Art with a Twist Campello on Contemporary. Or what this really will be… Who is this Campello guy...

Art with a TwistCampello on Contemporary

Or what this really will be…

• Who is this Campello guy anyway?

• A quick review of art history

• A quick lesson on art styles, genres and movements

• Loads of examples

• A pop quiz

• Booze at the end

All about me…

• Too many schools

• Artist

• Gallerist and Art Dealer

• Art Critic

• TV and Radio

• Arts Blogger

• Speaker

Art History Review

• Let’s focus on the visual arts and skip all the other associated arts, such as architecture, music, performance, etc.

35,000 years ago down to 10,000 years ago, mostly in caves in Spain and France

Enter the Egyptians

Enter the Greeks

• We think that the ancient Greeks were the first culture to use art to decorate their homes.

• Initially copied the Egyptians, but then exploded art into classical realism, with super accurate portrayals of people.

About 100 BC

Then the Romans rule for centuries

First they copied the Greeks…

Then they went on their own…

And this what their enemies were doing…

Then the Germans head South…

• Rome falls in 410 AD• The various German tribes sweep down

from the North and essentially wipe out Roman civilization in Europe as the Roman Emperor moves to Constantinople.

• Germanic tribes pour by the millions into Northern Italy, France and Spain and set up their own kingdoms in those areas.

• Dark Ages begin…

Enter the Christian Church…

Around 11th century in Daphne, Greece

The Renaissance

The shape of things to come…

We’ve skipped…• The Renaissance in Northern Europe…• Art in the rest of the world…• We’ll now skip Baroque art, Rococo, and most of

the 18th century…

We’re in the mid 1800s

• Romanticism and Neo-Classicism dominate the great salons in the capitals of Europe…

Enter the Realists and the Impressionists…

… an abstract object, invisible or non existent, does not belong in the domain of painting… show me an angel and I’ll paint one…

Gustave Courbet (1819 - 1877)

Rejected by the jurors for the 1855 Paris International Exhibition, he sets up his own pavilion and calls it the Pavilion of Realism.

ImpressionismThe term is introduced by art critic Louis Leroy ridiculing a

landscape by Monet titled “Impression – Sunrise.”

But it really began in 1863, at the Salon des Refuses, an exhibition held to accommodate the angry artists who had been rejected for the Salon that year.

• From the 1860’s Impressionist painters such as Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and others followed Manet’s lead in painting scenes of contemporary life and landscapes.

• Led to some of them painting outdoors, directly from nature. From this comes a new revelation of light, climate and atmosphere.

• Science added new colors to their palette and understanding of color theory.

• Most of their exhibitions irritated the public and the critics.

• Colors influenced greatly by the arrival of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints in Europe

• By the late 1800s, Impressionism has been accepted as “real art,” and thus was no longer the “new thing.”

• And the new generation of painters are no longer just interested in momentary sensations of light and color.

• Four painters lead the charge into Post-Impressionism: Seurat, Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin.

Paul Cezanne, Still Life, c.1890

Review

Characteristics of Impressionist painting usually include visible, choppy brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), common, ordinary subject matter, movement as a key element of human perception, and often unusual visual angles.

Not too many well-known contemporary painters paint in the style of the Impressionists… but many lesser known artists still do, and when they do, their work is considered by critics and museums to be too “derivative.”

Enter the 20th century

• Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Optical Art, Pop Art…

• Eventually, everything becomes art

And Picasso rules the art world…

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.

Pablo Picasso

Duchamp throws in the kitchen sink… ahhh… the toilet

Surrealism

Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, c.1927

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, c. 1930

• The period after WWII sees a rediscovery of the abstract works of earlier painters.

• In the US totally abstract work first surfaces around 1948 in the works of Jackson Pollock and it is harshly received by the critics and the public.

• By the 50s it is surprisingly suddenly accepted and abstract art is the new American hit!

The Washington Color School

• The home boys put the DC area on the art map!• Originally a group of DC area painters who showed

works in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, DC in 1965. The exhibition's organizer was Gerald "Gerry" Nordland and the painters included Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Howard Mehring, Thomas "Tom" Downing, and Paul Reed.

• Sometimes called the “stripe painters.”

• The last decades of the 20th century saw “post-modernism” and everything became art – driven mostly by theory.

• The concept, not the product, sometimes was the art.

• Video and photography finally found their footing and became hot commodities in the art market.

• And yet, in spite of many claims that painting is dead, painting continues to lead the way as an art commodity.

• The art critics hate this.

Some of today’s art stars

And finally me! I now paint like this…

But still draw like this…

Any Questions?

• Read this everyday: http://dcartnews.blogspot.com

• My website: www.lennycampello.com

• My email: lenny@lennycampello.com