Hierarchy of Painting, Animal Portraits

George Stubbs, late 1700's

According to About.com, "At some point during Academic Art's heyday--probably roughly around the time that George Stubbs' (English, 1724-1806) horse paintings became wildly popular--it became necessary to add a new genre to the Hierarchy: Animal Painting. Why is Animal Painting ranked so far down the scale? There are two possibilities here. The first may have to do with its late inclusion in the Hierarchy of Genres. The second, and more likely, is that while this was portraiture, it wasn't Portraiture-portraiture. In other words, it failed to meet the call for portraits to be of "God's finest creation," the human being. "  Animal painting is awesome, even though it is ranked five on the hierarchy of painting.  It is a special skill to naturally depict animals, fur, scales, feathers, etc., it is so different from painting humans.  Enjoy!

Style and Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse, Hang Up, 1966

Style by definition means, "a particular, distinctive, or characteristic mode."  According to Kit White, "Style is the by product of saying what has to be said in the most appropriate way a maker can say it."  It seems to me that each artist develops a certain style over time that makes them easily identifiable to the public.  I can easily point out a Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, or even Thomas Kinkade.  The way they capture something, the colors they use, the brushstrokes, etc., all become clues to who the artist is of a particular artwork.  In my art history classes, the teacher purposely identifies characteristics of the artwork that is prevalent in much of the artist's work.  Do I have a style?  Slowly I am developing one, but with the experimentation I am doing it is difficult to pin a style on me yet.  Enjoy!

Oil Paint and Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Oil paint is an interesting medium to work in.  I am currently doing a landscape in oil paint and I am enjoying learning which colors are opaque, translucent or transparent.  This is important for me because I am directly painting over another landscape I did years ago.  The colors that are opaque are doing a great job covering up the underneath painting.  While the translucent and transparent colors are not covering the underneath painting that well, so I am combining these colors with more opaque colors to improve there covering power.  According to Wikipedia, "Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. Oil paints have been used in Europe since the 12th century for simple decoration, but were not widely adopted as an artistic medium until the early 15th century."  Enjoy!

Ten Cent Comics and Ben Templesmith

Ben Templesmith

Today at my local comic book store, they had thousands of back issue serial comics for 10 cents each.  While I bought some of my favorite superheros, I also looked for comics that had interesting and different artwork on it's pages.  The artwork of Ben Templesmith (see picture), a comic book artist, is different from most artists.  His artworks tends to lend to the darker side of life, with horror and unusual crime dramas.  But his pictures still tell a story, with or without words, and different is usually good especially in art.  So today I was able to get my favorite superhero, Thor, and some interesting artwork between the pages of a comic book.  Enjoy!

All Art Is Political??

Kasimir Malevich

According to Kit White, "all art is political...the world your work describes is the world that you, as a maker, promote."  I disagree with the first part of this statement that "all art is political."  By definition, political means pertaining to or involving the state or its government.  Many things in life are outside of the government.  To say that the art an artist creates will "always have political implications" is casting the net to broad and is being a little paranoid that the government is in everything.  I would agree that my artwork describes my point of view, but my point of view is not fenced in by the politics of the time nor defined by it.  Freedom of the mind, is the greatest gift any artist could have, for we are more than those governing us.  Enjoy!

Shout Out to Monika Baer

Monika Baer, 1998

I recently saw an exhibit of work by the contemporary artist Monika Baer.  Her works combined abstract with representational, and showed great skill at handling the medium of oil paint.  What I thought was a buffet of color, were her "Mozart paintings (see picture)."  According to the Art Institute, "this series, the Mozart Paintings, expanded on her interest in the canvas as theater set that had developed in her student years, taken to an extreme, almost cinematic scale. Highly stylized and rendered in elaborate rococo detail, these paintings act as a foil for the more abstracted work that would follow."  Enjoy!

Hierarchy of Painting, Landscape

Jacob van Ruisdael, 1653

The first pure landscape painting did not occur until 1500 BCE in frescos in Minoan Greece.  Landscape paintings can be of our natural surroundings, or cityscapes done in any medium.  According to about.com, "Landscape Painting is ranked fourth in the Hierarchy of Paintings. While lovely to look at, landscapes require no human figures and somewhat less technical ability to produce than do the first three genres on the list."  I would have to disagree with about.com that landscapes "require less technical ability."  Painting rivers, mountains, trees, etc. that surrounds us requires the artist to depict many objects, from hard surfaces, to flowing surfaces, to soft surfaces, etc.  Landscapes and scenery have fascinated humans for thousands of years, I think that it is this fascination with natural landscape that drives the artist to depict it with vigor, or what some may call ease.  Enjoy!