Art Appreciation

Chapter 7Painting

painting terms• Pigment – powdered color• Vehicle – a liquid that holds pigment together• Binder – helps the paint to stick to the surface• Support – the painting surface• Primer – a preliminary coating to prepare the surface

for painting• Gesso – mixture of white pigment and glue used to

seal a surface to prepare for painting• Medium – has multiple meanings in art

– 1. the material used to make art (oil, charcoal, clay, glass)– 2. standard category of art (sculpture, painting, ceramics)– 3. a liquid used to make paint, also used to thin paint

(linseed oil)

Painting media• Encaustic• Fresco• Tempera• Oil• Watercolor• Gouache• Acrylic• Mixed media

Encaustic • Sometimes called hot wax painting• Pigment is mixed with wax and resin, usually applied to

wood panels• The paint is heated to melt it and make it easy to brush• Once the painting is complete, the artist brings the

heat source close to the surface to fuse the colors (burning in)

• A very long-lasting painting method, colors do not fade over time

• Used in ancient Greece and in Roman-Egyptian portraiture

• Jasper Johns used encaustic to build up a rich texture

Fayum mummy portrait,

Young Woman with a Gold Pectoral,

Roman Egypt, 2nd century

Fayum mummy portrait

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55, encaustic on fabric mounted on plywood with other materials

Flag, detail

Fresco• Pigment is mixed with water and applied to plaster, usually a wall• True fresco is applied to wet lime plaster– as it dries the lime has a chemical reaction and acts a binder,

fusing the pigment and plaster• Dry fresco is applied to dry plaster• Used for large scale murals since ancient times• Requires very careful planning and hard physical labor• Time-consuming; Michelangelo covered 1 sq yard a day

– The pigment can only be applied at the exact proper dampness• Artists used a cartoon with perforations as a guideline• Every brushstroke in a fresco painting is a commitment, it cant be

painted over or reworked in any way, to redo it the dry plaster must be chipped out of the wall and replastered

Fresco of a Roman woman from Pompeii, c. 50 CE

Detroit Industry, North Wall, 1932-33Diego Rivera, Fresco

Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, 1508-12

The School of Athens, Raphael, 1510-11, fresco

Tempera

• Sometimes called egg tempera• The vehicle for it is an emulsion; can be oil, fat,

wax, resin, casein, but most famously egg yolk• Has qualities similar to both oil and watercolor• Retains the brilliance of its colors for centuries• Dries quickly, hard to blend once brushed on• Artists often apply it in a cross-hatching style• Traditionally used on wood prepped with gesso

Christina’s World, 1948, Andrew Wyeth, tempera on a gessoed panel

Long Limb, 1999, Andrew Wyeth,tempera

Turkey Pond, 1944, Andrew Wyeth,tempera on panel

War Series: Beachhead, 1947, Jacob Lawrence, egg tempera on composition board

oil• Pigment compounded with oil, usually linseed oil• Jan Van Eyck was one of the first artists to understand the

possibilities of oil, – since he began using it, oil became THE most popular type of painting

• Allowed artists to switch from painting on wood panels to canvas• Paint can be used in various thicknesses

– Glazes - thin, translucent veils of color– Impasto – very thick paint, often strait from the tube

• Dries VERY slowly– Advantages:

• colors can be blended and the surface can be reworked for a VERY long time • allowed for no cracking problems when layering paint

– Disadvantage: • it can take weeks or months for a painting to fully set

Portrait of a Man in a Turban, Jan Van Eyck, 1433, tempera and oil on panel

Arnolfini Double Portrait, Jan Van Eyck,1434, oil on oak panel

Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, oil on canvas

Starry Night, detail

Impasto – A technique where paint is applied so thick that it looks like frosting on a cake

Starry Night, detail

Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci, 1503-05, oil on cottonwood panel

Sfumato – a way of layering glazes of oil paints to produce a translucent, smoky effect

Mona Lisa, detail

Mona Lisa, detail, atmospheric perspective

Lady at her Toilette, Berthe Morisot, 1875, oil on canvas

Girl Arranging Her Hair,

Berthe Morisot, 1885-86, oil on canvas

broken color - a technique where the

painting is made up of individual strokes rather than a smooth blended

field of color

La Contesse d’Hauusonville,

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,

1885-86,oil on canvas

La Grande Odalisque, Ingres, 1814, oil on canvas

Grisaille – painting technique where a monochromatic underpainting utilizing the desired value changes is produced before adding colored

glazes in layers to float over it

This is a computerized grisaille version of the Ingres masterpiece

Linda Nochlin – art historian (p. 173)• Throughout this semester I have shown you many artworks by women artists.

• There are many women artists used as examples throughout your textbook.

• This is possible because of the work of Linda Nochlin. She wrote various papers in the early 1970s pointing out the absence of women artists in art history books all over the world.

– “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 1971, ArtNews

• Prior to her research and writing, it was presumed in the art world not only that most artists were men, but that men were better artists.

• Her work is thought to be the impetus for the Feminist Art movement in the 1970s.

• Her work explains the many reasons why women artists were nearly absent until the 20th century.

Watercolor

• Pigment using gum arabic as a binder• The most common support is paper• Considered to be the most intimate of

painting media• They are transparent, the white of the paper is

meant to show through the color• The white of the paper is reserved as the

white in the painting

Mountain Stream, John Singer Sargent, watercolor and graphite on paper, 1912-14,

tradition watercolor style

Self-portrait, Cezanne, 1895

The Blue Boat, Winslow Homer, watercolor on paper,1892

A Good Shot, Adirondacks, Winslow Homer, 1892

Four Boys on a Beach, Winslow Homer,c. 1873, graphite with watercolor and gouache on

wove paper

Awakening, Sarah Capps, watercolorphoto-realistic style of watercolor painting

Gouache

• Watercolor with an inert white pigment added• Gouache is opaque (watercolor is transparent)• Pronounced go – osh

The Jungle, Wilfredo Lam, 1943, gouache on paper mounted on canvas

Acrylic • Paint made from synthetic plastic resin• The vehicle is an acrylic resin, polymerized by emulsion

in water• A more proper name would be polymer paints• Inexpensive• Readily available in many many colors• Dry quickly and form a tough but flexible waterproof

surface• Acrylics can mimic oil, watercolor, gouache and tempera• They can be used on most any surface• The can be applied very thick (impasto style) or they can

be thinned with water and applied in a translucent wash

Mount Fuji,

David Hockney, 1972, acrylic on

canvas

the artist uses washes for the background and a thick impasto for the

foreground

The Castle of Tin Tin, 1998, Takashi Murakami, airbrushed acrylic on canvas on board

it has been influenced by anime, the artist says traditional Japanese work has a flatness as compared to Western work which uses modeling and depth

Collage

• An innovation of Picasso and Braque, after Cubism; they called it “synthetic cubism”

• Collage is a french word meaning “pasting” or “gluing”

• The artists attaches actual objects such as paper or cloth to the canvas or other support

• A form of assemblage art• Inspired off-shoots such as decoupage

(multiples) and photomontage (photo images)

Still Life with Chair-Caning, Picasso, 1912, oil and oilcloth on canvas with rope frame

Compotier avec fruits, violon et verre, Pablo Picasso, 1912

Woman with a Guitar,

Georges Braque, 1913,

an example of Synthetic Cubism

Mysteries, Romare Bearden, 1964, collage, polymer paint, and pencil on board

The Calabash, Romare Bearden, 1970, collage (photomontage)

Birds and Trees, Fred Tomaselli, 1996, photo collage, acrylic, gouache, leaves and resin on wood, 48” x 48”

Birds and Trees, detail

Airborne Event, Fred Tomaselli, 2003, mixed media on wood panel

Red Iris, Fred Tomaselli, 2008, 24” x 24”photo-collage, acrylic, resin on wood panel

End of chapter 7

Watercolor techniques• 5 techniques required for the in-class project:

1. A graded wash2. Wet on wet3. Wet on dry (also called a controlled wash)

4. Dry brush5. Lifting (use a paper towel or a clean dry brush to lift paint off of the paper)

• It is possible to get all 5 of these techniques into a single painting. A landscape or a still life (such as a flower) will work nicely for these.

• Bonus point opportunity:– Everyone can do one or two extra watercolor paintings

worth 10 bonus points each