Buying Paintings Gothic Art

Buying Paintings Gothic Art:

Some of the most valuable early artwork comes from a point of time before the Renaissance had begun, and going on through the early Middle Ages, referred to as the period of Gothic art.  During this particular time in history, the artwork took on telling narrative stories through pictures, and much of these pieces were Christian and secular in nature.  Some of the earliest examples of Gothic art are sculptures found on cathedral and abbey walls, and the first real form of Gothic artwork began as architectural works in fact, even becoming the subject matter for many stained glass windows at the time.

The style of painting that further defined Gothic art wasn’t produced until nearly fifty years after Gothic architecture and sculptures, and even though the break between Romanesque artwork and the Gothic styles has remained imprecise at best, the beginnings of Gothic artwork seems to occur in various areas at different but related intervals.  The artwork began in England and France around 1200, and in other areas like Germany and Italy between 1220 and 1300.  The paintings stayed just as narrative as the architecture on church walls during this time, and has stayed the territory of secular storytelling for a long time afterwards.

Though Gothic art in paintings has had a relatively short time as the medium of choice among the artists, there is evidence that the artwork falls into four particular styles of these paintings, and these were the most common forms during this time period.  The fresco, the panel painting, the illuminated manuscript, and the artwork done on stained glass are all depictions of Gothic painting.  Of these particular types, stained glass artwork had remained a strong reminder of those ages long past, and is still created by master artisans that learned their trade skills from these dark ages.

In the case of the other three particular forms of Gothic painting, frescoes continued to be used as the pictorial narratives on church walls in southern Europe, and were a consistent incorporation of early Christian and Romanesque traditions.  In Italy, during the 13th century, the panel painting began and spread throughout Europe.  With this proliferation, panel paintings became even more predominant by the 15th century, and becoming even more popular than stained glass at the time.  Since not all monumental works have survived, illuminated manuscripts are the most complete record of Gothic painting, and provide a comprehensive account of styles that would otherwise perished.

As the state of the world began to change, so too did the interpretations of the artwork as a reflection of these changing times and attitudes, and the movement became known as International Gothic by the late 15th century.  From there, it had evolved into an art form depicting not just secular stories and allegories, but also resulted in the occurrence of more illuminated manuscripts and paintings as increased trade and the rise of cities and universities grew.  With this proliferation of growth, more people were literate, and lead to better records kept with this occurring.  Leading up to many of the well-known medieval artists today.

The International Gothic style of artwork was developed in Burgundy, Bohemia, and northern Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.  During this period in Gothic art, artists traveled widely around the civilized world at the time creating a common aesthetic among the aristocracy of the time, and removing the concepts of contrary artistic styles.  The main influences for this period in artwork were derived from northern France, the Netherlands, and Italy.  It was during this time, that aspects of rational uses of perspective and setting became a common feature, and other features included flowing lines and rich coloring.

In the case of Gothic sculpture, it had evolved from the elongated forms of the Romanesque style, and became a more naturalistic expression in the early 12th and late 13th centuries.  Influences from Greek and Roman statuary were incorporated into drapery, facial expressions, and poses.  The sculptor Claus Sutler and the changing tastes for more naturalistic styles became a harbinger for the end of the Gothic period of art, and signaled the beginning of the evolution into Renaissance period at the end of the 15th century.

In a time period where upheaval was the normal occurrence of many of the people then, Gothic art fell into the broad scope of medieval artwork that included such disparate elements and styles as Viking art and Celtic art, but in varying degrees relied upon the artistic heritage of the Roman Empire and the early Christian Church.  In fact, much medieval artwork has the history of these elements conjoining and converging into the remarkable artistic legacy we read about today, and have contributed over time to the outcome of many other forms of art from the Renaissance to the present day.

Buying Paintings Futurism

Buying Paintings Futurism:

A 20th century art movement with its’ roots in Italian and Russian beginnings, Futurism is said to have largely began with the writing of a 1907 essay on music by the Italian composer Ferocious Bunion, and explored every medium of art to convey its’ meanings.  The Italian poet Filippo Tomaso Marionette was the first to produce an article in which was summed up the major principles that became the Manifesto of Futurism in 1909.  It included the passionate loathing of ideas from the past, and with that enmity of political and artistic traditions, espoused a love for speed and technology.

The philosophy of Futurism regarded the car, the plane, and the industrial town as legendary of the technological triumph of mankind over nature.  With Marionette at the helm, a few artists of the time introduced the tenets of the philosophy to the visual arts, and represented the movement in its’ first phase in 1910.  The Russian Futurists were fascinated with dynamism and the restlessness of modern urban life, purposefully seeking to provoke controversy and attract attention to their works through insulting reviews of the static art of the past, and the circle of Russian Futurists were predominantly literary as opposed to being overtly artistic.

Cuba-Futurism was a school of Russian Futurism formulated in 1913, and many of the works incorporated Cubism’s usage of angular forms combined with the Futurist predisposition for dynamism.  The Futurist painter Kazimir Malefic was the artist to develop the style, but dismissed it for the inception of the artistic style known as Supremacist, that focused upon the fundamental geometric shapes as a form of non-objective art.  Supremacist grew around Malefic, with most prominent works being produced between 1915 and 1918, but the movement had halted for the most part by 1934 in Stalinist Russia.

Though at one point, those Russian poets and artists that considered themselves Futurists had collaborated on works such a Futurist opera, but the Russian movement broke down from persecution for their belief in free thought with the start of the Stalinist age.  Italian Futurists were strongly linked with the early fascists in the hope for modernizing the society and economy in the 1920s through to the 1930s, and Marinetti founded the Futurist Political Party in early 1918, which was later absorbed into Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party.
 

As tensions grew within the various artistic faces that considered themselves Futurists, many Futurists became associated with fascism which later translated into Futurist architecture being born, and interesting examples of this style can be found today even though many Futurist architects were at odds in the fascist taste for Roman imperial patterns.  Futurism has even influenced many other 20th century art movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Art Deco styles.  Futurism as a movement is considered extinct for the most part with the death of Marinetti in 1944.
 

As Futurism gave way to the actual future of things, the ideals of the artistic movement have remained significant in Western culture through the expressions of the commercial cinema and culture, and can even be as an influence in modern Japanese anime and cinema.  The Cyberpunk genre of films and books owe much to the Futurist tenets, and the movement has even spawned Neo-Futurism, a style of theatre at utilizes on Futurism’s focuses to create a new form of theatre.  Much of Futurism’s inspiration came from the previous movement of Cubism, that involved such famed artists as Pablo Picasso and Paul Cezanne, and created much of the basis for Futurism through its’ philosophy.

Buying Paintings for Relatives

I have found that people buying paintings for relatives usually have a very specific thing in mind when they set out shopping.  It is very rewarding to find just the right painting for a space that really needs it.  Sometimes color is the only consideration.

Content is also very appropriate to consider.  If you are buying a painting for someone that has very distinct tastes, it is important to keep that in the forefront of your mind.  The painting of a rooster might be great for one relative but not for another.

Size constraints need to be taken into account when buying paintings for relatives.  If your Aunt Eloise lives in a small apartment, buying a painting for her that takes up an entire wall is not a good idea.  It is a good idea to take a look at the place the painting will go before purchasing one.

Color can be a big factor in the buying of a painting.  If the color clashes with your relative’s decor, they will probably not be very excited about hanging it.  If the color is just right, it will hang on their wall for a very long time.

Religious themed paintings are difficult to buy for friends, but easy to buy for relatives.  More than likely, you know what religion your relatives adhere to and what symbols are most relevant to it.  Jewish symbolism is lost on a Christian family and vice verse.

Choosing to buy paintings for relatives based on the artist’s previous work is also a good method of finding great art.  If your relative already has purchased art from an artist that they like and that they hang prominently in their home, then it is a safe bet to buy another piece from the same artist.

Sometimes buying a nice painting for a relative has a point of inspiration, like a vacation.  If your mom and dad just visited Paris, a nice painting of Paris might be a great choice.  It is good to know what landmarks they enjoyed most and find an artistic representation of it.

I have some relatives that I’ve bought paintings for that were interested in the Middle Ages.  I found some very nice reproductions of the work that was popular in that time period.  Buying reproductions is acceptable if the painting is prohibitive in cost.

There is an aunt that I adore that is always buying painting for relatives.  Her heart is in the right place, but she has a hard time picking paintings that are appropriate for the recipient.  She bought her daughter a lovely painting that was Baroque and completely did not fit the feel of her home.

Landscape paintings done in the Romantic style look so nice in my uncle’s home.  I bought him a reproduction of a Monet that he hung in his study.  I enjoy watching him study that painting.

My little sister has requested that anyone buying her a painting should stay away from Van Gog.  She has equal dislike for Cezanne and Gauguin.  I’m not sure why she feels so strongly about Modern and Contemporary art.

I happen to like cubist paintings by Kandinsky.  My husband bought me a reproduction of a Kandinsky that I keep in my den.  I can look into it and see so many different things.  The painting comes to life and I feel so many emotions when I look into it.

Buying Paintings Expressionsim

When speaking on buying paintings of the Expressionist movement, it is always a good idea to review what elements make Expressionism unique, and to gain an understanding of some of the artists representative of this particular artistic movement.  The agreed upon intention of Expressionist artwork is not reproduce a subject accurately, but to instead portray the inner state of the artist, with a tendency to distort reality for an emotional effect.  The movement is closely associated with its’ beginnings in Germany, and has a few different but overlapping schools of thought within.

The term Expressionism was first used to describe the movement in the magazine produced in 1911 called “Der Storm”, and was usually linked to paintings and graphic work that challenged academic traditions at the time.  The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche later helped to define the area of modern expressionism better by clarifying the movement’s links to ancient art before any more modern interpretation had, and applied his own unique philosophy to the movement.  He has been quoted stating that disordered and ordered elements are present in all works of art, but that the basic traits of Expressionism lay in the mainly disordered aspects.

The Expressionist point of view was usually conveyed through the use of bold colors, distorted forms, and a lack of perspective.  Generally, a piece of expressionistic art is one that is expressive of intense emotion, and much of this kind of artwork occurs during times of social upheaval.  Though it can be argued that an artist is expressive by nature, and that all artwork is truly expressionist, there are many who consider the movement particularly communicative of emotion.  Later on, artists like Kandinsky changed 20th century Expressionist work through the formation of Abstract Expressionism.

The art historian Antonin Matějček was elemental in coining the term as the opposite to the Impressionist movement as well, and though Expressionism seems well defined as an artistic movement, there have never been a group of artists that called themselves Expressionists.  The movement was primarily German and Austrian, and many of the different groups of thought were based around Germany at the time.  Another artistic movement that heavily influenced Expressionism was Fauvism.  This kind of artwork is characterized by primitive, less naturalistic forms, and includes the works of famed painters Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.

With this influence firmly in place, Expressionism grew into striking compositions that focused on representing emotional reactions through powerful use of color and dynamic approaches with subject matter, and seemed to counter the qualities centered on by the French Impressionism of the time.  Where French Impressionism was to seek rendering the visual appearance of objects, Expressionism became an opposing movement seeking to capture emotions and subjective interpretation, and it was not important to reproduce a visually pleasing interpretation of the matter that the painting represented.

Expressionism has crossed over into many differing fields of artistic vision, with sculpture and film making being primary examples today, and have influenced many people throughout the course of its’ existence as a movement in art.  These visions have combined over time to create the comprehensive idea of what Expressionism has become, and many people have found this type of art very appealing and eye-catching.  Throughout this century, much Expressionistic artwork has come to be representative of what art can come to be, and many people have been influenced by this very emotional artwork.

Buying Paintings Cubism

What started out as a rather avant-garde art movement has become one of the greatest examples of artistic forms breaking that mold of convention, revolutionizing European painting and sculpture up to the present century, and was first developed between 1908 and 1912 during a collaboration between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso with influences from the works of Paul Cezanne and Tribal art.  Though the movement itself was not long-lived, it began an immense creative explosion that has had long lasting repercussions, and focused on the underlying concept that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously.

The movement had run its’ course by the end of World War I, and influenced similar ideal qualities in the Precision ism, Futurism, and Expressionistic movements.  In the paintings representative of Cubist artworks, objects are broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form, and the artist depicts the subject in a multitude of viewpoints instead of one particular perspective.  Surfaces seemingly intersecting at random angles to produce no real sense of depth, with background and object interpenetrating with one another, and creating the shallow space characteristic of Cubism.

French art critic Louis Nacelles first used the term cubism, and it was after viewing a piece of artwork produced by Braque, the term was in wide use though the creators kept from using the term for quite some time.  The Cubist movement expanded from France during this time, and became such a popular movement so quickly that critics began referring to a Cubist school of artists influenced by Braque and Picasso, many of those artists to Cubism into different directions while the originators went through several distinct phases before 1920.

As Braque and Picasso worked to further to advance their concepts along, they went through a few distinct phases in Cubism, and which culminated in both Analytic and Synthetic Cubism.  With Analytic Cubism, a style was created that incorporated densely patterned near-monochrome surfaces of incomplete directional lines and modeled forms that play against each other, the first phases of which came before the full artistic swing of Cubism.  Some art historians have also pegged a smaller “Hermetic” phase within this Analytical state, and in which the work produced is characterized by being monochromatic and hard to decipher.

In the case with Synthetic Cubism, which began in 1912 as the second primary phase to Cubism, these works are composed of distinct superimposed parts.  These parts, painted or pasted on the canvas, were characterized by brighter colors.  Unlike the points of Analytical Cubism, which fragmented objects into composing parts, Synthetic Cubism attempted to bring many different objects to create new forms.  This phase of Cubism also contributed to creating the collage and paper colle, Picasso used collage complete a piece of work, and later influenced Braque to first incorporate paper colle into his work.

Similar to collage in practice, but very much a different style, paper cello consists of pasting materials to a canvas with the pasted shapes representing objects themselves.  Braque had previously used lettering, but the works of the two artists began to take this idea to new extremes at this point.  Letters that had previously hinted at objects became objects as well, newspaper scraps began the exercise, but from wood prints to advertisements were all elements incorporated later as well.  Using mixed media and other combinations of techniques to create new works, and Picasso began utilizing pointillism and dot patterns to suggest planes and space.

By the end of the movement, with help from Picasso and Braque, Cubism had influenced more than just visual art.  The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was inspired by Cubism in some examples of his music that reassembled pieces of rhythm from ragtime music with the melodies from his own country’s influence.  In literature, Cubism influenced poets and their poetry with elements parallel with Analytical and Synthetic Cubism, and this poetry frequently overlaps other movements such as Surrealism and Dadaism.