Practice Of Painting Research Articles

Identification of pigments and binders of a 17th century mural painting (Bolivia). New report on pigments associated with Andean minerals

Research on the materiality of Andean Colonial artistic heritage contributes to the knowledge on the cultural and social history of the region. In this work we present the results of an interdisciplinary and multi-analytical investigation on a mural painting of the church of Curahuara de Carangas in Bolivia. This painting has been hidden for years behind the main 18th century wooden altarpiece. Its stylistic and pictorial characteristics place it in the early 17th century (1608), while other mural paintings of the temple correspond to a second stage, by 1777. Pigments were identified by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and Raman micro-spectroscopy. The application of imaging methods not only allowed the identification and characterization of the materials but also gave information on the manufacturing technique of this mural painting. An outstanding finding in our work was the identification of a mixture of two copper minerals, atacamite [Cu2Cl(OH)3] and antlerite [Cu3SO4(OH)4], as the green pigment. Atacamite and antlerite have been separately identified in a polychrome sculpture and a mural painting, respectively, but this is the first report on their use as a mixture. Other pigments identified in the mural painting were haematite, azurite, red lead, cinnabar, gypsum, cerussite, orpiment, and carmine lake. These results, together with the identification of traces of minerals of the region, indicate the use of local materials by Andean painters from the early Colonial period. This suggests continuity in the cultural practices from pre-Hispanic times and an appropriation and reformulation of traditional European painting practices adapted to new resources. Analysis of lipid and protein materials by gas-chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC–MS) indicated the use of a secco painting technique involving the use of egg as pigment binder. Identification of animal glue suggested its use as the plaster primer. The knowledge of the materials and the painting technique of this artwork will allow the identification of similarities and differences with other mural paintings in churches of the Andean region and give useful information for conservation and preservation of this artwork.

On the way to tempera grassa: Unraveling the properties of emulsion-based paint binders

Painting technique in Europe underwent a major change in the 15th century, when the use of egg yolk as a binder in tempera painting was gradually replaced by oil paint. This transitional period probably saw the occasional use of a mixed technique called tempera grassa, in which both types of binders, egg and oil, are mixed in the form of an emulsion. In order to better understand and document this historical painting practice, this article describes the physico-chemical aspects of emulsion-based binders, prepared with egg yolk and either raw linseed oil, or linseed oil partially saponified with lead oxide. Highly stable direct emulsions can be prepared with linseed oil (raw or lead-treated) and egg yolk. Remarkably, lead-treated oil also allows the formation of stable inverse emulsions. The rheological properties of direct emulsions are driven by the oil fraction: as this parameter increases from 0 to 70 wt% oil, the emulsion changes from a viscous liquid to a viscoelastic solid, which allows its flow to be easily tuned by the painter. The impact of egg yolk on the drying mechanism of the emulsion is elucidated thanks to the combined use of NMR relaxometry and FTIR spectroscopy.

Rediscovering Gaspar de Figueroa: A Technical Examination of the Portrait of Friar Cristóbal de Torres, Archbishop of the New Kingdom of Granada

ABSTRACT Gaspar de Figueroa (c.1594-1658) was a prolific painter in seventeenth-century Santafé de Bogotá, New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia). The portrait of Cristóbal de Torres, painted in 1643, is one of the rare-signed examples of works by the artist that exist. This article focuses on the technical examination of the painting using well-established imaging techniques, fiber analysis, optical microscopy of paint sample cross-sections and SEM-EDX. The choice and handling of the materials and the painting's built up showed proficient knowledge of the craft, the appropriation and local adaptation of European painting techniques, and the collaborative character of the artist's painting practice. Emphasis is given to the color palette, which is rich in locally sourced, high-quality earths, including the unusual blue earth pigment vivianite, and red lake pigments. This paper comes at an opportune time as it coincides with the increasing art historical interest in the exhibition and research of Colonial Latin American Art. Moreover, it opens a broad avenue of research that promises to contribute to the understanding of Gaspar de Figueroa's technique, to lead to a better-established oeuvre for the artist and to a greater knowledge of the art of painting in the New Kingdom of Granada.

A Brief Discussion on the Significance of Material Mediation to Mixed Media Painting

In contemporary society, material artworks have been widely used in art and established as a new form of artistic language. The creative use of media materials has greatly expanded people's visual space. The materialization of artists' aesthetic concepts means that media materials are involved in the process of painting practice through different ways of expression, promoting the independence and connotation of painting language, and strengthening it, so that the creation of mixed media has obtained a very strong living space in today's era. In the process of artistic creation, material materials are branded with themes and need to serve artistic ideas. They not only play the role of media of artworks but also have certain artistic characteristics. Materials will show different effects in different works and the use of different artists, reflecting the artist's visual perception of the objective world and also conducive to stimulating the work's deeper meaning. This paper studies the influence of media on the creative process of painting works by changing the creative thinking mode, emotional expression, and visual perception mode of mixed media painting, and tries to summarize the meaning of material media in mixed media painting.

Indigenous image theory

Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which contains an account of the origins of painting, offered sixteenth-century European artists a gift as they struggled to advance the status of painting as an intellectual rather than a mechanical art. The Roman authority was also read by Indigenous intellectuals in New Spain; they described their autochthonous painting practice in an account written in the Nahuatl language to respond to Pliny. This article offers a new translation of their account and a careful analysis that draws on recent work by material scientists to construct an Indigenous ontology of the image, and gives a comparison to the Plinian ideal. Crucial to both accounts is the role of the shadow as it relates to the nature of representation.

The bureaucracy of freedom

When Helen Frankenthaler said ‘no rules’, everything was up for grabs: she would interrogate, disrupt or disregard conventions. While Frankenthaler had the perception to envision what she intended to make, for some artists that deterministic state of knowing can be elusive. The author reflects on Frankenthaler’s maxim ‘no rules’ and compares it to their personal experience of painting practice. This article explores the impact of a single decision on the direction and outcome of an artwork and investigates the balance between regulation and artistic intuition in the author’s painting. The article further explores the concept of artistic freedom and the paradox it presents. It suggests that many artists introduce problems or limitations to navigate the creative process. The author outlines their own artistic methodology which utilizes rules, algorithms and systems to navigate artistic decision-making and to create a dialectic tension between structure and artistic freedom.

Material Metaphor and Reflexivity in Contemporary Painting: A Practice-based Investigation

Abstract Contemporary painting is a complex practice, and artists regularly incorporate elements from different media such as photography, textile, and performance. Despite its status being diminished by different conceptual art movements, painting still has a critically important place in the artworld. This importance is largely due to painting's ability to stretch across media and make a direct appeal to the senses. In this article, an attempt is made to theorize the facility of painting to incorporate different media and its resulting reflexivity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of embodiment and phenomenological theory of metaphor provide the theoretical means to articulate reflexivity in painting. Curatorial writing about contemporary painting and case studies of young painters from India form a backdrop for the analysis of examples from the painting practice of one of the authors to demonstrate the material dynamism of painting. It is shown that this reflexivity is intimately related to the sensuous texture of materials used in the creation of the paintings under discussion. The first-person narrative of artistic process and production provides insight into the embodied process of making and manipulating media and evidence that painters can create new insights about the ontology of painting.

Overview of Materials and Techniques of Paintings by Liu Kang Made between 1927 and 1999 from the National Gallery Singapore and Liu Family Collections

This article summarises the extensive research conducted in recent years on the paintings by Liu Kang (1911–2004), a renowned modern Singaporean artist. The investigation considered 97 paintings made between 1927 and 1999 from the National Gallery Singapore and Liu family collections. While detailed results of the analytical studies were presented in a series of publications, the scope of this article comprises an overview of the artist’s preferential painting supports and pigments and an outline of the evolution of his working methods. The collected information considerably increases the knowledge about Liu Kang’s painting practice and may assist conservators in the diagnosing, treatment, dating and authentication of artworks of uncertain origin. The results demonstrate the importance of comprehensive multi-analytical studies, which combined with documentary sources and art history research, provide a full understanding of the artist’s painting practice.

BEAUTY IS…

Walter Benjamin aptly describes the dual role of photography, since its invention, saying that “photography stakes a claim to art as soon as it appears as a commodity”. Although fashion has become the subject of significant philosophical and sociological study over the past 150 years, it continues to be a taboo, or merely too lowly a subject for academic consideration – even in modern–day cultural studies. The reason is clear: fashion does not pose an argument; it entices and seduces, constantly looking for a new aesthetic paradigm that will embody the eternal polytheism of Beauty. Photographer Julia Hetta adopts many of the tools and practices of classical painting to capture the paradox and ambiguity of the concept of Beauty, which Victor Hugo likens to Death, noting that: “Death and beauty are two things profound, so of dark and azure, that one might say that they were two sisters terrible and fecund, possessing the one enigma, the one secret.” Hetta illustrates the dualism of the modernist subject with appeals to the imaginary of an insurmountable innocence and purity, as this is captured in depictions of the classical ideal; and precisely therein lies the originality of her gaze. She develops a personal style in photography, featuring strong elements of drama and theatrics. She illustrates the current, the innovative, the radical in the field of human presence and clothing, recalling the cultural deposits of times past, but also imbuing her creations with new rules that detect a subjective and complex beauty.

Michael Fried’s theatricality and the practice of painting

ABSTRACT This article is the posthumous publication of a lecture given by the artist and academic Beth Harland (1964–2019). It was originally presented at a conference on Theatricality, at Lancaster University in 2017. This paper begins by working through the arguments of Michael Fried, to situate the key terms of theatricality and absorption, before then turning to contemporary painting practice (with notable reference to the work of Tomma Abts) to advance her reading of ‘an absorptive mode of address within contemporary painting’. This article also situates Harland's own art practice.

Indelible marks: Beth Harland’s absorption

ABSTRACT The article traces Beth Harland's approach to painting practice in light of her engagement with Michael Fried's interpretation of eighteenth and nineteenth century painting and her fascination with Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. The contrast between reflection on phenomena of inner life and a painting’s audience address is explored through a reading of passages from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, Proust's Contre Sainte-Beuve and Fried's writing about theatricality and absorption. Harland’s practical and theoretical explorations of the situation and possibilities of contemporary painting, illuminated by her engagement with notions of theatricality and absorption, are then outlined. After considering Hans Belting’s views on seriality and processes of re-working, the article concludes by suggesting that Harland sought and achieved a buoyant working relationship between formational contraries, avoiding both hypostatisation and easy compromise.

How creating art sustained me during the pandemic

ABSTRACT In this paper, I describe how my painting practice restored and sustained a more coherent and vitalized sense of self during the isolation, loneliness and sense of unrealness, dislocation, and lost world order brought about by Covid. I describe how the intersubjective and physical process of painting, and the nonverbal, embodied experience of creating art re-situated me in a world that felt real and allowed me to know and reflect on emotional experiences not available verbally until represented in visual, concrete form. I present a brief clinical example to illustrate how my artistic practice during Covid decisively informed an appreciation of the importance of a co-constructed selfobject experience that recognized how essential a patient’s own affirmed creativity was for enhancing her sense of vitality, agency, and possibility of positive change.

The Application of Virtual Learning Mode in the Design of Art Design Network Interaction Platform: Based on C++ Builder

:A system development platform based on C++ BUILD is introduced in detail, and how to configure OpenCV in C++Builder environment is discussed. Finally, two application examples are given on this basis. After the analysis of new media's intervention in public art design, the interactive digital public art design and practice of new media public platform is explained in detail, from the practice of interactive digital public art design and Chinese painting in interactive digital public art design The methods and methods of public art design are analyzed from the two aspects of reference and application significance. Based on the classification framework of research methods that combines hierarchical logic, process logic and the characteristics of this field, this paper analyzes the methods used in doctoral and master thesis in the field of virtual learning community research in my country with research methods.

The specifics of attribution of paintings: the Morelli method

Attribution and the study of painting pose two important questions to researchers: the choice of methodology and terminology used in describing and highlighting the characteristics of a work of art. "Visual research" as an integrated approach to the problems of reception and creativity forms a system of stable principles of analysis of the monument, focused on the study of the vision and complex extraverbal aspects of the existence of the subject in the historical and cultural space. The analysis of painting involves an integrated approach based on the study of technique and material, the features of shaping and means of artistic expression, iconography and semantics, the creative method of the master and the consumer's reaction, the role in the context of everyday culture and the principles of reception in a synchronous and diachronic cut.In the 19th century, the Italian art critic Giovanni Morelli made a significant contribution to the theory and practice of painting by outstanding masters of the Renaissance. Methods based on deep knowledge in the field of human anatomy and the analysis of the artist's professional skills have influenced not only the history of art, but also the development of criminology, criminology, psychoanalytic theory and psychotherapeutic practice. This article analyzes the method of Giovanni Morelli, which is adapted not only to the needs of attribution, but is also applicable to forensic tasks requiring the analysis of human skills and habits, as well as the identification or attribution of works of art.

Observations on Selected Aspects of Liu Kang’s Painting Practice

This article gathers, for the first time, some intriguing technical features of Liu Kang’s painting practice, which spans seven decades. These features encompass retouching, alteration as well as the painting over of rejected compositions and painting on the reverse sides of earlier artworks. As Liu Kang (1 91 1–2004) did not discuss the technical details of his artistic process, an exploration of these aspects of the artist’s expression helps us understand the motivation behind his unconventional decisions. The paint layers were characterised through imaging methods like visible light (VIS), ultraviolet fluorescence (UVF), near-infrared (NIR), reflectance transformation imaging (RTI), digital optical microscopy (DOM) and X-ray radiography (XRR). The technical analyses were additionally supplemented with archival sources. The results showed that some aspects of the artist’s painting practice may distort the provenance of the paintings, impact dating, visual interpretation of his painting technique and style, as well as future conservation and display decisions. The presented case studies discuss the influence of Liu Kang’s unconventional painting approaches on the perception and interpretation of his artworks. Additionally, some hidden alterations and entirely new compositions were revealed for the first time and presented here, adding to growing knowledge about the artist’s painting technique. Moreover, universal aesthetical and ethical considerations were discussed in the context of the conservation and display approach to the artist’s retouching work and double-sided paintings. Besides, this research promotes a need for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of Liu Kang’s painting practice and coherent guidelines to ensure proper presentation of his artworks and to prevent misinterpretation of his technique and artistic outcomes.

UPAYA PENINGKATAN KREATIVITAS ANAK DI SD NEGERI KARANGPUCUNG 1 DENGAN PELATIHAN SENI DAN BUDAYA

Early childhood has a high curiosity, so attention is needed that is not only pursuing achievement, but learning orientation that develops attitudes and interest in learning and stimulates various potentials and basic abilities of children. Therefore the design of painting activities will be the right choice to be used for creativity during this covid pandemic. This PKM painting activity was carried out at the Cimone Orphan House in Tangerang with presentation of the material and then continued with painting practice. The target of this service program is the elementary and junior high school level as many as 15 (fifteen) people. The implementation was carried out face-to-face (on the spot training) which began with observation and coordination with the management of the orphanage related to the availability of places, the readiness of the orphans and administrative licensing arrangements with the administrators of the orphanage. The method used in carrying out PKM activities is to increase children's creativity, showing examples of pots that you want to decorate / pictures using Microsoft PowerPoint in the form of pictures, playing games with orphans, and asking questions / quizzes. The results of the service to students increase knowledge, insight and creativity of orphans.

Graffiti – eyeful art or eyesore vandalism

In this article I am aiming on define Graffiti and unfolding the knot of confusion that whether it is eyeful art or eyesore vandalism. In layman language we can say that graffiti isan exercise of unlawfulpainting or writing any openly visual surfaces, butthis practice of marking or painting is not new infact it dates back to the beginning of society or civilization.Graffiti in its recent form is a shared or community artistic phenomenon that begun in 60s in Philadelphia and New York, and now has full-fledged spread into an international lobby. If we ever notice or focus on graffiti on the road sidesor on publicly visible surfaces,what kind of feeling do you get? either you feel amazed and admire the beauty of the art work or you will feel annoyed, discourage the work and consider it as vandalism, but the fact is that the definition of art is different according to different person(the beauty is in the eye of the viewer) and another fact is that a decent art work is rarely discouraged by anyone.

Minor matters of major importance:1 On the vicissitudes of minor painting

This introductory editorial surveys a range of minor painting practices. It considers how minor painting might be defined, not in order to fix its designation, but to assess its implications, especially in relation to institutional authority, art’s historicity, art education and the authorial subject. There are discussions of Jim Shaw, Henry Darger, contributors to the current issue and others. These lead on to questions about art education. Rather than propose resolutions, the text instead traces the frictions between minor painting and institutional renderings of art education. The text emphasizes the ultimate inability of minor painting to escape or resist the institutional framing of painting. In reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Minor Literature book, the voice of community, rather than the individual subject, becomes important. Taking up the figure of community, the essay ends by placing the painter Norman Lewis in relation to a minor intervention within the milieu of Abstract Expressionism.

Gendun Chopel: Tibet's First Modern Artist

Gendun Chopel: Tibet's First Modern Artist

Italian Influence in a Portuguese Mannerist Painting (Part II): A Matter of Image or a Matter of Technique?

ABSTRACT The panel depicting The Descent from the Cross, painted in 1620 by the Portuguese artist Pedro Nunes (1586-1637), shows a clear Italian formal influence. The painter’s colour palette was identified in another paper. The panel is now investigated from a technical perspective, discussing aspects related to the support, preparatory system, and paint layer build-up. The research is based on the visual inspection of the painting’s surface with complementary imaging techniques and on the analysis of the materials from the preparatory layers with microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. The characterisation of the painting technique revealed an ingenious use of colour that is based on the understanding of the optical and handling properties of oil paint. This knowledge is illustrated by the painter’s ability to exploit and combine a range of different oil painting techniques, such as glazing, scumbling, wet-in-wet, or wet-in-dry painting; by his formulation of a wide variety of pigment mixtures; and by his use of diverse and often complex layering systems - some quite unconventional for Portuguese painting practice. The material and technical originality of this painting clearly reflects Nunes’ international Roman experience and his desire to update the Portuguese mainstream practice of his time.