Sophie Jodoin explores themes of violence, highlighting the victims, not the predators. Here she uses minimal interior, that is implied, not seen; a chair propping the victim. Using a limited Palette, she achieves intense contrast between warm and cool, as well as between light and dark tonal values, makes this painting dynamic. Technically, I find it brave painting with oil on both mylar and paper as she does, and wonder how this is safely done. The features of the child are indistinguishable. This symbolizes anonymity to me, as her murderer has effectively dehumanized her. The blanket which covers her in a half-hazard manner serves to absorb blood, not as a gesture of respect. The killer must have been busy. As I can see so little of her body, I’m left to wonder what lies beneath the sheet. In later works by Ms Jodin, she eliminates colour completely, which creates profound shadow and depth.
Homicide 2, oil on mylar Sophie Jodoin
The following two paintings are by Alexander Kanevsky. He uses a technique of painting, rubbing out, and painting over. These multiple oil layers, which blurs the subjects of his paintings, also imply speed of time within stillness. He paints from life and photographs. Before he was solely an artist, he worked as an oncology surgeon. In his work, I see scenes of death and sadness. His paintings are often quite bright and energetic, despite the tale. In the painting below, he imploys rhythms of alternating warm and cool hues. The interiors are often clearly defined with strong lines, while the subjects are not. This solidness symbolizes the constancy of the surroundings, while the subjects are fleeting.
The piece below, I interpret as a story of a woman who is leaving a loved one behind. She is burdened with carrying a large suitcase of their belongings away. The person she lost, must have been in this hospital for quite some time. She’s moving slowly, without certainty. The dark room from which we see withness her, gives us the perspective of the recently departed, as well as the guilt they feel for the old woman’s grief.
Departure Alexander Kanevsky
The second piece (below) captures both speed and motion; the subject is moving faster than in the previous painting and with urgency. The mood is energetic. Mr Kanevsky uses rhythms of long sweeping brush strokes in translucent, light oil paint, alternating with shorter blobs of darker, intense chroma, opaque paint. In this scenario, I feel the emotion of the subject who is being left behind. Perhaps she is a ghost who has not realized her she’s passed on, or someone being confined in a mental institution. Both paintings have a unifying theme; the cleaving of relationships.
Scenes of everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, street scenes, and historical scenes. They may either be realistic or fantasized, but never idealistic.
Characteristics of Dutch realist genre paintings
°Linear perspective
A new way method of composition used as a way of creating the sensation of spatial depth, in which all diminishing parallel lines (called „orthogonals“) converge towards each other and meet at one point; the vanishing point.
°Naturalistic illumination
Brilliant pigments (usually 2 or 3) used to portray the intensity of incoming daylight.
°Pointillès
Dots of thick, light paint that represent specular highlights (areas with mirror-like shine which reflect light)
°Camera Obscura (hypothesised)
A concave viewing lens which reflects the subject onto canvas so the artist may paint/draw without having to move his eyes away from his hand. Often working in the confines of a small space, this would have been instrumental in composing one aspect at a time, with spatial accuracy.
Dutch realist genre painters
°Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669)
Mainly a history and portrait painter, capturing mythological or historical figures in his work.His mediums were oil and printmaking by etching. His greatest abilities were to capture the effects of light and shadow, producing strong contrast to create lively and dramatic scenes.
„The Suicide of Lucretia“ Rembrandt (1666)
The above is a historical genre painting of a mythical figure. The subject’s face and body appear three-dimensional with the use of chiaroscuro. The lightness of her face and body seem to illuminate her virtuous and moral nature, while the dark manner of the atmosphere surrounding her enhances intense emotion in her expression.
„The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp“ Rembrandt , 1632
This is an actual scene that was a common public event in the 17th century, often taking place in theatres, used as lecture rooms. Those who attended paid an entrance fee and dressed as if going to play. The corpse is that of an executed criminal, hung that day. Rembrandt uses umbra mortis (shadow of death) here and in many other genre paintings. The viewer’s attention is drawn to Tulp, who demonstrates how the muscles of the arm are attached.
°Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
Worked primarily within the boundaries of a studio, and was devout on creating the illusion of three-dimensional space, rendering the effects of natural light.
„The Art of Painting“ Vermeer, c. 1662- 1668
As in many of Vermeer’s interior paintings, such a this one; the viewer has the impression they are peering at a scene through an illusive door. Here there is an illusion created that a window permeating natural light exists, and illuminates the subject. The subjects back, feet and environment. This light draws the viewer’s attention more to the details of the room, rather than the action of the subject himself, which must be of lesser importance than the floor and the space in which his working. Perhaps this is to impress the viewer upon the relatively small spaces artist’s of this time were confined to. The light is also emanating from above and to the left; as if he were working from a lowly cellar space.
Colors are the stimulants of perception. Like chemical messages received by the eye, they are carried through the optic nerve and delivered to the brain, the hub of judgment. Here, the brain’s interpretation of what the eye has seen may occur in exceptional ways.
„In human vision, there is an independent sense of illumination. Exploitation of this sense gives promise of new modes of colour expression for the future“. – David Katz
Color and Science merge
With books such as “The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors“ (Chevreul, 1839) and new principles drawn from physiological optics (fostered by Helmholtz and Rood) the science of colour applied to art inspired the fundamentals of impressionism.
Fundamentals of Impressionism
°Small visible brushstrokes
°Open composition
°Portrayel of light and it’s changing qualities
°Ordinary subject matter
°Movement
°Unusual visual angles
Impressionists
Inspired by colour theory, impressionists portray their impression of a subject rather than recreating actual details of reality. They shun outline and specifics to create art in a freer form that reflected human perception. They achieved this through a variety of techniques.
Techniques of the Impressionists
Impasto
Application of thick paint layers which eliminates distinctive lines reflectinghuman perception, rather than a precise depiction of reality.
Broken Colour
Using the principle that colours mix optically, light layers of colour are painted with the uppermost coats broken to reveal the colour underneath by using:
°Hatching (short linear strokes)
°Cross-hatching (when linear strokes cross)
°Making patterned marks that vary in density
such as; dots (stippling), dry brushstrokes, and sgraffito.
*Thus capturing the effects of light and the form of the object rather than details.
Diffusion and Mixing
Diffusion is a technique which replaces hard lines in paintings by laying colours
side-by-side which are mixed optically. Instead of Black, complimentary
colours are combined to achieve dark values. Instead of glazing, the paint is opaque.
Wet Paint
wet into wet paint is used to diffuse hard lines and mingle colour in order to achieve a three-dimensional effect. This is also used in impasto.
Effets De Soir and En Plein Air
Painting outdoors and often in the evening when the effects of light and shadows were
more dramatic
Post-Impressionism
Emerged from the opticality of the impressionism movement with new uses of color, pattern, form, and line. This change included such artist’s as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Neo-Impressionism
Brought a new approach to the Impressionists’ interests in light and colour, and created new methods of laying paint using dashes and dots. Its followers focused on modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seascapes.
The movement, founded by Georges Seurat in the 1880s, included others such as Henri Matisse, Paul Signac, and Camille Pissarro.
Pointillism
A method in which paint is applied as small points or daubs of colour. Based on the laws of colour theory, pointillism depends on the viewer’s eye to mix the dots into the forms, colours, and values of the full scene.
The Pointillists
*Both pointillist artists used the principle of applying colour, known as „melange Optique“ (optical mixture), which is painting dots of pure colour separately on the canvas and allowing the eye to mix them.
Seurat
Was fascinated by the science of colour a well as form and expression. He believed the direction of lines in a painting could depict warmth or coolness. He practised the discovery that complementary colours could mix optically creating much more vivid results, than mixing them on the palette.
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884-86), by Seurat
In the painting above, Seurat uses tiny dots of colour to impress the viewer with a warm, sunny day. With different densities between the dots of colour, he creates a range of values of light and luminosity. Dots of complementary colours allow a natural diffusion between objects, where there would be hard lines in a typical sketch.
Signac
worked with various mediums producing paintings in tiny dots,
and never relied on lines to create form.
“…the separated elements will be reconstituted into brilliantly coloured lights.” -Signac
Opus 217, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon (1890), by Signac
Here Signac uses dots of many colours to create the impression of a single colour through optical mixing.
My Study in Pointillism
Initial sketch
Color study
Second sketch using points of colour and eliminating lines
Op Art Movement (or Optical Art Movement)
Included paintings or sculptures which seem to grow and pulsate through the use of optical effects. The Leading figures of this movement, Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, both used patterns and colours in their paintings to achieve a disorientating impact on the viewer.
Bridget Riley
In the 1960’s, this Op artist created geometric paintings of squares, ovals, stripes, and curves to stimulate both physical and psychological responses of the eye. She wanted the viewer to question the reality of what they were seeing. She produced paintings which appeared to be in motion. Her work inspired textile designs and psychedelic posters.
Birren, F., 1976. Color Perception in Art: Beyond the Eye into the Brain. Leonardo, 9(2), pp.105–110. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1573116.
Creative Arts 