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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Iconography, subjects depicted in art > Human figures depicted in art
This book analyzes the philosophical origins of dualism in
portraiture in Western culture during the Classical period, through
to contemporary modes of portraiture. Dualism - the separation of
mind from body - plays a central part in portraiture, given that it
supplies the fundamental framework for portraiture's determining
problem and justification: the visual construction of the
subjectivity of the sitter, which is invariably accounted for as
ineffable entity or spirit, that the artist magically captures.
Every artist that has engaged with portraiture has had to deal with
these issues and, therefore, with the question of being and
identity.
A new account of painting in early modern England centered on the
art and legacy of Anthony van Dyck As a courtier, figure of
fashion, and object of erotic fascination, Anthony van Dyck
(1599-1641) transformed the professional identities available to
English artists. By making his portrait sittings into a form of
courtly spectacle, Van Dyck inspired poets and playwrights at the
same time that he offended guardians of traditional hierarchies. A
self-consciously Van Dyckian lineage of artists, many of them
women, extends from his lifetime to the end of the eighteenth
century and beyond. Recovering the often surprising responses of
both writers and painters to Van Dyck's portraits, this book
provides an alternative perspective on English art's historical
self-consciousness. Built around a series of close readings of
artworks and texts ranging from poems and plays to early
biographies and studio gossip, it traces the reception of Van
Dyck's art on the part of artists like Mary Beale, William Hogarth,
and Richard and Maria Cosway to bestow a historical specificity on
the frequent claim that Van Dyck founded an English school of
portraiture. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in
British Art
Human forms can be intensely intimate or broadly universal. Here,
figurative artists use the human form as a tool to express varied
content and contemporary issues. These paintings depict our
feelings and sentiments, our sense of belonging to a larger
community in the contemporary world, while capturing the impulses
behind the range of figuration presented by today's contemporary
international artists. Portraitist Marlene Dumas presents figures
in a gritty, unsentimental manner, evoking the essence of the human
condition, while Kerry James Marshall paints the life of
African-Americans in the twentieth-century, employing recent
historical review to document the social challenges. British artist
Jenny Saville paints the figure in massive scale, combined with an
overt, never-ending interest in the pure rendering of human flesh.
Hope Gangloff paints her figures as characters, intimate friends,
and acquaintances, narrating a drama from their canvases. An
important resource for those interested in contemporary figurative
painting.
Taking inspiration from artists of the Renaissance to Rococo
periods, contemporary artist Arabella Proffer has re-imagined the
mannerist portrait with a pop surrealist twist. After researching
fashion history, heraldry, and peerage protocol, she went on to
create her own world parallel to that of old world Europe.
Concocting a family legacy -- ancestors that could belong to anyone
it has become an impulse and a passion the artist continues to
explore, adding characters and stories to her ever-growing private
empire of punks, goths, and nobility behaving badly. Included are
over 40 portraits created between 2000 and 2011, their stories,
family trees, map and more, as well as a foreword by Josh Geiser of
Creep Machine and Paper Devil.
For Japan the existence of the 20th century was announced apocalyptically by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Whatever clothes the Emperor wore that day, they were useless to him now. And no sooner had the revelation of Western civilisation been so awesomely visited upon the Rising Sun than came the 21st century, gizmoid and insensible, surreal and plastic. In Reflex, 40 urban young artists and performers realise the manifestations of modern Japan through their own unique brand of self-portraiture. Superficially many of them seem simply weird - two gay Sumo wrestlers fighting in a bathhouse, for instance, thereby subverting the parameters of traditional, male-orientated Manga culture, or amateur photography of Geishas and phallic steam trains. But they are more than that. By identifying six distinct Japanese reflexes to the 21st century, namely the Kid Reflex, Naked Reflex, Manga Reflex, Group Reflex, Amateur Reflex and the Imaged Reflex, these artists have provided, in a myriad of self-representations, the concerns of young Japan, shocking to anyone ignorant of the pressures at work in their society. The amateur auteur seeking to explain; the group methodology seeking to conform; the liberated innocence of nakedness at odds with nudity; the mass-market phenomenon of a strictured teenage audience; the professional artist and above all, the powerful Manga culture - these are bewildering and fantastic concepts, illustrated by images both sublime and confusing. Reflex is a compilation by 40 contemporary Japanese artists, professional and amateur photographers, Manga illustrators and renegade artists in Japan. It is co-edited by Mark Sanders (Senior Editor for Another Magazine), KyoichiTsuzuki (artist and editor of the award-winning Roadside Japan), and Fumiya Sawa (consultant and co-curator on the Barbican Gallery's exhibition JAM: Tokyo - London).
This title was first published in 2000: In their stunning
simplicity, George Romney's portraits of eighteenth-century gentry
and their children are among the most widely recognised creations
of his age. A rival to Reynolds and Gainsborough, Romney was born
in 1734 on the edge of the Lake District, the landscape of which
never ceased to influence his eye for composition and colour. He
moved in 1762 to London where there was an insatiable market for
portraits of the landed gentry to fill the elegant picture
galleries of their country houses. Romney's sitters included
William Beckford and Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton. An influential
figure, one of the founding fathers of neo-classicism and a
harbinger of romanticism, Romney yearned to develop his talents as
a history painter. Countless drawings bear witness to ambitious
projects on elemental themes which were rarely executed on canvas.
Richly illustrated, this is the first biography of Romney to
explore the full diversity of his oeuvre. David A. Cross portays a
complex personality, prone to melancholy, who held himself aloof
from London's Establishment and from the Royal Academy, of which
Sir Joshua Reynolds was President, and chose instead to find his
friends among that city's radical intelligentsia.
Whether you re an aspiring artist or new to the medium, seasoned
instructor and accomplished artist Nathan Fowkes makes drawing
portraits in charcoal not only accessible, but also a real
pleasure! From stocking the best supplies to using them
effectively, and composing a portrait while avoiding common
mistakes, How to Draw Portraits in Charcoal by Nathan Fowkes will
place you firmly on the path to producing the charcoal portraits
you've dreamed of creating. His easy-to-follow tips, in-depth
tutorials, and valuable exercises make this guide your first step
toward building an understanding and appreciation for every face
you draw. This handy book will equip you with the skills to capture
them in beautiful charcoal fashion."
Both an exploration of the ways in which we fashion our public
identity and a manual of modern sociability, this lively and
readable book explores the techniques we use to present ourselves
to the world: body language, tone of voice, manners, demeanor,
"personality" and personal style. Drawing on historical
commentators from Castiglione to Machiavelli, and from Marcel Mauss
to Roland Barthes, Joanne Finkelstein also looks to popular visual
culture, including Hollywood film and makeover TV, to show how it
provides blueprints for the successful construction of "persona."
Finkelstein's interest here is not in the veracity of the self -
recently dissected by critical theory - but rather in the ways in
which we style this "self," in the enduring appeal of the "new you"
and in our fascination with deception, fraudulent personalities and
impostors. She also discusses the role of fashion and of status
symbols and how advertising sells these to us in our never ending
quest for social mobility.
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