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Early 20th century art
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The nineteenth century produced a great number of art works from such artists as Pierre August Cot and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Two major themes in these works include images fabricated from the real world and mirror images of everyday situations in life. Cot produced a pair of star struck lovers sharing a moment together in a hidden dugout enclosed by trees and shrubs while Renior recreated a midsummer’s day with a family enjoying an outing downtown. Each of these painting possesses an iconography in which the artist has contrived within his mind as the main theme to his work. This image is not intended to influence the viewer’s individual observation, but to embellish the work’s particular symbolism.
Cot was a wonderfully gifted painter who applied remarkable use of proportional status when creating a two-dimensional painting. The only disadvantage about Cot is that his name is not well known. When this occurs, an artist and his work lack the media voice it needs to posses in order to advance among the inflections of those who do the observing. Therefore personal information is difficult to come across. His work can be classified under representational art. This form of art uses natural images that look very much like images in the natural world. His portfolio of artwork has not received the noteworthy recognition it so deserves.
The Storm, created in 1880, is his only painting to have received praise from the world of art. To showcase another masterpiece completed by Cot, I chose to compare and contrast the composition of Le Printemps . This was also created in the same era and was influenced by images fabricated from the real world. The composition of this painting is quite complete; it includes actual lines, organic shapes, and the illusion of light.
Le Printemps grants the subconscious mind to drift into a fantasy-like state and the illusion of mortality merges with the illusion of realism. Cot
portrays the young couple on a swing as his major element. The entire picture is based upon this element and with actual lines, the ropes of the swing and the immediate surrounding environment are defined as background major elements.
Two large ropes are attached to a small wooden plank, containing the man and woman. Indentations can be seen where the man is holding on and the illusion of movement is understood. For the environmental elements, the large tree symbolizes the relationship it has with the swing as well as the direction in which the couple is swaying.
The middle is the couple pushing their child and they are surrounded my much activity as they walk in the neighborhood. One of the girls that are jumping rope has her back towards the viewer with the thin but extra-long lines of rope they jump through. Lawrence use sharp and round lines throughout the painting to indicate the shapes that are seen in everyday life a Harlem resident. The lines also represent the movement of each of the people shown. Shadows created depth that is splattered across the painting and also how each of the people in the painting is positioned gave a realistic type of feeling to the painting. The showdowns provided in the painting also give off the time of the day those activities such like these could have been happening. Lawrence used repetition and patterns to create the rhythm of this city scene (“Jacob Lawrence: Exploring Stories”). The repetition and patterning in the painting tells how the activity is daily not only that particular day. The use of complementary colors which was both primary (yellow, blue, and red) and secondary (green and orange) brought the life to the painting. The colors or hues made negative spaces
Claude-Joseph Vernet’s oil on canvas painting titled Mountain Landscape with an Approaching Storm was created in 1775, and it is currently located in the European Art Galleries (18th- 19th Century North) 2nd Floor at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is a large-scale painting with overall dimensions of 64 1/2 x 103 1/4 in. (1 m 63.83 cm x 2 m 62.26 cm) and frame dimensions of 76 1/8 x 115 1/4 x 4 3/4 in. (1 m 93.36 cm x 2 m 92.74 cm x 12.07 cm). Vernet creates this piece by painting elements from nature and using organic shapes in order to create atmospheric effects, weather and different moods. This piece primarily depicts a landscape with a rocky mountainous terrain and villagers scrambling to an upcoming storm.
The visual elements in this painting are shape, color and light. The shapes and contours of the mother and child are life like.
Besides bright or dim colors, and fine or rough brush strokes, artists use centralized composition to convey their interpretations in "The Acrobat's Family with a Monkey," "Amercian Gothic," "The Water-Seller," and "The Third of May,1808.”
Two of the most extensively analyzed works of art are Diego Velasquez's Las Meninas and Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini Double Portrait. Both of these artist's talent won them recognition not only during their lifetime but after as well. Both Velasquez and Van Eyck have a justly earned title as the most talented artists of their respective times. A detailed examination of the details and intricacies of these artist's respective masterpieces, their similarities, and what sets them apart not just from each other but from other paintings from their time period and style, will lead the viewer to a better understanding of the mentalities of these gifted artists and how they transcend their respective genres and contemporaries to create their own artistic identities.
Watteau’s Enseigne de Gersaint is one of the artist’s most fully realized works. It is ambitious and sophisticated in size and execution, in visual economy, and in content. It is consequently only masquerading under the guise of a signboard, a categori...
“Renoir’s particular ambition was to paint works in joyful hues from which all trace of narrative is excluded” 1, quotes Jean LeyMarie author of Renoir; And truer words about Renoir’s work can not be spoken. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French born painter whose collaborations with other notable artists, among them Manet, Delacroix, and Monet 2, helped to influence and shape the budding Impressionist movement. The renowned painter began his humble upbringing in Limoges, France in 1841; The son of a tailor, his parents found him work with a porcelain decorator, which was the beginning of his lengthy career as an artist, and perhaps were his passion for translucent and luscious colors were established 3. While Renoir is well known for his paintings of women, couples, and various other human subjects, his work on flowers is equally as impressive. The work this essay will discuss is the painting Chrysanthemums, painted in 1881-82. Currently located in the Ryerson Collection in Gallery 201 of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Fragonard was a product of the late Rococo period in the early eighteenth century a period that consisted of pastoral images of both men and women participating in games, having lunch together or a passionate scene between two people. Rococo created for the rich of France, consisted mainly of two types gallant and libertines. Fragonard’s paintings were mostly gallant which represented love as a playful game. This can be seen in his two paintings Blindmans Buff (fig. 1) and The Swing (fig. 2). These included interactions with figures in the paintings that suggested courtship; in this case it would be the pastel colors that he used which created a more playful look for the figures. In his 1775 version of The Swing (fig. 2) Fragonard presented a vision of nature and shows tremendous growth from his previous work painted during his second trip to Italy. This version is less erotic compared to his previous version of The Swing (fig. 3). The Swing (fig. 2) bares many similarities to some of his other works none more than Blindmans Buff (fig. 1) that was painted at the same time as The Swing. Both paintings shared various similarities and featured playful scenes of love.
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
This painting, measuring about six-by-seven feet, is a massive work that draws viewers directly to it once they enter the room in which its displayed. It is not covered by any glass and is in a very well-lit area, thus it allows viewers to stand as close as possible to see the details of how Peter Paul Rubens handled his medium. Looking at the painting from a photograph is much different than viewing it up close and in person, because when looking at a photograph, one cannot see the texture of the paint that gives the painting its very delicate, unique, and realistic quality. The work appears to be in very good condition because most of the colors are still very rich and vibrant, such as Adonis’ red garment (Rubens). Although one cannot tell when directly viewing the piece, it has been said that previous use of radiographs for further analysis on the painting uncovered that initially, “Rubens gave A...
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…
The French 1884 oil on canvas painting The Song of the Lark by Jules-Adolphe Breton draws grasps a viewer’s attention. It draws an observer in by its intense but subtle subject matter and by the luminous sun in the background. Without the incandescent sun and the thoughtful look of the young woman, it would just be a bland earth-toned farm landscape. However, Breton understood what to add to his painting in order to give it drama that would instantly grab an onlooker’s interest.
From the creation of art to its modern understanding, artists have strived to perform and perfect a photo realistic painting with the use of complex lines, blend of colors, and captivating subjects. This is not the case anymore due to the invention of the camera in 1827, since it will always be the ultimate form of realism. Due to this, artists had the opportunities to branch away from the classical formation of realism, and venture into new forms such as what is known today as modern art. In the examination of two well known artists, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock, we can see that the artist doesn’t only intend for the painting to be just a painting, but more of a form of telling a scene through challenging thoughts, and expressing of the artists emotion in their creation.
In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugéne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason.
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,