Emotive Value Through Color And Form example essay topic

Modern Art For The Paper Store - April, 1999 Introduction It's been said that "Matisse was no more an abstract artist than Picasso. No abstract painter can claim descent from their work without acknowledging that fact. The worldly motif, especially the human body, and in particular the female body, was as basic to Matisse's art as it had been to Delacroix's or Titian's. His paintings vividly communicate a tension between what he called "the sign" and the reality it pointed to. He had learned about this tension and its anxieties from Cezanne.

But there has never been a great figurative artist who did not feel and exemplify it. It can be as poignant in Giotto or even in Poussin as it is in Cezanne or Matisse. For Matisse it was of prime importance, whereas in abstract art it tends to fall away, because one end of the cord is no longer anchored in the world and its objects. This is not an argument against abstraction, but it helps explain why, in those abstract paintings that derive from Matisse, one so rarely feels the urgency of their great exemplar.

(Hughes 70). An individual's personal relationship to art can be dichotomized into two responses: either one is repelled or one is drawn into the work. It can be a symbolic interaction such as one experiences with Jasper John's DEVISE, an emotional response such has been reported with Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen From Bibemus Quarry and Matisse's Blue Nude or, perhaps, it is the literal interaction of stepping on a floor sculpture by Andre. Whatever the individual's relationship or response, the reaction is not based on the piece's similarity to anything in the traditional art world nor it's lack of similarity to anything in th real world. Response to the art discussed in this paper is based on an individual level and is specific to the piece.

Paul Cezanne "In 1877, the critic Georges Riviere described him as "a Greek of the great period; his canvases have the calm and heroic serenity of the paintings and terracotta's of antiquity". And Renoir, in 1895, compared Cezanne's paintings to "the frescoes of Pompeii, so crude and so admirable". The watercolor-like freshness of so many of Cezanne's landscapes of the 1880's and 1890's, which feel both deliberate and spontaneous, is one of the miracles of modern art... Academic ideas about composition and modeling and perspective that had already been transformed into the gloriously mannered idiom of Ingres and then sunk into the kitsch of Bouguereau and Meissonier turned out to be miraculously new. Doric pediments or classical shepherds were not part of this radical classicism, but Cezanne instinctively understood that his birthplace and lifelong home, Aix-en-Provence, made such allusions unnecessary" (Perl 32). If it is true that nature is more depth than line, that color is reality and spaces and solids are merely illusion, then Cezanne is the embodiment of the modernist thought.

Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen From The Bibemus Quarry (1897). at: web youth / dl /yard / OM/impressions / ce 2. html The first thing one notices with this painting is the richness of the color combinations and the effect it has in elucidating the emotional feel of the quarry. Contrasting the green against the red-ochre-orange of the quarry with the dark shading of the cracks and crevices of the rocks and the shading in the trees and then using a bland, overcast looking sky, brings the vibrancy of the yellow / orange hues to the fore. Upon closer inspection, there is a balance of light and dark that is mediated by a center crevasse and poles that offset the cliffs and draws the eye to the middle. Once that is taken in, the view expands to include the more subtle colors of the trees and, finally, rests at the mountain and skyline.

The dark of the tree trunk frames the right side while the dark streak on the left side of the mountain triangulates the scene. The bushes in the foreground "ground" the picture with the use of shading and contrast. The orange is repeated in the tree and in the mountain while the sky is mirrored (just a tiny bit) in the sun lit spots on the cliff tops. It looks as though it was brushed on, that is, no palette knife or excessive texturing. The emphasis in on the light and dark contrast of shading in the style of someone like Vermeer, in that it is startlingly noticeable.

The painting is not realist, nor does it appear to be impressionistic or abstract; rather, a mixture of the three, with impressionism being the closest to the rendition. Again, it is the color and use of color techniques that make this painting so pleasing and compelling. Henri Matisse "Matisse, paladin of modernism, is a long way from us now. Almost a generation older than Picasso, his counterpart, he was born in 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened and Gustave Flaubert published L'Education Sentimental e. Everything that looked modern in Matisse's environment is now ancient... The idea that Matisse and Picasso, like Gog and Magog, are the founding opposites of modern art has left us a partisan scheme for looking at their work - and for thinking about it.

Picasso drawings, Matisse color; Picasso anxiety, Matisse luxury; Picasso the restless inventor, Matisse the calm unifier; Picasso in conflict, Matisse rhyming with peace; Picasso the bohemian Spaniard, Matisse the detached French bourgeois. There is something to these oppositions, but the closer you look at them the more tenuous they get. Matisse was just as challengingly inventive in his Fauve paintings in 1905 as Picasso became, with Cubism, around 1912 (Hughes 69). Matisse's Blue Nude (1907). at: web 1. htm This is another painting that defies automatic categorization. On first look it seems to be within the same genre or style as Picasso, but it has more emotive value and less chaos.

The simplicity of the color scheme brings the essence of the form to the viewer as the first consideration and then one notices the fluidity of the background and the feel of motion it gives the painting. It is far from realism: the body is neither proportioned correctly or in a feasible position, however, it has a sense of body awareness and form that has an undeniable truth to it - as though the painter knew from the inside out what it meant to be this person in this place and in this position. There is absolutely no detail outside of space and non space, but it is able to express emotive value through color and form alone. There is an element of abstraction and part of the form (the toes especially) bring to mind Gauguin. The name suggests a monochrome, but in reality it is a combination of hues and light (as in very little) shading that give depth to the form. The lines are not necessarily 'crisp', as though the painter allowed a bit of dry brushing on the edges that may be reinforced by small brush strokes.

Jasper Johns "Jasper Johns, ... may be the most influential artist of our time, as well as the most elusive. He seems, indeed, to be a figure of almost infinite paradox. Johns and his work have again and again been associated with such Apollonian virtues as wryness, remoteness, and intellectualism... Johns is drawn to the concepts of duality, ambiguity, translation, transposition, and memory. The two big new paintings, ... are densely layered compositions, full of images and abstract patterns, that appear to be grand summations of virtually all of his themes, from the maps and figure fragments of his early days to his most recent punning motifs" (Liebmann 162-168). Jasper Johns' Device (1962). at: http: //209.132.

4.118/art / johns /device. jpg. html Whoa! We are talking monumental. Monumental use of color, use of symbolism, texture and, not least of all, size. This six foot by four foot painting is difficult to take in all at once. The first thought is the force of weight - in the paint (which might have been put on with a six inch house painting brush, dripping with Sherwin-Williams) and the weight of the oppression of machinery.

Color is drawn between the two large wheels, compacted and crushed, then thrown out. Closer examination (actually walking away from the painting for a more overall view) shows that the lighter color splotches resemble human forms in an all-out abstract kind of way. This adds even more meaning to both the painting and the action within the painting. The first thought was, "fallen angels', then the idea of machinery clicks and it becomes a metaphor for technology, and, finally, the word and the technique used in painting the word, 'DEVICE' at the bottom brings to mind graffiti and urban decay, violence and mayhem. DEVICE in this context may refer to the machinations of society that 'sucks people in' to the class distinctions and chaos of industrialization, only to send them through the machine and spit them back out onto the ground.

All these thoughts and yet the painting is done in bright colors. The orange and yellow that Cezanne used to portray rocks is now very indicative of fire and motion. The paint is thick, even literally dripping, and it looks like it was applied with a putty knife as opposed to a palette knife. This is one of those paintings where every glance brings a new meaning or a new form to the foreground of consciousness. Meaning is both symbolic and personalized.

(Did you notice the man on a ladder between the two wheels - or the blood on the wheel or the way the legs of the person / angel are lengthened as they approach the ground). Carl Andre Andre's sculptural work is classical in feeling, defined by its simple geometric forms. A few of his more popular works from the same period as Zinc Magnesium Plain (1969) include: 17 Copper Triode (1975), a floor piece consisting of flat copper plates in a T-square configuration; 2 x 18 Aluminum Lock (1968), another floor piece composed of aluminum plates, its considerable length demanding to be walked across; and Fall (1969), made of hot-rolled steel plates bent at right angles, their surfaces reddish-black with rust and other markings. "Together these works demonstrated just how aware Andre is of the spatial dialogue that occurs between not only the viewer and his sculpture but among the works themselves; all three of the sculptures subtly played off each other in terms of form, color, material and scale. Two new pieces, the horizontal Sand-Lime X Axis and the vertical Sand-Lime Y Axis, were... utterly simple form - 18 small rectangles of grayish-green stone placed back to back across the floor or rising toward the ceiling... Even when Andre works small, as with these recent efforts, he always suggests the monument and its ability to memorialize through unembellished repetition of form" (Goodman 100-102).

There is an element of usefulness in the floor sculptures, albeit in an abstract manner. The use of metal and the size of the pieces also speak against use, however, the pieces have a worn look, are open to be walked on and, in the strictest definition of the word, are "floor coverings."Andre was one of the earliest Minimalists but, born in 1935, was decidedly younger than Sol Levitt and Donald Judd (b. 1928) or Robert Morris (b. 1931). And, indeed, from the outset he was essentially another sort of artist, a Romantic among Neoclassicists. Now, the essence of Minimalism, ... is its commitment to modularity.

One form this takes is an emphatically regular geometry. Thus, a 1989 work in Cor-Ten steel by Judd, recently shown in London, is a topless box, 100 centimeters high and 200 long and wide, its interior bisected by a divider half its depth rising from the bottom anti one of the halves bisected in turn by a similar divider descending from above. But Minimalism's most explicit form of modularity is, of course, its repetition of uniform units, whether by construction or assemblage. An arrangement of bricks tells us at once that it consists of modular components; so does an arrangement of square metal plates set on the floor or a stack of metal shelves mounted on a wall. Here, too, there is of course great scope for numerical games: in Andre's installation of eight different configurations of 120 bricks, first set up in 1966, the configurations give two layers of - length first - 20 bricks by 3, 3 bricks by 20, 15 by 4, 4 by 15, 12 by 5, 5 by 12, 10 by 6, and 6 by 10. The commitment to a form of standardization is the great link between Minimalism and Pop art" (Goodman 100-102).

Andre uses the art of repetition in almost all of his works, from the columns of bricks to the identical interlaced pieces that make up a number of the floor sculptures. Much of the work done by Andre is a representation of physical conditions. He alternates space with mass - bricks, wood and metal - in constructions either stacked or laid on the floor. His metal "rugs", are made with plates of iron, zinc, and aluminum, the neutral raw materials in standard units. Through their participation in a repetitious pattern they exemplify a given the minimalist concept of standardization and simplicity. The abstract component is seen in the representation of utilitarian use (the traditional) in a medium that disallows the functional value.

Conclusion These four works, three paintings and a sculpture are seemingly very different. However, they represent an era of art wherein, like the Renaissance, change and improvement are combined in creative melding of past traditions. All of them escape strict categorization. They may have aspects of abstraction, impressionism, modernism and even hints of cubism and minimalism.

The value they all share is the ability to bring the viewer into a new reality, based on the art and encompassed by the art. Goodman, Jonathan. "Carl Andre at Ace". Art in America, (1998): January, pp. 100 (2).

Hughes, Robert. "Art: Matisse The Color of Genius". Time, (1992): September, pp. 67 (4). Liebmann, Lisa. "Jasper Johns Unplugged". Harper's Bazaar, (1996): August, pp. 162 (7).

Perl, Jed. "Cezanne: Landscape into Art". The New Republic, (1996): August, pp. 30 (2).