Tuesday, February 26, 2008

This is some really cool/weird art!

There are some really amazing artist out there. These artists all have their own form of art. This means they prefer painting in their own way. Some artists are cubist, realists, impressionist, etc. Some example of these artists are Picasso, Leger, Magritte and Ernst. Picasso and Leger are cubists which means that their art is created with shapes. For example Leger's "Le Remporqueur" is of a steam boat. You can not see it right away when you look at the painting, but once you look closer you can see stairs, people, a dog, trees and smoke stacks. It may not seem like a boat but once you break it down you can see the formation.

Here is Leger's "Le Remorgueur":

Margritte and Ernst are both realist painters. This means that their art takes reality and twists it. In Margritte's "On the Threshold of Liberty" you can interprit it in many ways. It is a painting of a cannon in side a box with windows of different pictures in it. What I interpreted from it was that the windows are what the world is like at that time, and that the cannon represents the war and the main focus is the cannon that war is the stand out of the normal world.

Here is Margritte's "On the Threshold of Liberty":

Thanks for enjoying this Post! keep looking for new interesting posts coming soon!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Claude Monet- art style

I have been reviewing over some of Claude Monet's paintings from the 18 and 1900's. Knowing that Claude Monet was one of the inventors of Impressionism really stands out to me and makes me feel like he is a talented artist. He started his own form and style of art and that is very impressive. I believe that only a unique artist can discover his own style of painting. Monet's paintings are very smooth and mixed together. The colors all go together and blend perfectly. Even though the colors are blended together you can still clearly see the buildings, trees, people, flowers, etc. He uses both strong lines and blurred colors in his paintings. He mainly uses defined lines to emphasize tree trunks and buildings. To show the the leaves, grass and flower petals he uses a cluster of colors to create a blurred vision. One good example of this cluster of colors is "Villas a Bordighera" which he painted in 1884.



I think that his use of colors and lines flow and stand out. He does not make the sharp lines look out of place or having the cluster of colors look randomly put in. It all flows and each style is used perfectly. You can tell the different styles of brush strokes that he uses in this painting. As you can see he does not make the buildings in the back very clear but you can defiantly tell what they are. You are never guessing what is going on or what something is in Monet's art.

I found this wonderful website that has a ton of Monet's paintings in it from the beginning paintings to the last ones. http://www.intermonet.com/oeuvre/index.htm
There are also many galleries that have Monet's art in it. If you want to see the real thing.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Rainbow

I read a poem written by Leslie Coulson called rainbow. Leslie Coulson was a journalist and poet in the 1800's. He was also a solider in the first world war. He fought in the battles of Gallipoli and the Western Front. Coulson was born in Kilburn, England in 1889. He was sent to war in 1914 on Christmas Eve. He wrote his poem "The Rainbow" about his experience in the war. This poem gives great detail about what he was seeing and how he was feeling. He uses similes and metaphors to grab your attention. He uses a lot of adjectives to describe the horrifying things around him. He also uses repetition with the line "I thank the gods that ... are beautiful still." This line is really deep because he is saying that even though all these bad things are happening around him he thanks god that there is something beautiful that he can still look at. This poem is in a book that his father published after Coulson died in 1916.

Coulson wrote "The Rainbow" on August 8, 1916. He soon died on October 8, 1916 by a gun shot in his heart. The book that his father published was of Coulson's best work it was called From the Outpost and Other Poems. It sold 10,000 copies by 1917.


This is Leslie Coulson

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-rainbow-3/ if you would like to read "The Rainbow" here is a link to his poem. It is really moving and has great wording. I would recommend clicking on it.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was an artist during the Industrial Revolution. The paintings that he painted were called Impressionism. Claude Monet was a french painter. Monet painted mainly landscape pieces. One of his most famous pieces is "water lilies." He painted many scenes of the water lilies, close ups and far away scenes. His style of painting was a blurred brush stroke. His brush strokes were long and mixed together. Even thought the colors were mixed together and the brush strokes were blurry it was very clear to see what he was painting. Which most of the time was landscape, sometimes he would add people into his art. When he did paint people he did not put a lot of detail into the faces. The main detail was either in the clothes or the landscape around them.

One of Monet's paintings Impression: Sunrise influenced the name for the new movement of Impressionism in the 1800's. Monet's art was disliked in his early stages. But then he grew in popularity and his artwork began to sell in the 1880's. He was the first Impressionist who was known around the world, he made it all the way to the United States. One of his most famous series was at his home in Giverny, where he painted his Japanese style garden. He painted his most famous series "Water Lilies" and also painted in Giverny until he died. Monet liked to capture the wind, light, sun and the present moment in his paintings.

In 1890 he started painting in series where he would do the same painting but with different lighting and different atmosphere in each one. Monet exhibited many art pieces. He stuck with the art that he enjoyed through out the years and kept the Impressionist look. He was one of the only Impressionist artist who stayed with that form of art.

This website has many pictures of his and a great summary where I got most of my information from. http://wwar.com/masters/m/monet-claude.html

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Art- Industrial Revolution

During the Industrial Revolution art transformed its self. It became more realistic and showed emotions. The art before the Industrial Revolution was called the Renaissance period. The reason why art changed during the IR was because it helped people escape from the depression of the factories and look at more beautiful things. The forms of art were Romanticism and Impressionism. These forms were very happy and care free and showed the wonderful nature that they all missed. The paintings captured the clear skies and the ongoing fields of grass in the country side. All of the people during the IR missed their farms and their homes away from all the factories.
Many popular artist grew from this time period, like Monet and Vangoh. Their art made people happy and forget the hard times. Monet's form of art was more impressionism because of his blurred brush strokes and light in his pictures. These artist became huge during this time period and are still famous today. It is amazing to think about how many things grew from the Industrial Revolution. We would not be the country we are today if it weren't for the IR.

This is one of Monet's pieces called water lilies. You can see the blurred brush strokes which make it Impressionism.

http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/impact.html - this website has amazing information about anything that was impacted during the Industrial Revolution. If you want to learn more I would suggest this site!

If you have any information about Monet's art or art during the Industrial Revolution please comment on my blog!

~ I hope that this could be of help for some people to get a little glimps of the art during the IR.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Women in the work place!!!

I have learned so much about the social structure and the gender changes during the Industrial Revolution. The only social structure or classes during this period were poor and rich. The poor people worked for the rich who got richer because they owned the factories that were earning money and the poor were getting payed very little. The factories would grown and grown as time passed and they would need more workers. They brought children to work in the factories and women. The days would be very long with people almost falling alseep while they work. This was dangerous and did not benifit the workers because they did not get payed that much more. Even when the workers went home it was to old shack houses with straw beds. Life was not that great for people who were working in the factories. When you would work in the factories you would do the same job all the time all day long. Same process over and over and over agian. This made life so much fun! Not really, people hated going to work but they had to to earn money.
My theory for the way that art connects to the Industrial Revolution is that inorder for people to break away from working in the factories they would do art. Either paintings or sculputers or drawings and they would try and sell them to the rich people for money. If it was good enough art the rich people would want it in their homes and would pay a desent amount of money for them. This was much better than working in the factories and you earned a lot more in one job. This is my idea of how the middle class got started during this time.
If anyone knows how the middle class really got started or has a comment about the art during the Industrial Revolution people feel free to comment on this blog post. Also if you have any comments about the structure in society or the gender roles also please feel free. Thank you!

Monday, February 11, 2008

First Blog

We are now starting a new project and lesson in class. The project is called [Art]ifacts. We are learning about different types of art and we are actually going to make our own paint! The making our own paint is the science part of the project and for history and language we are writting papers about the art and learning about the art periods. Right now in Hummanities we are learing about the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was in the 80's/90's and was the break through of new inventions. For example the cotton gin, the car, factories, the bicycle, etc. On wednesday and thrusday we are giving presentations on different subjects about the Industrial Revolution. My partner and I got the subject of the Impacts on the structure of the society and defining gender roles durring this time. This was a huge part of the Industrial Revolution because it changed peoples way of living and they got new jobs. The poor were still poor and living in houses that their bosses owned, so the wealthy were becoming wealthier. But despite all of that women started to work for their own money. Women would work in the factories, side by side with the men. Even though the women got payed less than the minimum wage man, it was a break through for them.
I think that the Industrial Revolution is a very interesting and huge time for our country. Many inventions that were made then are still used today, of course more high quality but the same idea is still used. This period of time for our country made us high end and well produced.
This blog that I am making is for students, teachers and people to read about what information I am learing about. This specific blog will be mainly about our new project and the Industrial Revolution. I will be posting blogs three days a week about something new I have learned. This will keep me more organized and other people to read what I am learning and hopefully learn off of my information. I hope that my blog can help you with whatever information you are trying to find about the Industrial Revolution!