Critique: January 26, 2012
10 Finished Pieces — Breadth or Concentration
Welcome to Ms. Haas's Studio Art Class. This is where you will find information about your classes including AP Portfolio. You will be uploading your artwork and commenting on your own work and critiquing the work of others including work from art history. All critiques should be constructive.
"Tangerine Tango", Pantone's official Color of the Year for 2012.
This deep-red orange hue welcomes the warmth and energy we need to make this new year an amazing one!“Flaming June” was a well-loved painting long before Pantone decided that tangerine was the “color of the year,” but we’ll take any excuse to bring this masterpiece back to the fore!
 |
Flaming June, c.1895 By Frederic Leighton |
Though the artist, Frederic Leighton, was only loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, “Flaming June,” is one of the paintings most often associated with the movement. Leighton (1830 – 1896) was born to a family in the import and export business in Scarborough, England. He was educated in London, studied art in Italy, and then moved to Paris in 1855. While there, he associated with artists like Delacroix, Ingres, and Millet, and adopted romantic and realist touches in his works.
It wasn’t until 1860, when he moved to London, that he became associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. The brotherhood had been founded in 1848, and their aim was to reject the Classical poses and elegant compositions of the Mannerist movement, and to work toward expressing genuine ideas, study nature directly, and depict the things they deemed to be “serious” or “heartfelt.” Leighton’s subjects were mostly historical, biblical, and classical, and the woman in this print alludes to the nymphs and naiads of classical Greek art, while the oleander branch in the top right alludes to the link between sleep and death.
Frida Kahlo
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) was renowned for her self-portraits, and developed a style that infused Mexican and Amerindian cultural elements with surrealism and symbolism. As the above quotation implies, Kahlo experienced many... hardships in her life. At the age of six she contracted polio, which left her right leg physically deformed; as a teenager, she was in a trolley accident that left her lifelong back problems. Kahlo spent significant time in the hospital, and was notoriously irritable. However, her temperamental issues made her a fierce opponent when defending her ideologies.
The beliefs to which Kahlo held fast were the motivations of the Mexican Revolution, and Trotsky’s communist ideal—the latter had an effect on Kahlo seeing herself as an outsider, and the former had a strong influence on her aesthetic. Characterized by populist and agrarianist movements, the Mexican Revolution piqued Kahlo’s interest in the preservation of pre-Columbian and Mexican peasant traditions. For many posthumous years, she was better known as “Diego Rivera’s wife” than for her painting. But in the 1980s, Kahlo’s place in Mexican art history was recognized, and her work regained attention for its celebration of Mexican traditions.
Her work has also been described as "surrealist", and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb".[7]
Her volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera and lifelong health problems, many of which derived from the accident she experienced as a teenager are represented in her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."
One of the most influential and innovative artists of the 20th century,
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 – 1986) is best known for the enormous close-ups
of flowers which make up a significant percentage of her work. O’Keefe
believed that true artist...ic
meaning was only achieved through selection, elimination, and emphasis
of specific details; her fantastically magnified flowers dominate the
canvas. “Black and Purple Petunias”, painted in 1925, was among the
first of O’Keefe’s trademark series of flower paintings. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists were well known or highly celebrated. Within a decade, she had distinguished herself as one of America's most important modern artists, a position she maintained throughout her life. As a result, O’Keeffe not only carved out a significant place for women painters in an area of the American art community that had been exclusive to and is still dominated by men, but she also became one of America’s most celebrated cultural icons well before her death at age 98 in 1986.
Her abstract imagery of the 1910s and early 1920s is among the most innovative of any work produced in the period by American artists. She revolutionized the tradition of flower painting in the 1920s by making large-format paintings of enlarged blossoms, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens.
Links to AP Portfolio Samples
Click on the following links to see exemplary pieces created by former AP Studio Art students. Look at level of the work, read the rational for the score, and for the concentration read the Student Commentary. The work was scored according to the scoring rubric, which you should have. If you don't have it you will find the scoring criteria on the blog page that corresponds with the type of portfolio you are creating.
Scroll down to find links to examples of Quality, Concentration and Breadth then click on samples from different years.
2D Design Portfolio:
Drawing Portfolio:
3D Design Portfolio:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)