Cubsim

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century.

 

Pablo Picasso

Alive Between 1881 and 1973, Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.

His earlier works were very realistic, as he had an extraordinary ability to draw and paint as a child.  This amazing talent just kept on improving from then.  In his early 20s, his very close friend shot himself dead in front of Picasso.  this brought on what’s known as Picasso’s “blue period”, which is when he only painted with blue.  During this time, he mainly painted society’s outcasts.

Years afterwards, he and his good friend Georges Braque created the art technique and movement known as Cubism, which allowed them to almost mess up the normal anatomy of a figure like a Rubix cube, and to play with light and shadows.  And from here on out Picasso’s paintings just got weirder and weirder.

As well as sprinkling powdered pigment direct on to the canvas and mixing paint with materials like sand and newspaper, Picasso liked to use industrial paints alongside the more traditional oil brands, to create some of his unique colours. He particularly liked a type of enamel paint made by a firm called Ripolin.

Some of the many other artists and movements that inspired him were; Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, El Greco, surrealism, and African art.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I love Pablo Picasso’s artwork, it is very unique and creative, and he completely broke most painting conventions, and priced the pieces together to create something new… then he did that several times over.  He was so cool.

 

Georges Braque

Alive Between 1882 and 1963, Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism.

He spent his time on this planet making cubist paintings, and paintings landscapes.  The cubist paintings tended to have mostly very dark, earthy colours, like greys and browns.

But his more (but still very far off) realistic landscape paintings were made with bright, pastel colours, which is an interesting contrast to the darker, moodier colours of the majority of his cubist paintings.  The colours used in these landscape paintings almost convey a dream-like feel to the viewer.

He mostly used oils and watercolours for the landscapes, and oils for the cubist paintings.

Some of the long list of fellow artists and art movements that inspired him were; impressionism, fauvism, Henri Matisse, Aldo Crommelynck, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

Braque’s work isn’t something I’m really drawn to, I guess that it just doesn’t have enough angst for me.  But nonetheless I don’t mind his art, it looks quite nice.

 

Paul Klee

Alive between 1879 and 1940, Paul Klee was a Swiss-born, natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored colour theory and wrote about it extensively.

Paul Klee’s paintings are very abstract, and normally feature lots of multicoloured squares of flat colour.  He explored the effects that using different colours next to each other, and how overlapping shapes and colours effect each other and the overall picture.

Amongst other mediums, he mainly used oil and watercolour paints, and chalk.

Some of the many artists and art movements that influenced Klee were; Alfred Kubin, Robert Delaunay, Maurice de Vlaminck, pointillism, and abstract art.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  So Paul Klee didn’t live to witness the end of ww2.  It’s sad that the last glimpse he had of this world was when it was in one of its darkest and scariest periods.

In all honesty, I do not like his art at all.  I just find in unimaginably boring.  But I do kind of like looking at it.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10758308/Why-Picassos-palettes-were-a-work-of-art-in-themselves.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Braque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee

 

Dada

Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

Basically, Dadaism is art that is against the idea that art needs to have deep meanings.  Dada art can be made spontaneously and it very rarely has any meaning at all.

Marcel Duchamp

Alive between 1887 and 1968, Marcel Duchamp was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art.  Duchamp only made very few Dada artworks, because he didn’t want to make “retinal” art that was just nice to look at, he wanted to make art that would make people think, and he was deliberately not associated with Dada groups.  But the reason that I’ve put him on this list is because he made one Dada artwork that some say changed the way people think about 20th century art forever.  Because of the very small number of his artworks being dada, I’m only going to talk about one.

In 1917 Duchamp was working for an art gallery who were putting on an exhibition and stating that anyone could enter their art, and it would be accepted.  So Duchamp wanted to test this, so he anonymously submitted an upside-down urinal with the initials R.Mutt painted on.  The gallery went back on their word and denied its place in the exhibition because they thought it was too impolite.  This then sparked the idea that literally anything can, and should be considered art.

This is a Dada artwork because there was no real reason for Duchamp to choose a urinal, he could have chosen a toilet or even a jar of pee itself.  I guess that he was just in the mood for urinals.

Just some of the many people and movements he was inspired by were; Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Cubism.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I like his urinal, which was titled “fountain”, I like that he showed the world that you don’t need to have great drawing, painting, or even culture skills to be an artist who can produce good art.

 

Man Ray

Alive between 1890 and 1976, Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all.

He was very good friends with Marcel Duchamp, and they helped each other pursue their passion for art.  During this period, he would make weird compositions out of anything and everything he could get his hands on, which he would then photograph, like the image below.

After accidentally discovering the photogram technique which he named after himself “rayograms”, he produced hundreds of photos, experimenting with light and shadows. During this phase of his life, he also ventured into using this technique with portraiture photography, fashion, and even advertisement.

He would put great effort into creating weird and wonderful compositions that played with the ideas of time and space.

Some of the many artists and movements that inspired them were, as I already mentioned, Marcel Duchamp, Katherine Sophie Dreier, Salvador Dali, and Surrealism.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I like his work, it is experimental and I love the fact that he purposefully set out to break as many rules of photography as possible, which he did.  Because that’s how you progress a movement, you break the rules and open up a whole new area to artistically mess around in.

 

 

Max Ernst

Alive between 1891 and 1976, Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism.

After being traumatised from being in the war, Max Ernst co-created the Dada movement.  After witnessing firsthand the utter stupidity of war, he found solace in Dadaism.

He loved making collages out of cut-up bits of old encyclopedias.  These later inspired some of his paintings.

A lot of his art is very surrealist, and very closely resembles a lot of Salvador Dali’s paintings.

He mainly painted with oils.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I like his work, it is fun to look at these absurd collages and painting compositions that he created.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ernst

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasised speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city.

 

Giacomo Balla

Alive between 1871 and 1958, Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings, he depicted light, movement and speed.

His paintings are abstract in a sense, but also futuristic because he plays with the concept of light, speed and movement.  A lot of his paintings look as if you were whizzing past an object or a scene at high speeds, and only caught a blurred, stretched out glimpse of it, and then you did this multiple times.

But other paintings, like the one below, explore the dazzling effects of artificial light on your eyes; the painting is beautifully painted, even though it is just paint on a canvas, it is painted in such a way that it appears to glow.  It also resembles the art technique pointillism, as the majority of the paintings is made up of hundreds of little V shapes.  It is so cool.

It was the Italian Futurist artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who influenced Balla to begin painting in this futurist style.  He also taught divisionism, which is very similar to pointillism.  This very clearly influenced his later paintings, like the one above.  He was also influenced by the likes of Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini, as well as the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, which captured movement.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

It’s not really my thing, but I like his work, it is very bright and colourful.  I especially like the first painting I showed, because it looks like twisted slices of glorious watermelon.  I’m a sucker for watermelon.

Carlo Carrà

Alive between 1881 and 1966, Carlo Carrà was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.

His earlier, futurist works had elements of abstract art and cubism and explored motion, emotion, and light.  He was inspired by contemporary French art.

But Carrà’s Futurist phase ended around the time World War I began. His work, while still using some Futurist concepts, began to deal more clearly with form and stillness, rather than motion and feeling.

Inspired by Trecento painting, children’s art, and the work of Henri Rousseau, Carrà soon began creating still lifes in a simplified style that emphasized the reality of ordinary objects. In 1917 he met Giorgio de Chirico and worked with him for a couple of weeks.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

Again, this kind of art isn’t really my thing, but I don’t have anything against it.  I just find it kind of uninteresting and boring.

 

Umberto Boccioni

Alive between 1882 and 1916, he was just 33 years old when he died in a horse-riding accident.  But before that, Umberto Boccioni was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach to the dynamism of form and the deconstruction of solid mass guided artists long after his death.

The forms in his paintings don’t exist in a realistic 3-dimensional space, perspective is distorted and nothing feels solid.  He used a lot of bright, colourful complementary colours to create stark contrast in his paintings, which draws the viewer’s attention to certain parts, like in the paintings above, the bright oranges and reds of the women’s faces draw your eyes to them, then your eyes slowly move around the other smaller details of the painting, as you piece together the story.

Boccioni painted with oils and acrylics and made sculptures out of bronze, gold and lead.

For a while, he studied under Giacomo Balla, who inspired him greatly.  During a visit to Paris, he saw the works of Braque and Picasso, which greatly influenced him and the futurist movement.

Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903, and World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  So Boccioni didn’t live to see the end of ww1.

I like his work, it is very colourful and plays with colour, perception and form, by mixing them all up into a nice soup.

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Carr%C3%A0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Boccioni

Expressionism

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.  Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.

It tried to convey emotion and meaning rather than reality. Each artist had their own unique way of “expressing” their emotions in their art. In order to express emotion, the subjects are often distorted or exaggerated. At the same time, colours are often vivid and shocking.

Edvard Munch

Alive between 1863 and 1944, Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter, whose best-known work, The Scream, has become one of the most iconic images of world art. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family.

When he was just 5 years old, his mother died from TB.  Then a 9 years later when he was 14, his older sister also died from TB – this horrible event was the inspiration behind his series of six paintings and a number of lithographs, drypoints and etchings completed between 1885 and 1926.  All record a moment before her death.  They’re so haunting.

In his early 20s, he lived a bohemian lifestyle, and during this time, Hans Jæger who was a writer he was living with urged him to paint his own emotional and psychological state (‘soul painting’). From this would emerge his distinctive art style.

He was plagued throughout his life with depression, which he explored in his paintings.  For instance, he wrote this in his diary “I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”  Which can obviously be interpreted as the inspiration behind The Scream (pictured below).

In The Scream, Munch used oil paints and oil paints thickened with beeswax and also oil crayons containing beeswax and Japan wax, as well as casein pastels, a paraffin wax crayon and at least one gum-bound paint.

A lot of his paintings have very wavy brushstrokes, they almost make the painting look like liquid.  But almost all of them explore the darker subjects, like loneliness, depression, death, grief, anxiety, love, anxiety, jealousy and betrayal, but all were steeped in atmosphere.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, he also painted women in seductive poses, as most artists seem to.  But even these are somewhat scary, something in his paintings always seems to be off, like in the painting below her limbs fade off into wispy, ghost-like tendrils, and her eyes are sunken, making her look very ill and thin, almost skeleton-like, which heavily contrasts with the idea of a happy, glamorous, seductive woman.

In Paris, he learned much from Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, especially their use of colour. In Berlin, he met Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, whom he painted.

Some of the major world events around the time of his life were; the invention of the telephone in 1876.  The Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic strikes; by 1920, nearly 20 million are dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  So Munch died before he could see the end of ww2.

My opinion of his work is that I absolutely love it, he wasn’t afraid to explore very controversial subjects, and he was able to paint his inner demons.  I’m sure that painting was very therapeutic for him.

 

Francis Bacon

Alive between 1909 and 1992, Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his emotionally charged raw imagery and fixation on personal motifs.

Bacon had a very dark view of the world, and he also had a very abusive relationship with a man called Peter Lacy, who used to beat him up on a regular basis, and even once threw him out of a 2nd story window, which nearly caused Bacon to lose an eye, but all of this just made Bacon love him more.  Both were heavy drinkers.  It is thought that Bacon’s creative impulses were rooted in sexual pain and humiliation.  His sadomasochistic obsessions seem to have influenced his art style significantly, as almost all of his paintings have horrifically mutilated figures screaming in pain and anguish.  The painting below illustrates this and is also my favourite Francis Bacon painting.

He portrayed the people in his paintings as just chunks of meat that have been squished and battered into a messy pulp with bits of the human body sticking out at unnatural angles.  They can be very hard to look at, but at the same time, they are fascinating and I absolutely love his paintings.

In his early twenties, he went to a Picasso exhibition, and the way that the artist used lines to convey deep emotional feelings really hit a chord with Bacon, so he went home and started drawing and painting for the first time, with watercolours.  I think he later moved onto the painting with oil paints, which is what he used to paint the majority of his artwork.

For a while, he was good friends with the acclaimed artist Lucian Freud, who he painted.  He once said that he felt like he could brutalise his friend’s faces more easily in his paintings than those of strangers.

Some of the major events in the world that happened in Bacon’s lifetime were; World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic strikes; by 1920, nearly 20 million are dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  The Cold War between 1947 and 1991.

I’ve loved Francis Bacon and his artwork since I first discovered his work a couple of years ago.  I love how he really gets all of his deep anger and hatred of the world out in his paintings.  I find him an extremely intriguing person.  Looking at his paintings is a very visceral experience, and is one that really needs to be in person.  When I went to the Tate, I found one of his triptychs, and it was so cool.

 

Lucian Freud

Alive between 1922 and 2011, Lucian Michael Freud was a British painter and draftsman, specializing in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud.

He painted multiple self-portraits throughout his life, starting from when he was 25.  Here’s one from later in his life.

He was an interesting man, as he hung out with, and painted all kinds of people, from low life criminals to high society aristocrats – he even painted the Queen at one point in his later career.  He was also a massive womaniser, as he apparently had 100s of lovers and 14 confirmed children, and possibly at least 20 more.

As far as I can tell, he mainly used oil paints.  He had a very slow method of painting; he would look at his human subject, then mix some oil paints together and would make a line on the canvas, then slapped the remainder of the colour onto the wall of his studio, then the process would repeat again and again until the painting was complete.  Each painting took Freud a couple of years to paint.

He was good friends with Francis Bacon, who he painted (shown below), and Frank Auerbach.  I have no doubt that these big shot fellow painters influenced his art.

Some of the major world events during his lifetime were; World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  The Cold War between 1947 and 1991.  9/11 in 2001.

He had a very objective style of painting; he wouldn’t try to portray his subjects as glamorous, as he would paint everything he saw, every fold, every crease, every wrinkle.  The resulting paintings are very different to most figurative paintings, which often make the subjects look pretty, but Freud made his subjects look far from perfection, but this is actually a really nice and refreshing way of painting, as it shows people and their bodies in their most natural, objective states.  They may look kind of gross, but he’s just showing real people and their real bodies.  I like it.

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch

https://www.iiconservation.org/node/3292

https://www.infoplease.com/history/us/us-history-progressive-era-and-world-wars-1900-1949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6635404/Francis-Bacon-nearly-lost-eye-in-assault-by-psychopathic-lover.html

https://shop.mybluprint.com/art/article/painting-techniques-of-francis-bacon/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud

Art Deco

Art deco is an art movement that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It consists of geometric shapes in architecture, furniture and decorative art. An example of this is the design on the Chrysler skyscraper in New York.

 

Aleksandra Ekster

 

Born 1882 and died 1949, Aleksandra Ekster was an internationally acclaimed Russian painter who painted buildings, but more often women in dresses.  She was also a costume designer, which can be very obviously seen in her work.  Her paintings are always very bright, with multicolour rectangular shapes, as was popular in the art deco movement.  She used acrylic paint in almost all of her paintings.

The figures in her paintings are always very flamboyant, with very extravagant dresses, which makes these paintings feel very fun and lively.  The use of acute geometric shapes gives her paintings an almost abstract feel.  From looking at the unique, creative design of the dresses in her paintings, you can tell that she had a lot of fun being a costume designer.

Titled “City”, you can very clearly see that she was very inspired by the Cubism art movement.  Whilst in Paris, she met the cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who probably played a big part in inspiring the prevalent elements of cubism in her works.

When she wasn’t painting women and buildings, she also painted just pure abstract cubism.  All of her work is so full of colour and alive, I’m sure that she loved making her work.

I like her artwork, I like looking at the bright, colourful geometric shapes of the glamourous figures.

She seems to have painted the most in the 1910s.  Some of the major events in this time were the titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912, and World War 1 which lasted between 1914 and 1918.

Erté

Romain de Tirtoff, more commonly known by his pseudonym Erté, alive between 1892 and 1990.  He was a French-Russian artist and designer in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor.  Over the course of his lifetime, he said that he had created over 17,000 artworks.

Some of the major events around the time that he was making art were; World War 1 (1914 – 1918), World War 2 (1939 – 1945), and The Vietnam War (1955 – 1975).

His paintings are all very clean and have a distinct style.  He mostly painted women in serene dresses and situations who always looked very elegant.  His paintings were very detailed and complicated.  He mostly painted with acrylics and pastels.

His most famous work is Symphony in Black (pictured above).  It has been reproduced countless times.

His bronze sculptures were no different from his paintings, as they also depicted very elegant women dressed in complicated, glamorous clothing.  He was also inspired by Asian culture and clothing, which is evident in his work

Whilst staying in Paris, Erte met the author and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.  Beardsley’s clean, sophisticated art style obviously had an impact on the way Erte painted and sculpted.  Below are some of Beardsley’s drawings.

I like Erte’s work, everything is very clean, precise and colourful.  It has a certain sophisticated elegance to it.  It is very cool.

 

Jose De Almada Negreiros

Alive between 1893 and 1970, Almada was a Portuguese artist and writer.  Besides literature and painting, Almada developed ballet choreographies and worked on tapestry, engraving, murals, caricature, mosaic, azulejo and stained glass.

His works range from relatively realistic to very abstract paintings of people.  He used bright, lively colours that somehow harmoniously work with each other.  Sometimes he would use an analogous colour palette, and other times he would use a complementary colour palette.  He worked with oils and acrylics.  He was very influenced by futurism and expressionism.  He was also influenced by the artist and writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Some of the major historical events around the time of his work were; World War 1 (1914 – 1918), World War 2 (1939 – 1945), and The Vietnam War (1955 – 1975), and the titanic sailing off, but unfortunately sinking in 1912.

I like his work, it portrays normal people doing normal things, like a mother caring for her baby, a man in a cafe, and a fisherman fishing.  The other artists that I have looked at in the art deco movent both tended to paint glamorous women in luxurious clothing, but Almada seemed to have been very down to earth, and compassionate about the everyday person.  His work is very human.

My opinion on art deco as a movement, is that the paintings and sculptures are pretty visually appealing, but it is far from the kind of art that I like; I prefer art that is much more experimental and that explores darker subjects.

 

Research

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/art-deco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco

https://prabook.com/web/aleksandra.ekster/3743031

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandra-Aleksandrovna-Ekster

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1910to1919.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ert%C3%A9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_Almada_Negreiros

Pixar Short Film Research

Pixar wasn’t always the massive animation company that it is today, it all started in 1979 as a small department in Lucas Films called the “Computer Division”, which was given the task of creating film technology for the film industry.

By 1986 there were about 40 people working in the Computer Division, and Steve Jobs decided to buy it from Lucas Film and established it as an independent company called “Pixar”.

For the next 9 years, Pixar continued to produce commercials and short films including; Luxo Jr. (1986), Red’s Dream (1986), Tin Toy (1988), Knick Knack (1989).

In 1995 Toy Story is released, and it is the world’s first animated feature film, and quickly became the highest-grossing film of the year. This was a landmark achievement for Pixar, and it propelled them into eventually becoming the major animation company that they are known as today. Since then, they have made very popular animated films such as; Monsters Inc (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008), Up (2009), Brave (2012), Inside Out (2015), Coco (2017), The Incredibles 2.

 

Knick Knack (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfwVtiOyIfw

Made in 1989, Knick Knack is one of Pixar’s earliest animated shorts, and it was their first animation produced in stereoscopic 3D. It is about a shelf of living travel souvenirs who are all having fun together. But there is a snowman stuck inside of a snow globe, who longs to hang out with a mermaid, so he does everything he can think of to try and escape the snow globe, and chaos ensues. I used to watch this short as a kid, so it is fun and nostalgic to be studying it now.

Because this short is so old, there isn’t a whole lot of information online about how the film was made, and I can’t find what software this film was made with. But I found some of the software that was used on Tin Toy, which is the short made before Knick Knack, so I presume that the same software was used for Knick Knack. It is Pixar’s proprietary animation system, identified to the outside world as Marionette but internally known as Menv (“men-vee”), short for “modelling environment,”.

I can only find the jobs of three people that worked on Kick Knack;

Original Music by: Bobby McFerrin.
Written By: John Lasseter.
Directed by: John Lasseter.

 

Film Composer

A film composer writes the score, which is the sum of all the original music going into a film. They’ll demo pieces of the score regularly to the film’s creative team for feedback on how it’s fitting into the scene. Film composers are also responsible for the recording of the film score.

Script Writer

Screenwriters develop scripts derived from their own ideas or other existing ideas or work. When writing scripts, screenwriters are responsible for describing the stories in detail, including physical environments and the moods of the characters.

 

Director

A film director controls a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects and visualises the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the voice actors, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking.

 

 

 

Research

http://www.pixartalk.com/shorts/knick-knack/

https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Knick_Knack

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-1

https://www.connollymusic.com/stringovation/how-to-become-a-film-composer

https://study.com/articles/Screenwriter_Responsibilities_Outlook_and_Requirements.html

3D Animation Pipeline

For major animations made by big companies such as Pixar and Disney, there needs to be a production line of people with different jobs; this is known as a “pipeline”.

But the pipeline relies on everyone doing their jobs right, because if one small error occurs and gets passed down to the next department, then this will clog the metaphorical pipe. For example, if a modeller accidentally gives a model an extra finger, then it gets passed down through a couple of departments before anyone realises the mistake, it could potentially take a lot of effort to fix.

The schedule is very important to make sure that everything runs smoothly. It is very carefully planned out to make sure that people’s deadlines for their projects work together, and then consequently the finished animation is released on time.

It is also good for the people who are in the pipeline to be aware of some of the other job roles around them, as they could make decisions in their work which would make the job of the next person a lot easier, like making models that have good topology will make animating them way easier.

And now, here are the main job roles in the animation pipeline.

Story

Some stories might come from comic books, books, films, history, personal experiences and so on.

 

Directors

Directors are responsible for the whole upkeep of the production, they have to keep the whole crew on track and doing everything right.  Directors start with the script.

 

Editorial

Then the storyboards are created from the script.  After that, the Lead Editor makes an animatic, can be made to show the directors, producers and studio executives so that they can see how all the shots fit together.  It is basically a rough blueprint of the final film.

 

Art

Visual development artists create the characters, props and environments of a film before it is made, and then they show everything to the director, to see if they fit the film that they want to make.

 

Modelling

The modellers receive the concept art from the art department, then using that create all the environments, characters, props and pretty much everything you see in the finished film.  They do this using 3D application software, like Blender, Autodesk 3DS Max, Autodesk Maya and ZBrush and so on.

 

Rigging

The character models are then given to the riggers, who make the skeleton, and all of the joints, muscle, and fat (or weighting) of the character.  This is in preparation for the actual animation of the character models.

 

Surfacing Department

The surfacing artists are responsible for basically putting the textures on these models, like wood, glass, dirt or whatnot.  They add all of the surface details to the models.

 

Rough Layout

This process is essentially taking all of the work that has been made so far, like the models, and create a rough version of the film in a 3D space, using motion capture artists to act out the scenes, like the characters, and visual cinematography.

 

Final Layout

This department makes all of the low-quality detail into high-quality detail.  They make stereo passes, which make sure that the audience’s eyes follow the right parts of the scene.  They also do set dressing, which is basically decorating the environment of the scenes – this is like mise-en-scene in film.

 

Animation

The modern 3D animators use the CG puppet models that the modellers created.  They give the models controllers so that people can make the characters make different expressions, move different limbs and whatnot.  The number of controls of a typical 3D model for a film is about 6000.

For the animators to actually animate, they need a real-life reference for the movements.  They get these reference videos from a number of sources, and these include the internet or filming themselves acting out the movements.  They eventually build up their own reference library for each character.

 

Crowds

This department is responsible for creating large numbers of digital extras to a scene.  They create a small number of different background characters and animations.  They then use an artificial computer brain to assign the animations to these characters.

 

Character Effects (Character FX)

this department basically makes anything that the characters interact with, like hair dynamics, fur; and now the environment and objects visually react when the characters interact with them.

 

Effects (FX)

This department creates all the effects, like rain, fire, snow, explosions, sparks, particles and so on.

 

Matte Painting

This department basically makes the backgrounds, like mountains, cloudy skies, cityscapes etc.

 

Lighting

They take all of the 3D work and add computer-generated lights to make everything look good and realistic in a 3D space.

 

 

Image Finalising

These beautiful people take the almost finished film, and go in and clean up any imperfections in the film, for example deleting any unwanted, pesky pimples on a character.

 

Sound Design

A Composer will write music to heighten and enhance the story.

this department also adds all of the sounds and EQ them, normalise them, and makes everything sound right and play at the right times.

 

Marketing

Marketing is the penultimate stage of the pipeline. The wonderful people in marketing are responsible for releasing trailers, teaser posters, posters etc. They basically advertise the animation and ignite the hype.

 

Distribution

This is the last leg of the pipeline. If the animation is going to be shown in cinemas, then these people are responsible for sending it to the cinemas, and wherever else it needs to go.

 

Research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CbG0d_tnSg

Non-Manifold Geometry

non-manifold topology polygons have a configuration that cannot be unfolded into a continuous flat piece. Some tools and actions in Maya cannot work properly with non-manifold geometry.

Two-manifold topology polygons have a mesh that can be split along its various edges and unfolded so that the mesh lays flat without overlapping pieces.

 

Research

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-8E97CEF7-1CFE-4838-B4B7-59F526E21AB2-htm.html

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/what-is-non-manifold-geometry

Maya Asset Management

Folder structure is very important when using Maya, because if your files are spewed all over your different folders then Maya will have a hissy fit and refuse to work unless everything is as it should be, and it will also just be really annoying to have to search through all of your files just to find the latest save file incarnation of your dumb little animation.

But fear not! The folks over at Maya have thought about this, and have made it so that Maya projects automatically save all the relevant files in a very organised manner, so you don’t actually have to put any effort into remembering how to organise your files! Yay!

Here is an example of my folders.

 

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows if you forget to save your project regularly as you work on it, then when you come back to it, you may find that you’ve lost a whole days work. So in the name of all things sane and productive, please click the little save button every half hour or so.

And just in case you’re interested in this kind of thing, Maya can save files as: “Maya Binary” (“MB”), for unfinished projects, and “Maya IFF” for finished, rendered projects.

Modern Masters Pablo Picasso

Do I even need to explain myself at this point? There’s a documentary, then I fill in the little questions and tada

 

1 Where was Picasso born and in what year? He was born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881.

2 What nationality is Picasso? Spanish.

3 What was Picasso obsessed with as a young boy? Drawing.

4 At what age did Picasso win a scholarship to the prestigious academy of fine art in Madrid? When he was 16.

5 Who was Picasso’s best friend when he lived in Barcelona? Carlos Casagemas.

6 What year did Picasso leave Spain for Paris? 1900.

7 What was Paris known as? The European capital of sin.

8 What happened to Casagemas in a restaurant? He got drunk and attempted to kill his then-girlfriend with a revolver, but just missed and grazed her neck. He then shot himself in the temple of his head and died an hour later. Sounds like a really happy night…

9 What effect did this have on Picasso’s work? He started painting only in blue, which became known as his “blue period”. In this space of time, he painted outcasts of society, and portrayed only misery and despair in his paintings, as if that was all he could see.

10 How long did Picasso’s blue period last? 3 years.

11 After his blue period, what colour is used in his next period? Pink. This time in his life became known as his “rose period”.

12 How many years of artistic refinement did Picasso abandon? 600 years.

13 When was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon painted? In 1907.

14 At this time, who did Picasso start to collaborate with? George Braque.

15 What did they invent? The art movement cubism.

16 Where is the Spanish Guggenheim Museum? Bilbao, Spain.

17 What did Matisse call Picasso? A bandit, because he used to regularly steal motifs from other artists throughout history.

18 What year did the Spanish civil war start? 1936.

19 What happened to the town of Guernica? in April 1937 German aircraft flattened Guernica, which was held by the communist opposition.

20 How many bombs did the Germans drop? 5000. Woah, that’s a lot.

21 How many civilians died? more than 1600.

22 What political party did Picasso join after the war? The French communist party.

23 What bird was actually Picasso’s dove of peace? The forever majestic pigeon.

24 How old was Sylvette David when she worked with Picasso? 19.

25 How old was Picasso? 73.

26 How many pieces of work did Picasso produce in his lifetime? Over 43,000. Wow. Just, wow.