With Halloween festivities in full throttle and the weather getting colder, the days shorter and the nights darker, life has been feeling rather spooky. This week, we’re looking back at some gloomy, supernatural and spine-tinglingly scary pieces of art. From devils and deathsongs to screams and skeletons, it’s time to get your dark art history up to speed… just keep…
Art History
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Abstract Art is art that is non-representational and does not intend to portray an accurate representation of visual reality. Artists who work with abstraction often employ colour, form and mark-making in order to achieve the desired effect and to convey a message, emotion or their own perception of reality. Circus, Daniela SCHWEINSBERG, 2016, Acrylic on Paper, 70 x 100 cm…
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Acrylic painting is a relatively young medium, as it emerged in the mid-20th century. It was first made commercially available in the 1960s, and while it does not have the same long history as watercolour or oil painting, it was instantly incredibly popular. Its versatility means that it was presented as an alternative to traditional oil painting, and it opened…
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Contemporary art resists easy definition, due to the incredible variety of art it encompasses. It is broadly defined as the art of today, created during the late 20th and early 21st century. It is characterised by its global nature, the diversity of cultures it explores, and the influence of technology and the digital age. Contemporary art involves experimental and dynamic…
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Graffiti art is when text and images are drawn or spray painted onto walls and surfaces, usually in urban, public places and normally without permission. The notion of drawing words and images on to walls is not a modern one and can be dated back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Graffiti art was born in 1970s New York,…
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Landscape painting is a highly popular genre in Western art, with a long and established tradition. Landscapes typically portray a variety of natural scenes, including mountains, rivers, valleys, forests, fields, and coasts. This definition was expanded in the 20th century to include urban and industrial landscapes. Landscape painters are inspired by the world around them, and while landscape paintings are…
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Oil painting is arguably one of the best known and most used painting mediums. Oil paint consists of suspending various pigments in a drying oil that acts as the binder. A variety of oils can be used as the binding agent, such as linseed oil or safflower oil. Each oil lends a different property to the quality of the paint…
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Pop Art is a movement that emerged in 1950s Britain and exploded into enormous and everlasting success in 1960s America. Pop art employed a new, bold aesthetic inspired by popular culture such as advertising, comic books, and was a celebration of the mundane and the kitsch. The movement, as a reflection of the times, was about multiples and mass reproduction,…
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Portraiture is a genre of painting that focuses on depicting a human subject. Historically, portraits have often been commissioned and portray either public or private figures, which gives them importance as historical records; they recorded the past before the advent of photography. They are generally inspired by admiration for the subject, who is often the muse of the artist. While…
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Realism is traditionally used to describe the 19th century movement that used everyday scenes and people as the subject and painted them in a naturalistic style. The term is also used to describe works of art that are painted so realistically that they resemble a photograph. Realism as an artistic movement first began in France in the early 1850s, after…
