Discussion of the Major Paintings - Essay Example

? Discuss the following artists and their important paintings, making use of your knowledge of line, space, light, and color. Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper 1498: pitch and mastic tempera on plaster. The texture is three dimensional: depth, width and thickness of the pillars. His use of geometry and lines shows the scientist in him. Everything was thought out perfectly. Though you can see the lines as coming from Jesus's head as though they were going into the celestial sky, they also are in perfect perspective to the geometrical design of the architecture of the Refectory. The other the triangle between Mary and Jesus represents the cup of the last grail. Look out the windows, one can see the country side which is not congruent with the subject matter. He uses the technique of Chiaroscuro. It is dark in the room and bright outside. It is interesting to note that he used the same country side in his Mona Lisa painting which he completed in 1503. The colors used are green and orange(brown). There is symmetry with the large rolls on the table. Important paintings Perspectival study of the Adoration of the Magi: (Art Authority) Pen and ink, traces of silver point and white on paper. Fascinating to see his study in perspective of texture, the use of Chiaroscuro, the use of sienna to show white, the three dimensional by the fact that we can see the thickness of the stairs and the pillars. the lines showing how everything is done in perfect mathematical dimensions then The Adoration of the Magi: (Art Authority) oil on panel. The oil thing which remains from the perspective is the stairs and the pillars but they are quite distant. It was as though he used the study to do several painting. The texture is very primitive for a Leonardo da Vinci. The trees are two dimensional and Mary is in one color. Perhaps it is a question of aging. The people are half real. Titian, The Assumption of the Virgin: Oil on wood. A perfect study in vertical perception there is an incredible sense of movement, towards the heavens. In analyzing the lines, there are the two triangles with two parallel lines. The texture of the fluffiness of the clouds but also the heaviness the angles have of carrying Mary Profane Love: a perfect contract between the Assumption and this perfect technique of Chiaroscuro. There is the light shining on her face and her hand. She is also looking at someone but we do not see him either. There is also the mirror which shows you something that the person in the painting doesn't see. This is a technique which began with Leonardo da Vinci. The texture of her clothes is magnificence Van Gogh, Starry Night : oil on canvas. It is not polychromatic though he does use a great deal of blue. He avoided using red. He uses hatching in the modern sense of the word. His brush makes short rapid strokes of the same color. The texture has very little dimension to it other than a little bit of the town. I would not call it two dimensional. Road with Pollarded Willows and A Man with a Broom (Art Authority) is from carbon, ink, and watercolor on paper. His texture is three dimensional. You can see the end of the road but you see the beginning of the impressionist school as the road slightly bends to the right. As he advanced in his training, he mixed different techniques each time of pencil and ink, or pencil, ink and water color to cite an example. He showed his being influenced from different schools. He painted 37 self portraits. It is documents that none of them look directly at the viewer but the Self Portrait 1887 looks straight on. His self portrait in the straw hat looks like a modern version of hatching. Jasper Johns, Numbers in Color: uses the technique of pattern and polychromatic. He called his paintings of clusters "crosshatchings (Johns) Grey numbers (Art Authority) is the same technique of patter without color Andrea Mantegna, The Lamentation over The Dead Christ 1494: tempera on canvas. The texture is three dimensional. He uses lines in one angle to gain depth to take away from the size of his feet. There is one straight line so the viewer of the canvas feel as though he looking down on his body. The deepest part of the canvas is at his left cheek or his adam's apple. Light is obtained thought the shading of the tempera. Chiaroscuro of a black background gives the idea of night. There is a candle effect on the right from the viewer's stand point. Mantegna Fresco Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducal (Art Authority) is a perfect example of Chiaroscuro. You actually think you are looking at the blue sky with the clouds Tempera is pigment mixed with a mixed of water and egg yoke. This technique was used before oil paint. It served as a binder. It is like putting flour in water to make it milky. 2.Define and give examples of the following: Two and three dimensional space: is giving the viewer a sense of depth, height, width, or amplitude. The easiest way of finding it is to see where two lines meet in a form of an angle. Van Gogh self portraits are an example of 3/4 dimensional space, Two-dimensional space: a measurable distance on a surface which show height and width but lack any illusion of thickness or depth. Chiaroscuro : contrast between using dark and light. In wood cuts, drawings, paintings. Portraits in the 16th century showed the white faces in a black/dark background. The effects of showing candles as in the Hatching and cross-hatching : a technique to shade or create tones with parallel lines. It was done to make woodcut or engraving. Vermeer Jan The Astronomer shows three dimensional space, texture of clothe, chiaroscuro of the light shining from the sunlight into the window, the angle of the corner of the room, the shadows. Polychromatic: several colors Texture : when there is physical sense of touch or visual sensation of two dimensions. Pattern : repetition of one aspect in the work. 3.Identify the principles of design that artists use in the creation of art and explain the different effects that can be achieved by using them in different ways. Hung Liu is a Chinese born artist who paints large canvases with gouache paints in the old Chinese calligraphy manner of thick strokes. She was the artist in residence at Fullerton College (Prince 2010) Her primary colors are black, white and read. She specializes in portraits of old fashioned Chinese dressed women. Her symbolism of the bird cage represents the fact that these women are prisoners in their clothes as they cannot move, in their facial expressions as their makeup is such a mask, they are frozen. She plays with light by changing the faces she sees on the photos she uses. The paint she uses will drip down the canvas up to a day so she always uses a darker color at the base of each photo. Other than the bird cage, you can say her paintings are two dimensional. Judith Baca is specialized in mural paintings. She calls herself a visual political artist. Mural paintings. Visual political artist. Her paintings give historical rendition of what went on in each area of her mural or area." Baca was the founder of the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into a community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) which was has been creating sites of public memory since 1976. She continues to serve as its artistic director and focuses her creative energy in the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab, employing digital technology to co-create collaborative mural designs".(Baca)   The paintings take on a caricature look due to the size and style ; colors are polycromatic. In the texture she does not always achieve the depth she has in her sketches. She lacks the three dimensional depth she is after. Her style reminds me of Jacob's Toussaint L'Ouverture Series. (Jacob 1986) References Art Authority. Open Door Network. Web http://www.opendoor.com April 8 2011 Baca, J Web Site www.judybaca.com April 7 2011 B. Prince (2010, May 21). Hung Lui, artist in Residence Fullerton College [Web log Comment] Retrieved from http:// http://www.2pas.org/blog/2010/05/hung-lui-artist-in- residence-fullerton-college/ (2011, April 07) Jacob, L. (1986) Toussaint l'Ouverture [Web] Retrieved from http://www.artnet.fr (2011, April 9) Johns, J. Web Site http://www.jasperjohns.com April 7 2011 Welcome to Exploring Leonardo. Web Site http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/ April 8 2011 Read More