How Did Henri Michaux Influence Visual Art Creativeness?

Through the years art has been regarded as a form of communication, emotion, a feeling or expression of ideas, by which we mean a person or convey something. This idea can be captured in a painting, sculpture or even through writing, which through their expressions disclose the most characteristic form of a culture. By century to century there has been many creative persons like writer, artist, composer who contributed to development in the all creative fields. We also had so many great visual artists who create greatest arts, music and books. Pablo Picasso is one of them, who took modern art at new level. He was one of well-known artist in history .In fact, his vision and distinct creative style, some of the most innovative pieces he introduced to the art world.

Jackson Pollock was a legendary, novel, abstract expressionist who has created numerous paintings through his drip-style, action painting technique (Goodnough, 2012). Theosophical influence arose from Phillip Guston and Thomas Hart Benton, while in the early stages of the artist’s life. Muralists, such as Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera were also admired and studied by Pollock. He was captivated by the unorthodox techniques of David Alfaro Siqueiros which contributed to the abstract style of Jackson Pollock (Solomon, 1987).

Abstraction is the creation of art without representation of objects, in which the artist has total freedom of the art that they are creating. I will be using three paintings from three different time periods in order to show the development and lasting effects of abstraction in the twentieth century. The first work that I will be looking at is Foghorns by Arthur Dove. I will use this piece to show the beginning of abstraction, and how ideas of abstraction were present before the movement began. The second painting that I will be looking at is Jackson Pollock’s Lucifer. I will be using this painting as an example of the height of abstraction in the 20th century and will be discussing Pollock’s influence on abstraction. The third piece of art I will be looking at is Many Mansion by Kerry James Marshall. I will use this work to show the remnants of Pollock’s influence, and the influence of abstraction in general, on art in the later half of the century. For the development of this paper I looked at two of the course readings. The first reading that I used was The Tradition of the New by Harold Rosenberg. I used this article to show how Foghorns by Arthur Dove relates to abstraction, and to show how ideas in creation of this painting can be linked to ideas of abstract art. The second reading that I used for this paper was The Legacy of Jackson Pollock by Alan Kaprow. I used this article to gain information about

His early paintings had an unconventional, unique, and unfinished look about them. The images were known to everyone in everyday life.

While the painters after the Impressionism period were collectively called the “Post-Impressionists,” the label is quite reductive. Each artist had their own unique style, from Seurat’s pointillism to Signac’s mosaic-like divisionism, Cezanne, Émile Bernard, and others. These artists were all connected in that they were reacting to the aesthetics of Impressionism. Two of the more influential painters from this movement were Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who aimed to connect with viewers on a deeper level by access Nature’s mystery and meaning beyond its superficial, observable level. However, each artist’s approach to achieving this goal was different. In close examination of Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Paul Gauguin) and Paul Gauguin’s Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables), one may clearly see the two artists’ contrasting styles on display.

During the 1900’s there were multiple artists who made an impact in the world of art making: Henri Matisse is one of the many artists, who created lots of important artworks during his time in the 20th century. Throughout any artist's’ work, there is always an influence. Specifically for Zorah on the Terrace by Henri Matisse, there is a clear influential time period. Just from the different countries that Henri traveled to before 1911, he had the opportunity to be influenced by Early Islamic Art directly after he visited an exhibition in Moscow, Russia. In that travelling time before 1911, he also had the benefit of direct contact with the Islamic Culture in Morocco, which provided another form of inspiration for his art. With all of the places that Henri Matisse had the capability to travel to, he produced phenomenal art based off of all the influence that the artwork around the world was able to give to him just from the simple act of viewing artwork.

Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004) was a French photographer and photojournalist, working throughout his homeland of France and around the world. When looking at Cartier-Bresson's artistic practice – the physical actions, techniques and procedures used to create the work combined with the conceptual ideas, influences, meanings and beliefs – we can see an emphasis on the story behind the image rather than its formation. There is a subtle influence of composition on his works though, due to his interest in painting before he became a photographer.1 We can observe his ability to capture the decisive moment, producing a

Claude Monet was an impressionist who used and changed art conventions such as the Salon des Refusés and the world as a source of ideas to create artworks such as “Impression, Sunrise”. The impressionists of the late 1800s wanted to capture the ephemeral moment in time. The artists had a major focus with the light and colour of the moment than with the details of

Before the 19th century, artists mainly made artwork for the wealthy people and the religious groups. They were controlled by the academy and painted in a way that mainstream society recognized. Many of their paintings depicted scenes of mythology and church. However in the 19th century, industrialization brought many new technologies to ordinary people, making the impossible possible. Many artists began to create artworks to explore the concept of symbolism. Many of their subjects were daily things such as ordinary people, normal places and the things they had direct experience on. They challenged the traditional concept that artists must depict realistic worlds. Instead, they used a wide range of colors, materials and techniques to

Every artist has his or her own style of painting. Each painting tells some sort of story or has some type of personal meaning to the artist. One of the most important figures in modern art is Pablo Picasso. Not only was Pablo Picasso a genius in the field of abstract art, but he also experimented with sculpting and ceramics. Pablo Picasso has taken the world to many places with his unique style of work which is why I believe he is considered to be a genius of the 20th century.

Cimabue (1240-1302) was a master Florentine painter and mosaicist, who was a pioneer in the artistic movement towards naturalism in his time. Cimabue introduced three-dimensional designs using the Romanesque approach, with Byzantine models and medieval techniques to create his own style, which was soon enough followed by many other artists. He was born with the name of Bencivieni di Pepo, and was probably nicknamed Cimabue, or “Oxhead” because of Cima has the meaning of “head” and bue meaning “ox”, unfortunately, we know very little of his personal life, thus no one is exactly sure why he got the name Cimabue. It is a common error that he was named Giovanni, also he was not noble born as it is an error in many books.

Throughout time there has been of course many influences that have impacted the art world and have made it what it is today. However, there are some artistic movements that have had a greater impact and stand out over others. The movement that has always personally stood out to me was Ancient Egyptian art. The works that were produced for time period are interesting in terms of the lack of tools and the innovation to make these paintings, sculptures, and architecture that almost seem impossible to have been constructed. In my opinion the arts produced during the Early Dynastic through the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt are some of the most technologically advance forms that stand out over all other art forms for the time

In a ‘tradition breaking spirit’ [D’Alleva, 2012], that characterised modernist artists, early in the twentieth century, Duchamp abandoned traditional ideas and techniques, to create a new kind of ‘art’, one that the idea behind a work of art is more important that its visual realization, the ‘retinal’. The ready-mades was the product of Duchamp’s questioning what art is.

“Modern painting, breaking through old conversation, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world.”(Gropius) The birth of modernism and modern art goes back to the Industrial Revolution, a period that lasted from the 18th to the 19th century, in which rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world. Before the 19th century, artists created art pieces for wealthy people and institution places like the church where they can create art works about storytelling of religious or mythological scenes . These arts were there to instruct the viewers.However, this changed when during the 19th century many artists began to create works that were about people, places, or ideas that interested them, and of which they had direct experience. With the popularization of the idea of a subconscious mind, many artists began exploring dreams, symbolism, and personal iconography as avenues for the depiction of their subjective experiences.Challenging the notion that art must realistically depict the world, some artists experimented with the expressive use of color, non-traditional materials, and new techniques and mediums.

Art overall is created and adored by numerous amount of people for many reasons, such as amplifying shared common visual language. The word art often branches into many different movements and components. Modern art or Contemporary art is one those components; this specific genre began mainly in the 1860’s to the 1970’s. During, this time period artists began throwing aside their own beliefs in a spirit of experimentation and the bringing of new ideas. The purpose of Modern art is to beautify one’s surroundings with intrigue, its often very diverse and cannot be easily defined through a list of visual characteristics, artistic themes or cultural concern. Moreover, Modern art is often hard to understand by people because, unlike Egyptian tomb paintings or Greek sculptures, it speaks to the dramatic social, political and technological changes of the last 50-60 years, and questions many of society’s values and assumptions. Also, Modern artists known for incorporating a great deal of abstraction into their works and representational forms to convey their ideas more elaborately; Rene Magritte is one of those artists.