Mark Rothko, No. 46 (Black, Ochre, Red Over Red), 1957, oil on canvas, 8’ 3¼” x 6’ 9¾”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Photo by rocor Flickr.
Very few works of art grab viewers on a gut level the way Mark Rothko’s paintings do. There isn’t anything quite like the experience of standing in front of a Rothko painting and feeling just what the artist intended you … Continue reading
Joseph Cornell, Taglioni's Jewel Casket, 1940, wood box with velvet, glass cubes, blue glass, and glass jewlry, ¾” x 11⅞” x 8¼”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by istolethetv - Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution license.
Assemblage (noun) A work of art, either two-dimensional or three-dimensional, created with found objects. Joseph Cornell made assemblage sculptures that normally were boxes in which he arranged photographs and bric-à-brac to create new ideas with them. His Taglioni’s Jewel Casket … Continue reading
Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934, oil and tempera on canvas, 41.3
Regionalism (noun) A school of American artists who focused upon specific regions of the United States in an effort to celebrate ordinary Americans and their regional culture. In his painting The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, … Continue reading
Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928, bronze, 54” x 8½” x 6½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by rocor -Flickr
Artists sometimes repeat motifs in their work over the course of their career. Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor working in the early twentieth century, reworked a bird motif many times from the 1920s through the 1940s in an effort to arrive … Continue reading
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist painting (with black trapezium and red square), 1915, oil on canvas, 40” x 24½”, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Ironically, the paintings that Kazimir Malevich intended to be easily understood are perplexing to many people. He painted crisp, geometric shapes on white fields in his fully developed suprematist paintings. Malevich’s paintings are intended simply to convey the dynamic relationship … Continue reading
Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1910, Chicago, IL, photo by Dan Smith, Creative Commons attribution license via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s hard to believe that Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built this modern home over 100 years ago. The popular style of architecture at the time was the Edwardian style, which was slightly more pared down than the Victorian style, … Continue reading
Helen Frankethaler, Jacob’s Ladder, 1957, oil on canvas, 9’ 5⅜” x 69⅞”, Museum of Modern Art, NY, JamesKidsArts-Flickr
The American-born, Abstract Expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler died on Tuesday. Today, she is a prominent figure within the Abstract Expressionist movement, but early in her career she was known as Mrs. Robert Motherwell. As a woman, it was not easy … Continue reading
Norman Rockwell, OURS… to fight for Freedom from Want, 1942, color lithograph, covered by fair use laws via Wikimedia Commons.
This is the best-known image of Thanksgiving. Norman Rockwell, the painter and illustrator who created cover art for the Saturday Evening Post for forty years, painted this as part of a series entitled Four Freedoms that promoted war bonds during … Continue reading
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1951 (after a lost original from 1913), metal wheel mounted on a painted wood stool, 51” x 25” x 16½”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by rocor - flickr
Readymade (noun) An ordinary manufactured object that an artist selects and modifies so that it becomes art. When Marcel Duchamp created the first readymade, he inaugurated conceptual art in which the idea takes precedence over aesthetics.
© 2011 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Primitivism (noun) The use of non-western art styles, such as African Art, in an effort to be progressive and new. Western artists believed that non-western art conveyed fundamental truths. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, a German Expressionist, was drawn to primitivism for … Continue reading
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930, oil on canvas, 20”x 20”, Collection of Kunsthaus Zurich, Photo by William Cromar under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Following the devastation of the First World War, Dutch artists Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg founded de Stijl (The Style), a utopian art movement intended to create works of art that communicated spiritual harmony. Both artists were Theosophists and … Continue reading
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, California, 1936, gelatin silver print, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Social documentary photographers used their pictures to document serious problems in society and generate change. Their intentions were admirable, the change they achieved was vital, but their methods were not always completely honest. The power of most photographs lies in … Continue reading