Materials used:
*Watercolor paper (Maxleaf)
*Watercolor paint (Louvre Aquarelle)
*Brushes
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Wednesday 29 March 2017
Batanes
Materials used:
*Watercolor paper (Maxleaf)
*Watercolor paint (Louvre Aquarelle)
*Brushes
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Sunday 12 March 2017
Coron
Materials used:
*Watercolor paper (Maxleaf)
*Watercolor paint (Louvre Aquarelle)
*Brushes
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Tuesday 7 March 2017
How to Handle Art Critism
You are a human being, you've had to deal with criticism. Whether it's at work, school, or even at home, there is usually someone out there that will offer their advice, whether solicited or unsolicited, and it may not always be positive. Sometimes it is constructive, the type of thing that you probably needed to hear in order to improve whatever endeavors you are taking on. Sometimes it may be less than nice or even nasty. It happens. Everyone has to deal with it at some point in life, usually multiple times a day. But criticism can also be an important part of personal self improvement.
Dealing with criticism on art is indeed an intricate hold. Who likes criticism especially on one's creation? This is applicable for every one that's working in the creative field. We’re all afraid of being judged, and it’s really hard to hear that your artwork sucks but even though we all know negative criticisms aren’t exactly fun, we have to remember that they are a huge part of the learning process.
If you are an artist and you put your work out there, you probably deal with even more criticism than most. Nowadays, with social media and the easiness in which a person can get a website or blog, there are plenty of ways to show the world what you are doing. People can see your work anywhere. This is great and even amazing, but it also means that you are now open to a lot more people critiquing what you do. Remember that not everyone has the same manner in responding on how they think about your artwork. Art has never been so popular with the connection of social media, websites, YouTube, books, forums and networking. And yet where there is more art, there is more criticism. It's easy for anyone to be the 'art critic' now and hide behind a computer while they comment harshly and sometimes ignorantly on one's artwork.
An artist cannot forgo the critics’ opinion bestowed on his/her artwork. Not because this is the forte of the art critics, but listening/working on the criticism is the only way to impose more refinement and aesthetics on his/her artwork. So how does one deal with criticism when it's not so constructive, and sometime downright mean?
An artist cannot forgo the critics’ opinion bestowed on his/her artwork. Not because this is the forte of the art critics, but listening/working on the criticism is the only way to impose more refinement and aesthetics on his/her artwork. So how does one deal with criticism when it's not so constructive, and sometime downright mean?
After getting through the bruising of someone critiquing your artwork consider these:
1) Where is the source coming from? - If the person, who is providing the art criticism, isn't providing you with any support for improvements then take it with a grain of salt. It means to accept it but to maintain a degree of skepticism about its truth.
2) Listen and learn - It will be all too tempting to get defensive but you can actually be surprised of what another person's opinion can tell you. Really listen, try to understand that point of view. Accept just criticism.
3) Ask questions - Don't just accept the criticism. Ask why the critic feels the way they do. What are their suggestions to improve your work?
4) Don't take it personally! - This is a big one that is hard to swallow. You have just painted or drawn a beautiful masterpiece, and you love it. Now someone else feels they need to tell you what is wrong with it. Don't get a bruised ego over it and know that it is not a personal attack on yourself.
5) Try to be actively creative - However, The main impetus behind handling criticism is to overlook its harsh side and take notes on its quick-witted side. If someone says that your portrait sucks, keep on smiling. At least it looks like a portrait that audience is well aware. Now work on it and next time, make it better considering the critical point.
People come in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of tastes. If everyone liked everything, or the same things, how boring would it be? People who like your work are nice to have but do not be offended if someone doesn't like it. Plenty of people will like your artwork, and more importantly.. You like what you are doing. That's all that matters, dear.
“The artist is the only one qualified to criticize his art, because only the artist knows what he was trying to express and how satisfied he is with the attempt.”
Greatest Paintings of All Time
1) Mona Lisa - Leonardo Da Vinci (1503 - 1517)
- The Mona Lisa is an oil painting, with a cottonwood panel as the surface. It is unusual in that most paintings are commissioned as oil on canvas, but the cottonwood panel is part of what has attributed to the fame of the painting. Because of the medium used for the image, the Mona Lisa has survived for six centuries without ever having been restored–a trait very unusual when considering the time period of the piece.
The Mona Lisa is quite possibly the most well-known piece of painted artwork in the entire world. It was painted by the Leonardo Da Vinci, the famous Italian artist, between 1504 and 1519, and is a half body commission for a woman named Lisa Gherardini. Her husband, Francesco Del Giocondo requested the work by Da Vinci just after the turn of the century. It is perhaps the most studied piece of artwork ever known. The subject’s facial expression has brought about a source of debate for centuries, as her face remains largely enigmatic in the portrait. Originally commissioned in Italy, it is now at home in the French Republic, and hangs on display in the Louvre in Paris.
2) Creation of Adam – Sistine Chapel - Michelangelo (1508 - 1512)
- Of all the marvelous images that crowd the immense complex of the Sistine Ceiling, The Creation of Adam is undoubtedly the one which has most deeply impressed posterity. No wonder, for here we are given a single overwhelming vision of the sublimity of God and the potential nobility of man unprecedented and unrivaled in the entire history of visual art. No longer standing upon earth with closed eyes and mantle, the Lord floats through the heavens, His mantle widespread and bursting with angelic forms, and His calm gaze accompanying and reinforcing the movement of His mighty arm. He extends His forefinger, about to touch that of Adam, who reclines on the barren coast of earth, barely able as yet to lift his hand.
The divine form is convex, explosive, paternal; the human concave, receptive, and conspicuously impotent. The incipient, fecundating contact about to take place between the two index fingers has often been described as a spark or a current, a modern electrical metaphor doubtless foreign to the sixteenth century, but natural enough considering the river of life which seems about to flow into the waiting body.
3) Cafe Terrace at Night - Vincent Van Gogh (1888)
- The oil on canvas painting Café Terrace at Night is a Vincent van Gogh work completed in 1888. The painting is also referred to as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and is held by the Kroller-Muller Museum in Ottelro in the Netherlands, which is home to the second largest collection of Van Gogh’s paintings. The location for the work is a street in Arles, France. It remains virtually unchanged to the present day, and the café still exists but is now called Café van Gogh.
The café terrace itself dominates the left side of the painting. Several people are seated around the white tables on the terrace, which is covered by a large awning. A waiter, dressed predominantly in white, stands in front of one of the tables, holding a tray. Several of the tables are unoccupied. The right side of the painting depicts other buildings and several pedestrians on the cobbled street. Overhead, the sky is dotted with stars. Café Terrace at Night is the first Van Gogh painting to feature a star-studded sky.
4) The Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh (1889)
- Starry Night is probably Vincent van Gogh's most famous painting. Instantly recognizable because of its unique style, this work has been the subject of poetry, fiction, CD-ROMs as well as the well known song "Vincent" or "Starry, Starry Night" by Don McLean.
The night sky depicted by Van Gogh in the Starry Night painting is brimming with whirling clouds, shining stars, and a bright crescent moon. The setting is one that viewers can relate to and Van Gogh´s swirling sky directs the viewer´s eye around the painting, with spacing between the stars and the curving contours creating a dot-to-dot effect. These internal elements ensure fluidity and such contours were important for the artist even though they were becoming less significant for other Impressionists. Thus Starry Night´s composition was distinct from the Impressionist technique of the 19th century.
The artist was aware that his Starry Night composition was somewhat surreal and stylized and in a letter to his brother he even referred to "exaggerations in terms of composition. " The vivid style chosen by van Gogh was unusual - he chose lines to portray this night scene when silhouettes would have been a more obvious choice.
In Starry Night contoured forms are a means of expression and they are used to convey emotion. Many feel that van Gogh´s turbulent quest to overcome his illness is reflected in the dimness of the night sky. The village is painted with dark colors but the brightly lit windows create a sense of comfort. The village is peaceful in comparison to the dramatic night sky and the silence of the night can almost be felt in Starry Night. The steeple dominates the village and symbolizes unity in the town. In terms of composition, the church steeple gives an impression of size and isolation.
In the left foreground is a curvy cypress tree which is typically associated with mourning. It is painted in the same way as the sky with fluid lines which enhances the flow of the Starry Night painting well as its easiness on the eye.
5) Poppies in a Field - Claude Monet (1886)
| - This particular masterpiece of Impressionist landscape painting was painted by Monet the year before the first of the Impressionist Exhibitions in 1874, and about the same time as he painted Impression: Sunrise (1873, Musee Marmottan, Paris). Poppy Field was painted in the area around Argenteuil, where Monet lived between 1871 and 1878. Evoking the resonant atmosphere of a stroll through the fields on a summer's day, it is now among the world's most famous landscape paintings of the 19th century. A woman and child (probably Monet's wife, Camille, and their son Jean.) walk through a field of thick grass; red poppies cloak the bank that rises to the left; while another woman and child appear at the top of this bank. There is no sign of any link between the two pairs of figures, and no obvious reason why the woman in the foreground has lowered her parasol. On the horizon a ragged line of trees closes off the field, with, at the centre, a single red-roofed house. Although it is a fine day, there are some clouds in the sky, which temporarily mask the sun. As a result, an even light is spread over the whole landscape. This is a very ordinary, pleasant scene, although the site is not especially picturesque; neither the lie of the land nor the trees in the background offer any particular interest. In fact, there are some suggestions that we are near a town, rather than in the heart of the countryside - the figures are dressed as middle class people rather than peasants, and the house in the background is a substantial villa, not a rural cottage. The scene probably is a meadow near Argenteuil, the town on the River Seine just north-west of Paris where Monet lived and painted at the time. |
6) Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee – Rembrandt (1633)
- Rembrandt’s most striking narrative painting in America, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, is also his only painted seascape. Dated 1633, it was made shortly after Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam from his native Leiden, when he was establishing himself as the city’s leading painter of portraits and historical subjects. The detailed rendering of the scene, the figures’ varied expressions, the relatively polished brushwork, and the bright coloring are characteristic of Rembrandt’s early style. Eighteenth-century critics like Arnold Houbraken often preferred this early period to Rembrandt’s later, broader, and less descriptive manner.
The biblical scene pitches nature against human frailty – both physical and spiritual. The panic-stricken disciples struggle against a sudden storm, and fight to regain control of their fishing boat as a huge wave crashes over its bow, ripping the sail and drawing the craft perilously close to the rocks in the left foreground. One of the disciples succumbs to the sea’s violence by vomiting over the side. Amidst this chaos, only Christ, at the right, remains calm, like the eye of the storm. Awakened by the disciples’ desperate pleas for help, he rebukes them: “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” and then rises to calm the fury of wind and waves. Nature’s upheaval is both cause and metaphor for the terror that grips the disciples, magnifying the emotional turbulence and thus the image’s dramatic impact.
7) The Girl With a Pearl Earring – Jan Vermeer (1665)
- Girl with a Pearl Earring was originally titled Girl with a Turban and it wasn't until the second half of the twentieth century that the name was changed. Regarded as Vermeer's masterpiece, this canvas is often referred to as the Mona Lisa of the North or the Dutch Mona Lisa.
The girl in this painting is believed to be Vermeer's eldest daughter, Maria, who was about twelve or thirteen-years-old at the time it was created. Her facial features appear in several of Vermeer's works but his various techniques on his subject make it difficult to compare the female faces in his paintings, as the woman are portrayed in different lighting conditions and poses.
There is very little information about Vermeer and his paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring is signed "IVMeer" but there is no date on this work. It remains unknown whether or not this canvas was commissioned and if so, by whom. It's more likely that this image was a tronie, Dutch 17th-century description of a 'head' painting that was not intended as a portrait.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of over forty images of women created by Vermeer and thus it is obvious that he had a keen interest in women's socio-cultural roles. It could be argued that he valued their role in maintaining his idealist way of life by ensuring order within the household and raising children within Christian values. Therefore, women played a pivotal role in safeguarding tradition and moral values through the generations.
Vermeer depicted his women in thought-provoking stillness and also as encouraging images that inspired homogeny. With this painting the viewer is captured by the subject and believes they have caught her attention and caused her to turn her head. This is a sensual painting with the girl gazing at the viewer with wide eyes and a parted mouth and there is an air of mystery surrounding her identity.
In 1994 this canvas was restored which involved removing the yellowed varnish along with the retouches that had been made during previous restorations. This resulted in the vivid colors originally used by Vermeer shining through and the intimacy of the girl's gaze was also greatly enhanced.
8) Le Moulin de la Gallette – Jean Renoir (1876)
- Dance at le Moulin de la Galette is also known as Bal du moulin de la Galette and it is hailed as one of Renoir's most important works of the mid 1870s. The Moulin de la Galette was an open-air dancehall and café that was frequented by many artists living in Paris. Renoir attended Sunday afternoon dances and enjoyed watching the happy couples. For him, it provided the perfect setting for a painting.
Most of the figures featured in Dance at le Moulin de la Galette were Renoir's friends, but he also used a few professional models. Thus, it can be said that the scene he depicts is not a realistic representation of the Moulin's clientele, but rather an organized set of portraits.
This painting was first shown at the Impressionist exhibition of 1877 and demonstrated the original technique developed by Renoir. This canvas shows Renoir's friends, Frank Lamy, Norbert Goeneutte, and Georges Rivière gathered around the central table. Rivière, a writer who knew Renoir well at this time, wrote a review of Dance at le Moulin de la Galette in the journal L'Iimpressionniste which accompanied its exhibition. The writer referred to Dance at le Moulin de la Galette as a "page of history, a precious and strictly accurate portrayal of Parisian life. " Yet, others were not so kind. Many contemporary critics regarded this canvas as merely a blurred impression of the scene.
Known for his pleasant paintings, Dance at le Moulin de la Galette is regarded as one of the happiest compositions in Renoir's oeuvre. Today, it is on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and is one the most celebrated works in the history of Impressionism.
9) The Fighting Temeraire – John Turner (1838)
- The Temeraire had a dramatic and victorious career in her more useful days. She earned her legendary place in British naval history after coming to the aid of fellow British ship, the Victory, during the important Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Napoleon, along with his newly acquired French and Spanish fleets, raged an invasion against Britain.
It was the morning of October 21st, 1805. The Franco-Spanish fleet had 33 ships, the British only 22. Fortunately, among the 22 was the 98-gun Temeraire. British Captain Nelson arranged his fleet into two columns to attack the enemy head on. His ship, Victory, went straight through the line but not without absorbing significant damage. They hadn't even opened fired yet. Recovering from the blow, they managed to take down a French flagship, the Bucentaure.
Victory's further progress however was blocked by the French Redoutable. Coming to the rescue, the Temeraire thwarted the enemy ship from the opposite side. The Victory and Temeraire defeated Napoleon's forces with combined tactics. Eventually it was the Temeraire that ultimately lead Britain to victory. Though many of Britain's men were killed in this battle, Britain was not without triumph. The Battle of Trafalgar allowed the expansion of British colonial power for many years, keeping Napoleon out for good.
Turner wanted to give credit where credit was due. He desired to admire the glorious and passing age of the sail ship, replaced by the new age of steam and steel. He sought to evoke a sense of loss, and focused more on that quality than portraying complete accuracy. In reality it was said that the Temeraire was pulled by two tugs, not one. The scene was also without the beautiful sunset Turner afforded viewers. Once again, Turner took the liberty to romanticize a scene very close to his heart.
In The Fighting Temeraire the enchanting old war ship towers over the new steam power tug, a vessel that lacks personality and the story that the 'Fighting Temeraire' does. She is being tugged by this new ship, ultimately to her death. She will soon be broken up for scraps.
10) Dove of Peace – Picasso (1949)
- With Guernica hailed as one of the world's most moving anti-war paintings, Picasso was invited to design an image to represent peace.
Picasso's first Dove of Peace, chosen as the emblem for the First International Peace Conference in Paris in 1949, was a traditional, realistic picture of a pigeon which had been given to him by his great friend and rival, the French artist Henri Matisse.
Picasso later developed this image into a simple, graphic line drawing that is one of the world's most recognisable symbols of peace. He also named his fourth child 'Paloma', the Spanish word for 'dove'.
Different Modernist Art Movements
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| Henri-Odmond Cross, Oil on Canvas, 81 x 100 cm |
An art movement is a style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a period of time. Art in the modern era has come to be defined by its styles, schools, and movements. The major and minor collected here provide an introduction to the developments in western art together with all the participated artists.
1) Surrealism - As one of the most famous art movements of the Modernist era, thanks mainly to the indelible work The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí, Surrealism has come to be remembered for its production of visceral, eye-grabbing and aesthetic images. Leaping off from the absurdist inclinations of the Dadaists and the psychoanalytical writings of Sigmund Freud, André Breton, a well-known poet and critic of his time, published “The Surrealist Manifesto” in 1924, in which he declared the group’s intention to unite consciousness with unconsciousness so that the realms of dream and fancy could merge with everyday reality in an “absolute reality, a surreality.” Although they were best-remembered for the work of their painters—such as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, and André Masson—Surrealists worked with a variety of mediums, including poetry, literature, sculpture, and the then-new medium of film. Because Breton was militant in the adherence to his manifesto by the members of the movement, many members splintered off into new art forms, though still incorporating techniques and motifs of Surrealism.
2) Cubism - Highly influential visual arts style of the 20th century that was created principally by the painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories of art as the imitation of nature.
Cubism statement by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger in 1912:
To understand Cézanne is to foresee cubism. Henceforth we are justified in saying that between this school and previous manifestations there is only a difference of intensity, and that in order to assure ourselves of this we have only to study the methods of this realism, which, departing from the superficial reality of Courbet, plunges with Cézanne into profound reality, growing luminous as it forces the unknowable to retreat.
Some maintain that such a tendency distorts the curve of tradition. Do they derive their arguments from the future or the past? The future does not belong to them, as far as we are aware, and one be singularly ingenuous to seek to measure that which exists by that which exists no longer.
Unless we are to condemn all modern painting, we must regard cubism as legitimate, for it continues modern methods, and we should see in it the only conception of pictorial art now possible. In other words, at this moment cubism is painting.
3) Dada - An international movement among European artists and writers between 1915 and 1922, characterised by a spirit of anarchic revolt. Dada revelled in absurdity, and emphasised the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation.
It began in Zürich with the French poet Tristan Tzara thrusting a penknife into the pages of a dictionary to randomly find a name for the movement. This act in itself displays the importance of chance in Dada art. Irreverence was another key feature: in one of Dada’s most notorious exhibitions, organised by Max Ernst, axes were provided for visitors to smash the works on show.
While perhaps seeming flippant on the surface, the Dada artists were actually fuelled by disillusionment and moral outrage at the unprecedented carnage of World War One, and the ultimate aim of the movement was to shock people out of complacency.
Among the leading Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp (whose Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classic), George Grosz, Otto Dix, Hans Richter and Jean Arp. The movement had a strong influence on Pop Art, which was sometimes called neo-Dada.
4) De Stijl - The Netherlands-based De Stijl movement embraced an abstract, pared-down aesthetic centered in basic visual elements such as geometric forms and primary colors. Partly a reaction against the decorative excesses of Art Deco, the reduced quality of De Stijl art was envisioned by its creators as a universal visual language appropriate to the modern era, a time of a new, spiritualized world order. Led by the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian - its central and celebrated figures - De Stijl artists applied their style to a host of media in the fine and applied arts and beyond. Promoting their innovative ideas in their journal of the same name, the members envisioned nothing less than the ideal fusion of form and function, thereby making De Stijl in effect the ultimate style. To this end, De Stijl artists turned their attention not only to fine art media such as painting and sculpture, but virtually all other art forms as well, including industrial design, typography, even literature and music. De Stijl's influence was perhaps felt most noticeably in the realm of architecture, helping give rise to the International Style of the 1920s and 1930s.
5) Suprematism - The first actual exhibition of suprematist paintings was in December 1915 in St Petersburg, at an exhibition called O.10. The exhibition included thirty-five abstract paintings by Kazimir Malevich, among them the famous black square on a white ground (Russian Museum, St Petersburg) which headed the list of his works in the catalogue.
In 1927 Malevich published his book The Non-Objective World, one of the most important theoretical documents of abstract art. In it he wrote: ‘In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square.’ Out of the ‘suprematist square’ as he called it, Malevich developed a whole range of forms including rectangles, triangles and circles often in intense and beautiful colours. These forms are floated against a usually white ground, and the feeling of colour in space in suprematist painting is a crucial aspect of it.
Suprematism was one of the key movements of modern art in Russia and was particularly closely associated with the Revolution. After the rise of Stalin from 1924 and the imposition of socialist realism, Malevich’s career languished. In his last years before his death in 1935 he painted realist pictures. In 1919 the Russian artist El Lissitsky met Malevich and was strongly influenced by suprematism, as was the Hungarian born Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
6) Fauvism - In modern art, the term Fauvism refers to a highly fashionable, if short-lived, art movement associated with the Ecole de Paris, which formed around friendships between French artists around the turn of the century. Famous above all for their bold use of colour, the 'Fauves' received their name at the 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition in Paris, from the influential French art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who insultingly described their vividly coloured canvases as being the work of wild beasts (in French, fauves), and the name stuck. Curiously, while Matisse (1869-1954) and his French colleagues were dubbed fauvists, neither Wassily Kandinsky nor the 'Russian Matisse' Alexei von Jawlensky - both of whom exhibited alongside the Fauves at the Salon - were given the same treatment. Part of the general Post-Impressionism movement, which tried to go beyond the mere imitation of nature as practised by Impressionists, Fauvism is an early form of expressionism, since its use of colour is non-naturalistic and often garish. The close artistic association between Fauvism and the expressionist movement can be seen in the fact that Neo-Expressionism is known in Germany as Neue Wilden(German for 'new Fauves'). Fauvism was also influenced by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), whose flat areas of pure colour paved the way for the great expressionist paintings of the early 20th century.
7) Futurism - Futurism was an avant-garde art movement which was launched in Italy, in 1909, although parallel movements arose in Russia, England and elsewhere. It was one of the first important modern art movements not centered in Paris - one reason why it is not taken seriously in France. Futurism exalted the dynamism of the modern world, especially its science and technology. Futurist ideology influenced all types of art. It began in literature but spread to every medium, including painting, sculpture, industrial design, architecture, cinema and music. However, most of its major exponents were painters and the movement produced several important 20th century paintings. It ceased to be an aesthetic force in 1915, shortly after the start of the First World War, but lingered in Italy until the 1930s.
8) Post-Impressionism - Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style’s inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.
In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early 20th-century art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which sought to evoke emotion through colour and line.
9) Vorticism - A unique blend of Cubism and Futurism, Vorticism was an important British avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century, although it lasted officially for no more than two years. The movement's central figure was the English painter, writer and polemicist Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), while the name - referring to the emotional vortex which was considered to be the necessary source of artistic creation - was coined by the American poet Ezra Pound. These two, together with members of the Rebel Art Centre founded Vorticism in 1914. The journal "Blast", published only twice (in 1914 and 1915) proclaimed the Vorticist Manifesto and supplied publicity for the movement. Two exhibitions in London of Futurist art were significant catalysts for the movement's launch, while the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 led to its premature demise. As a result only one Vorticist exhibition was ever held. The movement effectively broke up in 1915 due to the impact of war, and the loss of financial support from its backer, the artist Kate Lechmere (1887-1976). Vorticist philosophy was briefly revived in 1920 with Lewis' formation of Group X.
10) Constructivism - Constructivism was an invention of the Russian avant-garde that found adherents across the continent. Germany was the site of the most Constructivist activity outside of the Soviet Union (especially as home to Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus, a progressive art and design school sympathetic to the movement) but Constructivist ideas were also carried to other art centers, like Paris, London, and eventually the United States.
Constructivist art is marked by a commitment to total abstraction and a wholehearted acceptance of modernity. Often very geometric, it is usually experimental, rarely emotional. Objective forms which were thought to have universal meaning were preferred over the subjective or the individual. The art is often very reductive as well, paring the artwork down to its basic elements. New media were often used. Again, the context is crucial: the Constructivists sought an art of order, which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World War I) and lead to a world of more understanding, unity, and peace. This utopian undercurrent is often missing from more recent abstract art that might be otherwise tied to Constructivism.
How to Price Your Artworks
One of the hardest decisions that artists have to make is how to price their artworks – pricing depends on so many factors: the popularity of the art, the medium used, the complexity and what the buyer is willing to pay. But there are some guidelines that you can follow:
Guidelines in Pricing your Artworks
1. Start lower. It’s easier to start low and raise your prices than it is to lower your prices later. But...
2. Don’t undervalue your work. Selling your art too cheaply means you’re probably not getting paid what it’s worth.
Also, low prices set you up for all kinds of problems later and will result in a mess of anger from other artists who see you as “the cheap one.”
3. Never ever undersell your galleries. You have one price for your art – whether a gallery sells it or whether you sell it from your studio, even when you post it in on your social media accounts.
4. If you don’t have a gallery and don’t want a gallery, you have more pricing freedom than other artists. Even then, I caution against pricing your work too low.
5. If you work faster and are prolific, your prices might be lower than an artist’s whose work takes months to complete. Or they might not be. Because . . .
6. If you can’t keep work in inventory – if you sell it as fast as you make it – it’s probably time to raise your prices.
7. Larger works are usually more expensive than smaller works.
8. Works made from higher-priced materials have a bigger price tag on them.
Works on canvas often command more than works on paper. But then there’s that whole framing thing. You have to frame works on paper.
So how do you account for that in your prices – so that works on canvas are still priced higher even though the framing is such a big expense? This is still a struggle for some of clients. Likewise, bronze sculptures have higher prices than carved wood.
9. Artists who sell in smaller or economically depressed communities have found it difficult to ask for prices similar to artists in larger cities.
If you try to sell online, you don’t have just a small-town audience any longer.
10. Conduct market research to find comparables. Look for artists who do similar work using similar materials and who are at a similar point in their careers.
Whenever you compare your prices to those of other artists, make sure you know that the work you’re looking at is actually selling. It doesn’t do you any good to look at prices from an artist whose work isn’t moving.
11. Keep a price list. When someone asks you how much something is, you want to be able to tell them quickly and effortlessly. You don’t want to look like you’re unsure or are pulling a number out of a dark hole. Because, the most important rule when pricing your art is . . .
12. Radiate confidence. It’s remarkable how powerful this trick is. If you’re not confident in your prices, we’ll figure that out. Spend time deciding on the prices, then have confidence in them – knowing that the prices are grounded in reality.
HOW DO YOU DO IT?
Let me know in the comment box on how you price your artwork!
Sunday 5 March 2017
Vigan
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| Ilocos Norte, Vigan City, Philippines |
Materials used:
*Watercolor paper (Maxleaf)
*Watercolor paint (Louvre Aquarelle)
*Brushes
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