Creating a piece of work is a subject of independent creativity and one’s ability to express thoughts and ideas in a painting, drawing, or sculpture. Art can be defined as the embodiment or arrangement of visual elements and views, particularly in generating works largely in a visual medium such as painting or sculpture for their aesthetic appeal or psychological prowess. This discussion highlights various pieces of art; how artists deployed various artistic devices, tools, and manners in their designs.
Corpse and Mirror II
The painter Jasper Johns was born in 1930; he found fame in the 1950s for his paintings of flags, targets, and other ordinary objects. Johns’ work has been exhibited worldwide, and he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1988. Despite criticism of his work, Johns’ work has always been popular among collectors (Johns). The painting, Corpse and Mirror II, was done from 1974 to 1975. Corpse and Mirror artwork comprises oil and sand on four linked canvases with a painted frame by the artist. He used a distinct composition of crosshatched marks, traditionally thought to be a graphic way of adding depth and dimension to an image or conveying the illusion of light in space. I like the technique used in this work because it creates a tonal effect by varying the spacing lines and having additional layers. Johns’ crosshatching emphasizes the painting’s flatness by being gestural but not emotive; in this way, the technique exemplifies his greater critique of strongly expressionist painting models.
The Starry Night
The Starry Night is a semi-abstract landscape painting by Vincent van Gogh. The artwork was done in 1889, expressing a night of sky topping a small settlement area. It was painted by a Dutch artist, Vincent van Gogh and happened to be his most celebrated piece. Van Gogh was born in 1853 and died in 1890. Furthermore, he created more than 2000 pieces of artwork in a decade time.
I love the creativity in this painting, whereby Van Gogh applies thick textures with brushstrokes to create patterns that depict the movement and energy of the sky and the stars, giving an impression of twinkling stars (Abigail). The starry night is a work of oil on canvas and pinpoints a sky at night, illustrated by chromatic blue swirls and a glamorous work of heavenly bodies, a hushed village of simple dwellings surrounds a church beneath an expressive sky. The foreground of this night image features a cypress tree. Its flame-like shape goes almost to the canvas’s top edge, creating a visual link between ground and sky.
Street, Dresden
This artwork is an oil painting done in 1908 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The artist expresses an illusion of discomfort experienced in modern urban bustle by radiating tension on canvas by using oil. It shows packed pedestrians in a constricted space. Even though the street is packed, even claustrophobic, everyone appears to be alone. The women on the right are keeping themselves in, clutching her purse and her skirt, and their faces are expressionless, almost masklike. The headgear of a small child dwarfs her in a cluster of whorling patterns that create human figures. Kirchner depicts Dresden’s fashionable street as a busy space where everyone appears to be alone. Kirchner’s palette of strident, contrasting colors heightens the sensation that this artistry ironically depicts fundamental features of urban life.
However, the painting is not bright enough to give the perfect illusion of a modern busy street. The painting would have been much better with shades of brighter colors to add on lighting effect (University). Kirchner uses dull colors to display clothing, as most of them do not show their faces. The mood displayed in the artwork is rather dull, contrasting with the mood visible in an urban street. Even if alone, people in the streets prefer presenting themselves boldly.
One: Number 31, 1950
The masterpiece is one of Jackson Pollock’s largest and best Abstract Expressionist drip artworks. A private collector owned it until 1968, when the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City purchased it, wherein it has been on exhibition ever since. It is a huge canvas with oil and enamel paint on top. This artwork was the first of his many paintings using a complicated blend of tans, blues, and grays with black and white slashes of variable sheen.
Pollock flung and freehandedly threw paint onto a canvas set on the floor underneath him, using rods, rigid brushes, and other devices. An artistic technique is called a drip-style painting. This sophisticated mix of varying luster creates a contrast of quiet colors with a splattering of paint on top created by tans, blues, and grays lashed through with black and white. Furthermore, it is an exemplary example of a conceptual piece of art. The vast combination of curves and regular geometrics were combined in a particular manner to depict a unique brightness and generates a color palette.
Pollock has also done other similar artworks using similar techniques. However, his work style is described as purely abstract and is a result of an artist’s play-around-with paints to give appeal. This artwork has majored in the use of black as a primary color. Since it is an abstract form of work, using different colors would bring a more abstract appeal rather than majoring in a few colors.
Works Cited
Cain, Abigail. “How One Art History Teacher Solved Two Of The Biggest Mysteries About Van Gogh.”Artsy, 2016, Web.
Johns, Jasper. “Corpse And Mirror II | The Art Institute Of Chicago.”The Art Institute Of Chicago, 1974, Web.
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig. “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Street, Dresden. 1908 (Reworked 1919; Dated On Painting 1907) | Moma”. The Museum Of Modern Art, 1919, Web.
University, Amsterdam. Reconstruction, Replication, And Re-Enactment In The Humanities And Social Sciences. 2020, Web.