The Exam!

This blog post is about “The Exam” we were assigned to do. Basically we didn’t have to write a blog post about it but I decided to do it anyway!

High Modernism: Make two photos of yourself.  In each photo, pose with a designed object that displays the tendencies of High Modernist design- one that you feel is a good design, and one that you feel is bad design.  Write in order to carefully explain your responses. Include citations references as needed.

High Modernism, Answer 1/2, A Good Design

This is a real guitar made with actual LEGO bricks. I was really surprised when I first saw this guitar at a dinner party at a friend’s house. The first question that came into my mind was: “Does this actually work? Can you play anything with it?” Apparently one of the owners’s hobbies is making rare and sophisticated LEGO objects.

Lego itself has a simple and excellent design. You can combine the blocks to make new things with them. A quite simple design that primarily was invented to challenge kids’ creativity, the blocks have the potential to be used to construct more detailed and complicated objects that can even be functional. With principles of science, math, and physics, my friend mapped out this guitar and built it.

Overall, this guitar is a well-designed High Modern piece. It looks good and appealing, it is made from simple parts, and it is functional!

High Modernism, Answer 2/2, A Bad Design

Here we have my roommate’s flat screen monitor that looks really simplified and nicely designed. But as a matter of fact it has a major design flaw. He literally said he hates it! It is deceiving at the first glance because when it comes to functionality it is not as good as it looks. Why? Because the buttons haven’t been placed in a functional spot; every time you need to use them you need to pick up the monitor and tilt it. Better functionality has been sacrificed for a better look; the designer placed the buttons somewhere a little bit more hidden to give the design a more cool and sleek look.

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Minimalism: You will make two images.

Image 1: Open a copy of your favorite magazine. Scan or photograph one of the spreads. Now, reduce, reduce, reduce- until you have a minimalist composition that captures the only the essential visual elements. No cultural signifiers or recognizable imagery should remain.

Image 2: Repeat this process with your Facebook profile picture.

Show me side-by-sizes of the originals, and your minimalist compositions.

Minimalism, Answer 1/2

Minimalism, Answer 2/2

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Postmodern: Follow this link to an interview with the artist, Craig Drennen. Using clear writing, explain three reasons we can consider his work postmodern.  Include citations references as needed.

There are a few key principles that clearly define postmodern art for me. When I read New American Paintings Blog’s interview with Craig Drennen I noticed signs of those principles, leading me to believe that he might be considered a postmodern artist.

One of the most significant of these distinguishing factors is the fact that a postmodern artist goes back to and studies, or in one way or another uses, artworks from the past, from which they form a unique understanding and make their own take of the artwork. Some of the works highlighted in the aforementioned interview clearly demonstrate creation of new ideas based on thoughts and styles from the past, yet in a modern way.

Another interesting factor is the idea of combining different mediums in order to create a “piece of art.” This quality is perhaps unique to postmodernism, in that art is not just a painting; it can, for instance, be a combination of photography, installation art, music, and so much more. There are apparent examples of this principle in Craig Drennen’s art.

At some point during the interview the artist talks about the connection between painting and acting; mentioning how he believes paints can “pretend to be something else.” This instantly reminds me of a key postmodern belief stating that there is no absolute reality, and each individual will perceive whatever they want depending on the time, location, and the “amount” of reality they have been exposed to.

And finally, where Craig Drennen is talking about how he questions traditional art and the whole notion of being true to the material, it very directly addresses another fact about postmodern artists: everything that was valuable in the modernists’ beliefs becomes obsolete in postmodernism.

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Postmodern: Using Jenny Holzer’s Truisms, create two “words over image” internet memes. One should use a Truism that you agree with. The other should use a Truism that you believe is false. Choose imagery that will complement or reinforce your ideas. Place them in this document and briefly explain your selections. Then put them on the internet somewhere.

Postmodern, Answer 1/2

I used an image that is in contradiction with Truism to show that I do not agree with it. No child has the choice to be born and we are the primary factor to create it. They are purely innocent until they start learning from the environment they are growing in, and then they shape and became whoever they are during the time. My point is that while a kid can still be cruel, they are not the cruelest of all. I wanted to show how innocent they are before they grow up and learn to live life as we do.

My friend believes the opposite; she thinks kids are capable of doing all sorts of things since they don’t know better or think about the outcome of their actions. She also recommended that I watch a movie called “The Hunt” to prove her point of view.

Postmodern, Answer 2/2

I chose this image (an artwork by Dimitri Tsykalov) to make this meme. I believe it’s true that sometimes drama grasps too much attention and distracts people from the real problem. I think this is a postmodern art piece and I do allow to have my own perception. So I use this example to justify my image choice.

When I first saw this image the first thought that came into my mind was that this woman could be the symbol of a culture that keeps pushing the public towards a high standard of being fit in order to be accepted by the society. The problem here is the unhealthy food that is distributed among the people and drama is advertisement and exaggerating the problem without really thinking about the real issue.

The figure represents the unhealthy society itself, with the gun representing the advertisement of the government and how they use it as a weapon. The material of the gun is meat and means the fight is not useful in solving the problem and it could even be making it worse. Her closed eyes point to the fact that she is intentionally ignoring the reality. Also the whole figure reminds me of meat itself, due to its size and body shape.

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I also had fun with making memes and I decided to just put some of them here at the end. It is really interesting that by using the same sentence over different image you can still show the same point of view or completely change the meaning! Here is an example:

And the last one that I miserably do believe in!

 

Bauhaus: the Building of a New Future

“The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building! To embellish buildings was once the noblest function of the fine arts; they were the indispensable components of great architecture.” -Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program” (1919)

Walter Gropius counts as the mastermind of the Bauhaus, a former soldier and architect with idealistic ideas, and the founder of Bauhaus who wrote the first Bauhaus manifesto on 1919 when he was only 36 years old.  The core of his idea was to gather all different sorts of artists such as architects, painters, and sculptors and teach them to see the world in a new way. The artists needed to be courageous to combine a variety of arts; they should be considered as craftsman, and their creations should be both practical and appealing to this new system of living.

Bauhaus Directors and Locations

In his opinion, creative and genius artists will glow better with fundamental and proper education, and neither is possible without the other. In other words, as one of the Bauhaus’ primary principals, “art cannot be taught, but the crafts can certainly be.”

On the right: Walter Gropius, Scheme for construction of teaching at the Bauhaus in 1922, published in: Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, 1919-1923 On the left: The ilutrate translation by Zahra Amirabadi

So education at the Bauhaus began with enrolling in some essential preliminary courses. They taught methods for operating with innovative materials in different ways and exploring new techniques with creative, and occasionally, an experimental educational approach. After this the education in Bauhaus was followed by training in different workshops with both theory and hands-on practice.

 

It has been mentioned in the manifesto that the school is the servant of the workshop. These workshops were directed by craftsmen who were  masters of workshop, and artists who were  masters of form with the goal of binding up the art with the crafts. Title of journeyman was then granted to those who passed the examination after three semesters. Then, they would be able to start their apprenticeship and later on receive the Master’s of Craftsman.

Ceramics Workshop

Weaving

Carpentry

Matal Workshop

Graphic Printing Workshop

Photography

On the Left: Glass and Wall-Painting Workshop On the Right: Printing and Advertising Workshop

Stone and Wood Sculpture / Sculpture Workshop

Stage Workshop

The Bauhaus has a legacy in almost every medium, but unfortunately the school was closed during World War II when the power moved into Adolf Hitler’s hands in 1933, and an aggressive campaign against modern art shaped by the Nazi party ensued.  Right in the first year of the regime the Bauhaus was forced to close permanently. Most of the key figures of the Bauhaus, including Walter Gropius, fled the country and emigrated to the United States, and others to France or Switzerland. Marcel Breuer and Joseph Albers became professors at Yale, Walter Gropius joined Harvard’s Faculty, and Moholy-Nagy established the new Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937.

Joost Schmidt, Advertising Brochure Entitled “The Future Belongs to Bauhaus Wallpaper”, 1931
Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design, Berlin

 

 

This design has a simple but effective composition. If we draw a diagonal line from the top-right corner to the bottom left, it divides the image into two sections; the most illustrative section on the left and the descriptive section on the right. The sphere and the diagonal, rectangular shape, and even the text underneath it are positioned on the page in a way that guides your eyes all the way through the image, and even further through the depths of the sphere. The next thing that grasps your attention is the information on the bottom-right corner of the image with no sense of depth, simply text and three boxes, just there to give you some information about the whole idea.

 

 

This image consists of geometric shapes. A sphere, which is the focal point of the design, with the illusion of a three-dimensional image inside the sphere. This sphere is really interesting and deep in a way that absorbs your attention right away, and you expect to see a reflection of your surrounding environment. The next important shape in this image is a flat diagonal rectangular shape that ends up being rolled into a spiral shape on one side. The shadow casted by the sphere on top of it helps give depth to this flat image. The artist also did a really good job when he wanted to give us some sense of depth by distorting the text underneath the rectangular wallpaper shape versus a really simple red text on the right side of the frame. That red text has been placed horizontally, and quite simply, in the middle of the thin rectangular boxes.

 

 

This design is really simple and most of it is covered with flat colors without any texture, except where it is needed. For example, the artist used rendering techniques such as using a reflection of an environment (a possible future design of an idealistic Bauhaus environment) or shininess and other aspects of a spherically-shaped object with a metallic texture to illustrate the metal material. He also depicted the texture of the wallpaper by building it up with some sort of cross-hatching monotone color lines. The rest of the image is covered mostly by flat colors with no texture at all.

 

 

We don’t see that many colors in this image and none of them are really saturated except for a few key colorations. The dark orange color that has been used for the text, a really dark green used for the background, and a bone color and its shades from dark to light used for the wallpaper, the floating text on the bottom of it, and the three rectangular boxes placed underneath the orange text on the bottom-right. The darkest color seems to be black but I doubt that to be the case since I am looking at the image of an image; my best guess would be the dark value of the same green that has been used for the background.

 

 

In this essentially flat image, lines have mostly been the tool used to outline the shapes and forms of each object. The contour lines have the same strength all over the painting, which helps to define the image’s graphic-edged contours. There is one more place that I can say makes use of lines and that is the repeated pattern that makes the wallpaper texture.

 

 

This design has a high contrast between light and dark values and we barely have a mid-tone there. Running a diagonal line from the top-right corner to the bottom-left corner, we can see most of the light tones being located on the triangle on the left side except the three rectangular boxes that are located on the bottom-right of the image, balancing all the light tones on the other side.

   

During my research I discovered a talented British fashion historian and writer called Amber Jane Butchart. In one of her articles titled “Exhibitionism: Bauhaus – Art As Life at the Barbican,” she talks about Bauhaus architecture, theater, and the costume and fashion design in their theater. Her descriptions and photos from the Bauhaus exhibitions that she visited in 2012 gave me good points to start with. I watched the series of videos of a play called “Triadic Balle,” which is one of most famous productions of Oskar Schlemmer. He was a Bauhaus master, painter, sculptor, designer, and choreographer. The costumes used in the play are pretty interesting and unusual; they transform the human figure to simple geometric shapes. Colors also play a critical role in this play. Yellow is used for cheerful and happy sequences, pink for festive and dignified scenes, and finally black for the mystical ending.

Members of the Bauhaus Theatre Workshop on the roof of the Bauhaus in Dessau, 1927/8

His costume design fascinated me; the way they consistently matched geometric shapes with corresponding parts of the body in a really simplified way. I searched further and looked through his sketches too. However, I began to think how could people of the future live in such clothing while they have to engage in their everyday routine? So I redesigned my characters in a way that they can live their life more comfortably and efficiently, as that was the main goal of the Bauhaus. For colors, I looked through Josef Albers’s “Homage to Square” series, since Oskar Schlemmer‘s paintings, sketches, and play scenes were the main inspiration when I was designing my two characters, citizens of the future, from the Bauhaus point of view.

Oskar Schlemmer’s sketches that inspired me

 

Ideal citizens of the future influenced by Bauhaus movement Digital Media – Zahra Amirabadi

 

This diagram shows some of my inspirational sources that belong to the Bauhaus movement, also highlighting my design choices.
Drawn by Zahra Amirabadi

Citations

1. Banner caption from left to right:

   1st row: Walter Gropius, Garrison Jasper Rose & Co., Art director: Steve Miller, Illustrator: Wilson McLean, 1984 Bauhaus Buildings, Germany, 1925 F 51 Armchair, designed by Walter Gropius , Manufacturer by TECTA Walter Gropius, Knits For The Chill, 1992

   2nd row: Prospectus ’14 Bauhausbücher’ by László Moholy-Nagy, Black and red print on white paper with wire binding, Bonn, Germany, 1928 Masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building, c.1926/1998 From left to right: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl and Oskar Schlemmer. Courtesy Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin/Centre Pompidou, Paris Walter Gropius’s portrait from  the serious Archiportraits, by an Italian graphic designer Frederico Babina Monument to the March Dead, Walter Gropius, 1921

2. Kleiner, Fred S., and Mamiya, Christin J., Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Thomson Wadsworth, 12th Edition, 2004
3. Stokstand, Marilyn, and  Cothren, Michael W., Art History Portables 
4. Schlemmer, Oskar, The theater of the Bauhaus,Wesleyan University Press; 1st  edition, 1961
5. Amber Jane Butchart | Exhibitionism: Bauhaus – Art As Life at the Barbican  
6. The Bauhaus 1919-1933| Metropolitan Museum of Art
7. Walter Gropius | Bauhaus Manifesto and Program, 1919
8. Bauhaus Online Atlas
9. Adobe Kuler | Digital Application

Romanticism Age of Emotional Expressiveness

If we consider Neoclassicism being affected by the thoughts of the Classical era, we can say that Romanticism rooted its interest within the Middle Ages, or “dark ages”, a time of superstition, dark mystery, miracle, and fantasy. Romantic era grew and developed around 1750 and ended about a century later, almost parallel to the time that Neoclassicism was marching. However, some scholars refer to Romanticism as existing from 1800 to 1840 when they were in their climax, mentioning that it filled the gap between Neoclassicism and Realism.

Transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism represented a huge alteration from reason, order, rationality, patriotism, and mechanical thinking to feeling, intuition, imagination, emotion, irrationality, and nature. Romantics were mostly emphasizing on emotional expressiveness and the unique experiences and the tastes of the individual. If you look at Romantic paintings, their dramatic subject matter explored literature, some historical events, the natural world, and at times the painter’s own imagination, while aiming to stimulate the viewer’s feelings and sentiments.

Paris was already a major artistic center in the nineteenth century and many artists were attracted to study under Parisian academy all over from Europe and America, where artists were competing intensely for a spot in Paris Salon since the academy system was the criterion of artistic success until the annual exhibition of the academy gradually opened up to those who weren’t academy members.

Romantic and Landscape Painting

Landscape was one of the most important means of showing visual expression for Romantic thought. They saw the nature so unpredictable and uncontrollable and compared that with human’s changing moods and feelings. They regarded nature as being fascinating, powerful, internal, and marvelous, and they were constantly trying to capture the “sublime”.

Sublime was a concept described by a philosopher, Edmund Burke (1729-1797), as something that strikes wonder and terror into the viewer’s heart while there is no real danger. A mixture of terror and beauty that absorbed some of Romantic artists such as William Turner, a British painter (1775-1851), has been utilized to depict events of genuine horror and excitement.

Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying
Typhoon coming on (“The Slave Ship”), William Turner
1840; Oil on Canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

There are so many great Romantic artists that I would like to name, such as Francisco Goya (1746-1828) in Spain who created many moving prints and paintings such as “Third of May” in order to depict historical events in his own emotional way.

The Third of May, 1808
The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, Francisco Goya
1814 Oil on canvas, 266 x 345 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) in Germany, a puissant landscape painter was mostly influenced by Gotthard Kosegarten, a local pastor and poet (1758-1818), who argued the landscape as being the God’s “Book of Nature”. Casper’s painting “Monk by the Sea” captures a moody beach that is only separated from the sky with a vague gloomy horizon and a miniature figure of a monk who looks at the far horizon from the edge.

Monk by the Sea, Casper David Friedrich
1809, Oil on Canvas, 110 x 172 cm
Nationalgalerie, Berlin

John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) a Swiss artist who moved to England in his 20s, was trained in theology, philosophy, and Neoclassical art of Winckelman back in his homeland.  Even though in London he was prominent for his historical paintings, he became an expert in dramatic subject matters that he drew mostly from Dante, Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton. He was more into the dark side of the human mind as he loved to paint supernatural and irrational subject matters. “The Nightmare” is a good example of his work where he illustrated the fear of the unknown and the unknowable. He painted at least four variations of the same subject, prints of which were quite popular. I would like to continue with talking about the specifics of one them by formally breaking it down.

The Nightmare, John Henry Fuseli
1781, Oil on Canvas, 101 x 127 cm
Institute of Arts, Detroit

The Nightmare, John Henry Fuseli
1780-81, Oil on Canvas, 77 x 64 cm
Goethe-Museum, Frankfurt

Composition

The female figure who is lying down in the bottom of the painting and diagonally divides the whole frame into half is clearly the focal point of this image. The curves on her body lead your eyes to follow through the figure and then conduct them to the eyes of the evil figure sitting on top of the female figure, positioned on the left thirds of the painting. A head of a horse is placed on a higher level compared to the other two figures, creating a perfect and big triangle with them.

Composition Diagram

Form

The artist here displays a good use of negative and positive space to create forms. You will notice several triangular forms, the way they fragment the picture in addition to the harsh values  and irregular diagonals, all together, help your eyes move faster and feel the irrationality, instability, horror, and danger of the situation. You can see and feel the delicacy and roundness of the figures, which are surrounded by the black flat triangular shapes in the background.

Form Diagram

Texture

Forms and highlights are the most important elements in this painting used to create textures. You can clearly see that the artist never had a plan to fully render the textures in this painting. He would rather have a hint of light wherever he thought necessary to differentiate the materials, such as the perfume container and the mirror. On the other hand, he doesn’t see a need to render and differentiate too much between the woman’s clothing and her skin. Some highlights that show the folds on her clothing are enough to address his purpose.

Color

The color palette of the artist is visibly limited to some brown tone and mostly dark colors. The colors are quite warm but not saturated at all and by the good use of lights and darks we can easily realize that the artist did not even need more colors to depict his emotions through this painting. The black background almost takes over half of the canvas but a wise distribution of dark colors and the harmony in use of lighter colors and their variations balances the heavy weight of the blacks and the lightness of the whites.

Color Diagram

Line

Romantic artists would rather leave the use of lines for the Neoclassical artists. Lines in the Romantic painting usually don’t mean anything expect showing the brush strokes. In this painting particularly, the visible lines are made of values and highlights that shape the folds of the fabrics.

Value

One of the most interesting and important aspects of this painting is the high contrast between light and dark values. The artist displays a great use of values to make forms, shapes, harmony, emotion, and even texture! Dark values almost cover half of the painting and they are distributed all around the frame and specifically make two big triangles on the top corners of painting. A huge triangle in the heart of the painting is where most of the light values and the mid-tones are laid down. It is obviously notable that the mid-tones also make triangles with the light values, which makes the painting more dramatic, dynamic, and unpredictable.

Value Diagram

Ryan Finnerty’s assignment to study Romantic paintings by copying masterpieces in order to understand them was really useful for me. For the first one I chose a portrait painting by Francisco Goya, and a beautiful landscape by William Turner was the second Romantic original painting that I picked. I didn’t try to carefully copy every aspect of the paintings; instead, I picked up my (digital) brush and made a loose colored thumbnail according to the discussions I had in my previous post. Looking for the primary shapes, values, and colors at the early stage, then after having fun with the process I went a little bit further towards adding details. A great method to explore Romanticism color palettes, brush strokes, paintings and even their way of thinking.

Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol, Francisco Goya
1804-06, Oil on canvas, 120 x 79 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Process Diagram

Final Thumbnail, Zahra Amirabadi, Digital Color Study

Landscape

Quillebeuf, at the Mouth of Seine, William Turner
1833, Oil on canvas, 88 x 120 cm
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

Thumbnail Diagram

Final Thumbnail, Zahra Amirabadi, Digital Color Study

Citations:

1. Kleiner, Fred S., and Mamiya, Christin J., Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Thomson Wadsworth, 12th Edition, 2004
2. Stokstand, Marilyn, and  Cothren, Michael W., Art History Portables Book 6: 18th -21st Century, 4th Edition, 2010
3. Web Gallery of Art – For Image Resources
4. Adobe Kuler – Digital Application

The Art of Thumbnailing

There is a huge difference between seeing something and looking at it carefully from an observational point of view. We can see with our eyes but what matters most is how our brain translates what we perceive. Thumbnailing is an interesting exercise for both the eyes and the brain. As an artist you might think that you already look at the world around you differently, but thumbnailing requires even more attention. You don’t just look at an image, you examine the different aspects of it by simplifying the piece you are making a thumbnail from, and by creating large shapes of light and dark moving around the composition, separating the big dark values from lighter ones.

What are thumbs? I know when I say that I don’t mean the one you show people when you wish them good luck! They can count as shorthand notes of an artist; quick, concise drawings that are done for fast studies.

As a graphic designer I use thumbnails as my first approach to design. It allows me to visualize the composition and layout that I want to go with, how forms and shapes should be distributed in a page and how they relate to each other, as well as what the main purpose of my composition is in a piece. After drawing a couple of pages of thumbnails, I narrow them down to the ones that work better for my purpose and then I work a bit further on the details. In this stage I may also add some colors to see how the designs work in different color themes. At this point they are still not fully detailed and I will only use them as references to make my original design.

About two weeks ago, Ryan Finnerty , my Art History instructor, took my DigiPen fellows and I to a field trip to SAM and Frye museums in Seattle. It was there that I experienced a new approach to making thumbnails. First he did a quick demo and then he asked us to look at art pieces and make some quick thumbnails. You might ask, why do we need to do thumbnailing when we can simply take a snapshot with our phones? I personally really enjoyed the experience and I realized even though I looked for the values and composition and other aspects of the piece, this process made me think about what the approaches of the artist were, and why and how he chose them (got to grips with his final decisions). In other words, it made me think deeper about those pieces and their processes and so they were engraved in my long-term memory, instead of only taking photos that I may not even look at later! I know you may think that thumbnails are limited and they don’t have the detailed information you will have in a photo, but you need to remember that that is not the intention of thumbnailing. They are for study purposes and they may not even be suitable for representing goals or conveying everything we see and observe to someone who has not seen the piece.

Ryan Finnerty’s thumbnail demo at SAM (Seattle Art Museum)
Click on the image to see the video!

Anyway, I want to talk more about my experience at the museums. First, I was struggling a bit and was focusing on capturing everything, but then I realized that drawing a piece is not my final purpose and I started to narrow down what I see by squinting my eyes and trying to eliminate the details while looking for the primary elements that make the piece. One of my weaknesses was being afraid of adding dark values, so I kept comparing the thumbs with the original pieces, which allowed me to perceive the actual values and have a better understating of them. All in all, here is the summery of my findings on that day, in addition to some research afterward.

For making thumbnails I have to imagine my subject matter is in poor lighting conditions or look at it with squinted eyes to let the image be stripped away of any details. That’s when I am able to see a bunch of rough shapes and lines. Then it’s time to draw a small rough box (representing the frame) with the same proportions, looking for any major vertical or horizontal forms and outline the key shapes. Next step would be to quickly divide the image into strong dark areas (looking for values). Since my classmate Tara was interested in color studies, we were taught later that thumbnails can be colored too, but we have to be careful to use them only in major areas of color in our picture by using colored pencil, water color, markers, etc., or like my friends Sharon and Tara, on a digital tablet.  Intense but small colors can be visibly noted since they can easily attract your eyes. Not to mention that it is really important, once again, to not be entangled by the details.

Here are some thumbnails that I made on the day of our field trip.

For more information about SAM’s exhibit click on the image.

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For more information about the exhibit click on the image.

And guess what? I will carry my sketchbook with me to the galleries from now on to make even more thumbnails!

Neoclassical Age of Reason

In the second half of the 18^th century, Europe began reconsidering the art of classical antiquity, particularly that of the Greeks and Romans.  The ideals of Enlightenment thinking had a huge impact on the formation of the art and thoughts of Neoclassicism.

The Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and Their Impact on Forming Neoclassicism

The rise of science in the beginning of the 18^th century affected the way Europeans were looking at the world around them, bringing about the Age of Enlightenment.  It was the start of an industrial revolution, a slow and decentralized economic shift, in Europe. The new virtues of the age were order, rationality, patriotism, and mechanical thinking, and emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition; all these together were the essence of Enlightenment, a cultural movement that deals mostly with politics and science. The essence of the their world view was that everything could be known by studying it scientifically. Rene Descartes, a 17^th century philosopher, suggested that anything can be defined by its function and that even complicated things can be separated into pieces that perform these basic functions. It was an idea that helped define this movement.  Europeans started dividing the universe into categories, studying those categories, and then putting what they had learned back together.  The first encyclopedia was invented in this era.  It was an attempt to gather all the known information in the world, break down the information, organize and categorize it, and publish the combined result.

The Neoclassical era was also marked by a return to universal values based on nature and reason as artists looked back through Roman and Greek art and literature in the Classical era.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer who believed that nature is the source of all good, and Denis Diderot a French philosopher, art critic, and writer who started the project of first encyclopedia to document all the phenomenas of the age of reason, were among the many French thinkers at the time that led the changes toward this new movement.  On the political side, people like Voltaire, a French enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, started questioning the system of absolute monarchy.  The rediscovery of the city Pompeii in 1748 opened a window to the art of antiquity, and renewed the interest in Classical art.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (German, 1717–1768)

Johann Winckelmann, considered the first modern art historian, was first published a few years after Pompeii’s rediscovery. Unlike other art historians before him, he did not write art history as a study of personalities and great artists.  For the first time in history, his approach was to characterize the subject matter and style. He also tried to figure out the differences between Greek and Roman art. In his systematic art history breakdown, he applied classical standards to every artist he studied. Therefore the best artists up to his time were Greeks and Romans and the best modern artists were those who could copy the art of Greeks and Romans.

Jacques–Louis David (French, 1748–1825)

David was one of the brightest painters of his period.  He lived through several political eras and his paintings reflect his entanglement in different political movements. From “Oath of the Horatii,” where he symbolically demonstrated the ideals of brotherhood who believed that men are born free and they shall remain free and equal in rights, to “The Death of Marat,” where he depicted the scene of his friend, the political revolutionary figure Jean-Paul Marat’s death.  As a supporter of revolution he went through many difficulties including imprisonment.  At the time Napoleon rose to power, he developed his “Empire style” using warm Venetian colors. Due to having a large number of students, he also had a huge influence on the art of 19th century and especially academic Salon painting.

 

The Oath of the Horatii, Jacques–Louis David
1784, Oil on Canvas, 330 x 425 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Secular Art, National Academy, French Salon

In the past century, Nicolas Poussin (1595-1665) helped found the national academy of France, which put the French on the map as the center of the artistic world for the first time. National academies were hiring artists to make art in a national academic system. In that system artists didn’t necessarily need to sell their art in the old-fashioned patronage model they were used to in order to make money. Therefore, they didn’t necessarily have to get commissions from the church or other benefactors to get painting supplies and they could focus on art for the sake of art. Salon exhibition was one of the most important outcomes of the national academy in which artists needed to submit their work for an annual salon-style exhibition to compete with other artists of their time. In the exhibit they would cover the walls with paintings and sell tickets to represent it to the public.

I would like to continue my discussion about this time period with a formal breakdown of an art piece I chose to represent this era.

 

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID, The Death of Marat
1793. Oil on Canvas,. 5’ 5” x 4’ 2 1/2”.
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.

Composition

The composition of this painting follows the rule of thirds both vertically and horizontally. The bathtub is located in the bottom thirds of the painting. The figure laying in the tub is located in the left thirds of the painting.  If we drew two lines and separated these two parts, the rest of the painting would be covered by a dark background that’s supposed to be the wall.

Forms

We can see both organic and geometric forms in the painting, but even those organic shapes have been separated with sharp-edged lines from the other forms and the background that makes them look flat in a three-dimensional world. When you first look at the painting, the first thing to catch your attention is the face of the figure, mainly because of the way light is illumining his face, but also because it is the lightest form that is located in the highest part of the composition. The block of wood and note on top of it create a harmony with the form of the figure on the left side.  The darkest areas among these two light shapes are connected with the arms of the figure and the way they are positioned moves the viewer’s eyes past the smaller shapes of the quill and the knife laying on the ground.

Composition and Form Diagram

Texture

This piece demonstrates a great range of rendering in all aspects.  David demonstrates the texture of the fabric on the curtain and the headpiece by using light and dark values. He also depicts the texture of wood very nicely. I suspect that he used a big brush to make the wood texture and did not cover the brush strokes. Once again, sharp, crisp, razor-thin lines differentiate various materials by separating the different forms.

Color

It seems that the artist didn’t go crazy by using a wide range of colors. Limited colors on his palette were enough to depict the scene beautifully. In this painting, values play a more important role compared to colors. The colors in this painting consist of white, black, green, a rusty brown, and the skin tone.

Color Diagram

Line

Lines have an important role in this painting; they have been mainly used to outline the shapes. The contour lines have the same strength all over the painting, which helps define the painting’s graphic-edged contours.

Value

The high contrast in the painting makes it more dramatic and interesting. We have the darkest value on the background and mostly on the top part of the painting. Conversely, we have the lightest value on the most important subject in the painting (the figure), followed by some other light values like the bath curtains and the box-shaped furniture to create an equilibrium. Our mid-tone here is the bathtub, which fades gradually into the dark tones on the bottom but is separated by a sharp transition from the dark tones above.  A hint of light in the upper-right side of the painting creates balance with the other mid-tones as well.

Value Diagram

 

To study and understand Neoclassical painting method, we assigned to recreate a portrait of a classmate. Mine was Isabel Anderson and since she reminds me Disney princesses I decided to draw her in Disney style.

Princess Isabella in Neoclassical Era by Zahra Amirabadi, Digital Media, 2014

Refrences including portraiture reference from Dominique Ingres

Citations:

1. Bietoletti, Silvestra, Neoclassicim and Romanticism, Sterling, 1st Edition, 2009
2. Nicolas Poussin | Metropolitan Museum of Art
3. Jacques–Louis David | Complete Work Collection
4. Web Gallery of Art – For Image Resources

The Hierarchy of Genres of Baroque Painting

History Painting

 

Portrait Painting

 

Genre Painting

Landscape Painting

 

Still-Life Painting

 

Translation to the Gaming Industry

After having a brief look at the hierarchy of a few key genres of Baroque painting, I want to show a similar hierarchy in today’s world, specifically relating to the various positions of artists in the video game industry:

Citations:

1. Hierarchy of a Game Development Company – IGN
2. Blitz Games Studios – Development Team Structure

Adventure Time Meets Baroque

Introduction

The Baroque period first manifested itself in Italy in the late 1500’s and in some regions namely Germany and colonial South America lasted till the 18th century. This era in the history of arts is known to be stylistically impressive, rich, and complex, to the extent of becoming contradictory at times. It is thought of as being energetic and cheerful, while showing a lot of movement, tension, and drama.

Philosophers in the Middle Ages used the term ‘barocco’ to describe a twisted idea or complicated logic. In Portuguese a similar word ‘barroco’ (and its Spanish counterpart ‘barrueco’) refers to a pearl of irregular shape. Consequently, in the world of arts the term Baroque was used to describe anything imperfect, bizarre, or deviating from the norm.

Art in the Baroque period shows great diversity across time, region, and culture. In the late 1500’s the style known as Mannerism was becoming less and less popular, even more so among religious artistic circles. The Roman Catholic Church around mid-16th century as part of its effort to restore the public’s faith in the Church, began its support of an artistic program producing art that would emotionally touch the average churchgoer. The Baroque style emerging from this attempt was spiritual, dramatic, and naturalistic. Many church ceilings from that period are still covered by such images of the Baroque rendition of heavens and the infinite.

Baroque also became a prominent element of great scale in palaces and monuments, one of the best examples of which might be the royal palace and gardens at Versailles. Though at the same time a new interest in nature coupled with advancements in science and further explorations of the globe were imposing a great effect on the art style as well. Many paintings from the 17th century display a rather insignificant nature of humans which portrays one of the more important tendencies of the Baroque era.

Mannerism was not the only style coexisting with Baroque; in fact, naturalism and classicism were both mixed in visibly in the works of vairous artists of the era. A rather unique style of painting which came to being in Rome around the 1620s is thought to be specifically Baroque. The same goes for Baroque architecture, mainly associated with Gian Lorenzo Boromini, which favored monumental, dramatic, and spatial plays with movement and lighting, coupled with the use of contrasting textures, graphic colors, and elegant materials.

The Baroque, while not quite finding its way into France, was adopted eagerly in Roman Catholic Spain. The style spread as far as what is now known as Belgium and had a remarkable impact on England, though Holland for instance along with such masters as Rembrandt did not give in to this art style, remaining faithful to their realist roots. Ultimately, the latest significant achievements of the Baroque came into being in the Roman Catholic southern Germany and Austria in the 1720s.

Formal Breakdown

St. Francis in Ecstasy
Caravaggio 1595
Oil on canvas, 93 x 128 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

Composition

This painting is composed of two figures, one sitting down and one lying down, both occupying the one third of the bottom right of the image. The figures are close together, acting as a diagonal divider cutting the frame in half. The painting is at eye level with the viewer, making you feel like you are there and a part of what is happening. The composition in general feels harmonious. The very first thing you see when looking at this painting is the white outfit of the angel, sitting between the two figures’ faces. Your eyes land on this bright spot, running through the white clothes to the other figure’s face, then following his body and clothes towards the edge of the frame, ultimately going out of the frame and coming back in.

Form

You see quite a lot of organic forms in this picture. One interesting observation is that the contrast of colors, especially difference in values in the bottom right and top left halves of the painting add to the intensity of the forms and slightly subtract from their organic nature. The presence of a dark background and bright foreground also adds the illusion of the image being pushed towards us.

Texture

When it comes to textures, fabrics are rendered nicely and the folds in the drapery are quite artistically done. Textures are not too defined, yet despite the lack of variation in colors are still distinguishable. As we get farther from the focal point of the image, textures tend to grow harsher. The skin and the wings of the angel for instance are quite detailed, but the farther you get the more details tend to fade away. You can almost feel the fabric of the lying figure’s clothes being thick and not as soft as the angel’s white outfit, nor as organic as the angel’s wings or the leaves on the ground.

Line

Lines do not appear to be key in this painting. We see mostly lighting and the use of positive and negative shapes (the bright and dark areas) being used in place of lines. We do, however, see lines used to separate shapes, and to render folds in drapery (long parallel lines) and define the wings of the angel (very close thin lines.)

Color

Using many warm colors is a well-known trait in Baroque as well as Caravaggio’s style of painting. Light sources are usually closer to spot lights, colors are mostly desaturated, and not a lot of variety in colors is seen in general. A dark background is present which lacks detail for the most part, and the focal point of the image is a bright color.

Value

We notice a very high contrast in this scene. The image is divided diagonally into two halves; the upper left is mostly dark while the bottom right is much more bright. If we squint our eyes we notice three tonal ranges; dark values, mid-tones, and very bright colors. Mid-tones and bright values compose a triangle in the bottom right of the painting.

After studying the Baroque period, we were assigned to “Baroque-up” a game or animated movie character in the same style. Since I am quite the fan of Adventure Time, an animated television series, I decided to redesign Finn (the main character) and Marceline (the vampire queen) in the horror and violence theme which is the one of the highlights of Baroque paintings. Desaturated colors, high range of contrast (extreme dark and light values), a very dark background, and sometimes exaggerated poses are other features associated with Baroque paintings.

 

 

Citations:

1. Baroque Period – Encyclopedia Britannica

Italian Renaissance

Florence, in the heart of fifteenth-century Italy, is where Italian Renaissance began. The city-state was an independent republic, a commercial capital, and the third largest city in Europe. The city eventually became the cultural center of Europe and the Renaissance with patronage from its wealthy citizens who supported the artists and the intellectuals. Many historians agree that between the 14th and 17th centuries, a new way of thinking about the world – which centralized man in his universe – replaced an older system of thought, inevitably giving birth to the period we call the Renaissance. The middle ages were almost over and this was the time for a rebirth of literature, art, and culture.

The core philosophy of Italian Renaissance known as Humanism involved their appreciation of physical beauty and the significance of man’s achievements, portrayed in their many idealistic figures. Humanism encouraged the intellectuals of that era to be curious and question everything, to experiment and use observation to solve problems, and to try to understand the laws of nature. Leonardo Da Vinci’s studies of everything from machines to human anatomy are perhaps the most well-known examples of the effects of Humanism. Their power of observation is quite obvious in the idealistic beauty of the figures from that period, in contrast to the background of most of their pieces that simply did not receive the same amount of attention.

Art was abundant during the Italian Renaissance with artists being the true celebrities, yet characteristics like humanist principles and personification tied them all together. For instance, Filippo Brunelleschi, an architect who brought elements of Classical Roman architecture to his buildings, introduced linear perspective to drawings, which later became one of the more notable elements of almost all Renaissance paintings. Many painters in the following decades also began using a technique known as chiaroscuro which allowed them to create an illusion of three-dimensional space on the flat surface that housed their art. By the end of the 15th century, however, Italy had seen one war after another, leading to the inevitable end to the Italian Renaissance.

Pallas and the Centaur, c. 1482
Tempera on canvas, 205 x 147,5 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
by Sandro BOTTICELLI

This painting is composed of two relatively big figures that cover most of the image. The figures are vertically oriented, which is also the case for the weapon that the female figure is holding. There is a big rock on the left side behind the two figures that finds its way above their heads. The rock, for the most part, is composed of horizontal lines that complement the figures’ vertical poses. The flow that your eyes follow when looking at this piece starts from the female figure and continues upward along her body till it lands on the rocks. Your look then follows the rocks in the back to reach the figure on the left, and through the semi-circle create by both of the figures’ heads being slightly titled, lands back on the female figure’s body, creating a pleasing circular flow. The background in this piece can only be described as subtle, since it appears as if the artist only wanted to communicate that the scene is happening outdoors. The big rock on the left is an exception and plays an important role in the composition of the two figures.

Most of the forms used in the foreground and especially the ones composing the figures are organic and rather poetic. The female figure’s standing pose looks delicate, with her head slightly tilted and her arm extending gently to her right. The two figures are very different and contrast in nature, though through the use of delicate forms in both they seem connected to each other. Not the same can be said about the background, however. In the background of this piece we notice sharp, geometric forms in the rocks. We also see smaller forms used on the two figures’ bodies to show details of fabric and the like. Finally, despite the scene being rather dark and violent, every single form and flow on the two main figures feels delicate, calm and poetic. I can only describe this painting as a frozen scene of a play in a theater.

When it comes to textures, most of the attention has been given to the foreground. As we get farther toward the back details begin to disappear, up to the point of the horizon having almost faded away. The outfit of the female figure shows quite a lot of detail, such that you can guess the material of the fabric and even distinguish the form of her body underneath. One can even easily feel the roughness of the texture of the ground beneath their feet. With clever use of lines, colors, and hue, the centaur displays realistic textures and appears life-like. The weapon being held by the female figure shows a color very similar to her hair, though lines and forms clearly define its texture as being quite different. Even the rocks in the top left appear wild and violent, mainly through the dramatic lighting applied and the contrasting shadows and highlights. Also, despite the colors of the rocks being abundant in other spots in the painting, nowhere else feels as violent or rough, which seems to be in accordance with the artist’s intentions.

The artist has used a lot of long and curvy lines, like the ones that show the details in the female figure’s head, or form the drop folds and half-lock folds on her outfit. An exception is where parallel vertical lines are seen, an example of which is the weapon dividing the painting to one and three quarters. The other major vertical line is visible in the rocks on the left side, which divides the painting to one thirds and two thirds. The top quarter of the left half of the painting shows many short, horizontal and vertical lines that communicate the sharpness of the rocks. There is a noticeable hint of a fence in the background visualized with vertical lines, which acts as a separator between the ground and the water. The real beauty in my opinion is how the two radically different types of lines in this piece (curvy and delicate, sharp and violent) work together in a pleasant harmony and significantly add to the appeal of this painting.

The color palette used is not very wide, and seems to be composed mostly of brown and green tones. Skin tones do not seem fleshy – or in other words as pink or red as they should be, – though the skin on the female figure is still not the same as the male centaur’s. The sky is a subtle blue color, and except for the brown used to paint the lower body of the centaur, the only other dark color visible is the green used for the drapery around the female figure’s body. We can notice the same green color appearing in the top part of the weapon, as well as being used to decorate the female figure’s outfit with leaves. The only color that pops out as being radically different is the red used to render the strap around the centaur’s torso. A brighter version of that red color can be seen in the female figure’s socks, with a slight more saturated variation appearing in her hair as well as the weapon’s wooden part. Overall, the foreground in this piece shows warmer colors, as opposed to the abundance of colder colors in the background. The colder tone of the background is, in my opinion, accentuating the foreground of the image and also helps separate the two. The only element connecting the foreground and background is the rocks on the left side, which is rendered using a neutral brown tone that is neither warm nor cold.

One can easily notice a lot of contrast in this piece. The dark drapery around the female figure’s waist along with the ground beneath their feet jump out as the darkest areas of the painting. The drapery is wrapping around the lighter values of the female’s body, connecting that brightness to the darkness of the ground, which is in turn distributing the weight such that the ground and the drapery do not feel as heavy as they should. All those elements are framed by a bright yet subtle value seen in the background. On the left side of the painting, we see the rocks, which, despite having a lot of contrast, are the mid-tones to this piece, and show almost the same value as the torso of the centaur. We can deduce that the difference between those two surfaces is mainly visualized using varying forms of highlights, among other things. To summarize, the background and the body of the female figure are the lightest and the ground and drapery the darkest values of the piece, while mid-tones appear in the rocks and the torso of the centaur. The lower body of the centaur has a value between the darkest area and the mid-tones.

The Venus of Urbino, before 1538
Oil on canvas, 119 x 165 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
by Tiziano VECELLIO (Titian)

In this painting we see a figure lying almost horizontally in the image, acting as the diameter and dividing the rectangular frame of the painting to two unequal parts. The figure is lying on her back with her eyes appearing to be locked into ours. Her pose is relaxed and gradually takes our eyes down her body to the dog that is calmly sleeping by her feet. The background in this painting, however, is a whole different story. The frame of the image has been vertically cut in half by a dark curtain behind the figure and to the left that separates her from the happenings in the back. We see a figure sitting close to a chest on the ground along with another standing next to her. Your eyes follow the body of the lying figure and eventually find their way to the two figures in the back. From there you continue to look towards the column and the opening in the wall, which leads you outside of this room.

The forms used in the foreground are mostly organic, being composed of curvy shapes like the nude figure’s delicate and poetic form, or the bed that she is lying on and the dog sleeping at her feet, all of which show round, curvy forms. The background has been divided vertically into two parts, and what remains on the right side mostly uses vertical, parallel forms; even the two figures seen on the right are no exception to this. We can see that the forms in the foreground have a lot of detail – and in many cases bigger forms visibly include smaller ones, – whereas details in the background are more sparse. And although most of the elements in the foreground have horizontal shapes, the background utilizes more vertical forms.

One of the main elements that plays a role in accurately rendering textures in this piece is lighting. Delicate lighting on the main figure’s skin shows its softness, and delicate line work on the folds of the sheets she is lying on helps us get a feel of its texture. The artist has not shown an immense interest in defining textures using details; but has rather used color and lighting masterfully to render various materials. You can notice some details on the red fabric of the bed that the figure is lying on, while most details are lost in the bouquet of flowers that she is holding. Also, the textures seen on the walls, ground, and many other objects in the scene appear slightly different, but not as much as they would in real life. Another interesting observation is the single tree seen on the outside far into the background, which is but a dark silhouette yet still feels leafy and organic.

Not a lot of lines are immediately visible in this painting, except for the ones that are used to separate surfaces. In the foreground, the major lines are to show the difference between colors, and some to define the wrinkles on the sheets beneath the figure. There are also curvy lines noticeable that lead to half-lock forms, as well as delicate, curvy lines used to visualize the texture of the figure’s hair and outline her body. The major lines in the background are the ones that show the folds in the outfits of the two figures, as well as the lines rendering the details of the chest on the ground and the decorations hanging from the walls. Overall, the artist does not appear very fond of employing lines, but has used them sufficiently to define shapes, show folds, and give depth to textures and materials. It is also worth noting that the lines visible in the tile-like pattern on the ground are effectively utilized to show one-point perspective.

In this piece mostly warm yet dark colors are sued. That applies to anywhere from skin tones to figures’ clothing, with the only exceptions being the subtle blue in the sky, and where a colder color is used to render the stony material of the wall and the column; everything else in the painting has a warmer tone. We see a dark red color in the outfit of the figure in the back, which is also used in the small part of the bed that is visible, as well as the flowers in the main figure’s hand. The wooden chest placed on the ground in the back is another example of a warm red tone. The dark curtain behind the lying figure is very close to black and aside from dividing the left and right sides of the frame, is separating the foreground and background along the depth of the painting. Skin tones in this piece are quite close to being naturalistic while not too fleshy, except when it comes to the main figure’s cheekbones and lips. There are also different tones of yellow visible in the sleeping dog and the stripes of the decorations on the wall. Colors in this piece are a powerful tool in the artist’s hands to render the differences between various materials and textures, complementing lighting.

What is instantly noticeable when it comes to value is the high contrast between the foreground and background. An imaginary diametral line going roughly from top left to the bottom right of the image is acting as a divider for values. The part below that line – which holds the main figure – has the lightest values, while the part above the line has been separated vertically into two contrasting regions. The top left of the painting is where we have the darkest values, and the top right houses our mid-tones. This big contrast in value separates the foreground and background and in my opinion tells us that a different story is going on in the back. There is another smaller, triangular section on the bottom left of this piece that has very dark values, helping to connect the foreground to the back. We can see how lighting plays an important role in defining values in this painting. Even thought the lightest values are mostly scattered in the foreground, parts of the outfits of the two figures in the back are helping connect the background and foreground through lighter values, and make you wonder about the story in the back. We can also a see a balanced distribution of dark values in the background; for instance in parts of the designs of the wall piece or in the silhouette of the vase by the window.

The Venus of Urbino
Value study

This noblewoman, although born in Florence and raised in a rich family with strong connections to the church and state, was rather different since her childhood. She enjoyed going to the theater and reading poems, leading to her recreational acting on the side. Through the connections that her noble family had established over the years in the city of Florence, she had the chance to meet the artist Sandro Botticelli. During one of her practice plays at a local theater, Botticelli found himself fascinated with her and began work on this portrait of her, only to pass it on to her as a birthday present.

Zaira Nobildonna(Zaira, an Italian female first name, means “dawning”
and is similar sounding to my first name, Zara.
Nobildonna is the Italian translation of noblewoman)

Italian Renaissance Environment

Citations:

1. Italian Renaissance | History.com

Northern Renaissance

Renaissance started in the Northern Europe in areas collectively belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and Germany roughly around the beginning of the 14th century. Art historians decided to name this period Renaissance meaning rebirth, since in their opinion this period marked the rebirth of Classical art right after the Gothic era. Renaissance artists went back to looking at nature for inspiration to create their art pieces, being influenced by the art of the Greek and Roman Classical artists. Particularly in Northern Renaissance artists began rooting their work in naturalism, using immense amounts of detail to render nature and figures. As a result, most figures from that period are not always idealistically beautiful, in contrast to what we know today as Italian Renaissance.

This amount of accuracy and attention to detail in the images from the Northern Renaissance era has had some interesting repercussions. Scientist and researchers have been able to study life in that era by observing plants, nature, clothing, and even weather, through art pieces that have survived the test of time. In this period, making art moved from monks to the hands of professional artists, who were skilled craftsmen and worked for commission. These artists worked hard to visualize believable spaces and scenes in their paintings, always paying direct attention to elements such as linear perspective, shadows, picture planes, and naturalistic details like the texture of fabric, glass, and plants.

Symbolism is another characteristic of most art from the Northern Renaissance era. Moreover, to them Naturalism was how they translated what they directly observed in the world into paint and color, perhaps the most prominent and persistent quality of their art. There are a handful of region-specific attributes known to us as well.

Braque Family Triptych (right wing) c. 1450
Oil on oak panel, 41 x 34 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris
by Rogier Van Der WEYDEN

The portrait in this panting has been placed in the middle, framed with a highly detailed yet not distracting background. The figure, of which we only see the upper body, is seen from a 2/3 view and is looking to the left side of the image, leading our eyes in the same direction. From the form of the female figure’s body and her posture we can guess that she is sitting down. In her right hand she is holing a jar (or some sort of container.) Also, the clashing of the form of her headpiece with the rocks on the right-hand side of the background coupled with the negative space directly to the left of her head create a vacuum-like flow that takes our eyes even more toward the left side of the painting. The background is composed of many small, round trees that go all the way back to the horizon. Lines and surfaces go up and down and into the distance to create rocks and shape the ground.

A combination of natural and geometric forms is seen in this piece. A good example is the lining of the figure’s neck and the triangle defined by the opening in her outfit, which works quite well with the organic form of the fabric. There are also lots of details visible on the sleeves, though they do not subtract from the presentation of her arm underneath, which still displays its form despite being covered with detailed colors and lines. From background to foreground, everything seen in this piece is naturalistic. It is clear that the trees in the back have received the same amount of attention as the figure’s hair strands, and so has everything in between. Despite the form of the trees being rounder and the rocks more pointy, they work together in an interesting harmony which is felt throughout the piece. The artist has indeed showcased their skillfulness in close observation. In some cases smaller forms have been repeatedly put together to make bigger, more meaningful ones (the bushy-looking trees being an example.) In other places, negative forms appear (such as the one noticeable to the right of the figure’s head) that surprisingly do not bother your eyes, and in fact help separate the background from the foreground.

Materials and textures are all artistically rendered in this piece. The existence of multiple fabrics in the female figure’s dress is obvious thanks to clever use of textures and addition of details. Silk can easily be distinguished from her robe or the embossed parts on her sleeve for instance, and one might even go as far as analyzing how different fabrics were made in that time using the observation skills of the artist as a helping hand. The figure’s hair appears soft, and quite reachable, so much that it fools you into thinking that you can reach out and touch it; and so does the semi-transparent cloth on her headpiece. The jar that she is holding in her hand projects itself as being made of ceramic, while her skin remains faithful to its organic roots. Also when looking at the background, the difference between textures still remains astonishing.

At first sight not many lines are visible, though they slowly pop out of hiding with closer observation. The trees are made up of many small, curvy lines, though the lines themselves cannot be easily distinguished; they mostly appear in underlying layers of the painting. There are lines noticeable in the figure’s hair and the wrinkles and folds of her outfit. Lines are also used to define her headpiece and some of the rocks seen in the background. Though, once again, our eyes are welcomed mostly by shapes at first, revealing only after a while the lines that they are covering. One could say that lines are helping shapes in this painting, and are utilized by the artist in some cases to render textures more accurately.

The artist has made great use of colors in this piece. In the background we can notice the use of atmospheric perspective, with warm colors used for closer objects and colder, more faded colors picked as we go into the distance. The foreground is composed mostly of brown-toned colors, the middle ground sees more greens, and the background shows shades of blue. The artist has not been afraid to use bright colors like the red seen in the figure’s dress. Despite the landscape only serving as a background, the level of detail and the attention to colors is on par with the foreground, a good example of which are the trees. The foreground sees more saturated colors such as dark blue, red, and golden colors used for the fabrics. Skin tones are natural, hair color artfully demonstrates its softness, and the various hues used to paint the figure’s face masterfully show the flowing of blood underneath her skin, most visible perhaps on her lips. And even though there are many bright colors in this painting, the artist has managed to beautifully use various highlight tones from light brown to yellow in rendering the headpiece, which is not quite as easy due to its material and texture.

When it comes to value, one thing that pops out is the foreground being quite darker that the background. Due to the artist’s use of saturated colors, pieces such as the figure’s robe, her hair, and the trees have some of the darkest values in the painting. The darker values can mostly be seen in the foreground, though they are artfully scattered all around the image. Mid-tones are noticeable mostly on the ground and parts of the figure’s outfit. The darker areas of her dress seems to be working their way up to the lighter values in her neck, skin, and headpiece, which in turn connect to the background and to the lightest value in the painting, the sky. It is also worth noting that the trees have the very important role of distributing the values across the piece. I do think that omitting the group of trees on the left side would have left the piece rather heavy and unbalanced.

The Wire-drawing Mill, c. 1489
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 286 x 426 mm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
by Albrecht DÜRER

The artist has painted a landscape showing a village with a river going through it. There are relatively big houses in the foreground that are adjacent to each other and the closest objects to the viewer. The bottom right of the painting is mostly composed of buildings, one of which is cut in half by the right frame. The left side of the image is framed with a tree and is complimented by the pile of houses on the right. The landscape covers the bottom two thirds of the painting, but gives its place to the mountains in the back as it gets closer to the top thirds of the painting, where the sky begins. Another small village can be seen closer to the horizon and to the left. The river also serves as a separator between the foreground and the background.

Buildings in this painting mostly show geometric forms, with each one being aligned rather uniquely in the frame. Where the river clashes with and gets covered by the houses, we notice the creation of a geometric negative space. The forms visible in the pile of houses on the bottom right lead their way and connect us to the small, squishy, and organic surfaces of the middle ground where rounder, smaller forms attach to each other in harmony. The village in the back also displays some more geometric pieces. It is worth noting that the distribution of geometric and organic forms in this image does not seem regular, but rather random. Organic forms are seen closer to the left side, on and around the horizon, and in the middle ground. There are also a few figures visible in this piece, though they appear to be treated as the least important elements of the painting. Landscape that is much farther even has, in some cases, more detail than these figures. We can see a person walking on the bottom left, another on a cattle in the river, and even some animals in the middle of the pile of houses, all of which display almost no detail. The objects in the scene as well as the landscape, on the other hand, are rendered with a considerable amount of detail.

Textures appear to be quite powerful in this piece, and perhaps one of the more important features of this panting. The wooden material of the rooftops, the brick walls of the houses, and the leaves of the trees are all rendered quite beautifully. As you get closer to the foreground you notice more detail, though the objects and foliage in the far back still visibly show their textures, just with less detail. The reflection on the water is painted artfully, though in contrast the artist has decided not to pay much attention to the ground and simply render it with small colored patches. From the depth of the textures in this image one might be able to tell the material of the objects quite definitively, or take an educated guess as to which plants existed in that time period and geographic area.

Line has mostly been used to render textures and materials, and to add detail to the scene. There are clearly visible lines on the rooftops, short and curvy lines have joined together to form bushes and trees, and parallel lines can be seen on wooden surfaces and in some fences. Most lines in this image are vertical, except where lines are used to separate two surfaces, and in the skeletal structure of the houses where diagonal lines are visible. Among all the man-made objects – which display straight lines – there is only one circular line seen. Also, shorter, curvier lines are used to define the organic parts of the painting

The use of atmospheric perspective in this piece is immediately evident. The foreground of the image shows various hues of brown and other warm tones. In the middle grounds, tones of green accompany lesser detail. In the far back colder colors such as shades of blue are utilized to demonstrate distance. The sky can be described as color-less, since it is most probably reflecting the color of the paper that sits underneath this painting. Despite not being highly saturated due to this being a watercolor painting, the colors in this image are not too varied or too bright. We can identify the three main colors used as brown, green, and blue. The color blue is used for the river and seems brighter because of the reflections, though a different shade of blue is seen in the mountains in the far back that appear colder and therefore more distant. The artist has decided not to distinguish the few figures from the rest of the painting, and has used a single mid-tone brown color to render them. Parts of the village and some of the buildings also show relatively brighter colors

The artist has mostly used mid-tones in this piece, and not a lot of variation in value is immediately noticeable. I cannot detect colors very close to white or even very dark ones, which translates to no bright highlights or dark shadows visible. Despite the relatively dark and bright surfaces of the piece not showing a dramatic difference in value, I believe that values have a strong and pleasant distribution in this painting. The bottom right quadrant which houses the darkest values is in the foreground, but the same value has been distributed to the left side of the image through the trees. These trees connect to the village on the horizon by spreading the same value, and gradually direct our eyes toward the darker trees in the middle ground. The lightest values in this painting are seen in the sky and on the many small, bright surfaces scattered around the bottom thirds of the painting, in the foreground.

A craftswoman is portrayed in this painting; a girl who has lived most of her life in a progressive and open-minded family alongside four brothers. Her dad, a successful businessman, had long dreamed of passing the family business to his sons, though they were not they type who could handle such responsibility. Hence she was raised by her parents just like a son, and inherited the family business, running it ever so successfully and making her father proud. Her close friendship with the artist Albrecht Dürer during one of his visits to her town led to Dürer painting this portrait of her.

Zerelda Kaufman (Zerelda, a German female first name, means “armored battle maiden”
and is similar sounding to my first name, Zara.
Kaufman is a common German last name, meaning merchant)

Citations:

1. Northern Italian Renaissance Painting | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Medieval Art Through the Sands of Time

Like to know more about the middle ages? In this post I briefly introduce the four different artistic periods of that era and for a more thorough look take two art pieces through a formal breakdown. First one is an ivory panel that has been made in the Ottonian period and the second one is an illustration page from the book Herrad of Landsberg related to the Gothic period. Then to utilize my knowledge, I discuss a video game that is designed around this era and point out and correct one of the mistakes in their effort to match the artistic style of the Medieval era.

The unique and fascinating art of the medieval ages is mostly studied when broken down to four distinct time periods of that era, for each of which a brief introduction follows.

The people of the early medieval ages migrated a lot and that had a big influence on their art consisting mostly of small, mobile pieces. They did not make monumental artworks as a result, and mostly crafted precious and valuable pieces that were used for trade or prestige. A lot of abstraction is noticeable in their art with many instances of symmetry and interlaced animals or plants. The meeting point of this migration-period art with Anglo-Saxon artists (while most probably under some Irish inspiration) is known as Hiberno-Saxon art.

The next installment of medieval art began around 800 A.D. when Charlemagne (Charles the Great) in his quest to rebuild the Roman Empire conquered Rome and was crowned Roman emperor by the Pope in his court in the German city of Aachen. His efforts in bringing back Classicism led the artists of his time to many failed attempts of copying the art of many generations before. The Carolingian art period was followed by Ottonian, when Otto I (ruled 936-73) was elected to revive imperial power on a Roman scale. Both these periods, constituting the Holy Roman Empire, are not known for their look towards nature and instead focused on using the best pieces from previous eras as reference. Some interesting observations about their art include the continued presence of symmetry and their use of flat Byzantine images as a model for creating often three dimensional art pieces.

The next artistic era known to us as Romanesque, describes the art of eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe. Even though this period is often thought of as more of a transition from Roman art to Gothic, it also has strong identifying qualities of its own, not the least of which is building massive cathedrals. The Romanesque period also saw the revival of architectural sculptures, in ways quite similar to the Greek, as integral parts of their buildings and not mere additions meant to fill space.

The Gothic period followed next, starting from France and finding its way through Germany and England. Art from that era is characterized by its naturalistic and expressive qualities, and has left behind many examples of vertical movements in their architecture and a variety of styles and technical methods. Their art is known to be very consistent throughout Western Europe while lasting for four hundred years. The artists of that movement also developed a competitive momentum, and are believed to be the first Western artists to present a believable array of facial expressions and human emotions.

Composition
The piece in this picture is a sculpture carved into an ivory panel, showing two human figures and framed with decorations of plants or leaves. The structure of the piece brings symmetry in mind, with an arch up top and the two figures standing below it. The figure on the right could be Jesus Christ, mainly because of the familiar halo behind his head. He’s standing on a platform, looking down and to the left, at the other character in the frame. The second figure appears to be climbing upwards, looking up at the figure to the right while slightly revealing his face.

Carolingian/Ottonian: Doubting Thomas, c. 1000
Ivory panel, 9.5×4 inch (24×10.5 cm)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Form
The person standing on the platform has a relaxed form, holding up a hand to reveal a supposed wound on his chest and allowing the second figure to see the wound through his clothes. The rest of his body is covered with drapery, and the form of the arch above coupled with the simplicity of the background has created a negative space which is quite successful in separating the figures from the environment they are presented in.

Color
Even thought this piece might have been painted at the time of its creation, what we’ve come to see of it has only a single color of ivory. Despite the monochromatic nature of this sculpture, it is easy to notice that the ups and downs of the surface or the depth of engravings is the main differentiator in terms of color, mainly by creating very interesting shadows and highlights.

Texture
When it comes to texture, different materials have been visually described quite artistically. You can easily distinguish cloth from skin or hair for instance. Various patterns have been used to render the clothes and drapery of the two figures, and the visual difference between Christ’s long hair and the left figure’s short and wavy hair is masterfully presented. It is also worth noting the use of lines to define textures, one example of which is the parallel longs visible on the drapery.

Line
The role of lines in this art piece seems quite significant. One can easily notice the different ways lines are used to define hair, facial features, and clothes for instance. Quite a bit of lines – and perhaps a bit exaggerated – have been used on the drapery. Curved lines are utilized beautifully to show the upward movement of the figure standing below. Shorter lines are noticeable on the decorative frame of the piece, while longer lines have been used to define the figures in the sculpture. Another simple but artistic handling of lines is to separate the two figures from the background.

Value
The depth of the engravings in this piece appears to be the main tool in the artist’s hands to emphasize on values. The deeper the sculpting goes, the darker the value gets, due to less light illuminating those deeper spots of course. Even though the frame displays a big variety of values, your eyes still comfortably land on the two figures. Despite the lack of color in this piece, you can still define and distinguish textures like skin and cloth, and that is mainly done through careful handling of lines and values. Another interesting observation is the platform that Jesus is standing on, which seems to have the darkest values of the piece, and hence the deepest engravings.

Composition
This piece is a painting with quite a lot of details and appears to be telling a very interesting story. There is one primary female figure in the middle, accompanied by a few symbolic elements all around it. Two demons are seen at the bottom of the image flanking the main figure, and an angel from above (quite literally) appears to be holding or carrying a person. The middle figure’s pose seems relaxed; with her wings semi-opened while wearing a crown and leaning on one of her legs, therefore creating a contrapposto. This piece is an illustration from a book and since it has not been placed against any particular background, we lack the information as to where this particular event or scene is taking place.

Herrad of Landsberg, Woman of the Apocolypse
Illumination from Hortus Deliciarum 1159-80

Form
When focusing on forms it starts to seem like a war is going on around the primary female character, though she seems quite calm despite that fact. I noticed four big circular shapes behind the figure; the smallest one behind her head might point to a halo, while the one covered by her upper body has no particular color. The circles down below and behind her feet remind you of the sun and the moon, mainly because of the color choice and their particular arrangement. There doesn’t seem to be a strong connection between the figure and the background, except through these circles. Another interesting observation when searching for form is the fact that the scale of almost everything in this painting is small compared to the main figure. Also, despite the presence of the angel, a demon and a head-pile on the left side, the image still feels symmetrical, probably due to the strong presence of the female figure.

Color
Colors are very radiant in this piece, with mostly tints of red visible to the viewer at first sight. The figure in the middle is wearing a blood-colored dress, with the same color spread to her wings and the two demons down below. There is a bit of blue noticeable in one of the circles behind her lower body (presumably the moon,) with a hint of green on the angel’s clothing and the halo behind the primary female character’s head. A dominant black color is also present to separate other colors from each other. Lastly, the background, which seems to be simply reflecting the color of the paper, is mostly yellow-toned.

Texture
Looking at the use of textures, it is immediately obvious how different the figure’s wings look from the clothing for instance, even though in both surfaces long parallel lines are present. You can also easily distinguish human skin from the demons’ because of the artist’s masterful utilization of colored surfaces and lines.

Line
Lines are arguably of one the most important elements in this painting. Through the use of lines the artist has created a variety of forms, textures, and values. The main figure’s body has parallel lines in the bottom half and intersecting lines in the top. It is by means of visualizing these lines that you can envision the form of the body underneath the clothes. Twisting lines define water or sea, while clothes show more straight lines and hair or body more curvy ones. All surfaces have been separated by the use of lines, and smaller forms take definition through thinner lines while thicker, more full lines represent bigger forms in the painting. One could even comment that the abundance of lines in this image is perhaps a bit too exaggerated.

Value
Last but not least, values are scattered more in the key parts of the painting. For instance, a big difference in value is used to define the clothes, while in the background there is almost no change in value. Lines are also used to amplify or quiet down the values across this piece. The difference between dark and light areas is quite significant, and the main figure shows a lot of darker values compared to the rest of the image, while standing against a much lighter background.

After learning about Medieval Art and doing some research on the subject, my next task was to find an inaccurate Medieval asset, character, or space used in a video game or movie and try to point out and address the problems I find and come up with my own historically-accurate prototype to replace it. I went through a couple of different games until I found Electronic Arts’ The Sims Medieval. The reason I chose this game at first was because of the word Medieval appearing in the title which would imply an accurate representation of that era, especially in a game developed and published by one of the biggest names in the industry. The Sims is also known for being a game that you can buy additional assets (buildings, furniture, props, etc.) to personalize your own space, which is another reminder to the players that those objects belong to the Medieval era.

The Sims Medieval (PC) published by Electronic Arts, 2011

The first objects that grabbed my attention were the thrones designed for this game. Since we can find an in-depth research on thrones in Medieval times on my classmate Sharon’s blog, I decided to move on and continue my search. When I saw the windmills in the game I was curious to see if they looked the same way back in time, so I looked for materials on Medieval-era windmills and found an accurate drawing from that time which is pictured below. I also found out that they were mostly called post mills since they were mounted on large vertical posts so they could be rotated when necessary. That’s right; back then they needed to move the mills towards the direction of the wind and that was made possible by pushing a long tail pole that was extended far out and near the ground post. The more important thing is that until the 1750s millers had to turn the machine (which would be the mill along with the tower, stones, steps, and doors) by hand in order to face the wind!

Title Book of Hours, Use of Sarum (‘The Taymouth Hours’), was made in second quarter of the 14th century in Latin and French and scripted in Gothic.
Artists: Sandler 1986 identifies the artist as that of Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 231, made for Roger of Waltham (d. c. 1336), canon of St. Paul’s, London.
From The British Library’s website

Pages from Smithfield Decretals (illumanated manuscript)
From The British Library’s website

A page from Smithfield Decretals (illumanated manuscript)

Illustrated By Christopher Schmidt

I ended up modeling a medieval post mill in Autodesk® Maya based on my findings listed above. Here are a few renderings of my recreation:

Citations:

1. Hartt, Frederick, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Volume 1, Prentice Hall, 4th Edition, 2003
2. Gimpel, Jean, Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, Penguin Books, 1977
3. Derry, T. K., A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900, Dover Publications, Reprint Edition, 1993
4. Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts | The British Library