Chapter 9 - Painting
Early Painting Media
Encaustic - A method of painting with molten beeswax fused to the support after application by means of
heat.

Mummy Portrait of a Man, Faiyum, Egypt
Fresco - Pigment is mixed with limewater and applied to a lime plaster wall either still wet (buon fresco) or
dry (fresco secco).

Still Life with Eggs and Thrushes, Villa of Julia Felix, Pompeii.

Bodhisattva, detail of a fresco wall painting in Cave I, Ajanta, Maharashtra, India

Giotto, Lamentation

Fra Andrea Pozzo, The Glorification of St. Ignatius
Tempera - A painting medium made by combining water, pigment, and, usually, egg yolk

Giotto, Madonna and Child Enthroned

Sandro Botticelli, Primavera

Julie Green, Don't Name Fish after Friends
Binders - In a medium, the substances that hold pigment together.
Ground - A coating applied to a canvas or printmaking plate to prepare it for painting or etching.
Giornata - Literally, “a day’s work,” the area a fresco painter is able to complete in a single sitting.
Oil Painting

Robert Campin and workshop, The Annunciation (The Mérode Altarpiece).

Jan de Heem, Still Life with Lobster
o Vanitas

Antonio López García, New Refrigerator
o Reflects the Vanitas theme

Rackstraw Downes, Presidio in the Sand Hills Looking East with ATV Tracks and Water Tower
o En Plein Air
Characteristics of Oil Painting
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Creates subtle shading that tempera does not.
Creates more realistic paintings (more 3-dimensional)
Thinned with turpentine-more transparent
Undiluted-impasto
Binder-linseed oil (slows drying)
Glazing creates a luminous quality
Impasto - Paint applied very thickly to canvas or support.
Oil Paint’s Superior Expressive Potential
Oil paint can record and trace the artist’s presence before the canvas. In fresco, the artist’s gesture is lost in
the plaster. In tempera, the artist was forced to use brushed so small that gestural freedom was absorbed by
the scale of the image.

Josephine Halvorson, Carcass
o Expressive
Watercolor

Winslow Homer, A Wall, Nassau

John Marin, Untitled (The Blue Sea).
o Watercolor and Charcoal

Jacob Lawrence, You can buy bootleg whiskey for twenty-five cents a quart, from the Harlem Series
o Gouache

John Singer Sargent, Rushing Brook
o Gouache
The Most Expressive Medium
Working quickly, it is possible to achieve gestural effects that are very close to those possible with brush and
ink. Artist’s like Homer masters the play between the transparent and opaque qualities of watercolor. In the
early 20th century, artists have favored it for realizing more abstract ends.
Synthetic Painting

Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
o Acrylic

Jeremy Deller, A Good Day for Cyclists
o Acrylic

Kenny Scharf, Mural on Houston Street, SoHo, Manhattan, New York
o Spray Paint
Advantages of Using Synthetic Painting Materials
Acrylic surfaces were durable and well suited for outdoor and indoor spaces. It also dries more quickly than
traditional oil paint.
Ways Painting Has Combined Itself with Other Media

Kara Walker, Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)
Combine-Painting - Robert Rauschenberg’s name for his works of high-relief collage

Robert Rauschenberg, Monogram
Mixed Media - The combination of two or more media in a single work.

Fred Tomaselli, Airborne Event
Collage - a work made by pasting various scraps or pieces of material—cloth, paper, photographs—onto the
surface of the composition.

Juan Gris, The Table
Collage Used For Political Goals
Because it brings “reality –often photographs of real events and people—into the framed space of the
artwork, collage offers artists a direct mean of commenting on the social or political environment in which
they work.
 Martha Rosler, Gladiators, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home