisian streets and cafes.

Purpose: To portray immediate visual sensations of a scene.

Impressionist Artists

• Claude Monet
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Edgar Degas
• Édouard Manet
• Camille Pissarro
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Paul Cezanne
• Mary Cassatt
• Berthe Morisot
• Valentin Serov

Modern Art:
Picasso
“I became a painter and wound up as Picasso”

• Born October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain.
• His full name which honours a variety of relatives and saints is; Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Clito Ruiz y Picasso. • Best known for his Cubism

• Cubism; broke up forms to recombine shapes in new ways. • For 80 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to and paralleled the whole development of modern art in the 20th century. • Blue period lasted from 1901-1904; This was his first distinct period. • Most famous paintings were from his blue period collection called, Blue Nude, La Vieand The Old Guitarist, all completed in 1903. • When Picasso fell in love with a beautiful model named Fernande Olivier, he improved his spirits and introduced his Rose period using warmer colors such as beiges, pinks, and reds in 1905-06. • In 1907 Picasso discovered the power of abstracted African masks. • In the same year he produced the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, depiction of five beige figures, prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays. • Picasso was a womanizer who had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes over the course of his life span. • He had only married twice and had 4 children.

• Died April 08, 1973

“Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should, different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not simply imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.”

Psychedelic Art

• Psychedelic art is free, magnetic, colorful, glaring, rebellious, youthful and absorbing. • Any kind if visual artwork inspired by psychedelic experiences, such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. • The word “psychedelic” means “mind manifesting”.

• Psychedelic visual art were a counter part to psychedelic rock music. Concert posters, album covers, lightshows, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling patterns of LSD hallucinations, but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from psychedelic states of consciousness. • The culture rose in the 1960s, it was aimed change the society’s “system” and “rules”. It was depicted by swirling patterns and surreal images of the art. • Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Bonnie MacLean, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Wes Wilson were apart of the 60’s Psychedelic Art Movement in San Francisco. Their posters were inspired by Art Nouveau, Victoriana, Dada, and Pop Art. • The style flourished from about 1966-1972

• The style developed internationally- British arts Bridget Riley became famous for her op-art paintings of psychedelic patterns creating optical illusions. • Late 60’s everything from cigarettes to shampoos to cars began to be sold by using this art form. • Once psychedelic art went fashionable because of it’s colorfulness and difference. • This art form was what started as a rebellion against capitalism and materialism and then begun to be used for promoting the very same “systems”. • In the 90s the rave movement and the innovation in digital technologies saw the revival of psychedelic art, referred to as “trippy art”. • Software began to be used to create psychedelic vector art using, circles, lines, points, curves, polygons, etc being used to show the hallucinatory patterns. • This art form is still very popular, particularly among those who believe in freedom of dreaming, creating and living!

Bibliography

1. “Art Smarts 4 Kids: Impressionism.” Art Smarts 4 Kids: Impressionism. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.

2.Dogra, Aastha. Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com, 20 Sept. 2011. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.

3. Johnson, Ken. Are You Experienced?: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2011. Print.

4. “Pablo Picasso Biography.” Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2013.

5. Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-modern. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1992. Print.