What do you know about Roy Lichtenstein ?

What do you know about Roy Lichtenstein ? This seems a strange question to ask about an artist that is so famous for being one of the key originators of the art form known as Pop Art. 

Surely everyone knows that he was famous for creating artwork that looked like cheaply produced comic book images, blown up to a large scale ? His images used the dots found in production of comic books of the 1960s. and... err that's about it for most people.

In fact Roy Lichtenstein was still creating art right up until his death in 1997  in the same city in which he was born some 73 years earlier - New York. During his life he produced well over 5000 pieces of art, including ceramics, sculpture, posters and murals - as well as his famous Pop Art material.

From the last part of the 1960s he began to consider the  roots of modernism and apply his techniques to the styles and beliefs of the early Modernists. For example one of the earliest was the Post Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh. He did a famous painting of his bedroom when he was based in Arles in France. Lichtenstein painted a tribute to this, but using his own techniques. See if you can see which is which ?



Roy Lichtenstein also went on to create paintings in the style of Cubists and Surrealists.

            

Not only did he show these influences but he was even more specific when demonstrating his positive support for the Bauhaus School, with this image that he simply called Bauhaus Stairway.

  

He even showed his appreciation for the Italian Futurist artists in this painting, which shows very clearly their stylistic theme of showing the power of movement by repeated versions of the same figure as it might have moved across the canvas.

 

For Lichtenstein the movement was that of a music conductor, rather than a cycle or a war machine. This is one of Lichtenstein's later obsessions - the view ( shared with Kandinsky ) that music and art have much in common - as these two images show - one by Kandinsky and one by Lichtenstein.

It was not only the styles of previous artists that Lichtenstein wanted to show that were amongst his influences. He also wanted to show that he had moved a long way from an early obsession with cartoon graphics. He moved into painting landscapes.

He produced a series of Nude portraits and many still life paintings. He didn't even restrict his artwork to paintings. On several occasions he moved into 3 dimensions and created ceramics and sculptures.

The moral of all of this is that you should not judge Roy Lichtenstein on the basis of his early paintings based on overblown comic graphics. His total output was far wider and much more inspired by a wide range of modernist artists. 

You may never see his full 5000 plus range of works, but just from this selection you should see that he was more than an illustrator in the early 1960s

The History of Art Deco

The History of Art Deco

The seeds of the Art Deco movement were sown in the 1920s. In some ways it was a reaction to the older Art Nouveau style, yet it also had a lot in common with it. Art Nouveau was Modernist in the sense that it reacted to the idea of “art for art’s sake” prevalent in the traditional styles up to the late 1800s.

It tried to make a link between the art as the pursuit of artistic endeavour and art as a link to improving the lifestyles of ordinary people in the nascent age of consumerism. People wanted things that increasingly looked good and also did the job required.

Art Deco took these ideas on board, yet it saw Art Nouveau as old fashioned and not really fit for purpose in an age of increasing mass production and machine technology. It was clearly from the 19th Century. They wanted to create a new style that served similar objectives, yet was more suited to the technology and lifestyles of the 20th Century. Instead they wanted to build on the developments of Bauhaus and the Cubist movements. It had to be a style that was forward looking, and one that appealed to aspiring middle classes. It could not simply be another style that intellectually rejected what had gone before in a way that most people couldn’t relate to.

The real start of Art Deco followed meetings of a group of mostly French artists who formed an association called the “Societe des artistes Decorateurs” - shortened quickly to Art Deco. This group was supported by the French Government and a major exhibition was planned in Paris for 1914. Unfortunately for them World War I broke out and no further progress was made until 1925. Then a major exhibition was held which exhibited work from over 15,000 artists, architects and designers. The various buildings hosting parts of this exhibition hosted over 16 million people.  Art Deco was truly with us now.

Art Deco became a major Art Movement during the 1920s, but really reached its peak during the 1930s when America had truly taken it on board and developed its own variant of the style( often known as “Streamline Moderne”). It became very popular during that period in the public mind and hit its objective of being seen as a populist art form for a modern, stylish and forward looking culture. It was visually pleasing whilst not at the same time being intellectually threatening. It now represented modern machine based produced goods rather than the craft based items typical of the Art Nouveau period.

Art Deco was dominant in the 1930s, but by the end of the decade a more negative culture had taken over and World War II broke out. The widespread destruction of europe after the War took a long time to overcome and austerity was the order of the day. Art Deco was a sophisticated extravagance. By the 1960s incomes and aspirations had grown again and Art Deco made a come back. It is still very popular up to the present day and had influenced many consumer products, architecture and design cues well into the digital age.

For lots more images from the Art Deco era, take a look at the videos on The Digital Modernist YouTube Channel or view The Digital Modernist Website

Wassili Kandinsky

Wassili Kandinsky was one of those artists that everyone seems to like and yet few can say why. He still has many followers and his art is still very popular.

He was born in Russia but trained to be a lawyer rather than an artist. He was good at that and made a good living. He actually got to the age of 30 before he even started to take painting seriously. Eventually he got a teaching place at the famous German Bauhaus school, but this was only after the constraints of the Soviet Russian State and its thoughts on Modernist Art became too much for him to bear. He left to go to Germany. This was when he joined the Bauhaus.

He had a very good career in Germany and became a very important figure in the theory of Art, He got into the philosophy of THEOSOPHY. This was the same line of thought that had influenced Piet Mondrian and  which helped to develop his strong style of vertical and horizontal lines to form rectangles, filled with bright primary colours or white. For Kandinsky it took him in a different direction. He built on the strong use of vertical and horizontal lines, but developed the use of lines having curves and a point. He also saw the strength of colour and shape.

Kandinsky became one of the most important abstract artists over a long period. He carried this on when the German Nazi regime took over in Germany and closed the Bauhaus School. Kandinsky saw the writing on the wall and moved away from Germany to live the rest of his life in France. That was in 1933.


This video is part of the Digital Modernist collection. You can view it here, or go to the YouTube channel and see more video in full screen by going to this link .

Learn to create Digital Modernist Art

Ever wanted to take that first step into creating serious artwork on your computer, but not quite sure where or how to start ? Well this entry is aimed especially at you. 

I have produced a simple to use video explaining exactly how to create a piece of art in the style of the Russian Suprematist movement. It is built up from screenshots of the computer screen from each stage of production. This means you can pause it at any time and follow the steps one by one. Then just go back to the video and hit "play" again. Couldn't be simpler.

The video is based on Photoshop, but the lessons apply to just about any editing software that uses layers.

This is the piece of art that you will be creating:-

Once you have conquered this image you will be able to amend the idea to produce a wide range of original pieces.

The video will show as a small image here, but you can follow the link below to go to the YouTube page and view it full screen size. 

Visit YouTube 

If you just want to find out more about the Russian Suprematists, see the previous entry into this blog.

Don't forget to visit our website for all sorts of videos, information and tutorials : The Digital Modernist

A Journey Through (Art) History

Just as an exercise in taking an almost totally random approach to viewing some of the best pieces of art in the Modernist era, I have produced a video that highlights some of the best during the Modernist styles from Impressionism in the 1870s through to Bauhaus developments up to the 1960s.

The Covered Lane by Paul-Auguste Renoir

The Impressionists started a reaction against the orthodoxy by criticising the French Academy of Fine Arts because they consistently rejected their works by not allowing them into the Galleries. Eventually they created their own exhibition of "rejects". This started a lot of discussion about the hold that very traditional art "experts" were having on limiting creativity. It was also the start of Modernism - a movement to disrupt the centuries old stifling strangle hold on what was acceptable by a small elite of artists and dealers.

It was only a few years before art 

of the Cubist style was acceptable

Cubism was such a startling move away from the Classical "Realism" of the pre 1870s. Georges Braques and Pablo Picasso worked in partnership to create a completely new approach to art - Cubism was born.

By 1927 the Bauhaus movement had made

Design and Art very close and Art was seen 

as a way to influence the way people lived.

By the 1920s the De Stijl movements and Bauhaus had moved abstract artwork into the mainstream and popularised it. They built Bauhaus furniture, built Bauhaus buildings and created fonts for printing. It was Art for a purpose.

To see more pieces of artwork in this journey take a look at this short video :

Art Deco

I love Art Deco. It is one of the art movements within Modernism that has been very popular for many years and still has a strong following, especially in Graphic Design circles after a full century.

When Art Deco began it was really it was almost an homage to previous Modernist traditions such as Cubism and De Stijl artists. from the beginning, however, it was not restricted to canvas art. From its early days in Paris at the start of the 1900s it became featured as a style in architecture and consumer products as much as in galleries.

One of the big reasons for Art Deco being so popular was that in its national search for a specific "American" art style, the USA sent delegates across to study art styles current across Europe. They took back elements of several styles, but were clearly influenced by Art Deco. They added elements of style from , for example, Italian Futurism and developed a streamlined version of the European style.

Once America had taken the movement on board it was inevitable that it would be taken on board by the exciting new developments in architecture - especially the growing trend of high rise "buildings as statements" such as the Chrysler Building. It was also a big influence on artists such as Le Corbusier.

Hollywood had a big role to play. Cinematic posters were amongst the most common ways for ordinary people to experience "Art". They film studios took to Art Deco in a big way.

In the "Roaring 20s", the period of of excess in style and the boom time for the US, Art Deco really flourished. It was seen in Clothing, advertising, cigarette lighters, jewelry, cars and other forms of transport,household goods such as lights, lamps, etc. It was everywhere. It had come to represent style and a sense of "feel good" exuberance.

No wonder I, like many others, still see the value in a style of art that could influence so much of everyday life, whilst bringing on such strong positive feelings.

I have tried to produce a range of modern images, produced using digital technology, to reflect that era. To see a selection visit The Digital Modernist website.

For more detail on the Art Deco Style and galleries of artwork see the section on The Digital Modernist site

Who are the Suprematists ?

When I first came across the term "Suprematists" I had a vision of extreme right wing politically motivated activists. Even worse was the thought that they would also be involved in racism of the worst kind - Cross Burning, murdering fascists. But NO. That was not the case, thankfully.

Suprematism is the name given to a group of mostly Russian artists of the 20th Century. The interest in being supreme was merely to do with their Art. What they were interested in was developing the most "pure" form of art. For them pure art was that which was a reaction to the previous Western ideals of getting  closer to "reality" in their work. Realism was, to them, the antithesis of art. It was a distraction from the nature of expressive art. The ultimate expression of artistic supremacy was a work by the movement's founder, Kazimir Malevich, which consisted simply of a painted black square.

The nature of Suprematist Artwork was that it was abstract. It was a development of the Cubist Style but also contained influences from the Italian Futurist movement. It went further than Cubism in the sense that it abstracted even further from any hint of "realism". Instead it concentrated on basic shapes - rectangle, triangle, circle, square - and with block colors. 

Whilst the movement was essentially established by Kazimir Malevich, it was an artist who was influenced by the Suprematist style, El Lassitzki, who developed it and made it more acceptable to the mainstream Abstract movements. The style was also a big influence on Wassily Kandinski, who went on to influence the Bauhaus  and the De Stijl movements.

* To find out even more about the Suprematists and their work, take a look at The Digital Modernist website. 

* For short introduction see The Digital Modernist video, "Suprematist Art",  which contains lots of examples of the group's artwork as well as more detail on what they stood for and where they came from.

Who is "The Digital Modernist" ?

Who, you might be wondering is this self styled Digital Modernist ? Well there is a summary in the "About" page, but here is some of the background.

I cannot DO Art ! How do I know ? Well my Art teacher at school told me. That was aged 11.A lesson you never forget. Presumably he thought his job was to work only with those who were already artists ? Who knows ? Certainly not the student teacher who came in to do a lesson on "Pop Art". It fascinated me like none of the Classical Art the teacher had shown us week after week. Shame he had to spoil it by telling the student "Thank you - and now take that nonsense back to college and throw it in the bin !". Suffice to say that this man put me off Art for decades.

I took up photography instead. I started the hard way, with chemicals in a dark room. That taught me a lot about light and how to control it. Once digital photography came along and I got into Photoshop, a whole new world opened up for me. I could use the digital tools to create Art - firstly realistic photographs, then manipulated photographs and then blank sheet images. I realised that Art was not about using a paintbrush, but was about expressing yourself.

I started to look for inspiration from a wide range of Artworks. A pattern emerged. I could not relate to classical styles at all. They represented photography clubs with their competitions and rules and I had already understood that my desire to express myself would not be met by blindly following a set of someone else's rules. I wanted to express feelings and emotions, ideas and beliefs. I was not getting anything by simply recreating a copy of nature. Everything that I liked in Art in some way related to the Modernist period from the 1870s to the 1960s. At heart I was a Modernist

What did it mean in terms of my creativity ? Well I now wanted to break the rules. I wanted to express thoughts about what was going on around me, not static snapshots. I felt strongly about things and I wanted to somehow express my feelings. Most of all I wanted to prove that Art teacher that he was WRONG.

The first piece of Modernist Art that I did was a naive attempt to create a sense of what it means to suffer from Bi-Polar, a mental health issue that has plagued my daughter all of her adult life. I later realised that I had produced an image in the style of an Abstract Expressionist.

It is now my Mission to encourage, and free, all the people who, like me, were put off Art by a blinkered conservative so called professional. I am The Digital Modernist.