Art appreciation textbook notes PDF

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Drawing and painting are related, overlapping processes. Drawing is often a prelude to painting. Paint strokes often resemble drawing techniques. In Gerhard Richter’s Abstract Painting (fig. 7.1), the medium (paint) and the process of its application are a major part of the message. Richter’s invented landscape suggests rugged forms in the foreground and an open, distant sky. Large brushstrokes of thickly applied oil paint in the foreground contrast with the smooth gradations of tone in the sky area, showing us some of the range of textures possible with the medium. For many people across the world, the word “art” means painting. The long, rich history of painting, the strong appeal of color, and the endless imagemaking possibilities have made painting a preferred medium for both artists and viewers for centuries.

In this chapter we will look at the process of making paintings, and then explore the unique characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of the most common types of paint. We will conclude with a look at some of the ways in which contemporary artists are stretching the boundaries of the medium. Ingredients and Surfaces All paints consist of three ingredients: pigment, binder, and vehicle. The pigment provides color, usually in the form of a very fine powder. Some of the purest and most brilliant colors available to the human eye are in pigment powders. The people who made the earliest cave paintings used natural pigments obtained from plants and nearby deposits of minerals and clays. Pigments used in cave paintings at Pont d’Arc, France—including blacks from charred woods and earth colors—have lasted more than 30,000 years (see fig. 15.6).

Artists prefer pigment colors that remain stable during the execution of a work and resist fading over time. Ground minerals and dried plant juices were the most common of the many natural pigment sources in ancient times. More exotic pigments have included powdered animal urine and even dried insect blood. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, major advances in the chemical industry made it possible to produce synthetic pigments that extend the available range of stable colors. Since then, the durability of both natural and synthetic pigments has improved. Most of the same pigment powders are used in manufacturing the various painting and drawing media.

The binder is a sticky substance that holds the pigment particles together and attaches the pigment to the surface. Binders vary with the type of paint: Oil paint, for example, contains linseed oil as a binder, while traditional tempera uses egg yolk. By Rembrandt van Rijn’s time, the seventeenth century, painters or their assistants mixed finely ground pigments with oil by hand until the paint reached a desirable fineness and consistency. The invention of tubes for oil paint in the nineteenth century made it possible for artists to take their work outdoors and paint on the spot. This helped to enable the Impressionist style.

The vehicle makes the paint a liquid, and can be added to the paint for thinning. In traditional oil paint, turpentine is the vehicle; watercolors, of course, use water.

Paint surfaces require a support, or structure to hold them. Wood panel, stretched canvas, and paper are common supports. Many of these supports require sealing, to lessen their absorptive qualities and to smooth them by filling in the pores of the material. Such sealant is usually called sizing or size, and is generally made from liquid clay, wax, or glue. Wood and canvas usually require sizing by artists (or their assistants), while paper used for watercolor is generally manufactured with a small amount of sizing included. Over the sizing (or instead of it), artists often apply a primer (usually white) in order to create a uniform surface. The sizing plus the primer creates the ground of a painting, and constitutes the surface preparation that artists generally do.

We will now consider the most common painting media in historical order of their appearance. Watercolor Artists have used water-based paint media for thousands of years. Paints very similar to modern watercolor appear in paintings from ancient Egypt, and also in ancient Chinese manuscripts.

In watercolor, pigments are mixed with water as a vehicle and gum arabic (sap from the acacia tree) as a binder. The most common support today is white rag paper (made from cotton rag), because of its superior absorbency and longevity. Such paper usually requires no priming; the paper itself is both the ground and the support. Watercolor was traditionally sold in solid blocks that the painter mixed with water to reach the desired thickness; today most professional watercolor is sold in tubes.

Watercolor is basically a staining technique. The paint is applied in thin, translucent washes that allow light to pass through the layers of color and to reflect back from the white paper. Highlights are obtained by leaving areas of white paper unpainted. Opaque (nontranslucent) watercolor is sometimes added for detail. Watercolors are well suited to spontaneous as well as carefully planned applications. Despite the simple materials involved, watercolor is a demanding medium because the absorbency of the paper support does not permit easy changes or corrections. Moreover, if you overwork a watercolor, you lose its characteristic freshness.

Watercolor’s fluid spontaneity makes it a favorite medium for painters who want to catch quick impressions outdoors. The translucent quality of watercolor washes particularly suits depictions of water, atmosphere, light, and weather.

Nineteenth-century American artist Winslow Homer was among the most devoted to watercolor. His 1873 work Boys Wading (fig. 7.2) shows many of watercolor’s properties. Both the boys and the water seem quickly sketched; the background shapes are flatter, which reflects how things farther away appear to our eyes under bright light. The water and the foreground shoreline are quickly brushed, with mostly horizontal strokes. In order to capture the dappled surface of the water, Homer used strokes of

analogous colors. The brightness of the boys’ shirts in the sunshine was easy to achieve with this transparent medium.

7.2 Winslow Homer. Boys Wading. 1873. Watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper sheet. 9¾″×13¾″. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 2014.18.15.

Homer created the highlights on the water after the first layer had dried by applying opaque watercolor, also known as gouache. We see these strokes most clearly at the left near the shoreline. Gouache is watercolor with small amounts of white chalk powder added for opacity. It was common in book illustration during the European Middle Ages, and also in traditional Persian art. It is popular in our times with designers and illustrators because of its ease of use and low cost.

In traditional Chinese watercolor technique, the artist employs water-based black ink as well as color, and often uses the ink without color. The Chinese regard painting as descended from the art of calligraphy, which is also done with black ink. In Asia, black ink painting is a fully developed artform, accorded at least as much honor as painting with color.

A good example of a traditional Chinese painting that uses both ink and watercolor is Five Deer Hermitage by Li Shida (fig. 7.3). The artist used ink for the black areas such as roof lines, with watercolor in the green and bluish areas. He also used many different types of brushstroke, most of them small in scale, which he learned by making calligraphy; we see this most clearly in the foliage.

7.3 Li Shida. Five Deer Hermitage. Not dated, early 17th century. Ink and color on gold-flecked paper. 121⁄2 x 24”. on wove paper sheet. 12½″×24″ Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art. © 2018. Photograph: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Scala, FlorenceFresco In true fresco, pigments suspended in water are applied to a damp lime-plaster surface. The vehicle is water, and the binder is the lime present in the damp plaster. The earliest true fresco paintings date from about 1800 BCE at a site in today’s southwestern Turkey. The technique was also practiced in some cultures of pre-Columbian Mexico.

In Renaissance Italy, fresco was the favored medium for painting on church walls. Probably the bestknown fresco paintings are those by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican (see fig. 17.9). His contemporary Raphael also created frescoes. We see a close-up of his technique in Assumed Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere (fig. 7.4). This is a detail of the much larger work The School of Athens (see fig. 3.22).

7.4 Raphael.Assumed Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, detail from The School of Athens. c.1510–12. Fresco. Vatican, Stanza della Segnatura. © 2018. Photograph: Scala, Florence.

Most fresco painters first prepare a full-size drawing in the form of a cartoon, then transfer the design to the freshly laid plaster wall before painting. Because the plaster dries quickly, only the portion of the wall that can be painted in one day is prepared; joints between each day’s work are usually arranged along the edges of major shapes in the composition.

The painter works quickly in a rapid staining process similar to watercolor. Lime, in contact with air, forms transparent calcium crystals that chemically bind the pigment to the moist lime-plaster wall. The lime in the plaster thus becomes the binder, creating a smooth, extremely durable surface. Once the surface has dried, the painting is part of the wall, rather than resting on its surface. Because lime-plaster walls are subject to mold infestations, fresco is most suitable to drier climatic zones.

The artist must have the design completely worked out before painting, because no changes can be made after the paint is applied to the fresh plaster. Fresco technique does not permit the delicate manipulation of transitional tones; but the luminosity, fine surface, and permanent color make it an ideal medium for large murals. (A mural is any wall-size painting; fresco is one possible medium for such a work.)

Fresco secco (dry fresco), another ancient wall-painting method, is done on finished, dried lime-plaster walls. With this technique, tempera paint is applied to a clean, dry surface or over an already dried true fresco to achieve greater color intensity than is possible with true fresco alone. Fresco painters often retouch their work, or put on finishing details, in fresco secco over the true fresco.

After the Renaissance and Baroque periods, fresco became less popular, being eclipsed by the more flexible oil medium. However, a revival of the fresco technique began in Mexico in the 1920s, encouraged by the new revolutionary government’s support for the arts. A fresco mural is often a piece of public art that cannot be bought or sold; such a mural in a public place is available to all classes of

people equally. This characteristic motivated the Mexican government in the 1920s to pay painters at union wages to decorate public buildings with murals, most of them in fresco. Diego Rivera was a leader in this movement, which influenced art in the United States. The Detroit Institute of Arts invited him to create Detroit Industry (fig. 7.5) in true fresco in the lobby. The largest panel of this large work depicts the manufacture of automobile engines. The panels above show raw materials in the earth; those at the wings depict scientific advances.

7.5 Diego Rivera. Mural depicting Detroit Industry. 1932–33. Fresco Detroit Institute of Arts, USA. Gift of Edsel B. Ford/Bridgeman Images. © 2018 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New...