History Of Painting

In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historical predominated the choice of media with equally rich and complex traditions.

Aesthetics and theory of painting :
Aesthetics tries to be the "science of beauty" and it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th century philosophers as Kant or Hegel. Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized about art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his philosophical system; he maintained that painting cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting. Leonardo Da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura est cousa mentale" (painting is an intellectual thing). Kant distinguished between Beauty and the Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the former. Although he did not refer particularly to painting, this concept was taken up by painters such as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.

Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one of the three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music for its symbolic, highly intellectual purpose. Painters who have written theoretical works on painting include Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Kandinsky in his essay maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that Goethe and other writers had already tried to do.

Iconography has also something to say about painting. The creator of this discipline, Erwin Panofsky, tries to analyze visual symbols in their cultural, religious, social and philosophical depth to attain a better comprehension of mankind's symbolic activity.

Beauty, however, a concept to which painting is essentially linked, cannot be defined as an objective matter, purpose or idea. Much aesthetics and theory of art is connected with painting.

In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." Thus, many twentieth century developments in painting, such as Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world, nature, which had previously been its core subject.

Julian Bell (1908-37), a painter himself, examines in his book What is Painting? the historical development of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas:

"Let us be brutal: expression is a joke. Your painting expresses – for you; but it does not communicate to me. You had something in mind, something you wanted to ‘bring out'; but looking at what you have done, I have no certainty that I know what it was…."

Painting media :
Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the pigment is suspended or embedded in, which determines the general working characteristics of the paint, such as viscosity, miscibility, solubility, drying time, etc.

Examples include: Acrylic, Encaustic (wax) , Fresco, Gouache, Ink, Oil, Heat-set oils, Water miscible oil paints, Pastel, including dry pastels, oil pastels, and pastel pencils, Spray paint (Graffiti), Tempera, Watercolor

Painting styles :
'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter sense has fallen out of favor in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts.

Abstract, Abstract expressionism, Post-Abstract Expressionism, Art Brut, Art Deco, Baroque, CoBrA, Color Field, Constructivism, Contemporary Art, Combined Realism, Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Figuration Libre,
Folk, Graffiti, Hard-edge, Impressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Mannerism, Minimalism, Modernism, Naïve art, eo-classicism, Op art, Orientalism, Orphism, Outsider, Painterly, Photorealism, Pluralism, Pointillism, Pop art,
Postmodernism, Post-painterly Abstraction, Primitive, Pseudo realism, Realism, Recto version, Representational Art, Romanticism, Romantic realism, Socialist realism, Stuckism, Surrealism, Tachism.

Retrieved from "http://www.articlesbase.com/gifts-articles/history-of-painting-2051252.html"

Watercolor: History Of Watercolor Paintings

The popularity of watercolor remains to this day. It is the most widely used medium as far as users are concerned and it is the subject of so many studies, development, and enhancements. During the renaissance though, more popular mediums like oils and its derivatives eclipsed the use of watercolor in more exacting art renditions. This is so because watercolor mixes are less stable than its coloring counterparts are. Watercolor tends to fade very fast with time. To top this, pigments especially in the blue hues easily flakes and become powdery and cannot hold its color for very long. The brilliance that are the main beauty of watercolor painting pales easily when exposed to light over a period of time unlike oils and acrylics.

No matter the shortcomings, watercolor was experimented and in fact used by masters too many to mention here. For commercial viability though, watercolor fails and so oils and acrylics were preferred as it commands a higher price. Even in today’s art auctions, seldom are watercolor prints sold except maybe when works of Wassily Kandisky, Pol Ledent, and their contemporaries are placed on the block and these are 20th century artists. Nonetheless, watercolor held its own. It did not become passé. It stayed in the background neither relegated to the forgotten category and neither very popular.

When book printing started on a grander scale, watercolor as a tool of illustration was the main, medium used. It is inexpensive, portable, light maintenance and the most practical. In the middle of the 18th century, watercolor use saw its initial revival, a rebirth people say. Its use became popular in the nobility and the bourgeois. Nonetheless, artists and illustrators late into this period still buy and mix their own pigments and the pigments come mostly in primary colors. This was the time that manufacturers and inventors started taking a second notice of its potential and market appeal.

Indeed watercolor pigments were developed. It still retained its basic pigments but a different binder, moist retainer, and plasticizer were included and modified. Today, watercolor has four levels of light fastness to choose from where it has very minimal durability to light compared to before. Paper was also developed. Were an ordinary white paper will suffice previously, there are now papers that are manufactured solely for watercolor purposes from the inexpensive watercolor specialty papers to the lint free papers of different grades. The quality is further enhanced when done on top quality archival paper. Today also, watercolor art can outlast oil and acrylic because of these recent technological developments adopted in its manufacture.

Until recent developments, the history of watercolor paintings has taken a long nap if you will. No matter, it is and remains a very wonderful medium to work on. Different challenges maybe but so are the rewards.