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Painting is defined as the practice of applying paint, pigment, color
or other medium to a surface (support base). In art, the
term describes both the act and the result, which is called a
painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as
walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete.
Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern paintings
incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of
paper.
Painting is a mode of expression, and the forms are numerous.
Drawing, composition or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve
to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the
practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as
in a still life or
landscape painting), photographic,
abstract, be
loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in
nature.
A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art
is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; examples of this kind of
painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on
pottery to
Biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and
ceiling of
The Sistine Chapel, to scenes from the life of Buddha or
other scenes of eastern religious origin.
Overview
What enables painting is the perception and representation of
intensity. Every point in space has different intensity, which can
be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray
shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by
juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by using just
color (of
the same intensity) one can only represent symbolic shapes. Thus,
the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means,
such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization
(perspective), and symbols. For example, a painter perceives that a
particular white wall has different intensity at each point, due to
shades and reflections from nearby objects, but ideally, a white
wall is still a white wall in pitch darkness. In technical drawing,
thickness of line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an
object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by
painters.
Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are
of music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable
psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to
the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the
East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and
scientists, including Goethe,
Kandinsky, Newton, have written their
own color theory. Moreover the use of language is only a
generalization for a color equivalent. The word "red", for example,
can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the visible
spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different
colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in
music, such as C or C♯ in music. For a painter, color is not simply
divided into basic and derived (complementary or mixed) colors
(like, red, blue, green, brown, etc.). Painters deal practically
with pigments, so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues:
phtalocyan, Paris blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on.
Psychological, symbolical meanings of color are not strictly
speaking means of painting. Colors only add to the potential,
derived context of meanings, and because of this the perception of a
painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite
clear—sound in music (like "C") is analogous to light in painting,
"shades" to dynamics, and coloration is to painting as specific
timbre of musical instruments to music—though these do not
necessarily form a melody, but can add different contexts to it.
Rhythm is
important in painting as well as in music. Rhythm is basically a
pause incorporated into a body (sequence). This pause allows
creative force to intervene and add new creations—form, melody,
coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is
of crucial importance in the given work of art and it directly
affects the esthetical value of that work. This is because the
esthetical value is functionally dependent, i.e. the freedom (of
movement) of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy,
in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes
to the esthetical value.
Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably
to include, for example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not
painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate
different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their
texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm
Kiefer. (There is a growing community of artists who use computers
to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe
Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be
printed onto traditional canvas if required.)
In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the mid to late
19th century, photographic processes improved and, as it became more
widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an
accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art
movements into the 20th century where the Renaissance view of the
world was steadily eroded, through Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Dadaism.
Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of
stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the
same time.
Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value
of craft and documentation in favor of concept; this led some in the
1960s to
say that painting, as a serious art form, was dead. This
has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to
practice painting either as whole or part of their work. The
vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century belies the
premature declarations of its demise. In an epoch characterized by
the idea of pluralism, there is no consensus as to a representative
style of the age. Important works of art continue to be made in a
wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments, the marketplace
being left to judge merit.
Among the continuing and current directions in painting at the
beginning of the 21st century are Monochrome painting, Hard-edge
painting,
Geometric abstraction, Appropriation, Hyperrealism,
Photorealism, Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop
Art, Op Art,
Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting,
Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage
painting, Computer art painting, Postmodern painting, Neo-Dada
painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting,
traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait painting,
and paint-on-glass animation.
History of painting
The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by
some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted
using red ochre and black pigment and show
horses,
rhinoceros,
lions,
buffalo,
mammoth or
humans often hunting. However the earliest evidence of
painting has been discovered in two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in
northern
Australia. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in
France,
Spain,
Portugal,
China,
Australia,
India,
etc.
In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known
media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the
East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media with
equally rich and complex traditions.
Painting media
Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the
pigment is suspended or embedded in, which determines the general working
characteristics of the paint, such as viscosity, miscibility, solubility,
drying time, etc.
Examples include:
Acrylic
Dry pastel
Enamel paint
Encaustic (wax)
Fresco
Gouache
Ink |
Light
Oil
Oil pastel
Spray paint (Graffiti)
Tempera
Water miscible oil paints
Watercolor |
Painting styles
'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual
elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's work. It
can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with.
This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved
with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the
painter. The word 'style' in the latter sense has fallen out of favor in
academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be
used in popular contexts. Such movements or classifications include the
following:
Western styles
Eastern styles
Painting idioms include:
Allegory
Bodegón
Body painting
Botanical
Figure painting
Illustration
Industrial
Landscape
Portrait
Still life
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