Art-Exhibition

Place of exhibition: St.James Cavalier

Date of visit: 24^th February 2014

Names of Practitioner/s:  Debbie Caruana Dingli - Andrew Diacono –Marisa Attard - Steve Bonello - Moira Zahra – Mark Scicluna – Paul Scerri – Saviour Baldacchino – Kenneth Zammit Tabona

Titles of exhibition: Xebgha Nies

Artist’s work chosen: Kenneth Zammit Tabona -is one of Malta's best known visual artists and illustrators. He is also a popular columnist and reviews Music, Literature and Drama. He supports environmental issues and has a penchant for defending lost causes.

Work 1: ‘Tea Time Stories’

This painting is a caricature and it is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified. I think that the subject here is that the Maltese culture bit by bit is going to lose itself, so he painted this painting to deliver the message that we need to continue on giving attention to our culture and will try never to lose it forever and to bring some nostalgia for the old people to remember some good time in this particular era of the 1956. The colour scheme is very bright colours and medium used is watercolours. There are many details in this paintings on the clothes, vases and other things like the sopra porta. It remains of the caricartures of Daumier’s.

                                                      Work 2: ‘The Acrobat Of Life’

This painting is a caricature and it is showing the features of a simplified subject.  I think that the artist what to show that in life we will be like the acrobat as the title of the painting, that we in life sometimes we need to be like the acrobat that we balance our life in all the things that we do that if you good some bad mistakes we need to do good examples so we will have a balanced life and also have fun all the way long. The colours are bright ones and as we can see there is texture on the draping of the curtain and very detailed other things like eyes and the shadows. The medium used is watercolours. 

Work 3: ‘The Corpus Christi Procession in Valletta’

This painting is also a caricature painting and it is showing the features of a simplified subject. Here the subject is a religious event that all the Maltese people will attend for and the artist what to show that this type of event is part of our culture, so he is making another reference for our culture, and also he is showing some artistic features that the only in Malta we have these artistic features, example the Maltese sculptures on the façade of the house and the event that is happening at that moment that small people know their purpose for this event.

Work 4: ‘The Bach Chaconne’

This is also a caricature painting and it is showing the features of the subject in its simplified. Here is a painting of a young boy playing the violin. The message that the artist what to deliver is that in this modern world with all these technology items that every minute is being invented we are losing this talents of playing the musical instruments, instead we are being lazy by pressing one button and we will listen to a sound of a playing violin, and we aren’t appreciate that we can learn to play this and other musical instruments and crate our own music. The scheme of colours is dull colours and also details are being created in this painting and medium used is watercolours. 

Work 5: ‘Procession & Corpus Christi’

These two paintings are also a caricature paintings and it is showing the features of a simplified subject. Here the subject is a religious events that all the Maltese people will attend for and the artist what to show that this type of events is part of our culture, so he is making another reference for our culture, and also they are types of events that the Maltese people will attend for and the artist is delivering the message that we need to go for these events because we are ignoring our religion culture and we are living in the material world without caring about our religion culture. The medium used is watercolours and small details are there for more interesting features in these paintings.

Art-Realism

Realism

By this period artists used this movement so they can make a particular light in the society to show how cruel and how much unfair  their life was. This style of Art reflects that in the 19^th century had been a negative age at that time. It was origin from a group of artists, writers and intellectuals in the late 1840`s.The most paintings where about politics and slaves at that time.

Some artists  realism to show their problems issues through political problems, and other artists used the realism to paint scene of urban landscape of life or portraits of nudes. They used to make the painting very realistic  to show their life.

In their paintings they used to show reflecting surface, shadow, light and as much details as possible for both still-life or live views interpretation, to show the object that the artist wanted to create.

French Realism emerged in times of social hardship and political in the early 1848, in the 3rd revolution that had happened in Paris. Then In the 19^th century, art of Courbet's caused a lot of controversy, because they came against the academic rules of the Salon. The rules of the Salon were that the paintings must be small, pleasant, escapist works that can be enjoyed by the people who were living in the town. So Courbet’s art went against standard academic practice so they weren't expected in the Salon.

This painting of Gustave Courbet – ‘The Stone Breakers’ that is made with oil on canvas. This was a painting that Courbet creates, that was against the rules of the Salon were accepting. It was made in a sketchy way and it shows a lot of focus of the two men that are breaking stones, to focus more on the two men, he made a plain background. These two figures are breaking and removing the stone from the road that had been built. They used to be forced to make some work that they didn`t want to do at that time.

Then this painting of Millet- ‘The Gleaners’ The painter had a lot of meaning in this painting. This is showing three feminine figures of normal people, that are working in a farm, and one rule that the artist went against it, was that he painted a rich man  on a horse watching the women working from far away, at that time that wasn’t acceptable because rich and important people were given the much importance of the painting rather than the normal people.

In these two painting there are the same meaning during the 19^th century, that the artists wanted to show the way of life that they had been through.

At that time, there were the paintings of the nude people, that artists used ideal forms to have the perfect painting that the Salon want to exhibit, but like the artists of above, they didn’t want to follow the formula that the Salon was accepting so they paint their paintings in their style as they want, some critics were saying that these paintings were 'the glorification of the ugly', meaning that these artists weren’t painting the ideal figures of nudes showing precision and perfectness but the figures of nudes with all the defects that the body will have. They made these type of art to show that no one was perfect and have some defects in their body.

Courbet.G. 1853. The Bathers[Oil on Canvas 227x193cm ] Musee' Fabre Montepellier- This painting was one of the painting that Courbet  didn't want to show the perfectness like the other artists done n their paintings. 

 

Gerad, F. 1798. Cupid and Pscyhe.[Oil on canvas 186x 132cm ] Louvre.Paris- This is one of the painting that the Salon accept beacuse it was the 'right size' and the 'right perfection' that they want to show to people so they can enjoy themselves.

The Stonebreakers - Smarthistory. 2014. The Stonebreakers - Smarthistory. [ONLINE] Available at: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/the-stonebreakers.html. [Accessed 26 February 2014].

Design-Fashion inspired from Romanticism Period

Fashion inspired from Romanticism Period 

Underneath as we can see one of the famous fashion designer, this is Alexander McQueen, which he has done lots of things and inspired from many things, but these dresses were inspired from Romanticism period. Alexander McQueen has shown freedom of thought and expression and combined together with the authority of the imagination. He also includes this inspiration in a creative way, that by these inspirations  created a masterpiece of dresses that are beautiful made and combined together.

 

 

As we can see above there is the modern clothing that was inspired from the Romanticism period and underneath them there are pictures of original clothing. As we can see there is many influences  from the original clothing of that time. Examples are: the idea of the corset was extracted, then the designs were also extracted but in a modern and twisted way, also the puffiness of the fabrics was also extracted but manipulated with other material such us feathers, elaborate clothing and others things.

dasKreativGbr, 2006-2012. 'I’m a romantic schizophrenic.' - Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty at the Met  [online] Available at: <http://www.styleclicker.net/2011/07/05/i%E2%80%99m-a-romantic-schizophrenic-amq-savage-beauty-at-the-met/ [Accessed 19 February 2014]

Art-Romanticism Period

Romanticism

 

Romanticism was mostly important between 1800 and 1850 and there was a lot of feelings and other things happening around like wars. People used to show spectacular and mystical life of how their life was.
The Romanticism period represents the style of emotion, taught and imagination, individualism and rebellion, that's why it is called the romanticism period. This is a period that was very rebellious throughout several rules. The main influenced that inspired this style was from music, because it shows that the romantic composers had freedom of expression,  movement, passion, and a lot of fantasy and imagination. So they influence themselves through painting, because they were going through emotions and expressing their feelings.

As techniques of this style they used to paint in paintings in dark colours, very detailed and represent many emotions and taught that the viewer will feel that he/she is in the painting and can feel what was happening of what he/she is seeing.  They used to paint landscape, nature and characters that were generally well of.


 One of the important artist was Delacroix that was from France. He used to do a sketchy paintings and unfinished pieces. This one  above is the most popular painting at that time, this was, ‘Liberty of the leading People’. This painting was made in the French Revolution that is showing the woman carrying the flag of the French and onward people fallen near her.

There was another famous artist that was William Turner`s work that is very similar to Delacroix work because the two of them are romanticism artists.

This is a very expressive painting of William Turner, that the viewer can reflects many emotions and taught so he/she will be more involved in the painting.  Also we can see that in this painting there is a very big bond between the human being and nature.

Romanticism. 2014. Romanticism. [ONLINE] Available at:http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html. [Accessed 17 February 2014].

Romanticism :: essays research papers. 2014. Romanticism :: essays research papers. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=84302. [Accessed 17 February 2014].