A cold gloomy winter morning, fallen snow covering the ground, leaving the path ahead a dull and melancholic white. In the middle of your path a noose suspended only by a bunch of brightly colored balloons ready to take you away. The photograph “Take me away” by Christopher McKenney has a heavy emotional message and depicts suicide as the only happiness in a cold and dark place. Being involved in artistic hobbies are important to express thoughts, feelings, and emotions.This art style is categorized as surrealism. Surrealistic artists tried to channel the “unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination.” (surrealism movement, artists and major works) Meaning that they try to look deeply within themselves to find the emotions
Mckenny is from Wilkes-Barre, pennsylvania. After dropping out of college he went and bought a professional grade camera. He self taught himself through youtube videos and experimentation. He goes out into the forest and takes all kinds of pictures ranging from burning people, drowning people, burying people and ghosts. He uses models for some of these pictures but the ghosts he can do using only himself and a white sheet. “I like taking away identity when photographing and to leave people thinking. I only make the photos I do to express myself and what other people see or think is up to them.” he explains. “I don’t like to give people an identity; I like to focus on the story, not the person.” (McKenney) Analysing other peoples art is important as an artist because it makes them form a stronger creative process and inspires them to make more art.
A similar art style is expressionism. Expressionism is a style of art in which the artist distorts form and uses colors to express strong emotion. The expressionists used “swirling,swaying,and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes.” (Expressionism Movement, Artists and Major Works.) This art style’s movement started in the late 19th century in germany and ended in the late 1930’s. Some pioneers of the expressionist movement were vincent van gogh and edvard
“The Scream” has 3 original copies. One is privately owned and the other two are in the munch museum and the national gallery, both located in oslo, norway. The scream is a distorted painting of a man on a bridge. Munch utilized color and line to give off an eerie and frightening vibe. The painting depicts a pale, nearly white man wearing black clothing. He is standing on bridge with his mouth unnaturally wide open, screaming with his hands on the sides of his face. The background is a body of water painted with dark blue and white swirls. Edvard munch said "In my art I have tried to explain to myself life and its meaning. I have also tried to help others to clarify their
People can have many different opinions depending on a topic, but what is truly difficult is getting a complete level of understanding from every opinion, or understanding the point of view of each opinion. Even accepting the points of view can be difficult for some people, who believe that their opinions are right. Luckily, people can learn about the other person’s frame of reference, and at the very least understand the topic or the person a little better. This particular topic is art, which is known for its multiple possible perceptions or its many different messages that it can send a person or group of people. In this way, people can learn more about the thought processes and feelings of others. Unfortunately, with differing opinions,
violence and change. Artists who worked in traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and in an eclectic range of styles. Some people went with the movement while others opposed it. I enjoy the different types of eclectic movement in art such as the paintings, drawings and the designs. It was not until 1911 that a distinctive futurist style emerged and then it was a product of Cubist influence. Futurism was not immediately identified with a distinctive style. Futurists were fascinated by the problems of representing modern experience, and strived to have their paintings evoke all kinds of sensations and not merely those visible to the eye. Futurist art brings to mind noise, heat, and even smell of the metropolis.
Often artists can express complex emotions in a form of a single subject matter. For example, the movement of abstract expressionism originating in the middle of the twentieth century was an approach to modernism/ post-modernism accentuating the uninhibited expression of emotions. The products of this genre are characteristically free and loosely structured, stylistically. They tend to focus the emotions that could be derived from the artworks rather than clear representational imitation of reality. In this artwork, ‘Red, Brown and Black’ (1958) by Mark Rothko, all consist of soft, rectangular bands of color stretching horizontally across his canvas. The artist views color as the most powerful communication tool. Through his blocks of color, which are representative of the simple components in the artwork, are meant to provide a contemplative, meditative space in which to visually investigate one's own moods and affiliations with the chosen palette. ‘He sought to distill an essence, or true nature, out of codified hues’
Expressionism can be described as a movement in the fine arts that emphasized the expression of inner experience rather than solely realistic portrayal, seeking to depict not objective reality, but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. Several characteristics of expressionism are distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy. “The Green Table,” a ballet by Kurt Jooss, is an ideal example of expressionism because it depicts the choreographer’s personal interpretation of war through the use of movement, music and lighting.
Experienced in European Modernism and becoming dull to the American Realism popular at the time, Abstract Expressionists became a new type of expression that gave permission to artist to have flow of their own emotion onto the canvas. They accomplished this goal by turning down the traditions of illusionistic painting in favor of their own individual spot. Abstract Expressionists were different from others they expressed their feelings/or emotions straight on a canvas, or by explorations with color, leaving no recognizable images or figuration. Many Abstract Expressionists threw fine art methods out the window by using non-traditional painting techniques. In the painting Number 31 by Jackson Pollock, for example, put his large canvases on the
It is said that art is like a mirror to the soul, a way to see what
Munch’s work is still popular today and continues to be in the media. In July of 2004, a few of Munch’s famous pieces, including, “The Scream,” were stolen from his museum in Oslo. This shows the continued popularity of Munch’s very personal powerful works.
The expressionism period was a movement to invoke emotions through art work. In The Scream Munch stirs up emotions through his heavy brush work and the use of unnatural colors. The use of red orange or warm colors in the sunset seems to make them advance or stand out. The thick swirling lines of the sunset and the river create the sanitation of movement. Munch relies on atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of depth. The warm colors in the sunset stand out while the cool colors of the river seem to go backwards. The shapes in The Scream are organic, object found in nature, but Munch has distorted this objects to echos causes by the sunken head.
Edward Munch painted "The Scream" in 1893. The scene for Munch's painting is actually based on a real location- the city and surrounding area of Oslo, Norway. The specific location is near a madhouse, where Munch's mentally insane sister was kept. Historians speculate that Munch was inspired by the screams from dying animals at a nearby slaughterhouse to paint "The Scream". However, in Munch's personal diary, he wrote that he was inspired by a memory of when he was taking a walk with two friends. On his walk, he became tired and stopped to rest and let out a scream. Edward Munch appeared to have painted this painting as a way to express his feelings.
The German Expressionism movement started in the early twentieth century art world, pre-WWI, presumably from Vincent Van Gogh’s “pioneering expressionist paintings like… Starry, Starry Night”(Encyclopaedia of Art History). It was a purely aesthetic movement at this time that sought to oppose the Impressionist movement, which imitated nature, by imposing unnatural, distorted images. Aspects of those distortions served to convey the emotions an artist held towards their subject. War brought terror. War brought mental meltdowns. War changed the Expressionistic style into a “bitter protest movement”(Encyclopaedia of Art History) as artists “suffered from war-induced disillusionment and were dissatisfied with post-war German
The impressionist movement is often considered to mark the beginning of the modern period of art. It was developed in France during the late 19th century. The impressionist movement arose out of dissatisfaction with the classical, dull subjects and clean cut precise techniques of painting. They preferred to paint outdoors concentrating more on landscapes and street scenes, and began to paint ordinary everyday people and liked to show the effects in natural light.
In the 1880’s the movement known as Impressionism was coming to an end. The eight and last Impressionist exhibition was held in Paris during 1886 (Time). Although Impressionism was coming to an end new forms of art arose to take its place. Some famous artists producing during this time include, Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon (Georges). Odilon Redon started his own movement known as Symbolism, which strives to give form to ideas and emotions (Odilon). Another painter responsible for creating a new style is Georges Seurat. Seurat was a French painter who popularized and developed his own style called pointillism.
Norris, George. “Expressionism: Its Spiritual and Social Voice.” VCCA Journal Electronic Edition. 1996. 16 November 2002
Conversely, upon investigating the artwork’s factual information such as the painting’s context, the artist’s background, the genre and the school or movement associated with the painting, it is possible to obtain knowledge that combines objective information and subjective opinion, confirming that some degree of objectivity, albeit with our ‘cultural imprint’, is possible as an art observer.
Artistic movements are often categorized by a specific aesthetic. These visual choices are usually a deliberate differentiating reaction to the current culture of art. Though most movements can be categorized by an aesthetic set of rules, such as Cubism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Fauvism, etc… Not all art movements can be defined solely within their visual associations. Nearly all major stylistic shifts in art were based on an ideology as well as a visual language. In the Arts and Crafts movement, the ideas behind the movement were more prevalent than a specific visual style. The Arts and Crafts movement not only changed the way people made objects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it also set into motion an ideological stance that persists today.