Part One-Exploring the Field ( Pre Modern Timeline)

Exploring the Field

 Pre Modern Art Timeline

 

Five hundred words is not a lot if I have to write about art from 15,000 BC till 1770. This time is called Pre Modern Art. I will pick two the most important surnames or places from each epoch and write why they are so import for us still.

The Ancient Art left us so many beautiful hand made objects and buildings. The best examples of Ancient paintings were found in the cave in Lascaux in France. In my opinion is hard forgotten about them as they show beautiful animals. Another important place I have to mention is the Palace of Minos where we can admire amazing fresco. Ancient people used pigment to create their art work unfortunately so many of them have faded therefore we do not have many examples of the art from this epoch.  

Classical Art left us Greek Sculptures and Etruscan Art. Greek sculptures show us beautiful nearly perfect human and God bodies. In my opinion they are absolutely perfect in terms of proportions and capturing the moment and the mood of the models. The Etruscan Art has been influenced by Greek style however human body looks more as a statue rather than a live object of glory. They used mainly bronze as a material while the Greeks preferred marble to a bronze.

The importance of Byzantine Art we can see based on Roman Catacombs where we can see the mosaics and frescos so crucial to study the meaning of life and dead for people they lived in Rome. Ravenna Mosaics tell us about early Christian life.

Jan van Eyck and Hieryonomous Bosch are the surnames of the Gothic period.

When we talk about the Renaissance we have to mention Donatello and Raphael. The key term for this epoch is allegory however this term was also popular until the Baroque.   

 Correggio and El Greco represent Mannerist.

Caravaggio and Jan Vermeer are the surnames from Baroque.

Talking about Rococo we have two artists as William Hogarth and Canaletto.

The Neo-Classical is represented by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Jean Ingres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Point ( JMW Turner)

 

 

Romantic means someone who is guided by his heart rather than his mind.

 

Romanticism was an art movement shredded across Europe in the first part of the XVIII century. It shows strong preference towards the nature very much dictated by emotions.

 

Landscape is showing the natural scenery such as mountains, rivers, fields.

 

 

Looking at the National Gallery there is a collection of ten of Turner's paintings.

 

"Dutch Boats in a Gale" painted in 1801

"Calais Pier" painted in 1803

"Sun Rising through Vapour" painted before 1807

"Dido building Carthage" painted in 1815

"Ulysses deriding Polyphemus-Homer's Odyssey" painted in 1829

"The Evening Star" about 1830

"Margate (?), from the Sea" painted around 1835-1840

"The Parting of Hero and Leander" painted in 1837

"The Fighting Temeraire" painted in 1839

"Rain, Steam, and Speed-The Great Western Railway" painted in 1844

 

 

   I have been asked in this research to look at his paintings and try to figure out in what ways his paintings were pointing towards something new. William Turner was famous for his beautiful bright art work. He was a romantic person looking towards different art movement. His way of capturing the moment was bit different than the Romantics used to do. He was able to combine the Romantic subjects but with the lightness of the brush. The colours he used were different from the other artists. He noticed the air movements and how does it reflects on the landscape. Many artists started to think in similar way and managed to create a movement which we now called Impressionism.

 

 

Research point: Practical

 

 

Petrus Christus creating "Detail of the Annunciation" in 1452 used liner perspective in very clever way. This artist divided the canvas with horizontal lines on the floor and gradually making them smaller and smaller. It is easy to see the two parts of the canvas in terms of the tone. The half bottom part of the painting is lighter and the second top part is very dark and heavy. By this clever idea the viewer can experience a big contrast and therefore the most important objects are more visible to his eye. We can see clearly that the Angel is holding a long sceptre as well as the little white dove above Mary's head.  We have been also drawn towards the middle of the painting by division of the canvas with the open door guiding us towards the outside light.

 

 

 

Exercise with the model

 

 

I definitely forgot how to draw a quick sketch of the person. There was a time when I was drawing sketch after a sketch and the more I was doing it the quicker and confident I was with the lines and the proportions. I have a great pleasure of drawing my little son during his very busy afternoon today. It was not an easy task as he is very lively little boy and does not want to stay still and for that fact I thought he was perfect candid at for this exercise. It does make me think about the most important parts of the illustrations and to get the proportions correctly.

 

 

 

 There are my first sketches of my little one however these are not so successful in my opinion and I am hoping to get much better with more practice. Fingers crossed

 

 

The hand is more relaxed and more confident after a few times  observing and the execution seems to be much better.



 

These are  more successful. I know that the hand has to record very quickly what  the eye sees.  

 

These exercise made my little one very interested in the drawings and he even started to pose at the end of my practice.

Research point

 

 

With this research where was the practical part as well I decided to use different object rather than a brush. I looked around and picked a few totally unrelated little things:

 

• a piece of bread
• a pine corn
• a pipe cleaner
• a stick
• a leaf
• a bottle cup
• wooden block

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This painting has been made with the wooden square block and the thin brush. I have used the purple paint and black ink to finish it. I decided to use different types of crosses however the cross has just one meaning and it is very strong and powerfully. The position of each individual cross make this painting more interesting as everybody has the choice to imagine anything they want and read this piece in  own way.

 

 This painting has been made with the plastic bottle cup. I have used purple paint and the black ink for the details. Just wanted to show the connection between one and another person. Some people have more friends and are connected to each other in close way and some people like to keep their relations bit more privet. Hove ever in current world it looks like everyone knows everyone because of the social media.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have used a bay leaf for this painting. The way of making the lines was very easy and it felt more organic and the fingers were closer to the paper. In this way I was more connected to the piece I was creating and the decision I was making were totally different then if I have used normal brush.

This painting was created with the stick and the lines are defenatly very stiff and straight hovewer the paint

Research point 

 

The link 10 which represents the Heilburnn Timeline of Art History will be very useful to me in the future. I just had a quick look at this website and already notice how easy and clear this link is. There are many interesting facts and art terms which are great for refreshing the knowledge about art movements, eras end so on. It was great to find about the relations between on e and atoner term based on the chosen area like political or geographical issues.  I am defiantly going to use it more often in the future.