Art in Context

1. Art in Context Outcomes 1) Look at the artist you have chosen to study on this powerpoint. 2) Answer the questions about your artist from the art in context sheet in more detail. 3) Choose a picture you want to study/write about in more depth and print a colour version of it (if you haven’t already) 4) Make links to the words highlighted in blue, using the following website: www.artlex.com. To give you even more information.

2. American Surrealist painter who concentrated on massive close ups of flowers, as well as moody landscapes of the American mid-west She worked primarily in oil-paint and by the mid-1920s, she began making large scale paintings of natural forms from close up, as if seen through a magnifying lens. A lot of critics have suggested that her flowers are very feminine. Ideas: What could you study in an extreme amount of detail? Georgia O Keefe

3. American Contemporary Painter PhotoRealist She uses airbrushes She concentrates on mystical and very colourful still life groups The objects she chooses to paint are very personal to her This painting is called ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Her paintings can be compared to the Dutch ‘Vanitas’ paintings which used objects in a very symbolic way to suggest life and death. (Small image to the right) Audrey Flack

4. Art Nouveau 1900-1910 An International movement involving artists from many different countries Art Nouveau can be recognised by the use of flowing lines based on natural forms. Plants, flowers , shells and animals were all sources of inspiration for designers. See the Powerpoint Presentation on the Year 8 Art page of the school website for more information.

5. Islam is the religion of Muslims, based upon the submission of the faithful to the will of Allah (the only God) Today, one fifth of the world's population believes in Islam. Of all the visual arts, calligraphy has been most highly regarded as a fine art by Muslims. The Arabic alphabet in various scripts, generally in combination with arabesqueornament, became the most prized decoration for architecture and other functional works, such as furniture, textiles, and vessels. Indeed, with the exception of poets and calligraphers, Muslims have never looked to artists for special insights or meanings. They have regarded the arts primarily as the decorative arts, based greatly upon the study of mathematics, and involving intricately geometricdesigns. The absence of figures is a characteristic feature of Islamic religious art. It is occasionally said that figures were banned in Islam from the start, but this is untrue. Islamic art

6. Blossfeldt A German photographer who concentrated on highly detailed black and white photographs of flowers. Karl Blossfeldt (1865 – 1932) was a Germanphotographer, sculptor, teacher, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany, at the turn of the century. He worked with a camera he designed himself. That camera allowed him to greatly magnify the objects he was capturing, to up to 30 times their actual size. He spent much of his time devoted to the study of nature. In his career of more than 30 years, he photographed nothing but plants, or rather, sections of plants. In many of his photographs, he would zoom in so close to a plant that the plant no longer looked like a plant. The images he created looked more like lovely, abstract forms. His photos revealed the amazing detail found in nature. When Blossfeldt began his career, photography was still quite new. Many people saw it as a scientific tool. They looked at it as an infallible means of capturing the world. Many people did not look at photography as an art form yet. Blossfeldt's work can be seen as a transition between looking at photography as just science and looking at photography as art.

7. Roy Lichtenstein American Pop Art 1960’s (Flower power, hippies, youth culture) Much of his work is based on comic strips, which at the time were very basic, using only the Primary colours. He invented a technique using ‘benday’ dots for half tones, which he stencilled through a metal ‘mesh’ Acrylic paints (had just been invented, a very bright paint , initially meant to be weatherproof for large outside murals. It dries very quickly and has PVA glue mixed with it, making it very hard-wearing. His work reflects a ‘materialistic’/consumer society. It is bright, brash, bold and fun

8. American Pop Art 1960’s (Flower power, hippies, youth culture) Acrylic paints (had just been invented, a very bright paint , initially meant to be weatherproof for large outside murals. It dries very quickly and has PVA glue mixed with it, making it very hard-wearing. His work reflects a ‘materialistic’/consumer society. It is bright, brash, bold and fun James Rosenquist

9. William Morris (March 24, 1834 – October 3, 1896) was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the BritishArts and Crafts movement, best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain. His family was wealthy, and he went to school at Marlborough College. He and his friends formed an artistic movement, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They eschewed the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture and favoured a return to hand-craftsmanship, raising artisans to the status of artists. He espoused the philosophy that art should be affordable, hand-made, and that there should be no hierarchy of artistic Victorian designer, famous for his intricate flower designs William Morris

10. Christo creates environmentalinstallation art. His works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and the 24-mile-long curtain called Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma counties in California Although his work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, he has denied that his projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of his art, he contends, is simply to make the world a "more beautiful place" or to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo's wrappings as a "revelation through concealment." Christo

11. Impressionist Painter 1890’s French Loved light and the play of light and shadow on natural objects Would paint the same thing over and over again, but at different times of the day, in order to capture the ‘fleeting moment’ The invention of oil paint in tubes meant that for the first time painters were not confined to a studio, could take their equipment with them, and paint outside! Impressionist painters didn’t use black in their palette as they felt that this colour doesn’t occur naturally in nature. They painted quickly and used a series of dashes and paint strokes to build up a picture, which shocked their audiences! (who were used to paintings that looked like photographs at this time) Monet

12. Sas Christian British Contemporary artist (Female) She works in acrylic paints and oils. Sas says, “They’re older than adolescent. It’s their eyes that give them that childlike quality.” It is the eyes. In every one of her pieces, the predominant feature is quite obviously those gorgeous, bulbous, ocean-sized eyes. They pull you right in. Sas Christian works out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her husband Colin, who is also a talented artist. She finds her inspiration all over, in one-liners and in music. She hasn’t been painting for very long. She kind of stumbled into it, by discovering that she was good at it. And that she is. With her graphic design background, her work hints at an illustrator’s genius. the artists she most admires would be Bouguereau, Tamara De Lempicka, Mark Ryden... Sas draws inspiration from everyday occurences, movies and music.

13. Kahlo Mexican Born 1907, died 1951 Female artist Influenced by Surrealism and Mexican Folk Art She was intensely proud of her background and heritage, much of her artwork dealt with her identity She used Oil Paint. She suffered from a horrific tram injury which meant a number of spinal operations, and spending a great deal of her life in pain.

14. Banksy • Banksy (1974 -- ) is a graffiti artist from Bristol, UK, whose artwork has appeared throughout London and other locations around the world. Despite this he carefully manages to keep his real name from the mainstream media. However, many newspapers assert that his real name is Robert or Robin Banks.Banksy, despite not calling himself an artist, has been considered by some as talented in that respect; he uses his original street art form, often in combination with a distinctive stencilling technique, to promote alternative aspects of politics from those promoted by the mainstream media. • Some believe that his stencilled graffiti provides a voice for those living in urban environments that could not otherwise express themselves, and that his work is also something which improves the aesthetic quality of urban surroundings; many others disagree, asserting that his work is simple vandalism • Due to the shroud of secrecy surrounding his real identity and his subversive character; Banksy has achieved somewhat of a cult following from some of the younger age group within the stencilling community.

15. Antony Mark David GormleyOBE (born 30 August1950) is an Englishsculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in Gateshead and Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool. Almost all of his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metalcasts. Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." Gormley