Art 04: Art Appreciation
Masami Toku, Ed.D.
Part III The Fine Arts Media
Each material presented,
bronze, oil paint, plaster, etc, is called a medium. The history of media used to create is is the
history of various technologies
employed.
Typically, most media
consist of pigments (the coloring
agents) mixed with a binder, which
holds them together.
Chapter 10: Drawing
Until the end of the 15th
c., drawing was viewed as a “student medium.”
However, by the end of the 15th C., drawing came into its own.
Dry Media:
Metal point: A common technique of the late 15th and early 16th centuries in Italy. It is often called silverpoint – a stylus with a point of gold or silver is applied to a sheet of paper prepared with a mixture of powdered bone (or lead white) and gumwater. When the metal point is applied to this ground, a chemical reaction result, and a line is produced. A metalpoint line is pale gray and is very delicate. It cannot be erased or redrawn.
Metal point is concerned with delineation – the use of line. Softer media allow an artist to achieve a sense of volumetric, or 3 – D form, through modulations of light and dark.
Graphite: It was discovered in 1564 in England. The lead pencil (graphite encased in a cylinder of softwood) became increasingly popular. During the Napoleonic wars when English graphite was no longer available. The substitute was the Conte crayon, a mixture of refined graphite and clay, which resulted in a very soft point.
Pastel: A chalked medium with colored pigment and a non-greasy binder added to it. The harder the stick, the less intense its color, which is why we associate the word “pastel” with pale color.
Liquid Media:
Pen and Ink: During the Renaissance, most drawings were made with iron-gall ink – black ink that browned with age. The quill pen used by most Renaissance artist allowed for far greater variation in line and texture than was possible with metalpoint.
Wash and Brush: When ink is diluted with water and applied with a brush, the result is called a wash. The wash serves two purposes – it defines form and volume, and it makes the drawing much more dynamic than it would have been had it been left in pen and ink. Drawing with the brush has long been a tradition in the East, perhaps because it is used there as a writing instrument.
Innovative Drawing Media: Drawing invites experiment. Matisse was inspired to cut out shapes of paper using scissors, and through this form of “sketching” he found what he considered to be the essence of form.
Walter De Maria’s Las Vegas Piece is a “drawing” made in 1969 n the Nevada desert with the six-foot blade of a bulldozer.
Drawing is being accomplished by electronic means, especially with the aid of computers (David Hockney, “Untitled” by “drawing” on a digitized “tablet” developed by a company called Quantel.)
In post-medieval Western culture, prints – the primary mode of book illustration, were fundamental to the creation of our shared visual culture.
Prints are popular because original works of art (paintings or sculptures) are often too expensive for the average collector to afford. Prints are an avenue through which artists can gain greater exposure.
A print is a single impression, or example, of a multiple edition of impressions made on paper from the same plate or master image (sometimes called a matrix).
There are five basic processes of printmaking – relief, intaglio, lithography, silkscreen, and monotype.
Relief Processes:
Relief refers to any printmaking process in which the image to be printed is a raised surface which holds the ink. An example is the common rubber stamp. The letters are raised above the background, and once “inked” on the pad, the ink is transferred to paper through pressure.
Woodcut: the first prints were woodcuts. It offers the artist a means of achieving great contrast between light and dark, and as a result, strong emotional effects.
Linocut (linoleum): Color can be added to a print by creating a succession of different blocks, each one printing a different color, and each one registered to line up with the others. Picasso, working with linoleum instead of wood, simplified the process.
Intaglio (“engraving” in Italian word)
Processes:
Relief processes like woodcut print from a raised surface. With the intaglio process, the areas to be printed are below the surface of the plate.
In general, intaglio is any process in which cut, incised, or etched lines on a plate are filled with ink. The surface of the plate is then wiped clean, and a sheet of dampened paper is placed over it. In the press, a powerful roller forces the paper against the plate, causing it to pick up the ink in the depressed grooves.
Engraving: the image is create on the plate by pushing a small V-shaped metal rod, called a burin, across a metal plate, usually of copper or zinc, forcing the metal up in slivers in front of the sharp tip. The silvers are then removed from the plate with a scraper, and the plate is ready to be inked and printed in the intaglio method.
Etching: It is a much more fluid and free process than engraving, and is capable of capturing some of the same spontaneity as exits in a sketch.
The process is essentially two folds, consisting of a drawing stage and an etching stage. Since the areas or lines that print are made by eating the metal plate away with acid, the plate is coated with an acid resistant ground which is then scratched or drawn through with an etching needle to expose the metal. The drawn plate is then placed in a bath of acid, and the drawn areas become eaten away, or etched. The undrawn areas, protected by the ground, remain unaffected by the acid. When the plate is etched, all the ground is removed with solvent, and the plate is inked and printed in the intaglio method.
Drypoint: the drypoint line is scratched into a copper plate with a metal point that is pulled across the surface. A ridge of metal called a burr is pushed up along each side of the line, and this gives rich, velvety soft texture to the print. Because this burr quickly wears off during the printing process, drypoint editions are usually limited to no more than 25 and the earlier numbers in the edition are often the finest.
Mezzotint and Aquatint: Mezzotint is a “negative” process. The metal plate is first ground all over using a sharp curved tool called a rocker, which effectively leaves a burr or roughed texture over the entire surface that, if inked, would produce a deep solid black. Burnishing the rough surface smooth again produces areas of light.
Like, mezzotint, aquatint is a process the does not rely on line for its effect, but rather tonal areas of light and dark. The method involves coating he surface of the plate with a porous ground through with acid can penetrate. Traditionally, powdered resin is used, and when the plate is heated, the resin melts and adheres to the plate. The acid bites around each particle, creating a sandpaper-like texture. Line is often added later, usually by means of etching or drypoint.
Lithography: It means literally “stone writing” that is a planographic printmaking process, meaning that the printing surface is flat. There are no raised or depressed surfaces on the plate to hold ink. Rather, the process relies on the principle that grease and water don’t mix. The stone surface could hold an ink image in areas drawn on with a greasy crayon, but that the other areas, if kept wet, would resist the ink.
Silkscreen Printing: Silkscreens are formally known as “serigraphs” from the Greek Graphos (to write) and the Latin seri (silk).
The principles used are essentially the same as those employed in stenciling.
Silk fabric is stretched tightly on a frame, and a stencil is mad by painting a glue-like substance across the fabric where the artist does not want the image to print. The ink is then forced through the mesh of the silk fabric (polyester is more commonly used) by means of a squeegee. Alternately, special stencil films are available that accommodate photographic processes.
Monotypes: It is to consider combines techniques of printmaking and painting.
Unlike other types of prints, once a monotype has been printed, it can never be printed again. In monotype, the artist creates an image on the plate with printer’s inks or paints, lays paper over it, and runs it through the press in order to transfer the image. The plate serves as the vehicle for transferring the paint to the paper.
In the 15th C., a figure known as La Pittura literally “the Picture” was introduced. La Pittura, which was the personification of painting, conferred the new status of painting as one of the liberal arts. Until this time, painting had been considered a craft.
Encaustic: It made by combining pigment with hot wax is a very old medium. Its origins date back to classical and Hellenistic Greece. These pieces are primarily funeral portraits painted with encaustic medium on wood panels, which were then attached to the mummy cases.
Fresco: Wall painting was practiced by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and the preferred medium was fresco, in which pigment is mixed with limewater the applied to a plaster wall.
In buon fresco (Italian for “good fresco”) the paint is applied to wet plaster that has not yet hardened. In fresco secco (dry fresco) the pigment is combined with a binder such as egg yolk, oil or wax, and is applied to a dry wall.
Tempera: Until the end of the Middle Ages, most paintings were done in tempera, a medium made by combining pigment with water and a gummy material such as egg yolk.
The painting surface (often a wood panel) had to be prepared with a ground similar to plaster, and gesso, a mixture of glue and plaster of Paris or chalk was often used. The gesso surface was very absorbent and the tempera paint would fuse with the surface to create a very durable and vibrant surface.
Oil painting: Oil paint is a far more versatile medium than tempera. Oil paintings were slow to dray, unlike fresco, so artists could work almost endlessly to perfect their images.
By the time the Netherlands freed itself from Spanish rule in 1608, it had become, through trade, the wealthiest nation in the world. Artist painted the new material riches through the medium of oil paint.
Watercolor: Watercolor is potentially one of the most expressive. Watercolor paintings are made by applying pigments suspended in a solution of water and gum arabic to dampened paper. Working quickly, an artist can create very spontaneous, gestural effects, similar to those attained with brush and ink.
Gouache: Gouache is watercolor mixed with white chalk. The medium is opaque, and white this quality results in a light reflecting brilliance, it is difficult to blend brushstrokes together. For this reason gouache lends itself to the painting of flat colored forms.
Synthetic Media
The first artists to experiment with synthetic media were a group of Mexican painters led by David Alfaro Siqueiros, whose goal was to create large-scale revolutionary art. In 1937, Siqueiros organized a workshop in New York close to the chemical industry, expressly to develop and experiment with new synthetic paints. One of the first media used at the workshop was pyroxylin, commonly known as Duco, a lacquer developed as an auto paint.
The oldest and most enduring of all the arts is sculpture.
There are two basic approaches – subtractive, where material is removed from an original block, as in carving; or additive, where the form is built up by adding material to the form, such as clay. Casting (or replacement process) is a separate process unto its own; and earthworks are often a result of both additive and subtractive processes.
Carving: In carving, material such as stone or wood is removed or subtracted from a block of raw material in order to reveal the form inside.
Modeling: The manipulation of clay by hand - pinching, bending, kneading, rolling and shaping, are the basic gestures of modeling. Clay, a natural material found worldwide, has been used by artist to make everything from pots to sculptures since the earliest times. The creation of objects from clay that are then “fired” (usually between 1200 and 2700 F.), are called ceramics.
Casting: Casting is an invention of the Bronze Age (beginning approximately 2,500 B.C. E.), where it was first used to make utensils by pouring liquid bronze into open-faced molds (very much like gelatin molds).
Assemblage: Another additive sculptural process. The transformation of common materials into art is one of the most defining characteristics of assemblage (e.g. Fig. 368. Hammons’s Spade with Chains).
Earthworks (Environment art): Since the 1960s, a focus of contemporary sculpture has been large outdoor environments. Viewers can experience the space and sense of the vastness and emptiness around them, a limitless freedom and time without end – a feeling of the sublime. Work of this scale indicates that art can have much in common with landscape, and some artists such as Beverly Pepper, are starting to design landscape.
Craft Media:
The line between the arts and crafts is a fine one. Craft refers to expert handiwork, yet artists produce their work by hand, and don’t call their work craft. One means of separating the two is to suggest that work made for aesthetic purposes is art; and work made for functional purposes is craft.
Ceramics: Ceramics are objects that are formed from clay and hardened by firing in a kiln. Most ceramic objects are made by one of three methods – slab construction, coiling, or throwing (on a potter’s wheel). Pieces are then glazed.
Slab construction: the clay is rolled out flat, cut into pieces that are then assembled by hand.
Coiling: the clay is rolled out in long rope like strands, then coiled around on top of one another, and finally smoothed. Coiling was the technique most often employed by Native American cultures.
Throwing: most cultures of the ancient world made use of potter’s wheels – flat disks attached to a flywheel below that is either kicked so that it spins, or (in modern times) turned by means of an electric motor. As the disk spins, the potter carefully pinched the clay between fingers and thumbs, gradually working the material upward to form both inside and outside simultaneously. Handles and spouts are added after the vessel from had pertly set up.
There are three basic types of ceramics:
Earthenware: it is made of porous clay and fired at low temperature, must be glazed to hold water.
Stoneware: it is impermeable to water, because it is fired at high temperature.
Porcelain: it is fired at the highest temperature until it becomes almost translucent.
Glass: Glass is an ancient media made by heating silica, or sand, until it melts and can be formed. The invention of glass blowing late in the 1st century B.C.E. so revolutionized the process that it soon became a major industry for the Romans. The mosaic glass bowl (Fig. 390) was produced near Rome during the 2nd half of the 1st century C.E. before glass blowing really took hold, and was made by fuzing colored glass chips over a ceramic. form.
In embroidery, a second traditional fiber art, the design is made by needlework. From the early 18th century onward, the town of Chamba was one of the centers of embroidery in India. It was particularly famous for its rumals – embroidered muslin textiles often used to wrap gifts.
Wood: Wood has always been a popular material to artisans because it is so easy to carve and widely available. However, wood is not long lasting – very few artifacts survive from ancient cultures. Cedar, native to the Northwest American coast, is a favorite of Native American artists in that region. Cedar is resistant to insects and weather.
Mixed Media:
When various media are combined together in a single artwork, the result is called mixed media. One of the most important results of mixed media has been to extend “the space of art.” If art was thought to be contained in the space of the picture frame, modern artists have extended it well beyond that boundary.
Installation: Collage is an inclusive medium – it admits anything and everything into its world. An installation is a collage that moves from the 2-D space of the wall into the 3-D space of the world. The play with the predictable forms of architectural space is typical of installation art.
Performance Art: Allan Kaprow invented an early form of performance art in the 1950s called Happenings. He defined happenings as “assemblages of events performed or perceived in more than one time and place …. A Happening is art but seems closer to life.”
The camera arts – photography, film, and video – allow artists to explore the 4th dimension – time. The images that come from still motion pictures and video cameras are first and foremost informational. But while cameras record the world around us, our discussion of photographic media will concentrate on their function as art.
Photography: Like collage, photography is inclusive rather than exclusive. According to Robert Rauschenberg, “The world is essentially a storehouse of information. Creation is the process of assemblage. The photograph is a process of instant assemblage, instant collage.”
The work camera is the Latin word for “room.” In the 16th century, artists were using the camera obscura (Fig. 422), a dark (sometimes portable) room with a hole on one side and a screen or canvas on the other. Light from the outside would travel through the hole to be projected as an image on the opposite wall. The drawback of the camera obscura was that while it could capture the image, it could not preserve it. In 1839, in both France and England, that problem was being solved.
In England, William Henry Fox Talbot presented a process for fixing negative images on paper coated with light sensitive chemicals which he called photogenic drawing (Fig. 423).
In France, Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype, which created a positive image on a metal plate. Paul Delaroche exclaimed, “From now on, painting is dead!” Painting, of course, was not dead, but initially, portrait painting saw a steady decline after the advent of the photographic portraiture industry.
Utilizing paper instead of metal plate, Fox Talbot’s process made multiple prints possible. He learned that the negative process could be reversed by laying a developed negative paper print over another sheet of unexposed paper and exposing them both to light. He also discovered chemical processes that greatly reduced the amount of time required to expose the paper. His calotype process became the basis of modern photography.
It could be said that every photograph is an abstraction, a simplification of reality that substitutes 2-D for 3-D space, an instant of perception for the seamless continuity of time. Given the fact that early photography existed solely in black-and-white, the medium becomes a further abstraction. If the photographer further manipulates the space of the photograph in order to emphasize the formal concerns, then the abstractness of the medium is further emphasized.
One of the most notable aspects of photography is its ability to reveal as beautiful what we take for granted.
Photojournalism does not seek to aestheticize the subject; still, it is the power to focus our attention on what we might otherwise avoid.
Black-and-white photography lends itself to investigating the relation between opposites because as a formal tool, it depends upon the tension between black and white. In color photography, this tension is lost, but new challenges face the photographer. The rise of color photography in the1960s coincided with the growing popularity of color television. The advent of color Polaroid film and inexpensive color processing both contributed to a cultural taste for color photography.
Film: Almost as soon as photography was invented, people sought to extend its capacity to capture motion. Both Edadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey captured the locomotion of animals and humans in successive still photographs. It was the formal, rather than the narrative, potential of film that first attracted artists, who saw it as a medium through which rhythm and repetition could be explored in a new way.
Assembling a film, the process of editing, is a sort of linear collage, the arranging of sequences of a film after it has been shot in it entirety.
D.W. Griffith invented the standard techniques of editing in a film called The Birth of a Nation (Fig. 446). He created visual variety by alternating between a repertoire of shots, including the full shot (actor from head to toe), medium shot (from the waist up), the close-up (head and shoulders) and the extreme close-up (a portion of the face). The battle scene is a long-shot, taking in a wide expanse and many characters all at once. Related to the long shot is the pan, in which the camera moves across the scene from one side to the other. The edge of the frame is blurred and darkened to make the viewers focus on the action in the center – this is an iris shot.
Two of Griffith’s more famous editing techniques are cross-cutting and flashback. In flashback, the editor cuts to narrative episodes that have supposedly taken place before the start of the film. In crosscutting, high drama is developed as the editor cuts back and forth between two separate events happening simultaneously. Both techniques are now standard in film practice.
Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein did his best work after the 1917 revolution. He created the technique called montage – the sequencing of widely disparate images to create a fast paced, multifaceted image. While Eisenstein’s work emphasized enhanced time sequencing, Andy Warhol created just the opposite effect. He equated “reel” time with “real” time.
The Popular Cinema:
Most audiences though interesting on an intellectual level would not appreciate Warhol’s film. Audiences expect a narrative, or story, to unfold – characters with whom thy can identify, and action that thrills their imaginations. They want to be entertained. After World War I, American movies dominated the screens of the world precisely because they entertained audiences so completely. The town where these entertainments were made became synonymous with the industry itself – Hollywood.
Walt Disney had begun to create feature-length-animated films in full color. The first was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, which was followed, in 1940, by both Pinocchio and Fantasia (Fig. 453). Animation (“bringing to life”), was realized during the earliest days of the industry when it became evident that film itself was a series of “stills” animated by their movement in sequence. One could draw these stills as well as photograph them. But in order for the motion to appear smooth, thousands of drawings had to be executed for each film.
Video: For artists, a drawback of film was the sheer expense. The advent of the Sony Portapak in 1965 allowed artists to explore the implications of seeing in time. One of the first video artists was the Fluxus artist Nam June Paik, who had been making video installations since the 1950s.