Art is an integral part of human existence. Yet, when it comes to innovation and progress, we face a lot of limitations. I’m talking particularly about the limitations that the traditional canvas paints.
The canvas paintings are limited by the size and quality of the artist’s hand movements and brushes. Every artist is limited by his own physical capabilities and can’t deliver more than he is capable of doing.
That is why art has not been able to fully reflect the social, political, and economic changes in society as a whole. We need to change that. We need to go beyond those limits so that we could deliver more accurate representation of our surroundings.*
The industrial revolution, the growth of the railways, the photo-engraving techniques of the nineteenth century, and so on all contributed to the need for a wider market for products. And it was in fact thanks to these new processes that art stopped being something that was only for the very rich.
Towards the end of the 19th century, artists started to experiment with new types of media. They began to use photography and other photographic techniques, lithography and posters, as well as mass-produced objects such as glass or pottery. These products helped artists to reach out to a wider public.
Mikhail Larionov’s work is a good example: he often combined different techniques and different media in his work. He was active in many fields of art and is therefore an interesting subject for study in relation to modernism.
The debate over the value of traditional fine art media and the emergence of a new generation of artists embracing new technologies will feature prominently in discussions at this year’s Sydney Biennale.
Partly in response to the rise of digital technology, and partly as a reaction against the dominance of conceptual art, the medium of painting has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years.
Google Art Project’s acquisition of 17th century Dutch artist Aelbert Cuyp’s ‘View of Dordrecht’ illustrates how photography is changing our relationship with works of art. The ability to view high resolution images online means that we are no longer reliant on seeing works in person to appreciate them.
The Sydney Biennale’s Art Stage has been renamed Art Stage Digital, signalling a move from physical to virtualArt Stage director and chief curator Adrian Bloom said he sees technology as the driving force behind art innovation.
Art’s relationship with technology has always been complicated. When there was nothing but hand and eye, artists used whatever they could to capture their vision. The first art of cave painters was done by scratching off the top layer of pigment from a cave wall, revealing the color underneath. In the Renaissance, artists started to work with glass and metal, materials that could be infinitely manipulated through grinding and polishing.
Toward the end of the Renaissance, another technology was discovered that allowed for an unprecedented level of control over an image: the camera obscura. Its use as a drawing aid became widespread in Europe, influencing many artists including Caravaggio, Vermeer and Rembrandt.
After this, however, there was little technological advance that had any significant impact on art for almost 300 years. Little changed until 1839 when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce invented the first permanent photograph using bitumen and a camera obscura. This allowed anyone to record images directly onto a surface without having to draw them first. Although this process was difficult and demanded a lot of technical skill, it gave many artists new ideas about what they could do in their work.*
Art is a very old concept. In ancient Greece and Rome, art was as important as science and technology. But when the Western Roman Empire fell, art was lost for centuries to come. The Renaissance period brought about a change in this attitude towards art and it was revived once again.
Art became something of value and importance. In fact, it became the symbol of everything beautiful in life. It was the key to bringing out creativity in people.
But the second half of the 20th century saw a decline in its popularity again when digital arts started taking over. Digital arts give you the ease to create an artwork even if you are not physically present at that place. You can create something from no where and make it look like an actual piece of work!
“In a world where the media is in your pocket, where you can take any picture, film it, post it on any site and it’s instantly available to billions of people,” he said, “how do you create a situation where people are willing to put aside their skepticism and come into a room, sit still for two hours and look at something?”
With its layers of video, sound, animation and live actors all orchestrated by a single artist, “Sleepwalkers” is intended to be an immersive experience — so much so that Mr. Abramovic had to design his own theater space with precisely calibrated acoustics.
The whole project was born out of an earlier one called “The Artist Is Present.” Its centerpiece was an empty chair placed in the museum’s atrium, where Mr. Abramovic sat immobile for eight hours a day for three months as thousands of museum visitors took turns sitting across from him. The performance stemmed from Mr. Abramovic’s desire to confront what he saw as the growing disconnection between art and everyday life.
The Renaissance is often considered to be the beginning of art in the Western world. It was a time when artists started developing their own expressive style and were able to express their own feelings and ideas through their works. The Renaissance was also a time where art started becoming less religious and more contemporary.
The Renaissance brought forth many new forms of art, such as the oil painting, sculpture and printmaking. The oil painting became a very popular form of art during this period, which is mainly because it helped artists to create bolder shapes and colors. Oil painting can be dated back to the 1500s, when it gained popularity in Italy. At this time, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci were already creating masterpieces with oil paintings.
Artists who worked during the Renaissance period were highly influenced by the Roman culture, which had declined more than 500 years earlier. Artists studied classical Roman statues and reliefs in order to learn about the human body. They began sculpting realistic figures that portrayed various human emotions and expressions, which is why some of their sculptures look like they are moving or living beings.
Artists also started studying nature more closely in order to gain a better understanding of how they can accurately portray real life subjects onto a canvas or wood panel. This encouraged them to