Michelangelo Carving

The Famous Michelangelo was many things a sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who influenced the development of western art. He was considered to be the best artist of his life time. He was born march 6, 1475 in Caprese, Tuscany. At the age of six his mother died so Michelangelo lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in Settigano. He began to sculpt all kinds of things from his wooden crucifix for the Florentine church to the huge statue of Hercules he sent to France. His most known Carving is the Statue of David. Carving is the cutting of material such as stone or wood to form a figure or design. The 17 foot statue of David was created to symbolize the freedom of Florentine during the 1500. The statue was created out of a marble block from the quarries at Carrara. Michelangelo displayed to the world that he was a sculptor with extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. My favorite part about the piece is all the detail put into it. The challenges he had to face when carving the hair and the face had to be difficult. Even the slightest whack of the chisel and mallet can destroy a whole sculpture instantly. This sculpture has gone down in history as the greatest of all time.

Andy Goldsworthy Earth Art

Andy Goldsworthy is a British Sculptor, photographer and environmentalist. He was born in Cheshire, England where he worked on his family farm everyday as a laborer. He would turn his farm task into making sculptures out of nature. Andy felt that working on the farm was his motivation to do earth art. Earth art emerged in the United States in the late 1960s early 1970. Earth art is art of altering the natural environment around you to create earthworks. People use the landscape around them and raw materials to create magnificence forms of art. In this imagine of Goldsworthy earth art he bends back two trees and intertwines each individual branch until there linked together. I like this imagine because it creates a door or a tunnel along the path way. Once you cross through that circular hole you are in the thick brush of Mother Nature. Andy Goldsworthy knows how to create a work of art out of nothing.

Robert Arneson Modeling

Robert Arneson was born in Benicia California and at a young age he was a cartoonist for the local newspaper. Later in life he went on to study at California College of the arts and received his MFA in 1958. Robert is a peculiar artist; he started a movement called funk art. His work interest me because it’s so different, he creates sculpture made out of ceramics of him. The majority of the sculptures I found were all of him some of just his head and other were a full body sculpture. Modeling art is making a model from which a work of art is to be executed; the formation of a work of art from some plastic material, expression or indication of a solid form. This sculpture is called self-portrait in bronze. He creates a sculpture of his head and made fifteen different variation of it. He uses bronze to symbolize durability and he made the faces look desperate maybe signifying his death was near. He stacks the heads on top of each other to show all the adversity and challenges he has face throughout life. Robert Arneson was an unusual man but he started a new wave of art.

Henri Cartier Bresson Decisive Moment

Henri Carter Bresson was a French photographer who was considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. Bresson was born in Chaneteloup-en-Brie France and was the oldest of five children. His family was very wealthy and owned a textile manufacturer. Originally Henri tried to learn music but was unsuccessful so his uncle Louis introduced him to oil painting. He was fascinated of art but when his uncle died in World War I; his painting lesson got cut short.  Eventually he moved on to photography. He was an early adopter of the 35mm format and the master of candid photography; he influenced the development of street photography to future generation.  This photograph taken in Hyères, France is a great example of Decisive Moment. Decisive Moment happens when the action reaches and apex, when a subject portrays the perfect expression, for example when the animal conveys a special look or a light becomes its most dramatic. In this image we see Henri capture the imagine at exactly the right time. The bike is flying by and right before he passes the wall Henri gets the shot. I like how the stair way is so perfectly visible and the bike rider is a little blurrier. It could represent that walking is much slower than riding your bike to your destination every day. Henri Bresson was the pioneer of Decisive moment photography.

Annie Liebovitz Portrait Photography

Annie Liebovitz was born in Waterbury Connecticut; were she was the third child out of six. She enjoyed art and music at a young age due to her father’s military duties which kept them in the Philippians for a big portion of her life. When she returned to the United States she started to blossom an became the chief photographer of Rolling stones magazines. She was well known for her Portrait Photography which is the capture by means of photography of the likeness of a person or a small group of people, in which the face and expression is predominant. Usually the objective is to display the likeness, personality and even the mood of the subject. In this portrait of the famous punk rock star Iggy Pop she displays him with his shirt off. Maybe representing that, even though he may look old he is still young in his heart. he still has sign of a six pack when you look at the picture to the left but when he turns around you see many wrinkles on his lower back. when you look at his depressing face is could symbolize that rock stars party like their kids and one day it catches up with to them.  I really like Liebovitz work because she really knows how to capture emotion.

Jerry Uelsmann's Manipulated Photography

Jerry Uelsmanns was born in Detroit, Michigan and at a young age he was fascinated by photography. He believed that through photography he could exist outside of himself, to live in a world captured through the lens. He went on to get his degree at Rochester Institute of Technology and then became a professor of photography at the University of Florida. Manipulated photography is the application of imagine editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception. The Unique thing about Jerry is that in a time when digital photography and Photoshop did not exist he was still able to create images that seemed to come from scenes in your dream. He spent countless hours in the dark room to create these images. In this photograph called Tree House he use two different imagines and combines them to make a beautiful piece. He’s trying to symbolize that where you live and grow up is the roots in your life. The area you grow up in helps build character and make you who you are, that’s why we’re all different. Jerry always liked to stress the idea that photography is not an art that can be contained; it can be pushed as far as your dreams will go.

Diego Rivera Fresco

Rivera was descended from Spanish nobility on his dad side. From the age of ten Rivera studied art at the academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. In the summer of 1911 he left for Paris and did not return until 1921 after his return he turned away from cubism back ground. He soon went to Detroit and began doing fresco paintings. Fresco paintings are paintings on plaster, either dry or wet. Back then the paint is an independent layer separate from the plaster proper. Latter on them did it by chemically bounding the plaster and is integral to the wall. Fresco paintings are usually done on a large scale. In this piece done by Diego he paints all different class of people working together. On the bottom you have the upper class people the business men look at blue prints. On the top you have lower class blue collar workers doing the steal. He’s symbolizing that everyone has to work together to create the finish product.