J O H N   C H I A P P O N E

Introduction


Read about the elements and principles of art before viewing the Introduction.

Elements of Art | Principles of Art | Definitions | Guide

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BRANCHES OF EDUCATION

 

HUMANITIES

  • Performing Arts
  • Visual Arts
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • History
  • Philosophy
  • Religion
  • Languages and Linguistics
  • Jurisprudence (theory and philosophy of law)

 

LIBERAL ARTS

Liberal arts subjects are not related to the professional, vocational, or technical curriculum.

  • Humanities
  • Mathematics
  • Social Sciences
  • Physical Sciences


SOCIAL SCIENCE

  • Sociology
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Cultural and Ethnic Studies
  • Economics
  • Gender and Sexuality
  • Geography
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
     

NATURAL SCIENCE

  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Space Sciences
  • Earth Sciences
  • Life Sciences


FORMAL SCIENCES

  • Computer Sciences
  • Logic (also a branch of philosophy)
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics


PROFESSIONS & APPLIED SCIENCES

  • Design
  • Engineering
  • Education
  • Business
  • Forestry and Environmental Studies
  • Family and Consumer Science
  • Health Sciences
  • Journalism, Media, and Communications
  • Law (jurisprudence is a humanities)
  • Library and Museum Studies
  • Military Sciences
  • Public Administration
  • Social Work
  • Transportation
  • Agriculture

 

Although we separate the humanities from the sciences and math, it wasn't always that way. Medieval scholars classified the humanities as studies that are relevant to humans. The humanities included:  philosophy (the sciences were called natural philosophy), math, and the arts. Theology and religion were rendered onto God. We now consider Theology to be part of philosophy while religion is not included in philosophy, but both are included in the humanities.

Did you know that PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy.

The branches of philosophy include:

- Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty. Some examples of aesthetic questions are: what is beauty, and what is beauty doing here? 

Is beauty an average? read  more
Sir Francis Galton, English (1822 – 1911)
He was a polymath: statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, and proto-geneticist.

Galton  devised a technique called composite portraiture. He superimposed multiple photographs of individual faces, created an average face for men and women.

- Metaphysics is the study of the basic nature of reality. Traditional branches are cosmology and ontology. Cosmology is the study of the universe. Ontology is the general study of reality, types of being, what can be said to exist, and how they should be categorized.

- Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge. Skepticism is the belief that knowledge is impossible.

- Ethics is moral theory. The main branches are applied ethics, meta-ethics, and normative ethics. Meta-ethics asks whether absolute moral truths exist, and how we can know them. Normative ethics asks what act, or personality traits, are good or bad.

- Political philosophy is the study of government. It includes justice, law, and property.

- Logic is the study of proper reasoning.

- Philosophy of mind deals with theory of mind. One of it's main concerns is the mind body problem.

- Philosophy of language

- Theology is theory of God.

 


Conventions:






photos by john chiappone

The Chrysler Crossfire concept car has a great sense of repetition. The production car was built for Chrysler by Karmann of Germany - with parts from Mercedes Benz.

For legal reasons, Chrysler was forced to change one thing; what do you think they changed?

With this car, do you think form follow function, or does function follow form?

 



Painting Methods

We start by stretching raw canvas on a wooden frame. When you stretch a canvas, you put one staple in the center on the top, and one in the center on the bottom. Next put on staple in the center of each side. We then go back to the top, and put 2 or 3 staples to the right of the center staple. Do the same to the right side, and keep moving clockwise until the canvas is completely stretched.

After the canvas is stretched, we paint it with gesso - a flat white primer. This prevents the paint from sinking into the canvass, and makes it easier to fix the painting in the future.

Images are sketched with a brush because pencils crack the gesso, and years later those cracks appear through the surface. This is why you never write on the back of a painting.

The first layer of paint is thin, sketchy, and spontaneous. We call this the underpainting. Some are monochromatic. Painting with shades of only one color is called Grisaille.


Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

We build thicker layers on top of thinner layers. We don't put thinner layers on top of thicker layers because that also promotes cracking. The paint needs to dry enough before a new layer can be applied. When the final layer is so thick it looks like frosting on a cake, we call this impasto. This technique makes the painting less realistic, but gives it texture.

A painting is considered painterly when the brushstrokes are visible, and it was painted in a free, and spontaneous manner. Examples:  
Aelita Andre Video
Marla Olmstead

Paintings are considered linear when the brushstrokes are not visible, and it was painted in a precise, and controlled manner. Linear also refers to sculptures that contain lines, rope, wire etc, and it refers to a kind of perspective that we will get to later.

Photorealism by Glennray Tutor John Baeder

Oil paint is used to create realism because it takes a long time to dry, so you can blend colors, and be more precise. It can take over 14 days to dry completely. This is why it might be months before an oil painting is finished.

Questions:

- Why do you suppose we use canvas as a surface to paint? Is it just a custom?

- It's not advisable to roll a painting up, but if you had to for shipping, what side should the paint be on - inside or outside? 
[Answers]
 


 Match the Terms to the Painting

 Collaborate:

Underpainting:


Vincent Van Gogh
Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers

Impasto:
Henri Matisse
Vase of Sunflowers
Painterly:
Sandro Botticelli
Birth of Venus
Linear:
Claude Monet 
Impressions, Sunrise
Click here for the answer.
Roger Dean



PURPOSES OF ART

 

1. Provide a Record

2. To Express Feelings

3. To Reveal Metaphysical Truths

4. To see common things in uncommon ways - different perspectives.

 

1. Provide a Record

Before photography we recorded what people looked like by painting them. The problem is that people want to be remembered as looking better than they really did look. When creating a record, should artists take liberties, and always create beautiful paintings, or should they be accurate? This etching is of a famous person. Do you know who this is?



Click the picture for the answer.
 

Naturalist Photography:

The Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis Dohrnii).

The jellyfish is found in the Mediterranean and waters off Japan. It is the only known case of an animal capable of immortality. Like most hydrozoans, they begin life as tiny swimming larvae called planula. When a planula attaches itself to the seafloor, a colony of polyps grows. Jellyfish, also called medusae, bud off the polyps, and swim off. All the polyps and jellyfish arising from a single planula are genetically identical clones.

When a T. Dohrnii jellyfish is exposed to stress, assault, sickness, or old age, it reverts to the polyp stage, forming a new polyp colony. Theoretically, this process can go on indefinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal.

 

Pistol Shrimp



The shrimp stuns its prey by snapping a special claw shut. It creates a bubble that extends out from the claw - reaches speeds of 60 miles per hour. As the bubble collapses, it reaches temperatures equal to the surface of the sun! The sound reaches 218 decibels. Imagine a school of this snapping their claws.

 

Naturalist Illustrations:

Ernst Haeckel (1834 – 1919) was a German naturalist, philosopher, physician, and artist. He discovered and named thousands of species.

 

 

 

 


view more
 

 

2: To Express Feelings:

Should we only depict good feelings?

 



Collaborate:
Analyze this untitled poem

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962):

 

Two people not in love by Peter Fuss

Abdi Farah - Home | 3 Bombs

 


Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Frida Kahlo de Rivera (1907 – 1954) was a Mexican painter. She was married to the famous painter and muralist Diego Rivera.

Her self-portraits are autobiographical, and a blend of surrealism, folk art, and fantasy. Many of her paintings are an expression of pain. When she was a child, she contracted polio, and was disabled. At the age of eighteen, she was in a traffic accident. Her injuries caused her severe pain - that lasted the rest of her life.  View Kahlo's Art

 

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
 

JACKSON POLLOCK

video | CREATE
 

Unknown Artist
Marco Grassi        

SUSO Abstract action drawing.

 

3. To Reveal Metaphysical Truths:

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy where we ask questions like: what is real; what is the basic nature of reality; what is the cause of all things? These are all metaphysical questions.

In epistemology we ask questions that pertain to knowledge. These questions can change our view of reality. Does reason alter belief, or does belief alter reason? In Man's Emerging Mind, H. J. Berrill said:

 

I think the statement you often hear that 'seeing is believing' is one of the most misleading ones a man has ever made, for you are more likely to see what you believe than believe what you see. To see anything as it really exists is about as hard an exercise of mind and eye as it is possible to perform... .

 

Metaphysical, and epistemological, questions have lead philosophers to different visions of reality - like paintings of Being hanging on some cosmic wall. The most successful vision of reality belongs to Democritus (460-360 BCE) and Leucippus. We know it as the atomic theory of reality; reality consists of atoms moving in a void. Atoms have properties in themselves like: position, impenetrability, shape, weight, etc.; they called these primary qualities. Primary qualities also have the ability to cause properties in us that are not in the atoms; atoms lack color, smell, taste, odor, and temperature. Democritus and Leucippus called secondary qualities. In art the atomic vision is best portrayed by pointillism.

 

POINTILLISM

Georges Seurat

Keep clicking on the image below.

 A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte
 




Detail of La Parade
Click the above image twice.



 

SURREALISM

René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was a French philosopher, and  mathematician. He is considered the father of modern philosophy. His Meditations on First Philosophy used a method of doubt where he attempted to doubt all his beliefs, so he could find one belief that was impossible to doubt (certain), and could serve as the foundation to his philosophy - his starting point. If he seems unreasonable to you, remember that he wants his starting point to be certain - free of even the most unreasonable doubt.

How do you know you're not dreaming? How do you know you're not insane? How do you know that an evil demon is not attempting to deceive you on all your beliefs? These questions, although unreasonable to some extent, lay waste the claim that we know anything for certain,  or do they?

In the second meditation Descartes said:

 

"Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me [an evil demon] as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. ... this proposition ... I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind."

 


Cogito ergo sum; I think; therefore I exist. Is impossible to doubt, and is the starting point of modern philosophy, but this starting point traps us in consciousness. This is one of the great problems in philosophy. How do we get outside ourselves to know that our perceptions are accurate representations of the real word. It is this problem that surrealism addresses. It turns to the dream state as it's source of inspiration.
 

Surrealist Manifesto

From Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924

ANDRÉ BRETON

Surrealist Animation
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy, 1900–1955, French painter.

Dali and Max Ernst: Salvador Dali, 1904-1989, Spanish
Max Ernst, 1891–1976, German painter, sculptor, and poet. He is a pioneer of the Dada and Surrealist movements.
Rene Magritte, 1898-1967, Belgian Painter


Out of chaos we create form – TED
A Stroke of Insight

4: Different Perspective

DADA Art and Existential Philosophy:

(Art is not a mirror; it's a hammer.)

The dada movement began in Zürich Switzerland in 1916 as a reaction to World War I. They believed that “Destruction is also creation." Dada can best be defined as art without rules. It focuses on the absurdity of existence, irrationality, is countercultural, controversial, and shocking.

Dadaism looks to existentialist philosophy for inspiration. Starting with Søren Kierkegaard, the existentialist reacted against a world at war, and accepted Descartes foundation of philosophy as consciousness.

 

From left to right, top to bottom: Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre.

- Science and systematic philosophies are removed from experience. 
- No moral rule can serve as a complete guide.
- Life is meaningless until we define ourselves. 
- We are defined by our actions.
- Be true to your nature; be authentic.

 


Fountain (1917) by Marcel Duchamp

Art is whatever is displayed as art.

Marcel Duchamp (1887 –1968) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He produced relatively few artworks. His output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period.

He said, “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”



Collaborate:
Write the Purpose of art to the left.

Provide a Record

Click Images  

Express Feelings Power farming displaces tenants, Childress County, Texas ppmsc00232u.jpg
Reveal Metaphysical Truths
Different Perspective
Click for answer.

 

FUNCTIONS OF ART :

SOCIAL CHANGE

Dread Scott Tayler's What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?

Banksy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GVs3BSxoOs
Warning - the above link has material that might be considered offensive.

Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring, 1912

Picasso - Guernica

- In 1937 the Nazis bombed the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. It was the first aerial bombing of civilians in history.

- 11 feet tall by 25 feet long – you feel dwarfed by it, and like you’re within the image.
- The painting is done in black, white, and grays to create contrast.

- The horse dominates the center, and represents the people.

Watch Pan’s Labyrinth.
-
 The bull symbolizes senseless suffering (Guernica’s a farming community, and bulls are farm animals. The bull also represents God - the mother pleads while the bull ignores her. 
-
Notice the man holding the flowers.


CRITICISM:

Gabriel Cornelius von Max, 1840-1915
Monkeys as Judges of Art, 1889

When Picasso was asked what is art, he responded by saying, "what isn't art?"
 
Should we censor art? Since we don’t know all ends, should we tamper with conventions? Should we glorify violence and vice? Here is the
Collateral Club Scene with music by Paul Oakenfold - "Ready Steady go". Notice the repetition in the music. 

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." - Frank Zappa

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
 

DECONSTRUCTION

This theory of art criticism was advanced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida. He believed that an analysis of any artwork would yield conflicting meanings. The meaning of a work arises from the artist and viewer, so there is no absolute meaning, facts, or truths in art. There are only interpretations.
 

FORMAL CRITICISM

Formal criticism does not consider any external information. The work must stand on it's own. This ignores symbolisms that point to things happening in the world.
read more


Criteria:

      Artisanship
      Clarity
      Coherence
      Interest
      Is it unique?
 

CONTEXTUAL CRITICISM

This includes external factors.

Criteria:

     Does the artist have something to say?
     How well does she say it?
     Is it worth saying?
     Does it make you think or feel?



STYLE

Repetition is an element of art. Repetition in a body of work creates an artist's style.

Mark Kostabi
(1960 - ) is an American artist. Kostabi World is his New York studio; it openly employs artists to do all his work. These artists are grouped as: idea people, image people, and painting assistants that do all the paintings. Kostai just signs the artwork.

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist who worked in France. His unique style is due to his repetitive distortion of form by elongation. He was addicted to alcohol and narcotics, and died poor.

Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Primitivism and Post-Impressionist painter. His style is due to the repetition of his subject matter (people of Tahiti), bold colors, simple abstract shapes, exaggerated body proportions, and stark contrasts. He was influenced by the art of Africa, and Native Americans. 

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 – 1986) was an American artist that was inspired by the landscapes of New Mexico, adobe architecture, and Navajo Indian aesthetic.



Collaborate:
STYLE

Are all three paintings in a row the same style and artist?

1
2 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 053.jpg

3

4

 

5

6

Amadeo Modigliani 064.jpg

Amadeo Modigliani 008.jpg
7

Click for answers.

IMPRESSIONISM

This style of painting and music started in France during the 1860's. Claude Monet was a founder of the movement in painting. The name comes from the title of his painting Impression Sunrise. Characteristics of Impressionist painting include bold visible brush strokes, emphasis on light, ordinary subject matter, and unusual angles.

Claude Monet (1840–1926)
Impression Sunrise


Houses of Parliament, London, c. 1904, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris


Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies
, 1899,
Metropolitan Museum of Art


Haystacks, (sunset), 1890-1891, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nympheas, c. 1916, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Water Lilies, 1916, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo


Water Lilies, 1914-1917, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

VINCENT VAN GOGH

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers
(Arles, January 1889)

Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of

Modern Art Tokyo

Sold for USD $39,921,750

File:Van Gogh Vase with Five Sunflowers.jpg

Vase with five sunflowers

(Arles, August 1888)

Destroyed by fire in World War II

on 6 August 1945

File:Vincent Willem van Gogh 128.jpg

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers
(Arles, August 1888)
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

File:Van Gogh Twelve Sunflowers.jpg

Vase with twelve flowers

(Arles, January 1889)

 Philadelphia Museum of Art,

Philadelphia, United States

File:Van Gogh Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers Amsterdam.jpg
Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers
(Arles, January, 1889)
Van Gogh Museum,

Amsterdam, Netherlands

 

Vase with three sunflowers

(Arles, August 1888)

Private collection, United States

Van Gogh began painting sunflowers in the late summer of 1888, and continued into the following year. One went to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. The paintings show sunflowers in all stages of life - from fully in bloom to withering. The paintings were innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum. Newly invented pigments made new colors possible.

On March 31, 1987, even those without interest in art were made aware of van Gogh's Sunflowers series when Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of USD $39,921,750 for Van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London  - a record-setting amount for a work of art. The price was over four times the previous record of about $12 million paid for Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi in 1985. The record was broken a few months later with the purchase of another Van Gogh, Irises by Alan Bond for $53.9 million at Sotheby's, New York on November 11, 1987.

While it is uncertain whether Yaso Goto bought the painting himself or on behalf of his company, the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Japan, the painting currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. After the purchase a controversy arose whether this is a genuine van Gogh or an Emile Schuffenecker forgery.

 

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