Whether you’re a professional artist or a total amateur, everybody knows at least a little bit about art. At the very least, most people learnt a little bit about art during their schooling career, and most likely attempted to create artworks of their own. Of course, some of us would’ve been more successful than others!
The world of acting, music and theatre may appear to many as a wonderland of fun and creativity. Just imagine being able to sing, dance and act for a living – if you’re a performer at heart, it doesn’t get much better than that.
One of the best ways of visiting and appreciating famous artworks is by stopping by a museum for a few hours. Sure, it might be cheaper and easier to simply stay at home and look at the same art through a website, but this doesn’t provide the same sense of presence as seeing the art right in front of your eyes. This is especially true with artists that make use of art styles that have some depth to them – Vincent Van Gogh is a prime example of this.
Jackson Pollock was a world-famous US painter who was a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, which is an art movement characterised by the free-associative gestures in paint. This style is also sometimes referred to as “action painting”.
As perhaps the oldest form of creative expression in human history, performance art – in its modern format – is a comparatively new addition to the world of western fine arts. Its path has been winding – in the context of modern and contemporary art history – until its ultimate acceptance. Now performance art has a leading status. From early developers of the form to current mould-breakers, we explore some of the top players in the constant evolution of this so very human form of expression.
Antoni Gaudí was a native of Catalonia, Spain, and a supporter of Catalan modernism, a style closely associated with Art Nouveau, before creating his own unique style. His buildings are known around the world, although the most famous is probably La Basílica de la Sagrada Família, which is still under construction. It will be completed in 2026.
There have been a range of different myths and superstitions that have plagued theatre for many years. Most stemming from the olden days of theatre, it’s surprising to see that some of these myths are still alive and well.
Thespians can be surprisingly superstitious folk, this could be as they were trained to be that way, or just a clutch for anything that could prevent mishaps on stage. Regardless of why, there are some pretty strange superstitions which are ongoing until today.
From an early age, Salvador Dalí was urged to practise his art. He would ultimately go on to study at an academy in Madrid, Spain. In the 20s, Dali went to Paris and started interacting with artists such as Pablo Picasso, René Magritte as well as Miró. This led to Dalí’s first Surrealist phase.
Landscape painting is one of the oldest art movements in the world, as popular as it is today as it was thousands of years ago without ancient ancestors. The focus of a landscape painting is to try and accurately capture a specific scene as closely as possible. The scenes and subjects in question are almost always based on natural settings, often consisting of mountain ranges, forests, vistas, and other similar scenes.
While the phrases ‘performance’ as well as ‘performance art’ only became used widely in the 70s, the history of performance in terms of the visual arts is frequently traced back to futurist productions in addition to dada cabarets in the 1910s.