March 28, 2012

Armless Propaganda: The Story of the Venus de Milo

by Lindsay Shapka in Art, Art History, Travel, Artists

The Venus de Milo is one of the most famous statues in the world, but like most famous art, one has to wonder what makes this piece more important than any of the other statues collecting dust in the galleries and storerooms of museums.

Well, first off, you can’t argue with the fact that she is beautiful.

Artists and critics have long praised the work as being the epitome of graceful female beauty, so much so that her image used to be on the seal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

On the other hand, though, there are many beautiful statues — and many that still have arms.

*Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Melos), circa 150 BCE*

Did she ever have arms?

No, Venus was not created without her upper limbs. She did originally have arms but was found with them already broken off. The buzz created by scholars over the mystery of the placement of her arms and what she may have once held has aided in her popularity. Only adding to the mystery is the fact that fragments found with the statue when it was dug up on the Island of Melos in 1820 have been lost.

The fragments, if reconstructed, would have been from the right arm of the statue and would have shown her holding an apple. Because the fragments were made of stone that was rougher than the rest of the statue, it was concluded that they were from an earlier restoration and so were set aside without being documented properly. They have now disappeared.

Scholars have recently speculated that the fragments were the originals and were carved differently because they would have been above the viewer's line of sight and so did not require a smooth surface (a common sculpting practice at the time of her creation). Without the fragments themselves, however, this can not be proven.

Who sculpted her?

Adding to her beauty, and the mystery behind her arms, is the fact that is is still not known who actually created the statue and for what purpose. Though it has been speculated that the artist may have been Alexandros of Antioch and she once sat in a high niche in the wall of an ancient city, none of this has been confirmed.

Though all of these facts are interesting, they do not add up to the kind of information that would attract the attention of the rest of the world.

Why is this Venus SO popular?

The main reason that this marble Venus is so recognizable is because of good ‘ol fashioned propaganda.

In 1815, France was forced to return the Medici Venus, which had been stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte, back to the Italians. It was (and still is) regarded as one of the finest classical sculptures in existence and to a country considered to be the art hub of Europe at the time, this was a HUGE blow to the ego.

When the Venus de Milo arrived at the Louvre so soon after the loss of the Medici Venus, French Officials immediately began promoting it as a greater treasure than what they had lost and voila, we now revere and recognize her as one of the most stunning and mysterious statues of the Hellenistic period.

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March 22, 2012

POP! A Brief Bio on the Iconic Andy Warhol

by Lindsay Shapka in Artists, Art, Art History

Mao Zedong, circa 1972             Andy Warhol

Beginning in the 1950s, artists influenced by Utopian American ads, Hollywood icons, pop music, comic books, and science fiction, started creating images that anyone walking down the street could recognize and declaring it art.

The public loved it, and with that, Pop Art was born!

Marilyn Monroe, circa 1962             Andy Warhol The artist only began to paint Monroe after her death and — staying true to the Pop Art philosophy — was only interested in portraying Marilyn THE STAR, not Marilyn th… — *Marilyn Monroe, circa 1962 Andy Warhol*
The artist only began to paint Monroe after her death and — staying true to the Pop Art philosophy — was only interested in portraying Marilyn THE STAR, not Marilyn the person.

Though he wasn’t the founder of this movement, the work of Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is indisputably the most widely recognized art from this period. Warhol officially began his foray into the art world in 1960 when he made the choice to leave a career as a commercial illustrator and devote all his energy to art.

Though he started off painting, he made a quick switch and settled into the assembly line technique of silk-screening photo images on canvas. This technique allowed him to mass produce art, making it more available to purchase, and making him more money.

Mao Zedong (detail behind portrait), circa 1972                Andy Warhol — *Mao Zedong (detail behind portrait), circa 1972 Andy Warhol*

His portraits of Mao Zedong were a glamorization of the infamous communist ruler’s official portrait. A portrait that was used on billboards, brochures and books giving it the same iconic and pop presence in China as a Campbell Soup ad had in America at the time. It is speculated that Warhol chose to paint Mao because — according to LIFE Magazine — in 1972 he was declared the most famous person in the world.

These portraits are a departure from his other famous works because they are hand painted making each one unique compared to his other highly repetitive works (see Marilyn Monroe above).

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March 15, 2012

When Modern Art Is Packing Tape In The Shape of A Streetlight

by Lindsay Shapka in Artists, Art

There’s a quote that comes to mind when looking at this work by Igor Eskinja, an artist from Croatia: "Modern Art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn't."

Modernism, as an art movement, originated in the early 20th century in tandem with momentous changes in politics, economics, and science. The developments in art and culture were a way of exploring new possibilities of expression, especially abstraction, in a rapidly changing world.

This work, titled Liberare Le Menti Occupare Gli Spazi is made from cheap packing tape and is applied directly to the wall of the gallery. Echoing the fleeting, fast-moving quality of the modern world, Eskinja creates his art using ephemeral materials applied directly to gallery surfaces.

This work is destroyed after each exhibit and the artist himself often doesn’t even create the art but sends measurements and instructions for the curators to do the installation themselves.

I often find myself shaking my head when walking into a gallery with a show like this and asking myself who it was that decided packing tape, tape gun still attached, on the wall was art.

I could do that… a small child could do that!

But I guess what it comes down to is that fact that I didn’t do it, Igor Eskinja did, and somebody, somewhere thought that it mattered.

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March 8, 2012

Michelangelo's Slaves: The Story Behind These Unfinished Sculptures

by Lindsay Shapka in Art, Art History, Travel

In 1505, Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to design his huge, free-standing tomb. The artist went straight to work, traveling to the marble quarries of Carrara — in central Italy — to hand select the pieces that he would use to create statues for the tomb.

Choosing the stone for his sculptures was very important to the artist because he envisioned the statue as already existing within the marble.

He saw it as his job to set the statue free.

In 1506, work on the tomb was put on hold when Julius insisted that Michelangelo work on painting the Sistine Chapel instead, and started diverting funds, meant for the tomb, to building St Peter’s.

At the time of the Pope’s death in 1513, the tomb was still unfinished and was never completed to the original specifications

There were over 40 statues planned for the original tomb, and 16 of them were meant to be slaves. The meaning behind the slaves is unknown, but scholars speculate that they may have represented captured enemies, captured territories, or the liberal arts.

Though Michelangelo continued to work on them over the years, out of the planned 16 statues, only 2 were almost completed, while 4 exist in various stages of completion.

The two completed slaves have a home in the Louvre in Paris, while the unfinished keep the David — also by Michelangelo — company in the Galleria dell’ Academia in Florence. What makes these unfinished pieces so interesting is that they give us a rare look at how the artist worked. They are essentially 3-D sketches, where all mistakes and the artist’s process are exposed.

You can see what the artist meant when he said it was his job to ‘set the sculptures free’, as the forms seem to be trying to pull themselves out of the stone with their torso’s straining and muscles bulging. Despite a lack of finished detail, the works command a sense of mass and movement.

The time that Michelangelo lived in was ruled by the Catholic Church, which did not believe in regular autopsies or studying corpses for science. Therefore, there was very little known about human anatomy at the time (autopsies were not widely performed until the late 1600s).

It has been surmised that artists, like Michelangelo, used to sneak into morgues and look at the bodies, (sometimes even performing their own autopsies), in order to get a better understanding of how the muscular system looked under the surface.

Click here to see photos of the unfinished slaves.

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March 6, 2012

Reads For The Road: "The War of Art — Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles" by Steven Pressfield

by Lindsay Shapka in Book List, Art, Artists

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance”

— from "The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles" by Steven Pressfield

I have always avoided (like the plague) anything that could be considered a ‘self-help’ book, but The War of Art came into my life exactly when I needed it (thanks Scott!). It gave me the motivation to get off my butt, stop making excuses and realize that the only person preventing me from doing what I REALLY wanted to do, was me.

In his book, Steven Pressfield calls procrastination and all other forces preventing you from exploring your inner potential (aka, getting off your butt and doing that creative thing you keep dreaming about doing) "Resistance".

According to Pressfield:

“Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us way, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

— from page 7

The book goes on to further define this term and gives straightforward, logical tools to combat Resistance that are meant to help readers feel empowered and turn their dreams into reality.

This book is not geared only to those who are creatively inclined, however, if there is anything that you have ever wanted, but just keep putting off (tighter abs perhaps?), this book is worth the read.

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March 1, 2012

Profile of Canadian Abstract Landscape Artist Ted Godwin

by Lindsay Shapka in Artists, Art

Ted Godwin, a Canadian painter, rose to prominence in the 1960s as a member of the Regina Five (1958-1968). The Five were a group of abstract painters, living and working in Regina, Saskatchewan, whose work was comparable to that being created in the New York art scene at the time.

In the mid-1970s, Godwin moved away from pure abstraction to more representative painting focused on landscape. His inspiration came from the expansive prairies, vast mountains and untouched scenery of Canada.

*Miz Beaver's Cafeteria and Mr. Brook Trout's Playground #6, 1980*

Despite the switch to a more representative technique, many of Godwin’s paintings look like abstract paintings in disguise.

For example, the pattern, brushwork and whimsical composition of Miz Beaver’s Cafeteria and Mr. Brook Trout’s Playground #6 (above) give an abstract feel to the work. True landscapes are also usually characterized by having expansive, wide-views with clear sky-horizon-ground layouts. The perspective of this work, being so low to the ground, only adds to the abstract feel.

Other paintings by Godwin can be found in major public collections across Canada and the United Kingdom.

He has also published a handful of books, where he recognizes emerging artist’s need for a place that they can devote to making ‘art and only art.'

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February 23, 2012

Illuminated Art: The Stunning Stained Glass Windows In Prague's St Vitus Cathedral

by Lindsay Shapka in Art, Art History, Travel

Often described as Illuminated wall decorations, the purpose of stained glass is not to allow those within a building to see outside or even to admit light, but rather to control it.

St Vitus Cathedral in Prague is home to some of the most stunning examples of this art form. The intense color of the massive windows, created by 20th-century Czech artists, floods the interior of the cathedral throwing color into every nook and cranny of the intricate French Gothic structure.

One of the windows throwing out spots of filtered light was created by the famous Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha. Rather than sticking to a more traditional, tightly organized visual structure when creating the window, he used a montage of images that gives an expressionistic effect.

His gorgeous, unique work of art is something not often seen in a gothic church.