Art with a Twist
Campello on Contemporary
Or what this really will be…
• Who is this Campello guy anyway?
• A quick review of art history
• A quick lesson on art styles, genres and
movements
• Loads of examples
• A pop quiz
• Booze at the end
All about me…
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Too many schools
Artist
Gallerist and Art Dealer
Art Critic
TV and Radio
Arts Blogger
Speaker
Art History Review
• Let’s focus on the visual arts and skip all
the other associated arts, such as
architecture, music, performance, etc.
35,000 years ago down to 10,000 years ago,
mostly in caves in Spain and France
Enter the Egyptians
Enter the Greeks
• We think that the ancient Greeks were the
first culture to use art to decorate their
homes.
• Initially copied the Egyptians, but then
exploded art into classical realism, with
super accurate portrayals of people.
About 100 BC
Then the Romans rule for centuries
First they copied the Greeks…
Then they went on their own…
And this what their enemies were
doing…
Then the Germans head South…
• Rome falls in 410 AD
• The various German tribes sweep down
from the North and essentially wipe out
Roman civilization in Europe as the
Roman Emperor moves to Constantinople.
• Germanic tribes pour by the millions into
Northern Italy, France and Spain and set
up their own kingdoms in those areas.
• Dark Ages begin…
Enter the Christian Church…
Around 11th century in Daphne, Greece
The Renaissance
The shape of things to come…
We’ve skipped…
• The Renaissance in Northern Europe…
• Art in the rest of the world…
• We’ll now skip Baroque art, Rococo, and most of
the 18th century…
We’re in the mid 1800s
• Romanticism and Neo-Classicism dominate the
great salons in the capitals of Europe…
Enter the Realists and the
Impressionists…
… an abstract object, invisible or non
existent, does not belong in the domain of
painting… show me an angel and I’ll paint
one…
Gustave Courbet (1819 - 1877)
Rejected by the jurors for the 1855 Paris International
Exhibition, he sets up his own pavilion and calls it the Pavilion
of Realism.
Impressionism
The term is introduced by art critic Louis Leroy ridiculing a
landscape by Monet titled “Impression – Sunrise.”
But it really began in 1863, at the Salon des Refuses, an
exhibition held to accommodate the angry artists who had
been rejected for the Salon that year.
• From the 1860’s Impressionist painters such as
Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and others
followed Manet’s lead in painting scenes of
contemporary life and landscapes.
• Led to some of them painting outdoors, directly
from nature. From this comes a new revelation
of light, climate and atmosphere.
• Science added new colors to their palette and
understanding of color theory.
• Most of their exhibitions irritated the public and
the critics.
• Colors influenced greatly by the arrival of
Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints in Europe
• By the late 1800s, Impressionism has
been accepted as “real art,” and thus was
no longer the “new thing.”
• And the new generation of painters are no
longer just interested in momentary
sensations of light and color.
• Four painters lead the charge into PostImpressionism: Seurat, Cezanne, Van
Gogh and Gauguin.
Paul Cezanne, Still Life, c.1890
Review
Characteristics of Impressionist painting
usually include visible, choppy
brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis
on light in its changing qualities (often
accentuating the effects of the passage of
time), common, ordinary subject matter,
movement as a key element of human
perception, and often unusual visual
angles.
Not too many well-known
contemporary painters paint in
the style of the Impressionists…
but many lesser known artists
still do, and when they do, their
work is considered by critics and
museums to be too “derivative.”
Enter the 20th century
• Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism,
Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract
Expressionism, Optical Art, Pop Art…
• Eventually, everything becomes art
And Picasso rules the art world…
God is really only another artist.
He invented the giraffe, the
elephant, and the cat. He has no
real style. He just keeps on trying
other things.
Pablo Picasso
Duchamp throws in the kitchen
sink… ahhh… the toilet
Surrealism
Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, c.1927
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, c. 1930
• The period after WWII sees a rediscovery of
the abstract works of earlier painters.
• In the US totally abstract work first surfaces
around 1948 in the works of Jackson Pollock
and it is harshly received by the critics and the
public.
• By the 50s it is surprisingly suddenly accepted
and abstract art is the new American hit!
The Washington Color School
• The home boys put the DC area on the art map!
• Originally a group of DC area painters who showed
works in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at
the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in
Washington, DC in 1965. The exhibition's organizer
was Gerald "Gerry" Nordland and the painters
included Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene
Davis, Howard Mehring, Thomas "Tom" Downing,
and Paul Reed.
• Sometimes called the “stripe painters.”
• The last decades of the 20th century saw
“post-modernism” and everything became
art – driven mostly by theory.
• The concept, not the product, sometimes
was the art.
• Video and photography finally found their
footing and became hot commodities in
the art market.
• And yet, in spite of many claims that
painting is dead, painting continues to lead
the way as an art commodity.
• The art critics hate this.
Some of today’s art stars
And finally me! I now paint like this…
But still draw like this…
Any Questions?
• Read this everyday:
http://dcartnews.blogspot.com
• My website: www.lennycampello.com
• My email: lenny@lennycampello.com