Art Papers: Art Essay Help, Art Research Paper Tips and Art Term Paper Guide

Henry Moore’s sculptures were most commonly very simple solid images. Many were of women, perhaps to celebrate their role in society and show their strength. Moore’s mother was a strong woman and it is apparent through his work that he viewed women as the crux of the family. The women depicted in his sculptures are sturdy and heavy looking which confirms this. One sculpture which displays this quality of his work is his Seated and Draped Figure crafted in bronze which depicts an exaggeratedly broad woman positioned as the name of the sculpture suggests.

Moore looked at the female figure as a landscape and it is possible to see the similarities between the rolling lines of the figures in his sculptures and the moors where he grew up. Read more…

Cubism is an early twentieth century school of painting and sculpture in which the subject matter is portrayed by geometrical forms without realistic detail. That makes it mystic and difficult to analyze and define their ambiguous meaning. During that period, Jacques Riviere is one of a few cubism critics who profoundly know and understand cubism. Especially, he is able to interpret it in words which are easily comprehensible to the other. He does not only conveys the cubists’ concepts but the mistakes of their works as well.

The essence of the cubists is to portray what objects really are instead of images which normal people see. Consequently, the images look distort from the original shape. Riviere analyzes the cubism transformation concepts in two functions including eliminating lighting and perspective. The cubists replace all these qualities by plastic values. They believe that lighting effects change the true senses of things. They reject the concept and nature of lighting and substitute to the equal and subtle distribution. The shade that normally place on some parts of object, are dispensed into a small portion to every part of object by placing it near the edge of surface, in order to divide and mark successive inclination of the parts of object. Read more…

Bertolt Brecht has been hailed as one of the pioneers of 20th century theatre. Through his didactic styles and revolutionary theories on teaching the audience instead of just entertaining them, Brecht managed to alter the general face of modern theatre and style of playwriting through many of his works such as his 1939 epic “Mother Courage and Her Children”. Using such techniques as alienation and historification, he presented his plays without any sense of dramatic lighting or effects, as well as trying to remove any sense of suspense from the audience. Brecht also promoted the use of Epic Structure, a way of narrating a play in which song, dance, and projected photos and music would assist regular speech.

Epic Structure is noted particularly in “Mother Courage and Her Children”. Each scene opens with a projected message on the stage, which is a synopsis of the coming scene. Some scenes are quite distant in terms of time setting; many years in some cases, furthering the Read more…

Parallel Developments in Modern Art
The notion that modern art developed in multiple cultures and nations is one that needs to be further explored. This stands in marked contrast to prevailing art history doctrine- lionized by the art establishment, which rose to fame and power in the last century. Their view of modernism, going back to the early 20th century, credits Western Europe and later New York (post WW II) as the primary influencers in defining the art of today. While many of those historians acknowledged modernist developments elsewhere, they were quick to denounce them as derivatives of the west, and therefore inferior. The primary reason for this position was not racism or cultural ignorance, but rather total absorption with the prevailing art philosophy of the time- that art should ultimately serve a higher or absolute ideal. This view was reinforced by Clement Greenberg, well known critic and advocate of the 1950’s New York abstract abstractionist school of art, which swept the art world at the time. A product of their times, these philosophies contributed greatly to the discourse on art, but have become out of date with current art thinking. This essay attempts to delineate some of these values and bring them into our present world. Read more…

The beginnings of the New Art (or Art Nouveau) style in Scotland were centred around The Glasgow School of Art. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the most famous Art Nouveau architects was based around Glasgow and by the turn of the century this new art became known as the Glasgow style.

One of the most famous pieces of design done by Mackintosh was of course the Glasgow School of Art. A particular room in the school came to my attention, the library. Mackintosh has an eye for using wood, much inspired from Japanese style. The library is a perfect example of this. The double-height interior of the library looked surprisingly modern. Symbolism was a great aspect of Mackintosh’s designs, particularly in this library. It’s screened gallery supported by vertical timbers, which fluently divide the space and the floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing this dark panelled room to be bathed with light. In symbolic terms I think Mackintosh has made this room, not only look, but feel like a Japanese forest. The tall dark timber supports represent tall dark wood trees and the small lights hanging are in the style of Japanese lanterns, representing small beams of light, edging through the small cracks in the trees. I think this is a fantastic use of light with design. Read more…