Painting Diaries

By: Matthew F. Cassar 

Date of visit: 1st May 

Location: Palazzo Ferreria, Republic Street, Valletta. 

The theme and message of the exhibition is of religious discrimination, prejudice and everyday morals on how we humans are meant to act. The paintings had no name as the artist had done an exercise where the viewer had to make up a name for the paintings and write it down on a piece of paper and put it in a folder hanging near the selected painting. 

I love the colour palette the artist had used with such vibrant colours and combining them together to make such colourful eye alluring paintings. The message he also sends through the paintings to the viewer is very clear about religious discrimination, bigotry etc. His use of colour and his colour combinations prompt me to make more use of my colours etc 

Spirit Of Piano

By: Ljupco Samardziski

This exhibition is with the theme of pianos, he does not like to talk about what his paintings are about etc but leaves the interpretation to the viewer to interpret as they please. I love how he abstracted the piano and also it was as if he made his paintings to look like continents on a map.I also loved the fact that he included musical papers and stuck them on like a collage. The paintings had no names near them only numbers.

Maltese Views by 19th Century British Artists

Location: Fine Arts Museum, Valletta. 

Date: 1st May 2013

This exhibition is a collection of many 18th-19th century British artists paintings which are landscape paintings depicting Valletta and the suburbs surrounding the Grand Harbour. The artists include David Roberts, J.M.W Turner, Edward Lear, Thomas Lyde Hornbrook etc. I like the way the artists used their colours and not very sombre colours due to the fact this was the time of the romantic movement. Their paintings inspire me to draw landscape paintings more often as I prefer portraits etc but a little bit of a change would be nice to be honest. 

 '' Malta from a painting'' By J.R. Carmichael 

                               ''English School'' (View of the Grand Harbour)19th Century by David Roberts

                          View of Entrance to the Grand Harbour (Storm Scene) 1961 by Thomas Lyde Hornbrook

Inquisitors Palace, Girgenti. 19th Century by ? 

Malta, 1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 

                                  A view of Marsa creek from Fort St.Angelo by Col.V. Godfrey.

Dadaism

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that had began in 1916 during World War 1 in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a reaction against World War 1, nationalism, rationalism, materialism which many thought to have brought war to Europe. Dada was influenced by many ideas and innovations such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Expressionism. Dada was quite universal with the arts ranging from performance art, poetry, photography, sculpture, paintings and collages. Dada was a powerful influence on artists in many cities which included Berlin, New York, Paris, Hanover and Cologne.  Dada's characteristics presented an interesting paradox in that they demystified artworks but still remained cryptic in some way to allow the viewer/reader to interpret the work in many ways. Dadaists portrayed people and scenes in order to create form and movement. Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer. Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dadaism. Dada had self-destructed itself when people started to accept the movement.  

Art Story, 2013. [online] Available at: <http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm>

[Accessed 28th April 2013]

Art History, 2013. About.com. [online] Available at: <http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm>

[Accessed 28th April 2013]

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert on March 30th, 1853 in Holland ( The Netherlands) and died in 1890. Van Gogh was raised by a religious family with his father being a minister/pastor. Vincent was a highly strung person and lacked self-confidence.  Between 1860 and 1880 Van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year Van Gogh traveled to Antwerp and discovered Japanese prints and purchased many of them. In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists.  Van Gogh's paintings contained a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature. In May of 1890 Van Gogh shot himself ''for the good of all''. 

Van Gogh Gallery ,2013. [online] Available at <http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html>

[Accessed 28th April 2013]

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau (New Art) was a movement that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is known by various names such as The Glasgow Style or as the Germans had called it Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was an aim at modernising design and to escape the historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists had drew inspiration from nature and geometrical forms. Art Nouveau's characteristics included organic, flowing lines- forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants - as well as geometric forms such as squares and rectangles.  

Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909 

A good example of an Art Nouveau artist would be Alphonse Mucha. The painting above was painted in Chicago in 1909 this picture depicts the American actress Maude Adams in the role of Joan of Arc. The portrait was made specifically for the one-night gala performance of the play at Harvard and was displayed as a poster for the event. Mucha also designed the costumes and sets and supervised the direction. Afterwards, at the actress' request, the painting served as the lobby poster for the Empire Theater in New York.

Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013]

The Art Story, 2013. [Online] Available at:< http://www.theartstory.org/movement-art-nouveau.htm#>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/20.33>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

The creation of photography

The first ''working camera'' was created by Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) who had lived around the time of 1000 AD invented the first pinhole camera also called the Camera Obscura. It is the effect of a lighted area seperated from a dark area with only a pin hole between them. An inverted (upside down) image of the lighted area will be produced on a flat surface in the dark area. As early as the 1400's it was documented that inserting a lens in the hole would produce a crisper, clearer image. Camera Obscura was often used by used by artists to sketch objects more quickly and ease the difficulties of depth perception. The image was allowed to be projected on a piece of paper inside a dark box and the artist would trace outlines of the projected image. 

                                       

The first photograph was made by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827 using the Camera Obscura. Niepce had created the first photograph by placing an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen  then exposing it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image, until then invisible, appeared. However, Niepce's photograph required eight hours of light exposure to create and after appearing would soon fade away.

Louis Daguerre was the first inventor of a more practical process of Photography. In 1829 he had teamed up with Joseph Nicephore Niepce to improve Niepce's process that he had developed. In 1839 after several years of experimenting and testing Daguerre developed a more convenient and much more effective method of photography and named it after himself ''The Daguerreotype''. Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.

About.com, 2013, Information on Inventors. [online] Available at: <http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

PS, 2013, Pieces of Science. [online] Available at: <http://fi.edu/pieces/watson/hist.htm>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013]