Paintings by Arshile Gorky - Case Study Example

PAINTINGS BY ARSHILE GORKY By Introduction The following text is a case study that will be developed from researching on the works (paintings) of Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky. The research pays particular attention to the methods he applied in creating his paintings, and what his styles or preferences of producing artwork made his unique works. The research will further seek to justify his works’ classification as Abstract Expressionism and/ or Modern Art, which is the wider context placement of his work. In short, this research will be more of what the systematic use of the artistic abilities of Arshile Gorky, the actuality in the construction of the artistic expressions in various forms of arts. The guiding aspect of research in art is that it seeks to expound more on what was done or put into use by the artist in coming up with the features works. This is contrary to the explanation which is the expounding on what one observes and understands from an artist’s work. Finally, the understanding of Arshile Gorky’s work cannot be complete without first understanding his inspiration and earliest encounters to art which are most likely to have inspired him into joining the field. As such, this research will also unearth his early career and entry into painting. Methodology These investigations will be derived from secondary sources, mostly historical books, and other recent texts written concerning the artist, his style of art (Expressionism and Modern Art), and sources of his inspiration. The only applicable sources are secondary sources since it is impossible to conduct a one-on-one interview with the late artist, and finding someone with firsthand information about Arshile Gorky is currently impossible. In addition, it will be necessary to compare his works to another artist’s work, and who reigned during the same art period as Arshile Gorky. This will help create a better understanding of the inspiration, style of doing art, materials used, and collectively the binding factor which brought the artists under the wider Expressionism and Modern arts umbrella. The other secondary source will be a website displaying some of his works as it will be necessary to compare the derived data with what can be seen in the websites featuring his works. This will be important in that it can either lead to justifying or downplaying of the information in case the comparison does not match. Concisely, primary sources consisting of pure literature will form the basis of the method used in conducting this research. Research The first part of my research revealed the summary of Arshile Gorky’s life. The understanding of his life is important in that from it, we understand that his inspiration was drawn from his exposure to the 1915 Armenian Genocide, themes which he reflected in much of his work. Secondly, we learn that he was mentored by a master Paul Cezanne who was a master of art in the 19th century. Arshile Gorky was born as Vostanik Manuk in April 1904 in the Ottoman Empire’s village of Khorgom, and lived until July 1948. He was an Armenian-American, and his painting was oriented towards Abstract Expressionism, which many critics attribute to his information or exposure to the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in which people lost and suffered greatly. When the genocide broke out, he fled together with his family to Russia and while in exile, his mother died out of starvation four years later. He later moved to the United States in 1920 with his father, and it was the need to fit into the new territory that he changed his name to Arshile Gorky1. Two years later in 1922, Arshile Gorky joined the Boston New School of Design where he was able to further his painting and drawing skills which had been inspired by Expressionism during the 1900s. He was largely influenced by Paul Cezanne. Abstract Expressionism2 emerged in the 19th century era from a group of artists based in Paris. It was a unique arts emergence which received much opposition from earlier art periods and styles. This is because they “violated” the norms of academic painting by creating artwork from colours brushed freely with much emphasis on the colours rather than the accustomed contours and lines. The other variation is that abstract Expressionism artists painted real life scenes and worked from outdoors unlike earlier artists who did all their still-life, landscape, and portraiture inside art studios. In short, Abstract Expressionism artists valued Plen-Air painting. The reason they preferred Plen-Air is that the sunlight created momentary effects which they could capture and incorporate into their compositions. However, the greatest attribute of recognizing Abstract Impressionist art was an overall visual effect, but not emphasis on minute constituting details. Second, the brushstrokes used were broken and made use of pure, unmixed or mixed colour which in most cases was neither shaded nor blended. This brought out an effect of vibrant, intense colour vibration. After conducting this research on his life history and Abstract Impressionism, the second part of the secondary research was viewing Arshile Gorky’s actual works and finding the evidence of technical decisions and aesthetics applied in their construction. The comparison offered by the artist’s works supports most of the prior definition of Abstract Impressionism. Below are amongst two of his most popular works, The artist and his mother and The Liver is the Cocks. In evaluation, both of these works depict overall similarities mostly in the use of colour, abstractness, brush strokes, and overlooking of definite contours and lines. First of all, the forms, constructing the figures are indefinite and do not adhere to reality of objects as appearing in nature. This is mostly evident in The artist and his mother where the bodies were not concretely defined to resemble reality. It is evident that Gorky’s emphasis of the line was low, and he did not mind what he is resulting shapes would look like. This he mostly applied in The Liver has been the Cocks where he correlated different indefinite shapes into the same plane, just organizing them to come up with a composition with figures left to the viewers’ imagination. This is one key attribute of Abstract Impressionism. The second feature he applied in constructing his works is short and very precise brushstrokes, which are in figure 1 very dominant. Unlike in the wider painting mainstream where the brush strokes are blended and smoothed to perfection, Gorky did not. Instead, he did short brush strokes of paint especially on the clothes of his figures and left them at that. Still under colour, he did his style of shading and contrasting colours in a rather rough manner in that he just pasted a dark shade where he intended to darken, and where light seemingly fell on, left a bright wash of plain colour. All in all, he did his pieces while considering the effect of light (movement from dark to light and vice versa). Finally, the attribute of mixed and unmixed colour as defined by Abstract Expressionism is evident in the method of Arshile Gorky’s paintings. In The artist and his mother painting, there is no mixing of colours. Instead, Gorky was creating the illusion of shading and progression of light by overlapping different pigments, darker or lighter, with the main colours. This gave his paintings rather abstract and unfinished appearances. The same observation is in The Liver is the Cocks where the forms were created by painting totally different pigments to create contrast and create the forms. He did not shade by mixing colours, but used short brushstrokes of darker pigments to do so. In a nutshell, viewing the paintings proved the evidence of Gorky’s works indeed conform to the period of Abstract Impressionism. Conclusion There emerged additional information not expected in the course of the research, such as that Arshile Gorky’s inspiration to take to Abstract Expressionism resulted from his experience with the Armenian genocide. There also emerged the fact that at first, this kind of art was unwelcome by the earlier practitioners of art since it had some aspects of it termed as being against a set (art) rules. These bits of information were derived from secondary sources. Due to the fact that finding a primary source was out of hand, this meant that all the information that the research could have gathered was limited. This is because one, there are some questions I would have preferred to pose to the artist directly, especially concerning his intense use of complex abstraction in his works. This is because while most of his works were explained from a perspective of Abstract Impressionism, there are still hidden meanings in his works that require a deeper explanation. This is what would have made the research more effective than it succeeded this time as it would have provided a deeper understanding in the field of Abstract Impressionism. However, the research was sufficient enough since it met its intended purpose which was to expound on how Arshile Gorky’s (abstract) works were created, and provided the difference between explaining an artwork, and understanding its process of creation. Bibliography COMPTON, M., Abstract Expressionism (United Kingdom: Tate Gallery Pub, 2000). THERIAULT, K., Rethinking Arshile Gorky (Penn State Press). Read More