Throughout history artists have used various mediums to express their views of the world, some use oils and canvas, some use marble or clay, and others use a camera. Gregory Crewdson uses both a camera and his flawless lighting skills to create beautiful other worldly scenes. In the Article In a lonely place by Gregory Crewdson, Crewdson discusses how his art reflexes the “ideas of beauty, sadness, alienation, and desire.” Crewdson has derived these ideas from a myriad of influences. The most influential of these sources would have to be other artists and Hollywood films.
The light work used in almost all of Crewdson’s pieces is very reminiscent of the unnatural light that embodies the great works of the Baroque period of art. The light appears seemingly from no known source but greatly serves elevate the dramatic themes of the pieces. The light also serves to tie the pieces together. This technique of using the uniting power of light was also used by Edward Hopper.
Edward Hopper was greatly influential on Crewdson. Both artists use their mediums to tell a story in one scene. They use windows, walls, and even doorways to frame their scenes. The scenes are framed in a way that leads the viewer to believe they are “looking in” at the subjects; it gives the artists’ works a voyeuristic quality that is both intriguing and mischievous.
Like William Eggleston, Crewdson takes everyday occurrences and transforms them into something mystical and captivating, often with a hint of the sinister. This is best reflected in Crewdson’s piece “Untitled (boy with hand in drain.)” The scene takes place in a normal bathroom, even the task at first glance appears to be completely normal. A boy with his arm down the drain searching for either an ...
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...de light to show just how magical and sometimes mystical our world can be. His pieces show tranquility that is often masking an underlying and troubling truth. To create these images Crewdson uses his influences from other artists and from cinematic films to embellish his views and images.
Gregory Crewdson once said “I love the experience of cinema- being enveloped in a complete world of another’s imagination. I love the quality of film- how it can capture so richly the color and light of a scene. And I love photography - for what it leaves unsaid for it is from this that we can start to spin our own imagination.” Crewdson accomplishes the both the most intriguing and frustrating aspect of art; he poses a question yet refuses to reveal the answer. It is the unanswerable question that leads the viewer to study the work and spend hours contemplating its meaning.
Johnson, Brooks. Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on their Art.” New York: Aperture Foundation Inc., 2004. Print.
An artwork will consist of different elements that artists bring together to create different forms of art from paintings, sculptures, movies and more. These elements make up what a viewer sees and to help them understand. In the painting Twilight in the Wilderness created by Frederic Edwin Church in 1860 on page 106, a landscape depicting a sun setting behind rows of mountains is seen. In this painting, Church used specific elements to draw the viewer’s attention directly to the middle of the painting that consisted of the sun. Church primarily uses contrast to attract attention, but it is the different aspects of contrast that he uses that makes the painting come together. In Twilight in the Wilderness, Church uses color, rhythm, and focal
In society we are surrounded by images, immersed in a visual world with symbols and meaning created through traditional literary devices, but augmented with the influence of graphics, words, positioning and colour. The images of Peter Goldsworthy’s novel, Maestro (1989) move within these diameters and in many ways the visions of Ivan Sen’s film Beneath Clouds (2002) linger in the same way. Both these texts explore themes of appearance versus reality and influence of setting, by evoking emotion in the responder through their distinctively visual elements.
In cinema, lighting, blocking and panning drastically influence what an audience will notice and take away from a scene. Orson Welles’s 1941 Citizen Kane has numerous examples of effectively using these aspects within mise-en-scène, cinematography and editing to portray the importance of specific events and items in the film. The scene where Kane writes and then publishes his “Declaration of Principles” (37:42-39:42) in the New York Daily Inquirer after buying them focuses on important elements of the film, aiding the audience by combining lighting, blocking and panning to define significant roles and objects that further the movie as a whole.
...wards as the light were to be shining from above. Motion can be seen as people would be talking, writing, and thinking as scholars do. In ‘Judith Decapitating Holofernes’, the work almost looks life-like. There is a lot of detail and has an effectively used shadow usage. The blood that is gushing out of Holofernes neck represents stopped time.
Although both Fragonard’s and David’s work convey different ideals through their style of painting, they are still able to use light in a very similar form. The viewer’s attention is directed on a specific point in the painting through the use of light. Both artists cast a spotlight on the figure or action in the painting that they want the viewer to especially notice. It is what each artist decides to focus on that makes his work is different from the other. A young woman on a swing who enjoys the pleasures of life is clearly where Fragonard wants to direct the viewer’s attention. However, David focuses attention on a male figure, specifically Socrates. How does the use of light help the viewer understand the ideals of each form of art? While Fragonard chooses to focus on a female and David chooses to focus on a male, the viewer now understands how Rococo can be a feminine form of art and Neo-Classicism the opposite. In addition, other stylistic elements like color and form depict how each art form differs from the other. By using all this visual evidence, we will later see how the concept of deciding...
Hopper's work is an unmistakable prologue to American abstract expressionism. The geometrical shadows on the dividers at early afternoon and the nature of the light on the items conjure deliberation. Mark Rothko once said that he never preferred inclining lines in canvases as for their situation they were supported by the light that goes into the spaces. The inclining lines that Rothko alludes to are shadows on the divider made from light, yet past the legitimization is the surface that Hopper accomplishes with his
Though people can look into color and composition, others can still even look into the source of the art itself. Cole goes deeper, delving into the source of the art, looking in particular into the idea of cultural appropriation and the view a person can give others. Though it is good for people to be exposed to different opinions of a group or an object, sometimes people can find it difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the art itself. Sometimes art can be so powerful that its message stays and impacts its audience to the point where the viewer’s image of the subject of the art changes entirely. Cole brings up an important question about art, however. Art has become some kind of media for spreading awareness and even wisdom at times, but in reality, “there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images” (973). Cole might even be implying that Nussbaum’s advertisement can sometimes be the point of some media, and that sometimes the different genres of art can just be to make someone with a particular interest happy. One more point that Cole makes is that “[a]rt is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when it comes to telling other people’s stories.” (974) Truthfully, awareness and other like-concepts are difficult to keep going when a person or a group is not directly involved.
In this paper, we will focus on examining Vincent’s painting, Starry Night. The paper will begin with a short introduction about Vincent where an analysis will be conducted to explore more into the painting. Subsequently, the paper will move on to explain how Starry Night impacted the wider histories of art and the period where it was created. Lastly, The paper will further examine two accounts or interpretations of Starry Night from art historians.
Imagine pondering into a reconstruction of reality through only the visual sense. Without tasting, smelling, touching, or hearing, it may be hard to find oneself in an alternate universe through a piece of art work, which was the artist’s intended purpose. The eyes serve a much higher purpose than to view an object, the absorptions of electromagnetic waves allows for one to endeavor on a journey and enter a world of no limitation. During the 15th century, specifically the Early Renaissance, Flemish altarpieces swept Europe with their strong attention to details. Works of altarpieces were able to encompass significant details that the audience may typically only pay a cursory glance. The size of altarpieces was its most obvious feat but also its most important. Artists, such as Jan van Eyck, Melchior Broederlam, and Robert Campin, contributed to the vast growth of the Early Renaissance by enhancing visual effects with the use of pious symbols. Jan van Eyck embodied the “rebirth” later labeled as the Renaissance by employing his method of oils at such a level that he was once credited for being the inventor of oil painting. Although van Eyck, Broederlam, and Campin each contributed to the rise of the Early Renaissance, van Eyck’s altarpiece Adoration of the Mystic Lamb epitomized the artworks produced during this time period by vividly incorporating symbols to reconstruct the teachings of Christianity.
The vast influence of observation was highly apparent in paintings during the Scientific Revolution particularly for artists like Jan Vermeer (Fiero, 120-121). According to, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Vermeer was intensely preoccupied with the behavior of light and other optical effects such as sudden recessions and changes of focus (Liedtke).” In Vermeer’s painting The Geographer, I think he pays attention very well to the light in this particular painting. It is obvious the source of the light is coming from the window next to the man in the painting. He captured the way light hits various objects in the room and the shadows they create in a very realistic manner. It is also, apparent Vermeer’s precise technical abilities and careful observation to everyday human activity that support in the realism of this particular painting. I like how he captures this individual briefly taking a moment away from his work to possibly double check something as someone would do to check their own accuracy. Jan Vermeer captured everyday life in his impressive realism paintings, which showed people a different world that existed around them. Similar to, the art influencing different viewpoints of the world was new literature of Enlightenment
In the mid 1800’s realism was developed as a style of painting to replicate the world as it was seen in a traditional artistic style. This allowed for a new style of art to be created that was based of a real moment or scene but to forget the traditional artistic laws such as distinct lines and forms. Approaching art from this impressionistic view Monet’s painted “Impression, Sunrise” bringing to life a natural scene of a hazy harbor using quick, short brush strokes and defining uses of color and natural light. Van Gough’s “Starry Night” uses similar impressionistic styles to paint a natural scene using vibrant contrasting colors, yet he embellishes the scene to create art that in not merely a landscape but a piece of self expression and shifted
René Magritte was a surrealist artist that created many beautiful works of art. He was well known for a number of captivating paintings. Magritte depicted mundane objects in unorthodox situations, and his work is well known for its unconventional perceptions of reality. Magritte is famous for a lot of unsettling works such as The Son of Man, Le Blanc Seing and the infamous pipe that is not a pipe in The Treachery of Images. Also, in the 1950s, Magritte created a series of works he titled The Empire of Lights also known as L’Empire des lumières or, The Dominion of Light in which Magritte uses the conflicting settings of day and night to create a wonderfully but unsettling feeling of confusion when first glancing upon the painting. He creates
Starting with visual elements I saw lines, implied depth, and texture. I see lines by him using lines created by an edge. Each line is curved not straight but it works with the piece. By using this he creates the piece to make it whole. He uses many curved lines within the painting I don’t know if there is a straight line in the whole thing. The next element I saw was implied depth. Using linear perspective you can see the mountains but they look smaller than the rest of the piece. They are the vanishing point in the back making it look as if you can walk down and they will get closer and closer to you. The last element that I saw was texture. They talk about Van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night having texture through a two- dimensional surface, in which this painting has that similar feel. Van Gogh uses thick brush stokes on his paintings to show his feelings. There is actually a name for this called, Impasto,
If we go back beyond Lumière Brothers’ projection of their cinematography in Paris over Christmas 1895, which is too straightforward birth narration of cinema; ancient visual forms like Egyptian hieroglyphics or pre-cinematic technologies of image capture and projection, known as magic lanterns, employing a series of lenses and light sources, were early proof of humanity mesmerised by the play and tricks of light and shades.