mariavbutlermerello-blog

[mariavbutlermerello-blog]

Making Histories. Top 10 Exhibition for my field.

Imagine you are going to curate an exhibition on the history of your discipline. Compile a list of 10 practitioners (or specific pieces of work) that you would include and write brief notes on why.

If I was to create an exhibition showing the history of my discipline, fine art, I would start with the classics. Fine art traditionally was drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking. 

Michelangelo

I would start off with what I feel is one of the most powerful paintings not only in the Sistine Chapel but in the Renaissance period too. Painted in 1512, The Creation of Adam illustrates the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God gives life to Adam, the first man.

Sandro Botticelli

After I would include Primavera ( meaning spring in english) a large panel painting in tempera paint by the Italian painter made in the late 1470s or early 1480sIt has been described as "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world", and also "one of the most popular paintings in Western art".

Alexandre Cabanel

I would also include “Fallen Angel” Its oil on canvas and its an allegorical painting. What I love the most is the emotions in it. It is a classic portrayal of a naked man by an academic artist with the crafted way he depicts the musculature of the figure.

Caravaggio

I would also have to include Caravaggio. The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, theatre, and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe.  This painting is called John the Baptist Baroque style and its oil on canvas. What really captivates me the most is that there are only 3 colors that make the painting yet how Caravaggio played with chiaroscuro is incredible. Also because John the Baptist is one of my favorite character from the Bible.

Claude Monet

After I would make a great leap into Impressionism and show some of Monet’s finest works. Water Lilies is one of my favorite paintings because of its colors and light, he mingles water and sky, Monet creates a peaceful meditation within a flowering, watery surround.

Zinaida Serebriakova

Of course I would include some female artists, this is a painting called Reclining Nude from the Russian artist painted in 1935. Considered an Art Deco style, its delicacy and femininity give a great representation of the woman’s body.

Vincent Van Gogh

I would also include Post Impressionism art works.  is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color. Due to its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content, Post-Impressionism encompasses Neo-Impressionism, symbolism, Cloisonnism, Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. Van Gogh is one of the most influential painters in art history, and I feel very strongly about this artist because I can relate a lot to his story and struggles through mental illness, so it would be very clear to me to include him on my top 10.

Pablo Picasso

After Post Impressionism I would also feature Cubism, and some of Picasso’s art pieces. Cubism is an early-20th-century art movement which brought European painting and sculpture historically forward toward 20th century Modern art. In its various forms inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered to be among the most influential art movements of the 20th century.

Lucio Fontana

Arte Povera (literally poor art) is a contemporary art movement. The Arte Povera movement took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. 

Andy Warhol

I would then make a great jump and display art works of the Pop Art movement to finalize this exhibition, Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and the late 1950s in the United States. The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular (as opposed to elitist) culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. 

[mariavbutlermerello-blog]

Glossary.

Abstract: A term generally used to describe art that is not representational or based on external reality or nature.

Abstract art: Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect

Abstract Expressionism: The dominant artistic movement in the 1940s and 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was the first to place New York City at the forefront of international modern art. The associated artists developed greatly varying stylistic approaches, but shared a commitment to an abstract art that powerfully expresses personal convictions and profound human values. They championed bold, gestural abstraction in all mediums, particularly large painted canvases.

Aesthetic: Relating to or characterized by a concern with beauty or good taste (adjective); a particular taste or approach to the visual qualities of an object (noun).

Avant-garde: French for “advanced guard,” this term is used in English to describe a group that is innovative, experimental, and inventive in its technique or ideology, particularly in the realms of culture, politics, and the arts.

Cinématographe: A combination motion-picture camera, printer, and projector invented by French photographers, photographic equipment manufacturers, and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1895. The Lumière brothers used the Cinématographe to show their films when they set up the world's first movie theater, in the back room of a Parisian café. Unlike Thomas Alva Edison and William K. L. Dickson’s electrically powered Kinetograph, the Cinématographe was compact and hand-cranked, so it could be easily transported to shoot films on location.

Conceptual art: Art that emerged in the late 1960s, emphasizing ideas and theoretical practices rather than the creation of visual forms. In 1967, the artist Sol LeWitt gave the new genre its name in his essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” in which he wrote, “The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product.” Conceptual artists used their work to question the notion of what art is, and to critique the underlying ideological structures of artistic production, distribution, and display.

Aesthete: one having or affecting sensitivity to the beautiful espially in art

Inneffable: incapable of being expressed in words

Critical thinking: the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Marxist theory: A system of economic, social, and political philosophy based on ideas that view social change in terms of economic factors. A central tenet is that the means of production is the economic base that influences or determines the political life.

Modernism: a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.[2][3]

Posmodernism: is a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism and that marked a departure from modernism.[1][2][3] The term has also more generally been applied to the historical era following modernity and the tendencies of this era.[4] (In this context, "modern" is not used in the sense of "contemporary", but merely as a name for a specific period in history.)