Old Masters Academy

Archive for November, 2010

Art Movements: Cynical realism

Cynical realism Cynical realism is a contemporary movement in Chinese art, especially in the form of painting, that began in the 1990s. Beginning in Beijing, it has become the most popular Chinesecontemporary art movement in mainland China. It arose through the pursuit of individual expression by Chinese artists that broke away from the collective mindset that existed since theCultural Revolution. The major themes tend to focus on socio-political issues and events since Revolutionary China (1911) to the present. These include having a, usually humorous and post-ironic, take on a realist perspective and interpretation of transition that Chinese society has been through, from the advent of Communism to today’s industrialization andmodernization. Artists associated with Cynical Realism include Fang Lijun, Liu Wei, and Yue Minjun.

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Art Movements: American REALISM

American realism was a turn of the century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period. Whether it was a cultural portrayal, or a scenic view of downtown New York City, these images and works of literature, music and painting depicted a contemporary view of what was happening; an attempt at defining what was real. In America at the beginning of the 20th century a new generation of painters, writers and journalists were coming of age. Many of the painters felt the influence of older American artists like Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, Thomas Pollock Anshutz, and William Merritt Chase. However they were interested in creating…

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Elegant Art Jokes: FUSELI’S “TITANIA.”

His Titania (also engraved in the Shakspeare Gallery), overflows with elvish fun and imaginative drollery. It professes to embody that portion of the first scene in the fourth act where the spell-blinded queen caresses Bottom the weaver, on whose shoulders Oberon’s transforming wand has placed an ass’ head. Titania, a gay and alluring being, attended by her troop of fairies, is endeavoring to seem as lovely as possible in the sight of her lover, who holds down his head and assumes the air of the most stupid of all creatures. One almost imagines that her ripe round lips are uttering the well-known words,— “Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick…

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«The Savior of Painting» by Odd Nerdrum

Odd Nerdrum´s self portrait is titled «The Savior of Painting». Almost life-size, it depicts the artist in a golden robe, armed with paintbrush and palette, against the soft Norwegian evening sky. On his palette is one single color: that of gold. «This is kitsch in its purest form,» remarks the artist in front of the nearly finished work, gracefully saving us the embarrassment. «Mind you, there´s absolutely no irony here.» The golden robe is for real. He had it made in New York a few years back, and it´s already a garment of international notoriety. His «Self Portrait in Golden Robe», first exhibited in Stockholm last winter and now showing in a retrospective at the Astrup-Fearnley Museum in Oslo, shows…

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Odd Nerdrum. An interview

The Importance of Being Odd: Nerdrum’s Challenge to Modernism By Paul A. Cantor The Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum is one of the greatest painters of the century. Unfortunately, according to his detractors, the century in question is the seventeenth. Thus Nerdrum has emerged as one of the most controversial artists of our day. His admirers praise him for his superb Old Master technique, while his critics condemn him as hopelessly reactionary. His work calls into question all our customary narratives about art history, and especially the modernist dogma that the artist can be creative only by turning his back on the past. Nerdrum has openly acknowledged his debt to the Old Masters. He uses heavy layers of paint to create chiaroscuro effects reminiscent of Caravaggioand Rembrandt,…

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Elegant Art Humour:TITIAN—SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. Part1

The name of this illustrious painter was Tiziano Vecellio or Vecelli, and he is called by the Italians, Tiziano Vecellio da Cadore. He was descended of a noble family; born at the castle of Cadore in the Friuli in 1477, and died in 1576, according to Ridolfi; though Vasari and Sandrart place his birth in 1480. Lanzi says he died in 1576, aged 99 years. He early showed a passion for the art, which was carefully cultivated by his parents.—Lanzi says in a note, that it is pretty clearly ascertained that he received his first instruction from Antonio Rossi, a painter of Cadore; if so, it was at a[Pg 2] very tender age, for when he was ten years old…

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Genius of Picasso

Genius of Picasso

Picasso was the first rock-star artist, whose wild visions gripped the public imagination and changed 20th-century art for ever. But his flamboyant personality divided opinion. Was he a playful genius, as some suggest, or a capricious and cruel misanthrope who left battered lives in his wake? On the eve of a new show in London, we speak to his closest friends and family in a bid to unravel the enigma. “Picasso,” the surrealist poet Paul Eluard said, “paints like God or the devil.” Picasso favoured the first option. “I am God,” he was once heard telling himself. He muttered the mantra three times, boasting of his power to animate and enliven the visible world. Any line drawn by his hand…

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Art Movements: Neo-conceptual art

Neo-conceptual art Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists, United States neo-conceptualists such as Cindy Sherman and the Young British Artists, notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom, where there is also a Stuckism counter-movement and criticism from the 1970s conceptual art group Art and Language. History Many of the concerns of the “conceptual art” movement proper have been taken up by many contemporary artists since the initial wave of conceptual artists. While many of these artists may not term themselves “conceptual artists”, ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, digital art, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects…

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Odd Nerdrum’s PAINTING METHOD

Odd Nerdrum’s PAINTING METHOD

Previous articles about Odd Nerdrum’s Oil Painting Methods: Part 1 Part2 OTHER PAINTING METHODS of ODD Nerdrum He started with a rough outline of the head and went straight to painting shadows, no hard edges in the beginning. During a break on the first day, he used a fan brush to soften the entire face. He turned the painting upside down a couple of times to see where the problem lies. At the beginning of the second day, before starting to paint, he applied a thin layer of linseed oil on the whole surface with the rag (oiling out) he then added green umber to the rag and applied that on the background. (no extra oil, except for the little…

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