"Art and Visual Culture" expresses its key focus in its title; it is a course about art, but not only standard art, it also includes aspects of visual culture. Culture has many definitions listed in Encarta Dictionary, one of which is the set of shared beliefs, customs, and attitudes of a...

Chang Dai-Chien is known for his skill of imitating traditional Chinese historical artists. He borrowed techniques from the diversity of Chinese art. Upon my arrival at the gallery, the atmosphere of the ancient epoch created by the paintings presented at the art show impressed me very much. The atm...

Since the beginning of humanity, women in art have been worshipped, venerated, treasured, and admired. They also have been defamed, condemned, and abused. Although there have been many woman artists, their ability has not always been respected. Today there are many great women artists. It was in the...

Henri Matisse's painting Purple Robe and Anemones, from 1937, hangs in the Baltimore Museum of Art. This painting depicts his model Lydia Delectorskaya in a purple robe with a vase of anemones in the foreground. Matisse did not intend to capture his subject realistically. Instead, the painting ...

Visual perception is a function of our eyes and brain. We see images as a whole rather than in parts. However, images can be broken into their visual elements: line, shape, texture, and color. These elements are to images as grammar is to language. They, together, allow our eyes to see images and ou...

Visual perception is a function of our eyes and our brain. We see images as a whole rather than in parts. However, images can be broken into their visual elements: line, shape, texture, and color. These elements are to images as grammar is to language. They, together, allow our eyes to see images an...

The twentieth century brought WWI, Hitler, and the Great Depression to the world. It was a time of turmoil and out of turmoil comes change. The art world would also be turned upside down and forever changed. Fauves, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Fantasy, Dada, Surrealism, and early Abstract...

Among the leading painters of post-World War II Abstract Expressionist movement, Franz Kline developed his own highly personal form of art based more on "spontaneous expression in abstract design of the artist's psychic states."1 Abstract expressionism saw representation as the exact opposite of...

Painting is one of the most interesting skills to have. Any child can do it, but the important thing in painting is the use of styles. The people who have talents can use styles very successfully and can create new techniques. With the new techniques, primitive art lost the sense and artists found m...

Pointillism has truly been the beginning of a new error within time itself. Its creation came from an offshoot of Impressionism, and is usually classified as a form of Post-Impressionism. It is very similar to Divisionism, but where Divisionism is concerned with the color theory, Pointillism is focu...

~Part 1~ Cubism and Fauvism were one of the most influential modern arts of the 20th century. Cubism was developed by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. Picasso and Braque found examples and initial concepts of cubism in two art sources. ...

Impressionist paintings are put into a category based on certain characteristics. Such features include light that draws attention to objects, rough textures, and visual pleasure that the viewer receives upon looking at paintings. Grainstack (Sunset) by Claude Monet is a great example of this. Duri...

In his famous "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" (1912) Marcel Duchamp used a limited cubist palette and faceting of forms but completely contradicted the cubist esthetic in his choice of an ironic title and stress on actual movement. When this painting was exhibited at the Armory Show in New Yo...

When I walked into the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the first time I could not wait to start looking at the artworks of brilliant artists of the past and present. I took my time on my first visit looking at as much as I could. "Prometheus Bound" by Peter Paul Ruben and Frans Snyders, is one of t...

In the early twentieth-century, art became a form of expression through personal experiences, nature, and visual aspects of the world. Early modern artists expanded and broadened the image and value of art. They explored different styles of art that merged painting and sculpture and left no border...

Several years ago when I was ten I had an opportunity to travel to France. I went to a few museums which I liked including Yhe Louvre and The Pompidou Center. The museum I found most interesting was Mus’ee D’ Orsay. All the paintings at Mus’ee D’ Orsay were impressi...

The aspect of a Romantic composition's balance is characterized by diagonals and tension. Disproportion, imbalance and a feeling of pushing and pulling within the depth of the composition can also be observed. While movement and activity is characteristic of Romantic paintings, a still, quiet, sta...

I chose to write about Marc Chagall because I like the colors that he used in his paintings. I like the way his painting technique looks on the canvas. His short brush strokes made it appear as if one color was blending into another. There are areas in some of his paintings where there are numero...

In the artistic realm, the artist's thought process is morphologically transformed through the art materials and forms into signs, symbols, and imagery. Signs and symbols play a dominant role in 20th Century art; the artist used this medium as a language to portray intentions of varying differences...

Late in his life, Velázquez painted what is his acknowledged masterpiece, "Las Meninas" or the "Maids of Honor" (1656). Here he provided his visual commentary on the nature of reality by fusing several subjects. The group portrait, the "genre" (scenes of everyday life) theme, the self-portrai...

The majority of the focus through history has been on the humanistic form, and the concentration of this paper will be on that. Art was the first written language and to study the history of art is to study the history of civilizations and humankind. The Paleolithic cave paintings in France, when vi...

Much painting had been done in England by a handful of native artists well into the eighteenth century, although it was foreign artists that had dominated the market for paintings. British artists could not form an original style and one they could call their own, thus they were seldom admired. In...

Art History: Cubism Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning 1912 characterises Cubism's divergence from more conventional, academic styles of painting previously dominating French art. Marking a transition between the Analytic and Synthetic phases, Still Life with Chair Caning expresses ...

Gothic Art is considered as the combination of the painting, sculpture, architecture and music characteristic in the central Europe during the Middle ages. Firstly derived from Romanesque art, Gothic art has a great influence for centuries lasted from mid-12th century to 15th century. The topic of M...

The piece I have chosen is an oil painting by Chuck Close entitled "Robert," (1997). I observed it at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The painting, which measures an enormous 102 by 84 inches, is a straightforward portrait of one of Close's friends and fellow pop artists Robert R...