What is Futurism art?



Futurism (1909 to 1918 AD)



Futurism is a modern art movement that began when 20th Century took hold of Europe. Artists took elements from Cubism, Surrealism and Neo-impressionisam to paint futuristic art that was dynamic and often expressed speed and motion. The focus was about creating a vision for the future, and often glorified war and the machine age.



The movement was invented by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 and first gained followed in Italy when he published “Manifesto of Futurism” in “Le Figaro”, a popular newspaper in Paris. Futurism was vehement about disowning the past, and aimed at freeing Italy from its cultural heritage. The Manifesto said, “We will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries”.



The movement was first a literacy one, with novels, manifestos and poems issuing declarative and bombastic statements. Soon, the visual and performing artists also entered the sphere. Other well-known Futurism artists were Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini.



After World War I, many artists rejected the often nationalistic sentiments of Futurism, since many of its revolutionary artists became part of Italy’s fascist regime, and the movement gradually declined.



Examples



Dancer at Pigalle: Painted by Italian artist Gino Severini in Paris, it shows the movement of a dancer through her swirling dress and intersecting lines. There are also four stage lights that focus on her, framing her in the centre of the image. This is a classic representation of a futuristic painting with elements of Cubism embedded in it.



The Cyclist: Natalia Goncharova’s painting shows a cyclist pedalling fast, passing by stores with advertisements on them. The movement is so well rendered that you can see the advertisements floating over the cyclist, to portray speed. The cyclist’s legs, body and feet are used well to indicate motion.



Battle of lights, Coney Island, Mardi Gras: This painting by Joseph Stella is a cacophony of shapes and colours, all mirroring the soul of Coney Island, including its famous roller-coaster. The entire painting, with its bright lights and mardi gras crowd, creates the feeling of a joyous celebration.



Wow facts




  • Futurism, in the literary sphere, developed a language that mirrored the dynamism and ruthlessness of the new world. The futurists established new genres and created “parole in liberta” (words-in-freedom) or free-word poetry. This was poetry liberated from linear typography, syntax and spelling.

  • Futurists used a number of new techniques to express motion and speed, including repetition, blurring and using lines of force. The last method was inspired by Cubism.



 



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What was Surrealism?



In the early 1900s, following the short burst of a movement called the Dada movement came another that invested in the unconscious and the surreal corners of one’s imagination. This came to be called Surrealism. Inspired by the words of revolutionary Karl Marx and most importantly, father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, the movement aimed to unlock one’s consciousness and reveal its true nature and creativity.



The Dada movement that preceded this was also about moving away from traditional forms of art with a more aggressive approach. This one, in comparison, focussed on dreams and breaking the chains of logic, and influenced art, literature, philosophy, films and music. The forerunners of this movement were Salvador Dali, Andre Breton (writer), Yves Tanguy and Joan Miro.



Surrealism believed in overlooking reality and creating from within. Sometimes, to achieve this, artists conducted different experiments on themselves to reach a state from where they could unconsciously create. One of the experiments was hypnosis but they soon deemed it as too dangerous. In their core, surrealists tried to liberate the imagination and reach new depths of human psyche.



Examples



The Persistence of Memory



Probably the most iconic Surrealist painting in history, this work by Salvador Dali, with dripping clocks, is an ode to time. The painting portrays Dali’s subconscious and also conveys a simple message – that time holds no meaning.



The Son of Man



This painting by Rene Magritte is a self-portrait. This painting aims to convey the message that not everything is as it seems and there’s more than one side to a person.



Harlequin’s Carnival



One of Joan Miro’s most iconic work of art, this painting is about the hallucinations that Miro saw when he went through a rough patch and too poor to often eat three full meals. Of the painting, Miro said, “I tried to translate the hallucinations that hunger would produce. I didn’t depict what I’d see in my drams, as the Surrealist often did, but what hunger would produce: a form of trance.”



Wow facts




  • Sigmund Freud preferred the works of Salvador Dali to any other surrealist painters and felt that the unconscious was being manifested into the conscious world through his art. Dali’s paintings border on dreams and illusions, making him one of the Surrealist movement’s most important and popular painters.

  • Many women joined the Surrealist movement, even though they were quick to be dismissed by the male surrealists. Meret Oppenheim, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo are a few painters who brought their own personal stories into the movement.



 



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WHAT IS CLAY SLIP?


Slip is a mixture of clay and water, forming a thick liquid. It can be used as a kind of glue to stick a handle onto a cup when both are “leather hard” (hard enough to handle but still soft enough to cut with a knife). Slip can also be poured into plaster moulds to form intricate shapes. The plaster absorbs water from the slip, causing it to dry on the outside first. If the rest of the slip is poured away, hollow vessels and ornaments can be made.



In pottery, pieces of clay sometimes need to be joined to each other.  A handle on a cup for example.  The way this is done is by scoring (scratching marks in) the edges that need to be joined, thereby creating a key.  Then liquefied clay is pasted onto the two edges before pressing them together.  This creates a bond.



The liquefied clay is called slip.  Sometimes the words slip and slurry are used interchangeably.  However, it is also argued that technically slip is thinner than slurry.  And that slurry is actually the particular kind of thick, gloopy slip that is used for bonding pieces of clay.



Generally, slurry that is used for joining pieces of pottery consists only of particles of the clay being used in the pot itself suspended in water.  This is important because different kinds of clay shrink and vitrify at different rates.  If you join pieces of clay together with slurry that has a different shrink or drying rate to the pot itself, the join may not be very strong.



There is no particular hard and fast ratio for clay to water for joining clay.  How liquid the slip needs to be depends on how wet your clay pieces are.  If the clay is still relatively wet the slip does not need to be too thick.  However, when the clay has begun to dry out, then the slip needs to be thicker in order for the pieces to key into one another.



Slip for joining clay is sometimes called ‘joining slip’.  It can be bought or made.  However, it is a good idea for the slip to be have the same clay body as the pot itself.  Therefore, it is often recommended that the potter makes the slip themselves.



Slip is also used to decorate items of pottery.  The term engobe is used to describe a clay slip coating that is applied to the body itself.  This can either improve the texture of the item or add color. Engobe is opaque and can be white or colored.  Colored engobe usually contains stains and metal oxides.



Engobe is different from slip in that it has lower clay content than slip.  It also contains more silica and flux than regular slip.  This means it shrinks less than slip when it dries.



Some people claim that engobe is half way between being a slip and a glaze.  Fired engobe surfaces have a bit of a sheen that fired slip surfaces do not have.  Others, state that engobe and glaze are quite different.  They point out that if an engobe creates too much of a glazed effect, it loses its opacity, which is its most important property.



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WHY ARE THERE UNGLAZED PARTS ON THE UNDERSIDE OF A CERAMIC OBJECT?


In the heat of the kiln, glaze would fuse with the shelf that the object stands on, so glaze is carefully wiped from the base of the object before it is fired.



In lower temperature firings, like cone 06–04, you can use a stilt, which is a small piece of ceramic material with pointed wires sticking out of it. You fire the pot sitting on the pointed wires. This leaves small marks in the glaze which sometimes have to be cleaned up a bit. In higher temperature firings such as cone 10, it’s not practical to glaze the bottom of a vase. The norm is to have what is called a dry foot where no glaze is applied to the bottom. A stain or a colored slip can be applied to the foot before firing if there’s too much contrast between the color of the bare ceramic and glazed areas. It’s also possible to construct a foot ring on the bottom of the vase in such a way that the glaze can at least be applied to the edge of the bottom without sticking the pot to the shelf. That does add a level of difficulty, though, since glaze can move during the firing, and you need to leave a little distance between the shelf and the glaze in case it does move. On my pots, I don’t attempt to do that, but accept the look of the dry foot.



The pot has to stand on something (or hang from something, with its own problems) during firing. It cannot float. During firing, the glaze melts. If you have glaze on the bottom of the pot, when the glaze cools it sets solid and fixes the pot to the kiln shelf or floor. Even if you can get the pot off the shelf, probably taking bits of shelf with it, you will have to grind down the rough bits. More likely the pot will break during cooling as the pot contracts more than the shelf, with (very sharp, beware) bits left stuck to the shelf and the pot ruined (also the shelf). If you can find a way to make pots float, then you can glaze the bottom.



You can hang them, but you need a suitable hanging point, and you may not want to have a hanging hole in your pot, and if you do, that part will have to be unglazed, so there will always be an unglazed part. And some plates appear to have completely glazed bases with no unglazed bits, but if you look carefully, you find breaks in the glaze between base and rim, where the plate has been supported during firing.



There has to be a break in the glaze where the ware is supported, it doesn’t have to be on the bottom, but if it isn’t it will be somewhere else, probably more visible.



Many items have an indented bottom which is glazed, leaving just a thin ring unglazed. Some potters like to do this as to them it looks more professional; others don’t, preferring the handmade look of a bare base. Many factories glaze the base this way, but there is still always an unglazed ring. It has to stand on something during firing!




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WHY ARE CERAMICS BAKED?


Ceramics are baked to make them hard and waterproof. Until they are baked (fired) ceramics can be mixed with water again to form clay. Firing is done in a large oven called a kiln. In large ceramics factories, the kilns are heated all the time. They are like long tunnels, through which ceramics move slowly on trolleys in a never-ending process. The first firing that a clay article receives is called a biscuit firing. It makes the article hard and brittle, but it is still porous. Water can be absorbed by it.



Firing clay transforms it from its humble, soft beginnings into a new, durable substance: ceramic. Ceramics are tough and strong and similar in some ways to stone. Pieces of pottery have survived for thousands of years, all because clay met fire.



The temperature needed to transform soft clay into hard ceramic is extremely high and is usually provided by a kiln. You cannot fire pottery in a home oven because ovens do not get up to the high temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit that you need for firing clay.



Firing is the process of bringing clay and glazes up to a high temperature. The final aim is to heat the object to the point that the clay and glazes are "mature"—that is, that they have reached their optimal level of melting. To the human eye, pots and other clay objects do not look melted; the melting that occurs is on the molecular level.



Bisque firing refers to the first time newly shaped clay pots, or greenware, go through high-temperature heating. It is done to vitrify, which means, "to turn it glasslike," to a point that the pottery can have a glaze adhere to the surface.



Greenware is fragile. To start, it must be bone-dry. Then, it must be loaded into the kiln with a great deal of care. The kiln is closed and heating slowly begins.



Slow temperature rise is critical. During the beginning of the bisque firing, the last of the atmospheric water is driven out of the clay. If it is heated too quickly, the water turns into steam while inside the clay body, which can cause the clay to burst.



When a kiln reaches about 660 degrees Fahrenheit, the chemically bonded water will begin to be driven off. By the time the clay reaches 930 degrees Fahrenheit, the clay becomes completely dehydrated. At this point, the clay is changed forever; it is now a ceramic material.



The bisque firing continues until the kiln reaches about 1730 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, the pot has sintered, which means it has been transformed to the point that it is less fragile while remaining porous enough to accept the application of glazes.



After the desired temperature has been reached, the kiln is turned off. The cooling is slow to avoid breaking the pots due to stress from the temperature change. After the kiln is completely cool, it is opened and the newly created “bisque ware” is removed.



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HOW IS POTTERY DECORATED?


There are many ways of decorating pots. They can be dipped in a glaze, made of tiny particles of glass in a liquid, and fired for a second time. The glassy covering melts onto the pottery, making it completely waterproof. Pottery can also be decorated after glazing, with transfers, hand-painted designs, or by screen-printing. It may then be fired for a third time to fix the decoration.



Glazes are the most often used form of pottery decoration. They come in a huge variety, including nearly every color imaginable and many types of textures. Glazing can transform a simple pot into something really special and the techniques you can use are endless. On a practical level glazes are used to make a pot vitreous and both food and liquid safe. When a piece has been bisque fired and then put through a separate glaze firing, it makes the pot much more durable. Raw glazed work tends to flake off more easily and you won't get this problem with a separate glaze firing.



Glazes can be laid on top of each other to create even more effects. This is called overglazing. Some "overglazes" are simply other glazes that are applied on top of another unfired glaze that will mature at the same temperature. True overglazes may also be applied after the base glaze has already been fired. These overglazes will require the ware to go through a third firing, at a lower temperature than the base glaze.



Underglazes are not glazes themselves but are colorants applied to unfired bisqueware (greenware) before an overglaze is applied (usually the overglaze is transparent to really let the colors of the underglaze shine through). Underglazes provide the flexibility for a huge range of creativity. Firstly, there's the range of colors you can use, as you can mix the underglazes to get your perfect shade. With underglazes, you have the opportunity to paint your own detailed designs and patterns. You can even use the underglazes like watercolors, as when you're painting straight onto a rough clay surface, there's less chance of the glazes slipping.



Slips and engobes are essentially the same thing. The difference in term is basically a difference in regional language preference. “Slip” is more common in Europe, and “engobe” is more common in North America. Both words refer to a liquid slurry consisting of clay or clay mixed with coloring agents. Slips and engobes are used to decorate wet greenware, adding color, texture, or two-dimensional design. The advantages of using an engobe are that you can use them for raw (or single) firing, meaning you can apply them to work when it is still slightly damp or even leather hard. Unlike, glassy glazes, engobes usually produce a matt surface rather than a glossy shine. The exception to engobes being matt in texture is terra sigillata, which can be buffed to have a higher shine to it.



Clay is a master chameleon. With skill, clay can successfully visually mimic all sorts of substances, from metal to old shoes. Clay is impressionable. Textures can readily be added to wet pots through impressing a variety of tools and objects into the surface.



Clay is also carve-able. Marks and designs can be incised into leather-hard greenware. By doing so at the leather-hard stage of drying, the cuts retain their crispness. Leather-hard greenware also allows for more ease when incising more intricate patterns.



Marbling with two different types of clay—say, a white clay body and a terracotta (or alternatively a colored clay)—is a wonderful way to create different effects on your pottery. One of the best ways to do it is to roll out the two different colors of clay into sheets, then stack them on top of each other. Then start gently rolling the whole block. The colors will mix together and make the most beautiful marbled patterns and from there you can hand build or use a mold to create your desired shape.



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WHAT CAN BE MADE FROM CLAY?


Clay can be used to make a huge variety of ceramic articles, from tiny electronic components to bricks and baths. It is a good insulator and, when covered with a glaze, is completely waterproof. Unlike many metals, glazed clay is unreactive, so that acidic foods will not stain it, and exposure to water and the air will not tarnish or corrode it.



Clay is made from the slow chemical weathering of silicate bearing rocks like granite and feldspar and other igneous rock. Usually the weathering is from it is slightly acidic solution other times it is geothermal. It becomes a hydrolyzed aluminum phyllosillicate. Al2Si2O5 (OH)4) They form flat hexagonal sheets that are less than 2 micrometers. The sheets are made of tetrahedral silicate sheets and octahedral hydroxide sheets. There are about 30 types of clay. Natural clays are always a mixture of these many types. There are primary and secondary clays. Primary ones are found where they were formed. Secondary ones have moved by water and deposited somewhere else.



Clays sintered in fire were the first form of ceramic. Bricks, cooking pots, art objects, dishware, smoking pipes, and even musical instruments such as the ocarina can all be shaped from clay before being fired. Clay is also used in many industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, and chemical filtering. Until the late 20th century, bentonite clay was widely used as a mold binder in the manufacture of sand castings.



Clay, being relatively impermeable to water, is also used where natural seals are needed, such as in the cores of dams, or as a barrier in landfills against toxic seepage (lining the landfill, preferably in combination with geotextiles). Studies in the early 21st century have investigated clay's absorption capacities in various applications, such as the removal of heavy metals from waste water and air purification.



Medical use: A traditional use of clay as medicine goes back to prehistoric times. An example is Armenian bole, which is used to soothe an upset stomach. Some animals such as parrots and pigs ingest clay for similar reasons. Kaolin clay and attapulgite have been used as anti-diarrheal medicines.



As a building material: Clay building in South-Estonia Clay as the defining ingredient of loam is one of the oldest building materials on Earth, among other ancient, naturally-occurring geologic materials such as stone and organic materials like wood. Between one-half and two-thirds of the world's population, in both traditional societies as well as developed countries, still live or work in buildings made with clay, often baked into brick, as an essential part of its load-bearing structure.



Also a primary ingredient in many natural building techniques, clay is used to create adobe, cob, cordwood, and rammed earth structures and building elements such as wattle and daub, clay plaster, clay render case, clay floors and clay paints and ceramic building material. Clay was used as a mortar in brick chimneys and stone walls where protected from water.



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HOW ARE CLAY ARTICLES SHAPED?


Clay can be shaped when it is wet by squeezing it between the fingers, “throwing” it on a potter’s wheel, or pushing it into a mould. Before using any of these methods, the potter must make sure that there are no air bubbles in the clay. If there are, the air will expand when the clay is baked, and the article may explode, breaking other items in the kiln as well. However ceramic articles are produced, they are made a little larger than the finished product needs to be, as they shrink slightly when baked.



1. Start off with clay of the proper consistency: soft enough to throw easily, yet not so soft that it will quickly collapse. Clay that's too hard or dry is very difficult to throw. Be sure to wedge the clay carefully up to 100 times, taking care not to fold it in a way that might trap air bubbles within. Mold into as perfect a cone shape as possible, and smooth out all cracks.



2. Slam cone onto the center of the wheel head or bat. Slowly spin the wheel to see if clay is off center; if so, gently slide cone toward the center as much as possible while the wheel is turned off.



3. Thoroughly wet the clay and start wheel turning to begin centering process. Cup hands evenly around clay and force cone upward and downward a few times to align the clay particles. Then firmly press inward with one hand, and downward with the other, making sure the entire exterior surface of the clay hump is in contact with a portion of the hands. Keep hands firmly positioned in one spot, and with wheel spinning rapidly, steadily maintain that position until the clay offers no resistance, periodically wetting it as necessary. Whenever you remove your hands from the clay, be sure to do so SLOWLY, so as not to knock the piece off center.



4. Once the clay is centered, cup hands around it and allow thumbs to glide into center while wheel is turning. Press slightly to make dimple, or impression, in the middle. With both thumbs and one of forefingers, steadily press downward in center to make a hole in the clay that's roughly 1/2 to 1/4 in. from the bottom. Periodically stop the wheel and check the depth by poking through the floor of the pot with a needle tool until the desired thickness is reached.



5. Now use forefingers or thumbs (whatever's more comfortable) to open floor of pot outward, being sure to slide fingers across the clay STEADILY, at the same level as the desired thickness of the floor of the pot. Continue to open the clay outward until the inside diameter of the pot is roughly 10% wider than the desired inside diameter of the finished piece, to plan for shrinkage.



6. Begin to pull clay upward with fingers or knuckles of both hands, one on the outside, the other inside. First undercut the bottom edge of the pot with outside fingertip to form a clay ledge. (Always make sure to re-set the rim of the pot after each movement, to keep it on center.) With fingers of inside hand slightly higher than those on the outside and outside fingers (or knuckle) positioned underneath the clay ledge, gently squeeze the clay between the fingers at an even pressure, and steadily pull upward at the same rate the wheel is revolving. (At this stage, the wheel should revolve at a medium to slow speed.)



7. Repeat the process until the clay walls have reached an even thickness and desired height. If you accidentally knock the clay off center or end up with walls that are uneven, try this: apply a straight-edge wooden rib to the outside of the pot, and hold your left forefinger at a 90 degree angle, pointed downward, on the inside of the pot. Slowly spin the wheel and force the wall of clay between the inside forefinger and outside straight edge back into a uniform thickness, slowly and steadily gliding upward until entire wall is uniform.



8. Gently shape the pot with fingers or ribs, re-set the rim, and release from the bat with a wire or string cutter.



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WHAT ARE CERAMICS?


Ceramics are objects made of materials that are permanently hardened by being heated. Usually, the word is used to mean articles made of various forms of clay. Sticky clay is dug from the Earth and needs to have impurities, such as stones, removed before it can be used. The clay may be naturally red, yellow, grey or almost white, but can be coloured before shaping or covered with a coloured glaze.



Ceramics are essential for our day to day life. It is useful from clay products to porcelain. Generally, a ceramic is a non-metallic, solid inorganic compound. Earlier ceramics were used only for pottery. Now, with the changing times, ceramics are more and more used only for specific purposes. Use of ceramics has been from ancient times. Based on these uses there are three basic types of ceramics:



Stoneware



Stoneware is an umbrella term for ceramics fired at a higher temperature. It is known for being impermeable and hard so it’s not easily scratched. It is typically glazed. Modern brands such as Far & Away have really brought this type of ceramic back into the mix.



Clay products



In this category, many of the common ceramics like bricks and tiles are used. They are basically prepared from clay. For their shape and state, they are processed and pressed in a wet plastic state after which they are dried and then fried. Clay products that have higher density show better mechanical properties but they also have the low insulating capacity. And thus can easily catch fire. Higher density is achieved through an increase in nitrifications and also through increasing fire temperature and finer original particle size.



Refractories



Ceramic can resist higher temperatures and that is why they are also used as refractories. Refractor ceramics can withstand very high temperature and are thus used as insulating materials. They can also resist high stress. Refractors should also resist abrasive particles, hot gasses, and molten metals. For best refractors ceramics made of pure oxide is used. But these are very expensive and thus compounds made out of ceramics are used more often.




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What are the examples of Prehistoric art?




  • Cueva de Manos: The cave of hands, in Patagonia, Argentina, gets its name from the “stenciled” handprints that dot the cave. Of course, there are other depictions of hunting scenes and animals, but the hands (most of them are left hands) were spray-painted and hence, the specialty. These date back up to 13,000 years.

  • Altamira Cave: This cave in northern Spain was discovered in the 19th Century. It had depictions of bison, horses and handprints, coloured ochre and outlined in black. They were so well-preserved that scientists thought it was fake until 1902, when it was deemed genuine.

  • Lion Man: This is a prehistoric sculpture discovered in Hohlenstein-Stad!, a cave in Germany, in 1939. Nicknamed Lowenmensch, or lion man, it is the oldest-known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world. It is between 35,000 and 40,000 years old.

  • Nazca Lines: The Nazca Lines in Peru are great examples of geoglyphs. These large creations are made by incisions in soil. They are of various animals such as monkeys, dogs, spiders, and fish and since they are so big, they are best seen from the air. There are over 70 such images with the total length of the lines being over 1,300 km. They occupy over 50 sq.km of land. These are more recent, and date between 500 BC and 500 AD.



Wow Facts



Scientists have found drawings by homo sapiens that date back as far as 73,000 years – some of the earliest in history! Among the oldest in sub-Saharan African art, the Blombos Cave has abstract geometric signs and beads made from shells. These were discovered in 2002 and date back to 70,000 BC. The discovery suggests that human beings used and understood symbols back then.

The Bhimbetka and Daraki-Chattan caves in Madhya Pradesh are the oldest evidence of prehistoric art and human existence in India. While the caves had been used as shelter in excess of 1,00,000 years, the earliest paintings there are 30,000 years old.



 



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What is prehistoric art?



Prehistoric art constitutes all forms of art and communication in pre-literature eras and the pre-historic period, roughly from 40000 to 5000 BC. In layman terms, much before there was papers or pens, leave alone mobile phones, computers or the Internet! This meant that people had to communicate with each other in person.



Prehistoric art is among the earliest forms of sculpting and painting. Whether this art took shape to express one’s creativity is unknown but what is clear is that humans wanted to leave their legacy behind. Either that, or they were just really good at Pictionary!



So, early human chose what they could find and began to draw. Sometimes it would be a cave. If that didn’t get the message across, they would make sculptures (the most popular being the Lion Man, said to be about 40,000 years old). Geoglyphs (a large design made on the ground, mostly using rocks or other materials) and megaliths (a large stone sculpted into a monument) probably helped as well.



These forms of art were a way of recording history and culture until humans began to develop some kind of written language to keep records better. Therefore, the age at which prehistoric art transitions into ancient art is blurry and varies it different parts of the world. You know earlier, not everyone caught on that fast!



 



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What is Cubism?



The early 20th Century witnessed a breakthrough in the art movement. Two iconic painters – Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque – no longer wanted to follow the traditional form of art. They didn’t believe that painters had to copy nature or everyday moments. Instead, they wanted to portray the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Hence, their paintings were flat and the forms were reduced to geometric shapes to give the illusion of a three-dimensional view, allowing the viewer to see different parts of the picture simultaneously, breaking away completely from traditional techniques. French painter Paul Cezanne and popular French art critic Louis Vauxcelleslooked at Georges Braque’s painting “Houses at L’Estaque” in 1908 and called it cubes. And, cubism was born.



In the beginning of this period, the subjects of the paintings were almost indiscernible. They were a collection of angles and planes that blended into the background and were almost in monochrome. The painters usually used musical instruments glasses, bottles, still-life and human face and forms as subjects.



The idea of Cubism was to abandon the idea and traditional notions of shape and form and present the world in an entirely new way. It used influences outside of western art, such as African art, and even science as its base to form different perspectives on a flat canvas.



The liberating concepts had far-reaching influences and were not contained to just art. It spilled over to architecture and sculpture as well.



Examples



 Man with a Guitar: This 1912 painting by Georges Braque is one of the most popular examples of analytical Cubism, a later evolution of the form. Here, the artist uses nails and ropes on a flat surface to depict a man playing a guitar.



The Weeping Woman: This iconic painting by Pablo Picasso tries to paint a universal picture of suffering. Here, Picasso directly targets the effects of the Spanish Civil War and some even say the picture had a personal story behind it. Picasso’s mother once called him saying all the smoke from the fighting (during the war) was making her eyes water.



Ma Jolie: Another of Picasso’s masterpieces, the representation of forms in the painting in subtle. The form of woman is visible in the centre, presumably his lover Marcelle Humbert. There’s also a treble clef drawn next to the name of the painting. Ma Jolie (My Pretty Girl) was a line in a popular song at a music hall in Paris that the artist visited frequently.



Wow facts



Even though many artists were moving towards abstractionism even as early as the 18th Century, Cubism was the first abstract art movement. It intentionally reduced all forms into geometric shapes and gave a flat but simultaneous view of different sides of the same object. It was a scientific art form.

Cubism wasn’t popular in the beginning. In fact, in the early 20th Century, not depicting nature in its purest form was considered scandalous and heretical. But over many years, the path-breaking form began to gain the importance and respect it deserved.



 



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What is Expressionism?



In the early 20th Century, there was a period of loss in spirituality and high anxiety, surrounding humans’ relationship with the world. At this time, artists began to shun objectiveness and turned within to unleash their emotions. The result was an expressive canvas with distorted shapes and exaggerated, vibrant colours that displayed emotions, rather than a picture. There, Expressionism was born.



The artists at the forefront of this movement were Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and James Ensor. Van Gogh, particularly, was the symbol of this movement since his paintings were mostly autobiographical and chronicled his emotions at different times of his life. Unlike Impressionism, Expressionist art did not aim to depict the world as it is but impose the artist’s sensibilities and feelings about the world. The paintings were harsh, bold and intense, and the artists encouraged distorted shapes in order to convey or exaggerate emotions.



The decline of Expressionism was also because of its intensely personal nature. The paintings were vague and unapproachable, and by the mid 1920s, the movement slowly came to an end.



Examples




  • The Starry Night: Painted in 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh, this painting depicts the scene that Van Gogh saw from his window at his asylum room at saint-Remy-de-Provence in France. An icon of Expressionist art, its swirling skies and the sinister cypress tree overlooking this scene are all reproductions of Van Gogh’s emotions on canvas.

  • The Scream: Edvard Munch’s most famous painting is everything that Expressionism is about. Throughout his career, Munch’s art described emotions such as anger, guilt, anxiety and fear while talking about humans’ relationship with the world around them. “The Scream” is no different, and often, just a look at this painting can create an emotional jolt due to its vibrant colours and exaggerated, distorted shapes.

  • Sunflowers: This iconic painting by Van Gogh is one part of two series of paintings. The first series had the sunflowers wilted and on the ground, while the second had a bunch of sunflowers placed in vases. The sunflower was special to Van Gogh and signified ‘gratitude’ and he hung his first two paintings on the wall in his friend Paul Gaugin’s house. Gaugin called the paintings ‘completely Vincent.’



Wow facts




  • Expressionists often had swirls and swaying components in their art, exaggerated and painted with bold brushstrokes to depict their own internal turmoil.

  • On his painting “Scream”, Norwegian artists Edvard Munch said he was walking with friends when “suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood… Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature”.



 



Picture Credit : Google


How they make clothes to fit almost everyone?



The traditional tailor can take account of long arms or a spreading waistline and achieve a perfect fit. But made-to-measure clothes get more expensive every year, and the modern clothing industry has to make off-the-peg clothes that fit most people with no alteration.



One of the first proper surveys into people’s measurements was carried out by US Government, who measured 1000 recruits during the First World War to determine the best sizes for uniforms.



In Britain, 5000 women were measured in the early 1950s, with some unexpected results. Existing size charts were based on an average height for women of 5ft 6in (168cm) – but the survey found that the real average was 5ft 3in (160cm).



Today, in large companies, from a basic pattern produced by a designer, a computer produces a range of sizes to cover the normal variations of the population. Unusually small or large people complain that they can never find anything to fit them, and they are right; it does not make economic sense for manufacturers to produce the limited number of garments that would be sold.



The next step is to use the patterns to cut out the material for the garment. Rolls of material, which can be more than 100ft (30m) long, are laid out perfectly flat by machine. Hundreds of layers are spread on top of one another so that a large number of garments can be cut out at once. Computers are used to arrange the patterns on the material so that the minimum of cloth is wasted. A paper computer printout, called a marker, is laid on the layers of fabric ready for cutting.



The actual cutting of the material is done by knives guided from above, or in some modern factories, by laser beams controlled by computers. The laser, an intense beam of light, burns a clean cut through the material, far sharper than the cut of any knife.



Next, the pieces of material have to be sewn together. Many operations, such as buttonholing, can be done automatically. A hand-sewer averages 20 stitches a minute; modern machinery can sew up to 7000 stitches a minute. Some clothes are not stitched in the traditional way at all, but fused together.



Finally clothes are pressed, to mould them into the right shape and to make sharp creases or pleats. Special presses, called buck presses, are designed for each part of a garment.



 



Picture Credit : Google


How to put the patterns into clothes?



The Chinese have been exchanging gifts of richly patterned fabrics for thousands of years. At about the time of Christ’s birth the wife of a Chinese nobleman, Ho Kuang, gave another, Shunyu yen, ‘twenty-four rolls of a silk brocade with a grape design, and twenty-five rolls of thin silk design, and twenty-five rolls of thin silk woven with a pattern of scattered flowers.’



The Chinese mastered the art of weaving, using silk threads of many colours and complex weaves to produce brocades and tapestries. With primitive looms, weaving patterns into cloth was a job that needed a great deal of skill and patience.



Even with the inventions of the 18th century, a weaver had to know which of the warp threads (running down the length of the loom) to lift and which to leave to make a pattern. Only the threads that were lifted would be woven into the design when the shuttle carrying the weft (the threads running across the loom) was ‘thrown’ across the loom.



It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that a French silk weaver, Joseph Jacquard, found a way to make detailed patterns without skilled weavers. A chain of cards punched with holes was attached to a rotating block above the loom. Only where there were holes could threads be picked up by small hooks and become woven into the pattern. After each card had been used to make a small part of a pattern, the block was given a quarter-turn, bringing the next card into place.



It took 24,000 cards to weave a silk portrait of Jacquard, so accurate that it could hardly be distinguished from a portrait in oils. The cards were tied together in a long strip which slowly passed over the loom. Jacquard looms are still used to make luxury fabrics.



Many patterned fabrics can be woven on simpler machines. The timeless patterns of tweed are still woven on hand looms.



The direct printing of patterns onto woven fabrics originated in India, and the first printed calicos were brought to Europe in the 16th century. From the Hindi word ‘tchint’ comes ‘chintz’, which we still use to describe printed fabrics that are glazed to give them a slight sheen.



Modern textile printing uses metal rollers on which the design is engraved, with each colour applied by a different roller. The rollers pass through a colour trough as they rotate and then transfer the dye to the fabric. As many as 16 rollers may be used to produce a fabric.



Electronic control ensures that each successive roller matches its patterns perfectly with the one before. As the fabric comes off the final roller it passes through an oven where it is dried. Modern machines can print in 16 colours at speeds of 200yds (180m) of fabric a minute.



 



Picture Credit : Google