Key: Anything in purple is a quote

What was one of the reasons artists stopped focusing on realism?

The key reason to why artists stopped focusing on realism is due to the invention of the camera. The camera could already capture a scene in the upmost quality of realism and so artists began to no longer see the point. Art could take hours, days, weeks or months to complete and this new piece of technology could encapsulate an event in mere seconds, how could they compete? Not only this but Artist's required a heavy sum of money for their work and of course in the invention of the camera, this seems almost ridiculous to pay for. Artist's lost commissions from the rich however their customers where still looking for vibrant colour and expression that the camera could not yet convey. Pictures could only be taken in black and white but that could soon change and so artists sought out new styles of art to emphasise the mood and emotion of a setting.

who was the first artist to focus on capturing emotion and light in painting rather than capture realism?

The first artist to focus on capturing emotion and light in painting rather than capture realism was J.M.W Turner. He was one of the most pivotal English artist that had an art with such profound and immutable creativity.

‘The delight I have experienced, during the greater part of my life, from the exercise of your talent and the pleasure of your society.’
Walter Fawkes to Turner, 1819

In spite of Turner’s working class up bringing, he appears to have drawn the attention of numerous well heeled, wealthy, aristocratic contributors, many of whom regarded him as a friend and embraced him into their homes.

During his early twenties, Turner had been taken up by countless prime collectors. They assisted him by commissioning work as well as permitting him to study their collections, stored in places like Stourhead in Wiltshire, (the estate of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, a member of a powerful banking family), and the ‘gothic’ Fonhill Abbey, also in Wiltshire, built by the fabulously wealthy and eccentric collector, William Beckford.

Important support also came from the marginally less wealthy Walter Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, near Leeds in Yorkshire, who he grew to develop a close friendship with. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Turner also came to be a regular visitor at Petworth in Sussex, home of the third Earl of Egremont. He gave Turner a studio of his own at the house, where he could work undisturbed, producing oil paintings of the park and more than a hundred watercolours of the interior of the house and its guests.

Short Name:

Turner

Date of Birth:

23 Apr 1775

Date of Death:

19 Dec 1851

Focus:

Paintings

Mediums:

Oil, Watercolor, Prints

Subjects:

Landscapes, Scenery

Art Movement:

Romanticism

Hometown:

London, United Kingdom

Later in his life, many of the patrons who had supported Turner and contributed to his rise to fame had died, and by the 1840s he had as many critics as admirers. His late style, with its energetic brushwork and relative lack of descriptive details, combined with the uncompromising nature of his modern subject matter, surprised even some of his most devoted patrons. Critics frequently ridiculed his work, accusing him of extravagance and exaggeration, and seemingly outdoing each other in their comparisons of his pictures to lobster salad, soapsuds, whitewash, and beetroot or mustard. Nevertheless, he was still, in his later years, the most celebrated painter in England and also had a notable reputation abroad.

From the later 1830s onwards, Turner gained a most ardent admirer in John Ruskin whose book, Modern Painters, published from 1843-60, was important in the development of Turner’s reputation. Ruskin was among the few contemporaries who admired Turner’s late style. Ruskin argued, that rather than being extravagant and unrealistic, Turner’s work was true to nature. He became the standard-bearer of a new generation of Turner admirers, usually professional, middle class or newly rich, who embraced his work for its modernity.

Select one of his images and comment on it

The Bay of Baiae with Apollo and the Sibyl

Joseph Mallord William Turner

J. M.W. Turner began his artistic career at a very young age and his success was almost immediate, selling his first painting at just 12 years old. Turner continued to accomplish significant achievements at a remarkably young age, some that people with much more experience would never have the privilege of enjoying.

Throughout his career Turner remained highly sought-after and he acquired a very large fortune from his commissions. He is remembered as an influential painter and is said to be the best landscapist of the 19th century. Turner was also a key inspiration for the Impressionist movement. He is most well-known for his original interpretations of bringing light and color to his paintings.

Turner displayed an evident evolution in his painting style throughout his long career. Though he stayed true to the genre of landscape, as his career progressed he began to pay less attention to the details of objects and landscape and more attention to the effects of light and color. He became increasingly fascinated with natural and atmospheric elements.

Style:
Early Years:
In Turner's early paintings he executed dramatic, Romantic subjects by emphasizing luminosity, and atmosphere. One can observe a more precise attention paid to architectural and natural details in his early years, as compared to his later years.

During this time, he played around with all the styles of landscape composition including historical, architectural, mountainous, pastoral and marine. His series of 71 etchings, inspired from his existing paintings and watercolors, show all of these styles (1807-1819).

Middle Years:
Turner's painting style shifted during the 1880s. His painting became more luminous and atmospheric. He began to focus more on color than the details of the actual topography. St. Mawes at the Pilchard Season (1812) is an example.

Frosty Morning (1813) is based solely on the effects of light. As time progressed he paid less attention to specific details and more to atmospheric quality created by the natural elements, such as the sun.

Advanced Years:
Still, less and less attention is given to detail, while his canvas now begin to assume a suggestion of movement. His Norham Castle, Sunrise and With A Boat Between Headlands are both examples of slightly brushed canvases, mere color notations.

Some of his more famous later paintings, he approaches the subject of modern technology. He pays a tribute to the passing age of sail ships that were soon to be replaced by steam-powered vessels. He moves away from marine subject matter, and focuses now on the railway in Rain, Steam, and Speed-the Great Western Railway (1844). This is a prime example of how Turner focused mainly on colors and the idea of fluidity through his whirling colors.

Method:
Turner's watercolor paintings provided a later influence on his technique with oil paint. He started to use oil paint in a translucent manner, similar to the effect of water color, which helped produce his original style.

Before painting a vast majority of his work, as many of his subjects (mainly water) changed so quickly, he had to do preliminary sketches. He later turned his sketches in to watercolor or oil paintings.

What movement was "trying to capture feeling or experience rather than accurate depiction."

Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of colour and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant.

The Term "Impressionism" The movement gained its name after the hostile Frenchcritic Louis Leroy, reviewing the first major Impressionist exhibition, seized on the title of Claude Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise (1873), and accused the group of painting nothing but impressions.

The term 'impressionism' comes from a painting by Claude Monet, which he showed in an exhibition with the name Impression, soleil levant ("Impression, Sunrise"). An art critic called Louis Leroy saw the exhibition and wrote a review in which he said that all the paintings were just "impressions". The word stuck.

Representative Artists: Edouard Manet Eugene Boudin Frederic Bazille Alfred Sisley Edgar DegasPierre-Auguste Renoir Mary Cassatt Camille Pissarro Claude Monet Walter Richard Sickert Berthe Morisot

A French 19th century art movement which marked a momentous break from tradition in European painting. The Impressionists incorporated new scientific research into the physics of colour to achieve a more exact representation of colour and tone.

The sudden change in the look of these paintings was brought about by a change in methodology: applying paint in small touches of pure colour rather than broader strokes, and painting out of doors to catch a particular fleeting impression of colour and light. The result was to emphasise the artist’s perception of the subject matter as much as the subject itself.

Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of color and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant. The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colors. Some of the greatest impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.

Manet influenced the development of impressionism. He painted everyday objects. Pissaro and Sisley painted the French countryside and river scenes. Degas enjoyed painting ballet dancers and horse races. Morisot painted women doing everyday things. Renoir loved to show the effect of sunlight on flowers and figures. Monet was interested in subtle changes in the atmosphere.

While the term Impressionist covers much of the art of this time, there were smaller movements within it, such as Pointillism, Art Nouveau and Fauvism.

Pointilism was developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy when seen from a distance. The equal size dots never quite merge in the viewer’s perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one experiences on a hot and sunny day. One of the leading exponents was Seurat to whom the term was first applied in regard to his painting ‘La Grand Jette’ (1886).

Seurat was part of the Neo-Impressionist movement which included Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. The word Divisionism describes the theory they followed while the actual process was known as pointillism.The effects of this technique, if used well, were often far more striking than the conventional approach of mixing colours together.

The Neo-Impressionist movement was brief yet influential. The term Divisionism was also the name of an Italian version of Neo-Impressionism in the 1890s and early 1900s, and one can trace a line to Futurism which was founded in 1909.

What did Cezanne say that everything can be reduced to?

Full Name:
Paul Cézanne
Short Name:
Cezanne
Date of Birth:
19 Jan 1839
Date of Death:
22 Oct 1906
Focus:
Paintings
Mediums:
Gouache, Oil, Watercolor, Other
Subjects:
Figure, Fantasy, Landscapes
Art Movement:
Post-Impressionism
Hometown:
Aix-en-Provence, France

Paul Cézanne was a nineteenth century artist whose work was misunderstood by his contemporaries. A shy man who worked a great deal in Aix-en-Provence, the home town where he was born and raised, Cézanne moved Paris when he was young and, despite his father's wishes, pursued a career in art rather than law.

Cézanne was a modern artist whose work was a precursor for Cubism and Fauvism. His compositions were usually dark in tone and he often chose to work inside rather than en plein air.

Cézanne didn't receive critical acclaim until very late in his life and after his first solo exhibition. He never formed close friendships with many of his fellow artists but before he died there was a great deal of interest in his works.

Paul Cézanne's modern style and technique was avant-garde and therefore misunderstood for many years. Even the other breakthrough artists of his era, the Impressionists, were dismissive of Cézanne's progressive style and method. After the first Impressionist exhibition many of them petitioned to have him banned from the other shows because Cézanne's compositions were too controversial.

Cézanne worked with thickly placed layers of paint and undefined forms and attempted to simplify everything into shapes that could be broken down. Although he was close with the Impressionist Camille Pissarro, and influenced by Pissarro's en plein air style of painting Cézanne was not an Impressionist. He was a highly modern artist who did not fit into any one category of painting style. His style was a precursor for the fauvism and cubism movements.

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air.

Early years:
Paul Cézanne was born to a wealthy family in Aix-en-Provence, France. His father was a successful banker whose riches assisted Cézanne throughout his life and his mother was a romantic who supported her son's career.

In 1852 Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon where he met his good friends Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. The three were famously close for a long period of time. After a classical education in Aix-en-Provence Paul Cézanne's father wished him to become a lawyer. However after attending law school for two years (whilst receiving art lessons) he could not bear the thought of continuing his education and left for Paris.

In Paris Paul Cézanne spent a large period of his time with Émile Zola, a French writer. He enrolled at the Académie Suisse, which is where he met his mentor, Camille Pissarro. After five months of trying to work as a painter in Paris, France, to no critical success, Cézanne returned to Aix-en-Provence at his father's request.

In his home town Paul Cézanne enrolled at the local art school and attempted to work as a banker but was also unsuccessful in this venture. Consequently in 1862 he returned to Paris to work as a painter. Disappointingly he failed the entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but continued to work between Paris and Aix-en-Provence and submitted many of his works to the Salon jury.

By this time he was good friends with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and had met his future wife. However, he also had a long-term mistress - Hortense Fiquet - and in the Prussian war Cézanne and Fiquet absconded from the Paris and stayed in L'Estaque, France, until 1871.

Middle years:
In 1872 Paul Cézanne was living in Pontoise, France with Hortense Fiquet and his newborn son Paul (whom his father did not know about). Cézanne was still enthusiastically working on his paintings and was spending time outside with his idol, Camille Pissarro.

In Pontoise Paul Cézanne met Dr Paul Gachet, who was an admirer of his work and thus spent the years of 1872 to 1874 living at Gachet's home in Auvers-sur-Oise.

In 1873 Cézanne met Vincent van Gogh and in 1874 he exhibited at the Impressionist's first showcase. Cézanne's work was highly criticized along with the Impressionist's paintings but Cezanne's paintings were disliked by the other painters too. Cézanne's compositions from this period of working close to Camille Pissarro reveal that he was slightly influenced by the Impressionist's en plein air style of painting.

In 1877 Cézanne showcased 16 of his paintings to a great deal of scorn from critics and vowed never again to show his work at an Impressionist's exhibition. Although still influenced by Pissarro's Impressionist style Cézanne continued to work inside his studio and didn't believe in always painting from nature.

In the early 1880s Cezanne started to move even further away from the Impressionist's style of painting. He fell out with Emile Zola in 1886 because of his interpretation of Zola's novel, L'Oeuvre, and the two never saw each other again. In 1886 Cezanne married his mistress and inherited a large estate from his father, meaning he never had to worry about making money from his art.

Advanced years:
In November 1895 Paul Cézanne held his first solo exhibition in Paris and Ambroise Vollard bought every artwork. He then moved to Aix-en-Provence permanently.

In the early 1900s his work was shown all around Europe to wide critical acclaim but throughout his life Cézanne was shy and hostile towards other painters and he maintained this attitude. He died in October 1906 of pneumonia and is buried in the cemetery in Aix-en-Provence.

Cubism is supposed to allow you allow you to see many view points at once. Find an image by Picasso and comment whether this is true.

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907/08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque who aimed to bring different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted

Cubism was one of the most influential styles of the twentieth century. It is generally agreed to have begun around 1907 with Picasso’s celebrated painting Demoiselles D’Avignon which included elements of cubist style. The name ‘cubism’ seems to have derived from a comment made by the critic Louis Vauxcelles who, on seeing some of Georges Braque’s paintings exhibited in Paris in 1908, described them as reducing everything to ‘geometric outlines, to cubes’.

Cubism opened up almost infinite new possibilities for the treatment of visual reality in art and was the starting point for many later abstract styles including constructivism and neo-plasticism.

By breaking objects and figures down into distinct areas or planes, the artists aimed to show different viewpoints at the same time and within the same space and so suggest their three dimensional form. In doing so they also emphasized the two-dimensional flatness of the canvas, instead of creating the illusion of depth. This marked a revolutionary break with the European tradition, which had dominated representation from the Renaissance onwards, of creating the illusion of real space from a fixed viewpoint using devices such as linear perspective.

Cubism was partly influenced by the late work of Paul Cézanne in which he can be seen to be painting things from slightly different points of view. Pablo Picasso was also inspired by African tribal masks which are highly stylised, or non-naturalistic, but nevertheless present a vivid human image. ‘A head’, said Picasso, ‘is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth, which can be distributed in any way you like’.

What did Photorealism develop in response to?

The name Photorealism (also known as Hyperrealism or Superrealism) was coined in reference to those artists whose work depended heavily on photographs, which they often projected onto canvas allowing images to be replicated with precision and accuracy. The exactness was often aided further by the use of an airbrush, which was originally designed to retouch photographs. The movement came about within the same period and context asConceptual art, Pop Art, and Minimalism and expressed a strong interest in realism in art, over that of idealism and abstraction. Flourishing during the 1970s, Photorealism engages the Marxist critic Walter Benjamin's influential treatise, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," (1936) which attempts to position art within the sphere of mass media. Among several male practitioners of Photorealism there is an interest in themes of machinery and objects of industry such as trucks, motorcycles, cars, and even gumball machines, whereas Audrey Flack, the sole female practitioner, infuses her works with greater emotionality and the transience of life.

To a degree not previously accomplished, Photorealism complicates the notion of realism by successfully mixing together that which is real with that which is unreal. While the image on the canvas is recognizable and carefully delineated to suggest that it is accurate, the artist based their work upon photographs rather than direct observation. Therefore, their canvases remain distanced from reality factually and metaphorically.

Many Photorealists adamantly insist that their works, which are laden with such mass and consumer culture icons as trucks, fast food restaurants, and mechanical toys, are notcommunicative of social criticism or commentary. However, it is hard to deny that these works are recognizably American. At times, the actual work rather than the artist's words is our most useful guide. In this manner, there is the contrast between the reality and primacy of the word or text, over the visual within our society.

Since the advent of photography in the early 19th-century artists have used the camera as a tool in picture making; however, artists would never reveal in paint their dependency on photographs as to do so was seen as "cheating". In contrast, Photorealists acknowledge the modern world's mass production and proliferation of photographs, and they do not deny their dependence on photographs. In fact, several artists attempt to ape the affects that photography, rather than the vision of the eye, such as blurriness, multiple-viewpoints, because they favor the aesthetic and look. Therefore, while the resulting image is realistic, it is simultaneously one-stage away from reality by its dependence on the reproduced image. These works question traditional artistic methods, as well as the differences between reality and artificiality.

The representation of light, as well as the interaction of light and color together has concerned artists throughout the ages. By using slide machines to project images onto bare canvas Photorealism for the first time unites color and light together as one element. The capturing of light is most especially evident in the highly reflective surfaces of steel and chrome.

Photorealists, along with some practitioners of Pop art, reintroduced the importance of process and deliberate planning over that of improvisation and automatism, into the making of art, draftsmanship, and exacting brushwork. In other words, the traditional techniques of academic art are again of great significance, and painstaking craftsmanship is prized after decades of the spontaneous, accidental, and improvisational.

Beyond Caravaggio

What do you think defines the style of Caravaggio?

Chiaroscuro (English pronunciation: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/; Italian: [ˌkjaroˈskuːro]; Italian for light-dark) in art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.

One art historian famously said that Caravaggio put the"oscuro" in chiaroscuro. His paintings are almost always recognizable for the dramatic contrast between an intensely dark and somber background and an interest in playing with the effects of light.

Caravaggio's style of painting is easily recognizable for its realism, intense chiaroscuro and the artist's emphasis on co-extensive space.

Following the evolution of Caravaggio's paintings is almost like a visual history of his life: from his simple, humble beginnings in his paintings of genre scenes, still-lifes and using himself or his roommate as a model, to his meteoric rise to success around 1600 and his large-scale, magnificent commissions, to the darkest of paintings during his last years as a murderous fugitive.

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.

Abstract Expressionism preceded Tachisme, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Fluxus, Pop Art, Minimalism, Postminimalism, Neo-expressionism, and the other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements that evolved.

The Abstract Expressionism movement began in the 1940s in New York City after World War II. However, the first real Abstract Art was painted earlier by some Expressionists, especially Kandinsky in the early 1900s.

The abstract expressionists were mostly based in New York City, and also became known as the New York school. The name evokes their aim to make art that while abstract was also expressive or emotional in its effect. They were inspired by the surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind, and by the automatism of artist Joan Miró.

Essay: Did camera kill art?

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