American modernism

His obsession with El Greco started when he went to study in Madrid where he was impressed by El Greco’s magnificent heads. As early as 1899 he had filled page after page of a sketchbook with caricatures of Greco-like portraits, often with flamboyant ruff collars, exaggerating their pointed chins, their schematic quality and their hyper-refined tonality. One of his heads even had the inscription: Yo El Greco, yo Greco! Shortly afterwards Picasso’s Blue Period followed and there his pictures were…

Music The influence of modernism was not only in the arts, but also well evident in the musical world. Modernism truly influenced the music of the time; it evolved from the late romantic and impressionist periods as a result of the experimental efforts of modern composers such as Irving Berlin. Modern composers experimented with new and unusual harmonies. They developed an entirely new system of melody and harmony that was known as surrealism. Modernism branched off from well versed and…

Painting Process Essay Are you feeling crafty, and want to get a little messy? Painting sounds like fun, but you are not particularly artistic. The ability to make something extremely creative isn’t required to make a piece of art that will look marvelous. Having all the right materials and tools available before you begin is most important for making a work of art. Not much is needed to make a masterpiece from paint. Pretty much anything that you are comfortable with be painted on is a…

A woman’s silhouette is seen through barred frosted windows. The camera cuts to a surveillance camera and zooms out to reveal that woman in a skin colored bodysuit stretched out on a moss green sofa like a marble sculpture. She appears to have no contact with the world outside except through the intercom and dumbwaiter. Her room is populated by reproductions of Louise Bourgeois’ fabric works created by ripping apart the dresses in her closet that she refuses to wear, and covered by texts that…

Popular culture, or Pop Art was a time when simple objects of everyday life were made into fine art, but more often Pop art is a statement on mass advertising and the customer culture after WWII. It also was a means to demonstrate against future conflicts as well. During the world’s recovery of WWII magazines and newspapers were full of advertisements of what to buy, and how the perfect house hold should look like. People tried to live above their means in order to fulfil what they thought they…

Art in the Bible Is art in the bible? Would God understand our art or want us to create art? Francis Schaeffer explains all of this in the short book, Art and the Bible. There are many opinions and views on art in a Christian life, or from biblical point of view that argue if art and the bible is considered acceptable. Schaeffer goes in depth on; Art in the bible, different perspectives on art and the bible, and how we are as individuals linked to both art and the bible. When you look at the…

T.S Eliot once said, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Eliot 's poem, “The Waste Land” (1922), embodies the essence of this quote; take from what is already there, and place his own updated interpretation for the modern audience to provide their own temporal relativist view on top of the already layered meaning of the original work quoted within Eliot 's poem. The…

According to William H. Gass, the concepts of beauty and morality are two unrelated concepts. Gass conjures the scene of a dinner party to prove his point with a myriad of characters and situations behind each action or object at the party. He claims that if the quail were to be unethically shot by a machine gun from a plane, it would be completely unrelated to if that quail were to be cooked badly. He also draws the example that the presence of a field marshal could not sour the wine. The…

Vassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter, writer, teacher, art theorist and the father of abstract art. Being a trained musician, he used music in his approach to color which he made sing from the canvas. A major turning point in his style of art came after he viewed Claude Monet’s “Haystack at Giverny” at a Moscow exhibition. Over the years he perfected his style of abstract art. He inspired other artists, wrote books on his theories, worked with museums, and ballet’s, experienced his work…

“Functionalism – by all means is a strictly modern phenomenon but actually originates in classical antiquity” Giving the prodigious sense of a security but very different from that which is attained by the seeming immobility of the mass and weight of masonry. Concluded as one of the dominant successes of Woolworth, all will agree, it is an accomplishment of ‘scale’. Which assuming that the help of transformation the skyline of the city can be somehow added to the functions presumably from the…