Three blank white canvases are put on display as a triptych in a prestigious French art gallery. Paintings that look more like hastily scribbled pencil marks, or seem to resemble a child’s graffiti on a blackboard, are sold for over four million dollars. Some viewers and critics would venture to ask, “What’s the big deal?” or comment, “My six year-old could do that.” Although normally I enjoy abstract, experimental art – being such a painter myself – I do not believe Cy Twombly to be a “worthy” artist.
Make no mistake: what Twombly creates is, without a doubt, legitimate art. In fact, I do like and appreciate some of it. However, I don’t believe Twombly deserves to be the multi-millionaire and household name that he has become…regardless of the challenging circumstances he faced throughout his early career.
Twombly’s work is to many, very cryptic and mysterious. Some have called it an acquired taste. Anyone who has seen an original piece in person will agree that it is nearly impossible to duplicate. Unfortunately, forty years ago, this placed Twombly at a disadvantage. The virtual antithesis of over-reproduced Pop Art and the minimalist styles that were so hugely popular in the 1960’s, Twombly’s art was harshly criticized and widely counted against in America. In making his career in Rome, Italy, he had sided against history. 1964 was the year his reputation plummeted. A gallery show in New York of nine paintings entitled “Discourse on Commodus” was trashed by journalists and viewers. Most regarded the series of paintings as a joke. Twombly relocated to Europe. It wasn’t until twenty years later that he would return to America, backed by enthusiastic young European artists and collectors.
Cy Twombly was born in Lexington,...
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.... In 1995, The Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, designed by Renzo Piano, provides space for over thirty sculptures, paintings, and works on paper. The entire collection spans over forty years.
Intrigued by mythology and classic literary works from Italy, Twombly often quoted authors and poets in his paintings, scrawling fragmented lines of prose in a loose cursive script that was barely legible. He would drop names and well-known phrases from antiquity, hoping to communicate his belief that the classical past was not dead. However, in speaking for many critics, Richard Hughes commented, “a toenail paring isn’t a body,” and so many agree Twombly’s efforts were insufficient.
WORKS CITED
The American Art Book
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_156.html
http://www.home.spyrnet.com/~mindweb/twombly2.htm
Wikipedia.org
... find the authors’ of my articles arguments very convincing. By weaving both visual and literature evidence together the authors support their arguments almost scientifically. The articles go into more depth than the Gardner text book. Gardner does not provide as much contextual evidence to support his arguments. In this manner the articles I read are a more progressive form of art history. Also, Gardner’s text discusses Witz’s intense focus on realism, but does not discuss his important departures from realism. In actuality, Witz’s departures from realism represent the most significant aspects of the painting. Although we have learned to not read into a work too much, Witz’s hyper deliberate nature requires attention to every detail and is well suited to more than surface level analysis. My analysis of the painting reflects, and supports the author’s conclusions.
Inside the yard now stands a freshly painted mural, sixty feet wide and twelve feet high. The work is the result of weeks of designing and planning, and with luck it might last as long on the train as it already has on paper. What the boys have done, what has taken place inside that trainyard, is a work of art. [Let us begin with a basic assumption. One may object to graffiti on social or moral grounds, but only in the most conservatist terms can it not be considered “art.” Any idea of art which does not go out of its way to disinclude vandalism will, in fact, contain graffiti. We will, then, put aside social and moral considerations for the duration, and consider graffiti as art.]
The notable French-Canadian abstract expressionist Jean-Paul Riopelle is known for his signature large-format mosaic composition to establish explosive engagement. The monumental Chevreuse II (Figure 1) in his Mosaiques series was created during 1953 to 1954, measured in 3m x 3m. This work is currently on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The AGO decided to put up a co-exhibition of Riopelle and his romantic partner Joan Mitchell’s works, and titled the exhibition Nothing in Moderation.
Cohen, Ted. “High and Low Art, and High and Low Audiences.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.2 (Spring 1999): 137-143. JSTOR. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
Jeff Koons is one of the most controversial artist in the modern art world. His artworks are mostly appurtenances of childish holiday celebrations such as Easter eggs, Valentine hearts, ice-cream sundaes, etc. All of those kiddie kitsch are scaled up, covered in glossy, colorful materials. In critics’ eyes, his works are banal, trivial, meaningless, are “affront to great tradition” of art. They believe Jeef Koons is able to sell those ridiculous pieces and became famous because of his sale experience, not because of the art itself. They criticize his endorsement of selling, advertising, marketing, and commercial life in general. Jeff Koons, instead of defending himself, admits that he completely believes in the power of marketing and media.
It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
Artists have a knowledge of all the artists that preceding them, creating a visual vocabulary from the art that they have seen and understand. For Jean-Michel Basquiat, that knowledge translates into his work, despite never having formal training in an art school. It is his awareness and understanding of the culture that surrounds him that brings a layer of sophistication to his painting, setting it apart from street graffiti that has been painted on canvas. Basquiat’s Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold) (1981) is a confrontation of his own identity that is created with the visual vocabulary of artists that preceded him.
In the article “Conditions of Trade,” Michael Baxandall explains the interaction serving of both fifteenth- century Italian painting and text on how the interpretation of social history from the style of pictures in a historical period, pre-eminently examine the early Renaissance painting. Baxandall looks not only on the explanation of how the style of painting is reflected in a society, but also engages in the visual skills and habits that develop out of daily life. The author examines the central focus on markets, material visual practices, and the concept of the Renaissance period overlooking art as an institution. He observes a Renaissance painting, which relate the experience of activities such as preaching, dancing, and assessing. The author considers discussions of a wide variety of artistic painters, for instance, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Stefano di Giovanni, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and numerous others. He defines and exemplifies concepts used in contemporary critic of the painting, and in the assembled basic equipment needed to discover the fifteenth- century art. Therefore this introductory to the fifteenth- century Italian painting and arise behind the social history, argues that the two are interconnected and that the conditions of the time helped shape the distinctive elements in the artists painting style. Through the institutional authorization Baxandall looks at integration in social, cultural and visual evaluation in a way that shows not only the visual art in social construction, but how it plays a major role in social orders in many ways, from interaction to larger social structural orders.
Hughes, Robert. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1997. Print.
Rap and hip-hop is an artistic mirror reflecting society, which is violent in some places, and needs not a moral dismemberment via the glorification of fictional violence. The history of hip-hop has some sting to it, being that deaths have been caused and childhoods are under affect; the actions that younger listeners who enjoy hip-hop are not influenced by the songs or the artists, but only by perception of their surroundings. All that hinders a strong faith in hip-hop is its “gangsta rap” counterpart. Violence is a reaction, not an action.
Georges Didi-Huberman is critical of the conventional approaches towards the study of art history. Didi-Huberman takes the view that art history is grounded in the primacy of knowledge, particularly in the vein of Kant, or what he calls a ‘spontaneous philosophy’. While art historians claim to be looking at images across the sweep of time, what they actually do might be described as a sort of forensics process, one in which they analyze, decode and deconstruct works of art in attempt to better understand the artist and purpose or expression. This paper will examine Didi-Huberman’s key claims in his book Confronting Images and apply his methodology to a still life painting by Juan Sánchez Cotán.
“Art in a Material World.” The show’s basic tenet is that “Warhol’s most radical lesson is reflected in the work of artists of subsequent generations who have infiltrated the publicity machine and the marketplace as a deliberate strategy.” (O’Brien,
Diarmuid Costello, Jonathan Vickery. Art: key contemporary thinkers. (UTSC library). Imprint Oxford: Berg, 2007. Print.
"Quotations by Subject: Art." The Quotation Page. QuotationsPage.com and Michael Moncur. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. .
As Stephen becomes aware of his surroundings, his perception of art begins to change. In chapter two, the protagonist’s eager tone leads him to develop a different understanding of the qualities of art. The author makes a literary allusion to Alexander Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cr...