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Understanding Visual ArtsAs we continue our study of American Indian art by looking at paintings and other pieces of “contemporary art” by American Indian artists, you should remember to ask yourself not only “What is it?” but also more importantly “What effect does it have on me?” In other words, the subject matter or recognizable object is only one factor of the work of art: “the expressive content” or the combined effect of subject matter plus the meaning, the feeling or the image and (sometimes) the purpose that the artist is trying to convey is the more important experience we should try to be aware of and recognize. The effect a work produces on us (whether calm, excitement, joy, pity, etc.) depends on many things: the colors used, the proportion and harmony in the picture, light vs. dark tones, degree if movement, and above all the “composition” or relation of parts to the whole. “Contemporary visual art” as the term is used in this class refers to art produced on and in non-traditional media. This means to your Instructor paper, bought or commercial paints, poured sculptures, etc.
Types of Visual Arts
There are four main types of visual arts: drawing, painting, sculpture and the graphic arts. Within each of these there are several types—each quite distinctive.
Drawing can be either in pen or pencil for exact portrayals or in charcoals or pastels (sticks of finely ground pigment held together with weak glue) for a broader or softer treatment: e.g., in portraits.
Paintings are usually done in watercolors, tempera, acrylics or oils. Watercolors are done on fine linen paper. Careful planning and exact mixing of color is necessary because once the paint hits the paper it is permanent. Tempera is just pigment ground in water and mixed either with egg, gum or perhaps some oil. It is a centuries old medium that requires many meticulous strokes to achieve the colors and shading desired. When dry it becomes very hard and permanent. Acrylic is simply a liquid plastic in which pigment is mixed. Acrylic paintings usually have a certain luminescent quality to them. Oils are pigments mixed with linseed or other oil. Applied on linen or cotton canvas, it is easily manipulated and allows one stroke to fuse with another. The resulting colors are usually very rich.
The art of sculpture uses three different techniques: carving, modeling or construction.
•Carving is done in stone or wood with the unwanted parts of the original block cut away and the intended form remaining. Great care with the tools (chisels, hammers, picks, etc.) is required since it is impossible to replace a section once it has been cut away.
•Modeling involves building up and modifying the desired form using malleable material such as clay or wax. The tools are primarily the hands plus some wooden and metal modeling tools. Once the model is made it can be either fired if made of clay and hence it becomes a piece of pottery, porcelain or terra cotta; or the model can be used to form a cast of plaster of paris into which molten bronze or other metal is poured to create the piece.
•Construction is a modern technique that uses different objects or parts of objects and assembles them into a new form.
Graphic Arts
Unlike drawing or painting, where the artist applies the ink or pigment directly on the paper or canvas, prints made by the graphic artist involve a medium which the artist creates and which in turn produces the image on paper. The main types of graphic art are: woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithographs and serigraphs.
••In the woodcut the artist blocks out the unwanted portions of a block of wood, inks the parts and lines that remain, and then applies it to paper.
••In the engraving process the artist cuts his image into metal (usually copper) and the ink is put into the hollows or grooves of the metal plate (and the plate is wiped clean.) Then with great pressure dampened paper is forced into the ink-filled hollows to make the print.
••In the etching process acid is used to produce the grooves in the metal. First the plate is covered with an acid-resistant waxy substance in which the artist makes his/her design and thereby exposes the metal underneath to the action of the acid. As in the engraving technique the paper is forced into the ink-filled grooves.
••In the lithograph technique a drawing is made on smoothed limestone with a pencil or crayon containing grease or fatty acids which interact with the lime of the stone so the image will receive printing ink, which then adheres to the paper. In each of these techniques the design on the medium is done in reverse.
••Finally in the serigraph or silkscreen process a design is cut in a thin sheet of film that is applied to a fine-meshed screen of silk cloth stretched over a frame. The screen is placed over the material to be printed and the pigment worked through the design by means of a rubber squeegee. Several (often dozens) of screens are used to produce prints in color, one for each color. With the serigraph and etching techniques the earlier prints are often slightly more exact and sharper than the later ones. The number of the printing is usually indicated in the margin: 23/100 means the 23rd impression in a total edition (or number of) 100.
••Also related to printmaking are monotypes, in which the artist applies oil paint or ink on metal or glass surface and then transfers the image to paper through a press. The monotype is most often characterized by a certain spontaneity and freedom and—as its name implies—it is a one of a kind piece rather than a multiple as in the other graphic arts.
••A technique that is halfway between the drawing and engraving processes is that of the scratch board, which is a board with black on the outside and white beneath into which the artist engraves the image. The deeper the line the whiter it becomes, with the resulting image one of white on black with intermediate tones of gray.
••The currently popular “limited edition prints” and posters are not really prints in the traditional sense, but are made commercially from a plate or medium with the designs made photographically rather than by hand. Posters are usually reproduced in very large quantities. “Limited-edition prints” or offset lithographic are most often done on fine quality paper and occasionally signed by the artist who did the original.
••The art of photography combines the vision of the photographer with the scene encountered. In this unique union of the subjective and objective, the photographer is conscious of composition, contrast, light, framing of the main object, etc. to produce the most effective image possible.
Artistic Traditions
These are the artistic traditions we can expect to see in contemporary American Indian artists’ works: Realism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Abstractionism.
REALISM: The realistic tradition with its fidelity to nature and real life is characterized by the artist’s portrayal of an accurate representation of what he/she sees around him/her, whether it is a landscape, an adobe, a cowboy or an Indian. The artist does not try to improve on or change nature, although s/he might try to convey his/her interpretation through the use of color, shading, harmony, degree of movement, etc.
IMPRESSIONISM: In Impressionism the artist aims at capturing a momentary glimpse of a subject. The emphasis is on color; form and space are conveyed through contrasts of pure color rather than shading (little or no black is used). Paint is applied in short strokes of pure color, often with a spatula rather than a brush.
EXPRESSIONISM: In Expressionism the stress is on the artist’s emotional attitude. Again color, sometimes soft and gentle, often bright and even violent, is of pure importance. The works of the Expressionists are basically representational but are characterized by simplicity, with many elements found in nature left out.
ABSTRACTIONISM: In an abstract painting or piece of sculpture the emphasis is on the artist’s self-expression and on the organization of line, form, space and color. In this non-representational form of art, which is “abstracted” from reality, we often find natural forms reduced to basic shapes: e.g., cube, square sphere, etc.
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