Origins In October of 1964, an article in Time Magazine coined the phrase "Optical Art". Op was recognized and popularized in the United States, and spread to Europe specifically France and Italy where it achieved critical acclaim (“Op art – Art Term”). It emerged in the 1960s as an abstract style of art that creates the illusion of movement through mathematical precision, contrast, color and abstract shapes (“Op Art”). Ops greatest success was in 1965, when the Museum of Modern Art exhibited the style in The Responsive Eye show, which showcased 123 paintings and sculptures by various artists such as Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Jesus Rafael Soto, and Josef Albers (Op-Art.co.uk). Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, and Jesus Rafael Soto where key Op artists that dazzled museum …show more content…
Op compositions create visual tension. It is flat, static, and two-dimensional, but the human eye tells the brain that the object moves. Op Art is not reality. Op Art is abstract. Artists do not attempt to depict anything we know in real life. Op Art is not chance. The elements picked for maximum effect in each color, line, and shape in the overall composition. It takes a great deal of thought to successfully create artwork in the Op style. Consider most of it was hand done, at large scales. Op Art has specific techniques. They used perspective and juxtaposition of color to achieve effective optical illusions. The color may be chromatic (hues) or achromatic (black, white, or gray), or bold, complementary and high-contrast for a full visual experience for the viewer. . Op Art does not blend colors. The lines and shapes are defined. Artists do not use shading. Two high-contrast colors placed next to each other to trick the eye into seeing movement. Op Art uses negative space. The positive and negative spaces in a composition make the illusion plausible. Op artists used negative space as they do the positive. Color
Gallery 19 of the Museum of Modern Art features Pop Art trailblazers of the early 1960s, ranging from Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl with Ball” to Andy Warhol’s “Gold Marilyn Monroe.” Alongside these emblematic works of art, there hangs a more simplistic piece: a six foot square canvas with three yellow letters, entitled “OOF.” The work of art, created by Ed Ruscha in 1962, is a painting that leaves little room for subjective interpretation as does the majority of his work. Ruscha represented the culture in the 1960s through his contributions to the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, efforts to redefine what it meant for a painting to be fine art, and interpretation of the Space Race.
...ssionism and the work they display are different. The texture, balance, and the use of color are unique to their own personality and experiences.
New York City is known for its extensive collection of art museums ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which is usually the most renowned to others such as the the Solomon R. Guggenheim or the Whitney Museum of American Art which are popular in their own rights. This abundance of art museums makes the city very attractive for foreign visitors. However, this abundance of choice can overwhelm even the most informed visitors who have a finite amount of time to explore what the city has to offer. Although all of the above mentioned museums have great collections of their own, the often unheralded Frick Collections might trump them all in terms of exceptional works which include some of the world's most celebrated Western artists, such as Goya, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, and Renoir.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) had three different artists work on display. It was split up into three different rooms the first room was Design 99 To Much of a Good Thing and in the next room is Latoya Ruby Frazier Mother May I and in the last room was Jef Geys Woodward Avenue. The art that was on display was not traditional art work. All of the artist’s work displayed in the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit was out of the box thinking. The flow in each exhibit made it easy to move from one piece of art work to another piece of work.
Many might have been working on Good Friday, but many others were enjoying The Frist Museum of Visual Arts. A museum visitor visited this exhibit on April 14, 2017 early in the morning. The time that was spent at the art museum was approximately two hours and a half. The first impression that one received was that this place was a place of peace and also a place to expand the viewer’s imagination to understand what artists were expressing to the viewers. The viewer was very interested in all the art that was seen ,but there is so much one can absorb. The lighting in the museum was very low and some of the lighting was by direction LED lights. The artwork was spaciously
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’
where people decided to reproduce art as a picture of what was going on. Instead, this artistic
Robertson, Jean, and Craig McDaniel. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. New York:, Oxford UP, 2013.
Mark Rothko is recognized as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and during his lifetime was touted as a leading figure in postwar American painting. He is one of the outstanding figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the creators of Color Field Painting. As a result of his contribution of great talent and the ability to deliver exceptional works on canvas one of his final projects, the Rothko Chapel offered to him by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil, would ultimately anchor his name in the art world and in history. Without any one of the three, the man, the work on canvas, or the dream, the Rothko Chapel would never have been able to exist for the conceptualization of the artist, the creations on canvas and the architectural dynamics are what make the Rothko Chapel a product of brilliance.
focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that
in the physical world we did not see the real object we only saw a shadow of it. The art of
An artwork that stood out in the exhibition was School of Beauty, School of Culture (2012) . It portrays women and two children standing in a beauty salon and school with green walls and a red floor. The walls have posters promoting black beauty with one that reads, “it’s your hair” and under this statement are the words love, dark and lovely. There are mirrors against the wall and in the reflection a camera flash is shown from a person who is taking a picture of those in the salon. Red, black, and green, the colors of the Afro-American flag, border the top of the wall, symbolizing the black power movement . The focal point of this piece is a woman who stands in the center, posing for the person taking a picture. To her right, towards the floor, is a “floating” head of a white woman which is compressed and 2-dimensional. This is a tribute to Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533) because in Holbein’s piece, there is a 2-dimensional skull painted in the same fashion. Just how the skull in The Ambassadors is a reminder of death, the head in Marshall’s
Uses a wide variety of primary colours including red, blue, yellow, white and black with the bend day dot technique to create and illusion of other colours in the painting. An example of this is on the plane when Lichtenstein uses reds and blues to create a grey effect. Lichtenstein also uses a black outline around most objects in the artwork including the plane, explosion, smoke and fire. Whaam! uses both Geometric and organic shapes. The primary shapes are shown in the fire and smoke. The primary shapes are lively, erratic, flickering, random and explosive. The geometric shapes are used in the plane to show that it is man made and also on the star symbol. They are both sharp and smooth. The composition of the artwork is symmetrical and the artwork is evenly balanced on both sides. The most prominent contrast of the artwork is the black and white and these colours are also used to outline the shapes. The last principle is the movement and rhythm, the missile is used to show direction of line and the flame appears like its flickering and dancing die to the irregular shape and variation of colour.
Abstract Expressionist artists believed that the subconscious mind could recognise and respond to the emotions portrayed in their paintings. To aid this absorption of feeling, blocks of colour and simple forms were used extensively. `Abstract expressionism's avowed purpose is to express the self to the self.' (Page 2, David and Cecil)
...e others look very real and shaded. The landscape goes back in the distance and is done with great perspective but some areas aren't so deeply painted as others which if looked closely upon can throw a viewer on what type of painting it should be considered. One of the Magi has such detail and depth in one view of his wardrobe that it looks like a picture but then you look at the front surface and it's almost perfectly flat.