Picasso

I have deliberately chosen three completely different pieces for this example. I love picasso's work I have both the picture above and the painting on the bottom on my bedroom walls. However, most people seem only aware of Picasso's style as the middle picture which surprises me. This style is the one I like least of picasso, although a bright use of colour, I find it too busy and distracting and in some ways unsettling, whereas the one above I like the simplicity of.



As I have already said, I do not like this style. Although I am a big fan of colour and use alot of it in my own work, this is just too much colour for me, and it seems there is too much happening all at once on the page.




I love this piece, the texture and colour as well as the choice of subject really appeal to me. It inspired one of my AS projects, and I can never get enough of looking at it. I would love to see the original and analyse how the texture was created.

Peter Greenaway and Jean-Luc Godard

For this project we were required to watch 2 art films by Peter Greenaway and Jean-Luc Godard. I much preferred the Peter Greenaway film, "A walk through H" in which the narrator goes on a journey following drawings and maps given to him by Tulse Luper.

" Like all the best surrealist art, it combines the pedantically methodical with the devoutly inconsequential..." Nigel Andrews, Sight and Sound.

Interestingly, the film was not obvious, yet not obscure, in many ways like painting. I took us on a journey as a painting tends to do, and with no clear end. It is probably the best way to make a film about painting and certainly the best way to make an impression.

I think if I was to create a film of painting it would be best done in this style. Like painting it self, the ambiguity leaves room for interpretation and will mean people view it in different ways. In regards to who I would choose to do my own film about, I would have to say Joan Miro, whose work for me is bizarre enough to be made into a moving picture without to much added surrealism.

Digital Version

This is digital version of what it may look like. I played around using paint to get an idea of how the colours mix. The final colour I used as my background will probably be a slightly different shade of blue.

Lilac Background

This a VERY rough version of what it will look like with a lilac background.

Nearly Finished!

I have nearly finished the coloured piece that I restarted. I have honestly spent a great deal of time and effort on it. As you can see I have the basic first layer down. I am scared to do the bacground now! I wish it could be white as I really do feel this would be effective but since we are not allowed to use white paint, I'm going to do a really light wash. I have tested what the colours may look like by using paint a roughly colouring in back grounds, so far I think a bluey-lilac would work well, I think I have a tube similar to this that I could dilute with linseed oil. I also thought black would have been good, but, alas, we are not allowed to use that either!

The Inner Life of Painting, Matthew Collins

I think Collins is aware, as I am, that he is one of the few art critics who is accessible to nearly everyone. Like, ‘This is Modern Art’, I found Collins very readable and without airs.

The significance of the medium of paint has decreased in the past century, since the industrial revolution, the world wars and improved education amongst other things. This, in my view, has lead to many artists being able and feeling forced to find new, original ways to express themselves.

This does not mean that painting has been forgotten, but more that the approach to painting has changed. During the last part of the 20th Century, a whole new era of art developed and you could argue painting was dragged with it (arguably kicking and screaming).

What Collins is trying to state in his essay, I believe, is not that the paintings are bad quality, but the medium as a whole has lost the integrity that once it held. He describes in his essay how the art we have had for fifteen years is a “new kind of art” and this type of art is now “fashionable”.

One of the main points Collins makes is that today’s paintings try to ‘keep up’ with other mediums, such as instillation art and new media. It is for that reason, Collins says, that painting is now following the tradition of these mediums and not following the tradition of it’s own. Following this statement Collins suggests that they are not “connected to the past in any real way”.

Because it defines itself by “this new tradition” much of today’s art is “visually boring”. I understand what Collin’s is saying here. Surely a medium which has carried itself for centuries cannot reinvent itself based on art that is “non-visual”? It is competing with types of art that are, at a basic level at least, not as concerned with aesthetics as they are with ‘trying to say something’.

Personally, I couldn’t describe what attracts me to a painting in the first place, which is surely the point of art in the first place. When we write down in laments terms what makes a painting mean something to us, surely we take the magic from it?

I like simplistic bright colours, one of the reasons I am so enjoying this project, yet I rarely paint this way. Why? I couldn’t really say. All the years of restrictive art education, as well as restrictive exam syllabuses had lead me to stay stuck in my comfort zone. A talent in painting that stuck to a ‘technically good’ piece would get a more successful mark than a piece with meaning, thus I was always encouraged by teachers to do so. I produced some lovely pieces which I felt very little for and I became quite disillusioned with it.

Since beginning my degree my passion for art has expanded as my knowledge has increased. Painting is a craft, but not one that is exclusive; anyone can paint. It has, and continues to have, such a vast history that it remains impossible to define in any concise way. Collins seems disappointed with paintings new era but it’s always changing.

Old and New

This is a picture of the old piece I did for paint. I know Laura says we should work and rework our pieces as often as possible, I trapped myself into a corner with this one. What I had in my head just did not and would not appear on canvas, so I completely changed what I had oringinally developed. I'm very glad I did this as I really enjoy the one I am working on now. It is very time consuming however, and probably has about ten hours worth of work so far!