Comparing_and_Contrasting_Artists

Art Essay When comparing and contrasting two artists, aspects such as; historic period, beliefs of the artist and available materials must be taken into account. Using Michelangelo Buonarroti and Alberto Giacometti and making comparisons and contrasting these two artists, will find the aspects that are similar and different between both artists and their artwork, and find that aspects such as historic period or beliefs of the artist affect immensely on the artist’s work. Commonly known as “Michelangelo” and formerly known as “Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni” was born in Tuscany in Central Italy on the 6th of March in 1475. He was an Italian Renaissance painter, a sculptor, an architect, a poet, and an engineer. Although specialized in painting and sculpting. Two of his best-known works, the “Pietà” and “David”, were sculpted before he even turned thirty, hence why in his lifetime he was often called “Il Divino” which means, “the divine one”. Although born in Tuscany, Michelangelo was raised in Florence until his mother died after prolonged illness when he was 7. It was then his father sent him to be raised with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. It was here he learned to carve. "If there is some good in me, it is because I was born in the subtle atmosphere of your country of Arezzo. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, with which I make my figures” Michelangelo at that time showed no interest in school, and preferred to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters, instead of children his own age. At the age of 12, Michelangelo was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. His father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay him, which was highly unusual at the time. Michelangelo was considered, by him, as one of his best pupils. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy. At the academy, both Michelangelo's outlook and his art were influenced by many of the philosophers and writers. Including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted “Madonna of the Steps” and “Battle of the Centaurs”. Towards the end of his life, Michelangelo became more involved in architecture and poetry. In 1546 he was made chief architect of the partly finished “St. Peter's Basilica” in Rome. He died on the 18th of February in 1564. He was 89. “David”, being one of Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces was created between 1501 and 1504. It is a 5.17 meter marble statue of a standing naked male. The statue represents the Biblical hero, David, an alleged favorite in the art of Florence. On August the 16th in 1501, Michelangelo was given the official contract to undertake the challenging task of carving the block of marble, known as “The Giant” into the famous “David”. He began carving the statue on September the 13th, a month after he was awarded the contract. He would work on the massive biblical hero for 3 years. Unveiled on the 8th of September in 1504, it was originally meant to be positioned high up on the facade of Florence Cathedral, but the statue was instead placed in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria. It soon came to symbolise the defence of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic. “David” has become one of the most recognized pieces of Renaissance Sculpture, and becoming a symbol of both strength and youthful human beauty. Michelangelo portrayed David partly as the ideal man, partly as an adolescent youth. He is represented as an athletic, manly character, very concentrated and ready to fight. Unlike other sculptors which portray David with the “grissly head of the giant under his foot”, Michelangelo poses David as to appear to be relaxed, imitating the pose of a classical Greek sculpture, the tension of the conflict is evident in his worried look. Michelangelo described David: "Eyes watchful...the neck of a bull...hands of a killer...the body, a reservoir of energy. He stands poised to strike." The statue is now displayed in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, and a replica stands in the place outside Palazzo della Signoria. Alberto Giacometti was born on the 10th of October in 1901, in Borgonovo. He was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. He came from an artistic background as his father, Giovanni, was a well-known Post-Impressionist painter. He, from the beginning, was interested in art: “As a child, what I most wanted to do was illustrate stories. The first drawing I remember was an illustration to a fairy-tale: Snow White in a tiny coffin, and the dwarfs”. Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva and in 1922 moved to Paris to study. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the models facial expressions. He preferred models he was close to, like his brother and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne. This was then followed by a unique phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out and her limbs elongated. Now obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisaged through his own unique view of reality, he often carved until they were so thin they could be compared to nails. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife." As his tiny sculptures became larger, the thinner they became. The grand prize for the sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1962 brought worldwide fame for Giacometti. He played a key role in the Surrealist Movement, but still his work is not categorized easily. Some describe it as formalist or others argue it is expressionist. The intention of his sculpting was usually used as imitation. The end products were his emotional view of the subject. He attempted to create his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said: “He was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast.” His figures resembled the way he looked upon himself. His figures also contain specific allusions to ancient Egyptian burial figures and to early Greek korai. At the same time, the fragile figures are universalized, their tentative movements expressive of an essential human condition. . Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease and chronic bronchitis. “Three Me Walking II”, 76.5 x33 x 32.4cm, shows that his characteristic figures are extremely thin and attenuated, stretched vertically until they only slightly resemble the human form. Almost without volume or mass, apart from their swollen, oversize feet, the skeletal forms appear weightless and remote. The rough, heavily worked surfaces of "Three Men Walking II" show his technique. In this work, the figures take wide steps, each in a different direction. The empty space around them acts as an obstacle to communication. They stride along, each untouched by another; alienated by the void that surrounds them. The similarities between the two artists, is merely the fact that they both sculpt human figures. Giacometti's work can be seen to balance the concerns of the modern and the historical as well as the specific and the universal. He, before his later “stretched out” works, concentrated on faces and facial expressions. “One day when I was drawing a young girl, I suddenly noticed that only thing that was alive was her gaze. The rest of her head meant more to me than the skull of a dead man.” This is similar to Michelangelo in most of his works, including “David”. Differences between the two artist’s artworks vary from the mere fact that they come from different time periods and the materials they used to the fact that they come from different areas such as the urban modern life and the rural country life. By 1947, Giacometti had adopted what was to become his characteristic style. The bronze sculptures are emphasized by the matte shades of gray and beige paint, sometimes accented with touches of pink or blue, that the artist applied over the brown patina of the metal. Whereas in Michelangelo’s time, marble was used to create works of art. The marble was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara. Unlike bronze which doesn’t deteriorate has easily, the marble in the sculpture “David” contains many microscopic holes that cause it to weaken and deteriorate faster than other marbles. This is shown on the Conceptual Framework through the Structural Frame. Michelangelo believed that the job of the sculptor was to free the forms that were already inside the stone. He believed that every stone had a sculpture within it, and that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away all that was not a part of the statue. “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” This contrasts the idea of Giacometti who as said before, wants to create his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. These ideas and beliefs are shown through the Subjective Frame on the Conceptual Framework. Michelangelo Buonarroti and Alberto Giacometti are both different and similar. Not only in their life, but their artworks. By comparing and contrasting the two, it is found that there are more differences between them then similarities. But they both were historic artists and made great influence on the world.