Historical_and_Critical_Practices

Historical and critical practices are shaped as much by culture as by artists and artworks. Art criticism is concerned with the expression of evaluative judgements about artworks and the critical exploration of issues in the art world. It allows for an opportunity to interpret and evaluate works by expressing responses, systematic analysis and value judgments on works. Through the essay you will be able to view both historical references and critical points on the following artists and artworks: Leonardo Da Vinci with his works, The Mona Lisa, the last super and embryo of the womb. Pablo Picasso with his works, Guernica, Les demoiselles and the Blue nude. Andy Warhol and his works, Marilyn Monroe prints, Campbell’s soup cans and his self portrait. Leonardo’s contribution to humanity appears even today so profound and real that it is as tough this extraordinary artist and mind must have foreseen the spiritual needs, the aspirations and the technical achievements of modern times, his greatness was recognized even while he lived and without him the renaissance as a whole would have fallen short of those spiritual conquests that brought light to all of European civilisation. The Mona Lisa is widely considered the greatest portrait of all time. It appears in countless advertisements, it has inspired poetry, sculpture, forgeries, and theft. The painting is small being only 30 x 21 inches. The color is somber and the background is barren and uninteresting. the Mona Lisa been singled out for such acclaim and mystic status throughout the world even though there are hundreds of similar paintings and subjects belonging to the same period. Today Mona Lisa’s relaxed pose seems common, however it was revolutionary in the early 16th century. Prior portraits were mainly stiff and consisted of profiles. Her pose established a new style of portrait painting that remains the same today over 500 years later which had reshaped the world of art. Modern interpreters have analysed the truly classical qualities of his style which combine, like Greek art of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, a spiritual and formal dignity, harmony and equipoise never before or after equalled in the history of post-classical art. The last super uses this style which had been adapted top suit him. Leonardos employer requested he paint the painting. Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, for nearly eighteen years. The Duke decided he wanted this particular religious scene painted and Leonardo, who was not obtuse and decided painting it made perfect financial sense. The super was a major cultural influence mainly because it was the typical and traditional painting for Leonardo to paint during his times, where religious paintings were seen as the only great painting to be painted. Today however, culturally and historically it has impacted the religion Christianity with many mysteries behind it therefore, impacting our own culture and the history behind it. It has caused a riot between the authenticity of religion and the mystery behind Jesus Christ. With his most spiritual piece of artwork the last super has become world famous, not only through the audience as they are able to gaze upon one of his most masterful artworks, but through the religious aspect and mystery which he may have achieved with or without knowing. As the world comments on the mystery behind the last super which include, a depiction of a female which may have been Mary Magdalene or a hint of the holy grail it has come to the worlds attention that perhaps the master painter and genius of the renaissance was hiding a factual secret from the world that had great affect on religion that should otherwise remain unsaid. Embryo of the womb was not a tradition artwork of his time. He wanted to understand every aspect of the universe.  Science was meant as a means of perfecting his art, but over the course of his lifetime, the scientist in Leonardo began to consume the artist.  In fact, Leonardo considered art to be a science, once calling it "the Queen of all sciences", which provided not only a means of obtaining knowledge, but of sharing that knowledge with the rest of the world. Also, as in those days, it was remarkable fro a man to be able to dissect and inspect the human body, in which many people found that very abnormal to have done.  As in every discipline in which he practiced, his anatomical studies represent a knowledge that was far in advance of his generation.  At a time when society was trying to wake up from the Dark Ages, Leonardo da Vinci was a man who awoke early.  Leonardo composed one of his most famous anatomical drawings, Embryo in the Womb.  Although this drawing was faulty in some respects, it is in others so expertly drawn that it can still be used as an example in medical textbooks today. At the turn of the century, Paris was by far the most important centre of the international avant-garde. Here artists and writers met in cafes and studios, and gallery owners encouraged the latest trends in art. Picasso’s experience of Paris was to place a decisive role in his development. Pablo Picassos, self portrait with coat. 1901-02 In the early portrait Picasso appears proud even inviolable, but there is also a deep dejection in his gaze. Painted in the inter of 1901, and showing a pale emaciated 20-year-old, it communicates the deep melancholy of Picassos so-called Blue period. It masks the beinging of a phase of profound artists and personal change. Picasso was now creating a pictorial world entirely in shade of blue – a sad hopeless world of those on the fringe of society, the people who could be seen in the streets and bars of any big city, beggars, the blind, lonely and improvised women, Picasso used these motifs to create general reflections on life, sombre reflections that mirrored his personal situation. One of Picassos friends of the time once said “ he believed that sadness was favourable to thought, and that sorrow was the basis of life.” the pictures of the blue period are among the most famous and at the same time most enigmatic of Picassos works. It shows an oppressive mood of sadness weighs on the work. He is a motionless figure which remains pensive, isolated and lonely. The dominate blue tones give an unreal character to the images, creating a world that reflected his at the time that seems beyond a specific time and place. When he first exhibited this work form the bleu period reviewers praised the artists symbolism and critized their unrelieved note of sorrow. Cubists’, which represented a complete break with artists tradition, was perhaps the major achievement of the 20th century art. After Picasso had created new forms with his shocking painting Les Demoiselles, cubism become and adventure. In a close artists collaboration with other artists he developed a completely new langue of forms, Cubism freed art from the mere depiction of reality; it fragmented the visible world into the smallest particles and the organised them anew. A deep rejection at first settled on the Des… because it deeply shocked his contemporises. The paintings that followed were less aggressive and proactive but were less revolutionary. At first when Picasso’s friends first saw the work in 1907 their reaction was one of shock and incomprehension; it was not exhibited until 1916, today it is regarded as a key work in modern art. Picasso has ushered in a revolution in the painting, and during various phrases of cubism he continued his exploration of images that cam close to but never quiet reached total abstraction. Picasso search for representational forms that did not conform to the traditional painting was very evident. As Gertrude Stein observed “Picasso was the only painted who saw the 20th century with his won eyes and saw its reality.” By the beginning of the 2oth century, many traditional certainties were being questioned, notably by the rapid development of scientific knowledge and also by the west growing awareness of non-European cultures made possible Europe’s many colonies. Picassos portrayal of the strange looking women in les Dem…can be seen as a reflection of his uncertainly. “in the wall painting on which I am working, and which I am going to call “Guernica” and in all my latest works, I am openly declaring my revulsion against the military case which has submerged Spain into an ocean of suffering and death,” – Pablo Picasso. Picassos monumental mural Guernica is a record of the terrors and suffering of war which soon became a powerful symbol of the Spanish civil war. It became a powerful image of the destructive forces that threatened human life and civilisation. Here, Picasso found a universally comprehensible was of expressing humanities suffering. Picasso was making use of the stylistic methods of motifs he had worked out in the preceding years. “I did not paint the war, because I as not one of those photographers in order to record events, but I have no doubt that the war is contained in the pictures I have painted.” “Andy Warhol is a cultural phenomenon”: said art critic John Coplans. As an artist Andy Warhol does not only belong to the world of art, but also cannot be regarded as developmental. He was a visionary- prophetic and radical in his approach to art and his ability to intensity the art dialect of their times with deliberate incisive strokes. Warhol has actively engaged fascination to the public; he has become a leading symbol and shaper of the very culture he so coolly reflects in his art. He has made his own persona and personality a part of his body of work. “I feel I’m very much apart of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.” –Andy Warhol. Warhol stared appropriating brand name products, such as his painting of the Campbell’s soup cans. These paintings gave an ironic, somewhat menacing new dimension to the American dream by dramatizing the inheritance materialism of the American culture, with its entrenched consumerism and fascination with advertising, packaging and promotion. “I think of myself as an American artist. I like it here, I think its so great. Its fantastic. I’d like to work in Europe but I wouldn’t do the same things. I do different things, I feel I represent the US in my art but I’m also not a social critic.” Many critics hated his pictures. Warhol’s detractors, knowing he had become a highly successful commercial artist refused to take his work seriously, viewing him as a “flagrant self-promoter and cynical opportunist who defragged the seriousness of art through restless commercialism” There was no shortage of observers who declared that the artists brand name subjects were too “low”, “vulgar” and “commercial” to be considered seriously fine art. The issue of transformation was especially troublesome. If Warhol was a true artist, people wanted to know why he couldn’t invent an image of his own. How they wondered, could anyone call themselves an artist who merely copied labels' In addition to soup cans he began to do silk screen portraits of Marilyn Monroe. “I don’t feel I’m representing the main sex symbols of our time in one of my pictures, such as Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. As for wether it’s symbolical to paint Monroe in such violent colours: its beauty.” Unlike the Fauve colours, the non-representational colours of Pop Art do not depict the artist’s inner sensation of the world. They refer to the popular culture, which also inspires Warhol to experiment with the technique of silkscreen printing. Warhol moves away from the elitist avant-garde tradition. Initially, many spectators received this new marriage between art and commodity culture with little enthusiasm. Warhol was fascinated with morbid concepts. Sometimes, however, the results are astonishingly beautiful, such as the resonating, brilliantly coloured images of Marilyn Monroe. The Marilyn canvases were early examples of Warhol’s use of silkscreen printing. Marilyn was a great icon during his time and even her death became iconic. With her great influence over the culture and historically it made Warhol famous to be creating images of her which also helped to introduce him into the pop culture. his first self-portraits were created within the context of the new-born Pop Art, Andy Warhol sees himself as instant theatre, as a glamorous celebrity hounded by paparazzi which was inspired by his culture at the time. Andy Warhol's self-portraits are rarely an exercise of uncompromising honesty, but rather an art of disguise and deception in which - like an actor - he plays roles. However, many works are a mix of both, telling us all and nothing about himself. An exception form some of the Polaroid photographs, which "seem to reveal a troubling fragility of the artist as a human being and as a man, in search of his own identity" The way art has been perceived in the 20th century is quiet different to that of the previous century. Changes in the world and environment, new philosophies, new audiences, new functions and roles for art, new materials and processes, feminism, indigenous issues and politics; all have had implications for artists, art making, art writing, art criticism and collecting. Essentially, art historians document the significance of change and art critics document the significance of value, as do artists in their artworks. We see this through Leonardo Da Vinci with his works, The Mona Lisa, the last super and embryo of the womb. Pablo Picasso with his works, Guernica, Les demoiselles and the Blue nude. Andy Warhol and his works, Marilyn Monroe prints, Campbell’s soup cans and his self portrait. Maleah Butterfield.