Chapter 3 is my favorite so far. Learning about all the styles of art is truly fascinating. I have realized what an interest I have in paper drawings and etch work. To get more involved with specific examples I analyzed the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer.
Leonardo with a genius mind, and brilliant imagination was an introverted artist. There was not a whole lot of finished work done by Leonardo. The Last Supper being the most famous done for King Louis of France, he focused primarily on drawings. He sketched often of natural science, and used a lot of movement. While Chapter 3 discusses different forms of drawing he drew on paper. He sketched free hand and wrote a Treatise on Painting. He took hundreds of notes on things he saw in the natural world, simply walking around. In his treatise he suggests approaching art with a scientific mind,“... there is such an infinite number of forms and actions of things that the memory is incapable of preserving them...”.
Being from almost the exact same time period, Albrecht Durer, had the same upbringing and scientific mind of Leonardo, however was a print artist and less of a drawer. Durer was not as introverted as da Vinci, and was prideful in himself as an artist. Albrecht emphasized in wood engravings and etching. His detail, and fascination with perfection and ideal beauty makes the prints exquisite. Like his fellow artist he ended up teaching art in a scientific way.
Both artists living during the same time and having very different personalities enjoyed the perfect and beauty of natural art in the same way. Their genius minds made art especially interesting. They both found a way to take their complex minds and put all their thoughts and ideas into very different art. “For from many beautiful things something good may be gathered”.
Two very different artists in Chapter 3, are primarily oil painters. Their styles are much more contemporary than the previous two painters. Living much more recently than both Durer and Leonardo, Jacob Lawrence and Kathe Kollwitz have many more differences than just their eras.
Jacob Lawrence in a Harlem Renaissance artist that blossomed just as that period had reached its peak. Coming from a very poverty stricken family, Lawrence’s paintings had very deep themes. He painted in more series than single paintings using tempera which is a mixture of oil paint and water color. He surrounded his paintings with his personal experiences growing up in Harlem and his hardships being African American. They typically had very lengthy titles and a lot of narrative content, with very powerful violent images. He was a pioneer in the social protesting or reporting as fans would call it. Rather than a normal sketch or perfected drawing he had a contemporary spin to his figures.
Kathe Kollwitz, a female artist, was a pioneer of her own in the art world. She was less of a color artist and loved black and white. Like Lawrence, Kollwitz focused on specialized struggle between mothers and their children, cruelties of war, death and hardships for women during the civil war period. Unlike Lawrence, she was much more of a draftsman and focused on etching and woodcuts. She had much more of a political reason to do art. “I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate”. She spoke out for women during a male dominated time, just as Jacob Lawrence spoke out for impoverished African Americans during the same time.
While having different motivations both artists had similar looking works of art with the same messages. With less precision and more meaning these two artists took more of my interest than both Leonardo and Durer
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