Everything about Paintings totally explained
Painting is the practice of applying
color to a
surface (support) such as, for example
paper,
canvas,
wood,
glass,
lacquer or concrete. However, when used in an artistic sense, the term "painting" means the use of this activity in combination with
drawing,
composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner.
Painting is used as a mode of representing, documenting and expressing all the varied intents and subjects that are as numerous as there are practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a
still life or
landscape painting),
photographic,
abstract, be loaded with narrative content,
symbolism, emotion or be
political in nature. A large portion of the history of painting is dominated by
spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting
mythological figures on pottery to
biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of
The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the human body itself as a spiritual subject.
Overview
"The boundary of things in the second plane won't be discerned like those in the first. Therefore, painter, don't produce boundaries between the first and the second, because the boundary of one object and another is of the nature of a mathematical line but not an actual line, in that the boundary of one colour is the start of another colour and isn't to be accorded the status of an actual line, because nothing intervenes between the boundary of one colour which is placed against another. Therefore, painter, don't make the boundaries pronounced at a distance."
What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity. Every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by using just color (of the same intensity) one can only represent symbolic shapes. Thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as
geometrical figures, various points of view and organization (
perspective), and symbols. For example, a painter perceives that a particular white wall has different intensity at each point, due to shades and reflections from nearby objects, but
ideally, a white wall is still a white wall in pitch darkness. In technical drawing, thickness of line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters.
Color and tone are the essence of painting as
pitch and
rhythm are of
music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including
Goethe,
Kandinsky,
Newton, have written their own
color theory. Moreover the use of language is only a generalisation for a color equivalent. The word "
red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the
visible spectrum of light. There isn't a formalized register of different colors in the way that there's agreement on different notes in music, such as
C or
C♯ in music. For a painter, color isn't simply divided into basic and derived (complementary or mixed) colors (like, red, blue, green, brown, etc.). Painters deal practically with pigments, so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues: phtalocyan, Paris blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological, symbolical meanings of color are not strictly speaking means of painting. Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear - sound in music (like "C") is analogous to light in painting, "shades" to
dynamics, and coloration is to painting as specific
timbre of musical instruments to music - though these don't necessarily form a melody, but can add different contexts to it.
Rhythm is important in painting as well as in music. Rhythm is basically a pause incorporated into a body (sequence). This pause allows creative force to intervene and add new creations - form, melody, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is of crucial importance in the given work of art and it directly affects the esthetical value of that work. This is because the esthetical value is functionality dependent, for example the freedom (of movement) of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes to the esthetical value.
Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example,
collage, which began with
Cubism and isn't painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as
sand,
cement,
straw or
wood for their
texture. Examples of this are the works of
Jean Dubuffet and
Anselm Kiefer.
(There is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Photoshop, Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required.)
In 1829, the first
photograph was produced. From the mid to late 19th century,
photographic processes improved and, as it became more widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art movements into the 20th century where the
Renaissance view of the world was steadily eroded, through
Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism,
Expressionism,
Cubism and
Dadaism. Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and didn't undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time.
Modern and
Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in favour of
concept; this has led some to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this hasn't deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work.
Recently, painting has been used in
paint-on-glass animation.
History of painting
The oldest known paintings are at the
Grotte Chauvet in
France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using
red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. There are examples of
cave paintings all over the world—in
France,
Spain,
Portugal,
China,
Australia,
India etc.
In Western cultures
oil painting and
watercolor painting are the best known media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historical predominated the choice of media with equally rich and complex traditions.
Aesthetics and theory of painting
Aesthetics tries to be the "science of
beauty" and it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th century philosophers as
Kant or
Hegel. Classical philosophers like
Plato and
Aristotle also theorized about art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his philosophical system; he maintained that painting can't depict the
truth—it is a copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a
craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting. By the time of Leonardo painting had become a closer representation of the truth than painting was in
Ancient Greece.
Leonardo Da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura est cousa mentale" (painting is an intellectual thing). Kant distinguished between
Beauty and the
Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the former. Although he didn't refer particularly to painting, this concept was taken up by painters such as
Turner and
Caspar David Friedrich.
Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one of the three "romantic" arts, along with
Poetry and
Music for its
symbolic, highly intellectual purpose.
Painters who have written theoretical works on painting include
Kandinsky and
Paul Klee. Kandinsky in his
essay maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and he attaches
primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that
Goethe and other writers had already tried to do.
Iconography is the study of the content of paintings, rather than their style.
Erwin Panofsky and other
art historians first seek to understand the things depicted, then their meaning for the viewer at the time, and then analyse their wider cultural, religious, and social meaning.
In 1890, the Parisian painter
Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." Thus, many twentieth century developments in painting, such as
Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world,
nature, which had previously been its core subject. Recent contributions to thinking about painting has been offered by the painter and writer
Julian Bell. In his book
What is Painting ? Bell discusses the development, through history, of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas. In
Mirror of The World Bell writes:
‘A work of art seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards, bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination.’
Painting media
Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the pigment is suspended or embedded in, which determines the general working characteristics of the paint, such as
viscosity,
miscibility,
solubility, drying time, etc.
Examples include:
Painting styles
'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify an
individual artist's work. It can also refer to the
movement or school that an artist is associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter sense has fallen out of favor in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts. Such movements or classifications include the following :
Common painting idioms
Painting idioms include:
Some other painting terms are:
Altarpiece,
Broken Color,
Cartoon,
Chiaroscuro,
Composition,
Drybrush,
Easel Picture,
Foreshortening,
Genre,
Halo,
Highlights,
History painting,
Imprimatura,
Landscape,
Madonna,
Maulstick,
Miniature,
Mural Painting,
Palette,
Panel Painting,
Perspective,
Pietá,
Plein Air,
Portrait,
Sfumato,
Stippling,,
Trompe l'oeil,
Underpainting,
Varnish,
Wet-on-wet and
Four-dimensional painting.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paintings'.
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