Thursday, 10 December 2009

Multimedia as an art form

'Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms'. Multimedia must contain few of those:
  • Text
  • Animation
  • Video
  • Images
  • Audio
Apart from that, a piece of multimedia must be interactive, it must immerse you in its environment, it must have hyper links and have a story that you can follow.

Today's artists use multimedia as an art form to represent their ideas. Some of them create installations, other games and other websites. One of my favourite multimedia artists is probably Golan Levin. He has been developing his multimedia art for over 15 years. My favourite piece of his work is Messa di Voce, which is fantastic installation controlled by voice and movement. The artist described it as: 'Messa di Voce augments the speech, shouts and songs produced by a pair of vocalists with real-time interactive visualizations. The project touches on themes of abstract communication, synaesthetic relationships, cartoon language, and writing and scoring systems, within the context of a sophisticated, playful, and virtuosic audiovisual narrative. Custom software transforms every vocal nuance into correspondingly complex, subtly differentiated and highly expressive graphics...'


In my opinion it an amazing piece of multimedia art. I find it really good because of its great interactivity . I think it is very unusual and interesting approach of art - the idea of creating visuals by your voice and having complete control over it is just fantastic.

Another example of my favourite multimedia are computer games. The one I probably like best is Far Cry 2. It is First Person Shooter game. I like it because it really immerse you in its world, sometimes you really feel like you were the part of this virtual world. Also, I like the control that you have. The game is designed to give you choice where you want to go and what you want to do. I really love that as you can decide what the story is like by choosing your missions in no particular order.

I find multimedia art very interesting as it still develops and evolves. I like it because there is no limitations and you can create anything you can think of. Also I love the idea of interactivity, the fact that you can be a part of it and how the things react based on your movement, voice etc.

(selected quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia and http://www.flong.com/projects/messa_inst/)

Thursday, 26 November 2009

Futurism

Futurism was an international, artistic and social movement, which started in Italy with the appear of the Futurism Manifesto published on 20 February 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is considered to be the founder of Futurism. By the word Futurism, which refers to the future, Marinetti tried to emphasize innovation, development, social revolution but also discard all the things that had been created in the past - "We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind..."

Futurist ideology was associated with speed, dynamism, technology, noise, power, machines and violence. Artists, who were inspired by Marinetti's manifesto, very often tried to express movements, dynamism and speed in the visual arts.


The painting above is a good example of what Futurists tried to achieve. It was painted in 1912 by Gicomo Balla and is called Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. The artist tried to capture the movement of a dog by layering multiple images. In my opinion it gives you the feeling of a motion. Today's digital artists do quite similar thing by applying motion blur to some parts of an image. In the example below, by Andree Wallin, you can see how the artist blurred the background to show the speed of the spaceship.

Other artists, influenced by Cubist style of painting, attempted to simulate dynamism by fragmented surface of the paintings. One of the most famous artists that used that kind of technique was Umberto Baccioni. He was an Italian painter and sculptor. My favourite painting of his, is probably Elasticity painted in 1912 (below).


The painting shows a man riding a horse. What I like about this painting is how the artist visualised the horse - to me it looks very dynamic and almost machine-like. I also like the colours that he used, in my personal opinion, they look quite aggressive and vivid.

As a sculptor, Baccioni created many fantastic sculptures, which reflected the Futurist idea. In his scuptures, the same as in his painting, Baccioni tried to create the feeling of a motion. You can also notice the relationship between his scultures and paintings, which show quite similar Cubist style.

Architects were also involved in the Futurism. The most fomous among them was Antonio Sant'Elia, which was in extremaly influential. As many Futurists, Sant'Elia was a nationalist and joined the army. Unfortunately, he was killed in WWI, 1915. However, he left many of his futurist drawings, which inspired many architects in later years. I really like his work, even today it looks quite modern and futuristic. The buildings remind of some kind of factories, which I think represent the development, machines and speed - everything that Futurism was all about.

Contemporary artists from Atkinson+Co visualised Sant'Elia's ideas by creating 3D scenes based on his sketches and projects.

I think Futurism was very interesting movement full of amazing art and artists that I really appreciate. However, I do not agree with the Futurist view on politics.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Surrealism

Surrealism was a cultural movement that involved many aspects of life such as art, cinema and literature that developed mainly from Dada. It started with the release of the 'Surrealist Manifesto' by poet and surrealist theorist Andre Breton in 1924. As he described, "Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in an absolute reality, a surreality." Surrealists used visuals to express processes happening in the subconscious mind, often taking inspiration from their dreams. It was flourishing in Europe, mainly in Paris (however, it quickly spread around the world attracting many artists, musicians and directors) between WW I and WW II.

One of the most famous and appreciated surrealist artists was Salvador Dali, who was born in 1904, Figeures, Spain. He is most famous for his paintings, however, he was also involved in a film making, sculpture and photography. As a very creative and original artist he always attracted attention of the public and art critiques.

To bring his ideas form subconscious mind, Dali, used to induce hallocinatory states in himself. It was quite efficient method for him as he developed the style very quickly and produced many paintings that made him well-known around the world.

Perhaps, one of his most famous paintings is Persistance of Time (1931). The painting shows melting pocket clocks. 'The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and the other limp watches, shown being devoured by insects.'


I like this painting as it is quite extraordinary and really dream-like. Also it is very detailed and nice painted what give more realism to the scene.

The Temptaion of Saint Anthony (1946) is another well-known painting of Salvador Dali. The painting represents the temptaion that Saint Anthony had to face during his stay in the Egyptian desrt.


I really like this piece. It is extremely imaginative and surreal. It is also very influencial piece even today. The band Linin Park used the idea of the elephants in one of their music videos: 'Somewhere I belong'

In later years Dali concentrated on academic paintings ispired by Reneisance artist Raphael, creating religious paintings. Salvador Dali died in January 23, 1989 and today is considered to be the greatest of surrelist artists.

Famous Surrealist paintings by other artists:

Rene Magritte - The Son of Man 1964 (left) and The Human Condition 1935 (right)




Max Ernst - The Elephant Celebes 1921


Yves Tanguy - Indefinite Divisibility 1942


(selected quotes from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ and http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/surrealism/)

Thursday, 5 November 2009

Abstract art

"Art should be purely about the creation of beautiful effects."
Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin's thought perfectly describes what abstract art is all about. It uses form and colour to represent something different than the material world. The idea of abstract art was first seen in ancients Greece. The philosopher Plato, thought that 'the highest form of beauty lies not in the forms of the real world but in geometry'. The abstract artists reject all the rules, such as perspective, and often use geometrical, flat shapes to create representation of 'order, purity, simplicity and spirituality'.

One of the abstract art pioneers was Wassily Kandinsky, born in 1866. He was a Russian painter whose works were one of the very first modern abstract pieces. However, before he started creating abstract works he was developing different styles. Many of his early works, in my opinion, were inspired by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism (left: 'Autumn in Bravia' 1908). His first abstract pieces started to appear around 1910. The painting Improvisation 7 (below, left), although it is kept in the similar style as his previous works, has become rather abstract.



During following years Kandinsky was developing his style and joined the Bauhaus movement as teacher at Bauhaus School in Weimar, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius. During that period he went completely abstract creating one of his most famous pieces - 'On white II' (above, right) painted in 1923. Personally, I am not a huge fan of abstract art, however in some way I quite like Kandinsky's works. I like the way he used simple shapes to create quite interesting compositions. Also the colours that he had chosen for his paintings work perfectly.

Important part of abstract art was a movement that developed in Netherlands, 1917 - De Stijl. It involved furniture design, architecture and painting and what's more it was all about abstract art.

Theo van Doesburg - a painter and founder of De Stijl along with Piet Mondriaan were the most important figures in the movement. Their styles were quite similar and were represented by different coloured squares and lines. However the difference between them (which appeared in later years) is the layout - Mondriaan would only paint them straight, vertical and horizontal when van Doesburg's paintings were often rotated 45 degrees.


Their work influenced the look of the whole movement and are still influential today. Fashion designers often use Mondriaan's paintings for the patterns. Also the influence can be seen in the architecture.

(selected quotes from: www.tate.org.uk/)

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Art Deco

The second quarter of twentieth century brought radical change to art and design called Art Deco. It was undoubtedly one of the liveliest, magnificent and the most comprehensive movements in the art history. It began in Europe, particularly in Paris, in early years of the twentieth century. Art Deco was really elegant and affected all aspects of live, design and art, starting with fine art and decorative art to fashion; architecture, cars, handbags, glass, bathroom fittings, jewellery, lighting, furniture, transport, product design and even film.

The term ‘Art Deco’ was coined in 1966 and refers to exhibition entitled 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes', held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Originally planned for 1914 but launched in 1925 due to World War I. Many international exhibitions helped promote Art Deco, but none was more important than the exhibition held in Paris. The exhibition brought together many designers from all over the Europe including British, Austrian, Netherlanders, Hungarian, Italian, Spain, Polish, Czechoslovakian, Denmark, Swedish and the USSR designers. Other parts of the world were less well represented – Germany as a main aggressor in World War I was not invited to exhibit. The USA declined to participate. However, in later years ( around 1940s) Art Deco flourished in America.

The style that represented Art Deco was full of streamlined and sleek forms, geometric and angular patterns. It was also characterized by experimenting with industrial materials such as aluminium, stainless steel, glass, shark skin, zebra skin and plastic. This movement was a mixture of many different movements and styles including Cubism, Modernism, Neoclassical, Futurism, Bauhaus and Art Nouveau. Art Deco began a modernist reaction against Art Nouveau and totally took its place after World War I. It was caused by young reformers who believed that beauty does not depend on ornament but can be achieved by sensible use of colour and texture as well as manipulation of form.

Art Deco, like its precursor Art Nouveau, was influenced by many sources from all over the world. Art Deco had many strong European, Asian, African and Meso-American influences. Egypt played a big part in the style of Art Deco. The discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb, by Howard Carter in November 1922, resulted in huge interest of Egyptian art and culture. Many goods extracted from the tomb such as furniture, cases, mummy, chariot, gold jewellery and unusual golden funeral mask of Pharaoh inspired many designers.

Art Deco survived until 1939, the beginning of the World War II. However, in colonial countries like India or Philippines it became popular in 1960s as a gateway for Modernism. In my personal opinion Art Deco was one of the most admirable movements. What I like about it, is a fantastic use of form. Streamlined, elegant and modern shapes, extraordinary materials, triangle patterns.

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was completely new and decorative style in art and design. It started at the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th centuries and involved wide range of designs, such as furniture, lamps, jewellery, textiles, architecture, illustrations, poster design and painting. It developed mainly in Europe and had many different names - in England and France 'Modern Art', in Germany 'Jugendstil', in Italy 'Stile Liberty'. In some way, Art Nouveau was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution as most of the artists were not in fond of the machine-made goods. Art Nouveau was characterized by complex, swirly leaves, flowers or roots and curved forms, vines and lines.

One of the most recognizable Art Nouveau artists who had a great impact on its look was Alphonse Mucha. He was a Czech painter and designer and was most famous for his fantastic posters. One of his first, which appeared in 1895, gained huge popularity. It was a poster for a play called Gismonda. From the moment that people saw the poster they absolutely loved it and soon they called it Art Nouveau. In the following years Mucha was developing his style and created many beautiful posters, which now are iconic for Art Nouveau style. In my personal opinion the poster are just amazing and really like them. One of the things I am impressed by are the stunning ornaments around the characters. Also I really like how the artist created the characters - combining outlines with very nice shading, which gives quite amazing look.


Another amazing example of Art Nouveau that I was able to find is this doorway in Paris. What I like about are great curvy lines and fantastic ornament around it.


Personally, I think that Art Nouveau is very impressive. However, in my opinion, too much of it can look just too busy and you can be overwhelmed with amount of details in each piece.

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

African influence on modern art

African sculptures had very strong influence on European art during 19th and 20th century. They inspired many artists because of their abstract form of the human body. French and Spanish painters Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso as well as other artists from School of Paris (perhaps also influenced by Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne) adopted African sculptures style mixed with Cubist style in their paintings.

Although Picasso's paintings from his 'African Period' have really vivid colour palette and the faces became flat, he kept the Cubist style by fragmented shapes in his paintings. What I find interesting in his paintings from that period are the colours he had chosen and relationships between them. However, I do not like the flattened faces and shapes Picasso created as I am not fond of abstract art.


The Young Sailor, 1906 (above) by Henri Matisse is one of his paintings influenced by African art. I find this painting quite nice because of the texture of the clothes that the artist created - in some way it looks abstract and loose, but at the same time it is quite realistic. And again, I like the nice colours that Matisse used and I think they really look fantastic together.

I think that the African influence played a big role in the modern art. It also inspired later generations of artists - Jean Michel was one of them. He incorporated African art with graffiti art. In my opinion it is interesting approach and I think he did similar thing to what Cubists did, mixing two different styles of art to create something new.



Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism was a continuation and extended-version of the French movement - Impressionism. Post-Impressionist artist hadn't just stopped on vibrant colours and bold brush strokes but had gone further into structures, geometric forms, expression and exploring emotions in paint. Many of the appreciated artists were involved in this movement, such as Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin or Charles Angrand.

Probaly the most famous of the artists during this era was Vincent Van Gogh. Although he was never appreciated during his life, at present his paintings are worth millions. Van Gogh was born in Zundert, Holland, 1853. He died at early age (37) after he commited suicide caused by a mental illness.

One of Van Gogh's most famous paintings is The Starry Night. It shows part of the village of Saint-Remy which Van Gogh seen through his sanitarium window.

I like this picture as it seems to me that the artist was probably trying to express astronomical view of the sky at night. I can clearly see the stars, moon and perhaps the Milky Way.

During that time, Van Gogh was perhaps influenced by the discovery of the M51a galaxy in 1744 and the sketch made by Lord Rosse.

The Starry Night

Whirpool Galaxy (M51a) Sketch

Other well-known works from Vincent Van Gogh are the Sunflower Series. One of them, specifically fourth version , can be seen in London National Gallery.The artist did not concentrated really on perspective, light or details but focused on impression of the flowers, colours and rather their form.

Thursday, 1 October 2009

Impressionism

Impressionism was an art movement during the 1870s and 1880s. It was completely new style in art. Bright colours freely brushed on canvas broke the academic rules of painting during 19th century. Impressionists concentrated on light, everyday life, weather and atmosphere. Also they started to work outside, while other painters painted in studios.

Beginnings of the impressionism started with the Academie des Beaux-Arts which dominated the art scene during the 19th century. It was a powerful institution which could make artists famous and rich or unknown and hated. Artists whose work was kept in traditional style showing religious, historical or landscape themes had the approval of the academy, and their work had been shown in the Salon de Paris during the annual art show. Others, like Edouard Manet, Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with more controversial themes or techniques had been rejected.

In 1863, Emperor Napoleon III saw the rejected works and established Salon des Refuses as he thought people have the right to see different painting as well. Now rejected painters could show their work there.

One of the most popular impressionist paintings is probably Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet, which Impressionism name was driven from. Louis Leroy, who was an art critic, wrote an article in Le Harivari newspaper and entitled it The Exhibition of Impressionists inspired by the painting's name.

It was painted using oil paints on canvas in 1872. What I like about this picture is amazing use of colour. The artist did not payed much attention to the details but concentrated on the expressing the atmosphere, tones and the mood during the sunrise.

One of my favourite Impressionist paintings is Branch of the Seine near Giverny, also painted by Claude Monet. It was painted on canvas using oil paints in 1897.

I really like the way that Monet captured the trees and the reflections on them. You can see rather loose brush strokes when you look closley but when you move back it all comes together creating this fantastic landscape. I also like the depth - the trees further away are blurry, which makes the picture more convincing and gives a little realistic taste.

Another painting of my favourites is Garden Path in Rueil by Edouard Manet, painted in 1882 again using oil paints on canvas.

The reason why I like this one is the way that the artists captured the light and the shadows. Again, picture was painted freely, with many loose brush strokes giving very nice impression of leaves and shadows casted by them. Also, you clearly see where light hits the leaves.

Thursday, 24 September 2009

Romanticism & Realism


Romanticism


Romanticism was a movement during 18th century. It involved many aspects of live such as art, literature and music. It was strongly related to emotions, feelings and human soul. It was reaction against the established values and the scientific rationalization of nature.

I would like to show you my favourite pictures from the romanticism era. One of them is The Voyage of Life - Old Age. I was painted by American artist, Thomas Cole. He was born in February 1, 1801 and died in February 11, 1848. His paintings represent romanticism and naturalism styles.


The painting was painted in 1842 using oil paints on canvas and is 33.4 × 196.2 cm big. I really like this painting not only because it's been amazingly well painted but also because of its meaning. Thomas Cole painted four pictures showing The Voyage of Life - this one is the last of them. It represents a man at the end of his life passing to another world, probably heaven. He leaves his present life, which is showed in dark colours, guided by an angel to the light. I like to contrast and the colours used by the artist, which really shows the mood of this scene and gives sort of magical feeling.

The other painting I want to share with you is Cloister Graveyard in the Snow by David Friedrich. He was one of the most important painter during the romanticism era. His painting are really appreciated and recognisable.


The reason why I like this picture is really good composition. Also the scene is a little bit scary , sad and mysterious which make it really interesting. Besides it is amazingly painted and is very realistic.


Realism

Realism was an art movement which begun in France during the 1850s. It was a response to Romanticism movement. Realism concentrated on reality, showing everyday life or activities and had nothing to do with emotions or feelings.

During the Realism era photography was introduced, which made painters paint as realistically as possible to achieve similar effect to a photography.

One of the most popular paintings from that era is probably The Stone Breakers, painted by Gustave Courbet in 1849. Gustave Courbet was one of the leading artists during Realism era. He was born in France, 1819 and died in 1877.


Another very famous painting of his is Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet painted in 1855. The painting represents the artist himself meeting probably his friends. The painting was painted very precisely showing all the details.


Even though Realism paintings were painted extremely well with all the details I am not a big fan of them. In my personal opinion they are rather boring. However, I am quite impressed with the painters' skills.

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

Welcome to my blog!

First of all I would like welcome you to my blog where I am going to write about contextual influences in art.

Also, I would like to write a little bit about my favourite contemporary artist, which is Dylan Cole. He is one of the most appreciated matte painters in the art industry. You may ask what is matte painting. Well, it is a visual representation (used mostly in flims) of a landscape, alien planet, apocaliptyc vision of a city or anything that cannot be filmed, don't exist or is to expensive to film. It mixes airbrushing techniques with photo manipulation.

Back to the artist - Dylan Cole graduated from UCLA with a degree in fine art and now uses his painting skills to create digital art. At the first stage of his career he worked on small projects and concentrated at freelance work as a concept artist. His first big project was Daredevil. After that he started to work on important films and productions such as The Lord Of The Rings, The Chronicles Of Riddick, I Robot, The Chronicles Of Narnia, 2012 and The Happines Factory for CocaCola.

For his stunning mette paintings he uses Adobe Photoshop - to paint with the Wacom Intuos3 tablet, Cinema 4D - for its great camera maping tools and After Effects - to compose footage with matte.

What I like about his work is amazing feeling of depth. Also I really like the realism of his pieces - somethimes you think it is a real picture and then you realise it's a paiting. All his works are really imaginative, creative and detailed. In my opinion he is the best matte painter ever. Be sure to check out his demo reel and his gallery.