Symbolism

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the movement had its roots in Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) by Charles Baudelaire. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire greatly admired and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stephane Mallarme and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and '70s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated through a series of manifestoes and attracted a generation of writers. The label "symbolist" itself comes from the critic Jean Moreas, who coined it in order to distinguish the symbolists from the related decadent movement in literature and art.

Distinct from, but related to, the movement in literature, symbolism in art represents an outgrowth of the darker, gothic side of Romanticism, but where Romanticism was impetuous and rebellious, symbolist art was static and hieratic.

Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic movements which attempted to capture reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. These movements invited a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams, the path to symbolism began with that reaction. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before moving in the direction of symbolism, for Huysmans, this change reflected his awakening interest in religion and spirituality. On the other hand, certain of the characteristic subjects of the decadents reflect naturalist interest in sexuality and sordid subjects, but in their case this was mixed with a stiff dose of Byronic Romanticism and the world-weariness characteristic of the fin de siecle.

Symbolism in literature is distinct from symbolism in art although the two overlapped on a number of points. In painting, symbolism was a continuation of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, which included such artists as Caspar David Friedrich, Fernand Khnopff and John Henry Fuseli and it was even more closely aligned with the self-consciously dark and private decadent movement.

There were several rather dissimilar groups of symbolist painters and visual artists, which included Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edvard Munch, Felicien Rops, and Jan Toorop. Symbolism in painting had an even larger geographical reach than symbolism in poetry, reaching Mikhail Vrubel, Nicholas Roerich, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Martiros Saryan, Mikhail Nesterov, Leon Bakst in Russia, as well as Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Elihu Vedder, Remedios Varo, Morris Graves, David Chetlahe Paladin, and Elle Nicolai in the United States. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a symbolist in sculpture.

The symbolist painters mined mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul, seeking evocative paintings that brought to mind a static world of silence. The symbols used in symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the contemporary Art Nouveau movement and Les Nabis. In their exploration of dreamlike subjects, symbolist painters are found across centuries and cultures, as they are still today, Bernard Delvaille has described Rene Magritte's surrealism as "Symbolism plus Freud".

In the English-speaking world, the closest counterpart to symbolism was aestheticism. The pre-Raphaelites were contemporaries of the earlier symbolists, and have much in common with them. Symbolism had a significant influence on modernism, and its traces can be seen in the work of many modernist artists, including T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Conrad Aiken, Hart Crane, and William Butler Yeats in the anglophone tradition and Ruben Dario in Hispanic letters. The early poems of Guillaume Apollinaire have strong affinities with symbolism.

The cover to Aleksandr Blok's 1909 book, Theatre. Konstantin Somov's illustrations for the Russian symbolist poet display the continuity between symbolism and Art Nouveau artists such as Aubrey Beardsley.

In Romania, symbolists directly influenced by French poetry first gained influence in the 1880s, when Alexandru Macedonski reunited a group of young poets around his magazine Literatorul. Polemicizing with the established Junimea and overshadowed by the influence of Mihai Eminescu, symbolism was recovered as an inspiration during and after the 1910s, when it was voiced in the works of Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu, George Bacovia, Ion Barbu, Mateiu Caragiale and Tudor Vianu, and held in esteem by the modernist magazine Sburatorul.

The symbolist painters were an important influence on expressionism and surrealism in painting, two movements which descend directly from symbolism proper. The harlequins, paupers, and clowns of Pablo Picasso's "Blue Period" show the influence of symbolism, and especially of Puvis de Chavannes. In Belgium, symbolism penetrated so deeply that it came to be thought of as a national style: the static strangeness of painters like Rene Magritte can be seen as a direct continuation of symbolism. The work of some symbolist visual artists, such as Jan Toorop, directly impacted the curvilinear forms of Art Nouveau.

Many early motion pictures also employ symbolist visual imagery and themes in their staging, set designs, and imagery. The films of German expressionism owe a great deal to symbolist imagery. The virginal "good girls" seen in the films of D. W. Griffith, and the silent movie "bad girls" portrayed by Theda Bara, both show the continuing influence of symbolism, as do the Babylonian scenes from Griffith's Intolerance. Symbolist imagery lived on longest in horror film: as late as 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr showed the obvious influence of symbolist imagery, parts of the film resemble tableau vivant re-creations of the early paintings of Edvard Munch. Read More...

Ancient Art - Persia

Region traditionally known as Persia is now called Iran. The term ancient Persia is used to refer to the period before the advent of Islam in the 7th century A.D. The high plateau of Iran has seen the development of many cultures, all of which have added distinctive features to the many styles of Persian art and architecture.

Early works

Although earlier civilizations are known, the first archaelogical finds of artistic importance are the superb ceramics from Susa and Persepolis (c.3500 B.C.). The choice of biological subjects, simplified into patterns, may be called the formative principle of Persian art. Much of 4th-millennium Iranian art is strongly influenced by that of Mesopotamia. The 3d-millennium art of Elam, found at Sialk and Susa, also follows Mesopotamian styles, and this trend is continued in the less well-known Elam and Urartu art of the 2d millennium.

Beginning at the end of the 2nd millennium to the middle of the 1st millennium a great florescence of bronze casting occurred along the southern Caspian mountain zone and in mountainous Lorestan. Probably dated 1200-700 B.C., harness trappings, horse bits, axes, and votive objects were made in large quantities and reflected a complex animal style created by combining parts of animals and fantastic creatures in various forms.

Achaemenian period (550-330 B.C.)

A unified style emerges. Luxurious works of decorative art were produced. The Achaemenids evolved a monumental style in which relief sculpture is used as an adjunct to massive architectural complexes. Remains of great palaces reveal plans that characteristically show great columned audience halls. The style as a whole and the feeling for space and scale are distinctive.

In the sculpture is shown ordered clarity and simplicity. Heraldic stylization is subtly combined with effects of realism. Typical are the low stone reliefs and friezes executed in molded and enameled brick, a technique of Babylonian-Assyrian origin. The great care lavished on every stone detail is also found in the fine gold and silver rhytons (drinking horns), bowls, jewelry, and other objects produced by this culture.

After the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.), there was turmoil in Iran until the rise of the Parthians (c.250 B.C.). Theirs is essentially a crude art, synthesizing Hellenistic motifs with Iranian forms.

Sassanian Period (A.D. 224 - 651)
Of far greater artistic importance is the the Sassanian art. Adapting and expanding previous styles and techniques, they rebuilt the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon. There a great palace with a huge barrel vault was constructed of rubble and brick. Sassanid architecture is decorated with carved stone or stucco reliefs and makes use of colorful stone mosaics.

Sassanian metalwork was highly developed, the most usual objects being shallow silver cups and large bronze ewers, engraved and worked in repoussé. The commonest themes were court scenes, hunters, animals, birds, and stylized plants. The largest collection of these vessels is in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. The Sassanids recorded their triumphs on immense outdoor rock reliefs scattered throughout Iran, often using the same sites that the Achaemenids had covered with reliefs and inscriptions.

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Lyrical Abstraction

Lyrical Abstraction is a French style of abstract painting current in the 1945 -1960. Very close to Art Informel, presents the European equivalent to Abstract Expressionism. The name Tachisme is sometimes used to describe the style.

In 1947 the painter Georges Mathieu organized the exhibition "Abstraction lyrique" in Paris. The term that Mathieu chose for the exhibition, pointing clearly to the gap separating "cold" geometric abstraction from a "hot" organic and lyrical form of abstraction. Works by Wols, Hartung and Riopelle were exhibited.

Lyrical Abstraction is a French style of abstract painting current in the 1945 -1960. Very close to Art Informel, presents the European equivalent to Abstract Expressionism. The name Tachisme is sometimes used to describe the style.

In 1947 the painter Georges Mathieu organized the exhibition "Abstraction lyrique" in Paris. The term that Mathieu chose for the exhibition, pointing clearly to the gap separating "cold" geometric abstraction from a "hot" organic and lyrical form of abstraction. Works by Wols, Hartung and Riopelle were exhibited. Read More...

Optical Art

Op Art made its appearance in the United States and Europe in the late 1950s. Op Art, also called Optical Art, was popular along side Pop Art. Branching from the geometric abstraction movement, Op Art includes paintings concerned with surface kinetics. It was a movement which exploits the fallibility of the eye through the use of optical illusions. The viewer gets the impression of movement by flashing and vibration, or alternatively of swelling or warping. Two techniques used to achieve this effect are perspective illusion and chromatic tension. Artists used colors, lines and shapes repetitive and simple ways to create perceived movement and to trick the viewer's eye. Many of first, the better known pieces were made in only black and white.

Op Art was encompassing artists of very different nationalities, including Soto (Venezuelan), Agam (Israeli), Vasarely (Hungarian) and Riley (English). The aim of Op Art was to produce illusions of depth, relief and motion; it would blur or stir the eye, but never by resorting to actual movement (as in Kinetic Art).

The term first appeared in print in Time Magazine in October 1964. Victor Vasarely's 1930s works such as Zebra (1938), which is made up entirely of diagonal black and white stripes curved in a way to give a three-dimensional impression of a seated zebra, should be considered the first works of Op Art.

The Parisian gallery owner Denise Rene was the very first person to show Op Art to the public.

In 1965 The Museum of Modern Art in New York put on a major Op Art exhibition, The Responsive Eye. This show did a great deal to make op art prominent, and many of the artists now considered important in the style exhibited there.

Op art subsequently became tremendously popular, and Op Art images were used in a number of commercial contexts. The artist Vasarely helped the most to popularize Op Art projects and research; he produced many of his works within the architecture and planning of large cities. Bridget Riley is perhaps the best known of the Op artists. Taking Vasarely's lead, she made a number of paintings consisting only of black and white lines. Read More...

The paintings on display in the Marche and Romagna to the palace of Reduced

From June 25 to August 28, 2011 35 paintings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century from the collection Altomani-Ciaron tell the story of two neighboring territories that have flourished over the centuries art gone far beyond regional boundaries. In the varied and often contradictory world that goes under the name of Italian antiques are also active experts of international standing, who are responsible to track, restore, study and possibly return to their original works of art that the time has dispersed and confined in 'oblivion.

A move is a feeling that, by the enchantment of beauty, is sometimes reflected in an ethics of memory. From this same feeling comes The Lands of the painting between the Marche and Romagna, a choice anthology of ancient paintings, which gathers 35 works from the collection Altomani-Ciaron, held in Cesena (FC), the Municipal Gallery of Art Palace of the Reduced by 25 June to August 28, 2011.

From Madonna and Child by the Master of Castrocaro to that of Giovanni Francesco da Rimini, a virgin to a newly discovered by Cagnacci of Sassoferrato, a major modelletto Bargellini by Ludovico Carracci's altarpiece paintings depicting the Resurrection to two recently discovered, one of ' Albani and other Pomarancio, the paintings on display tell the story of two adjacent territories, the Marches and the Romagna, which for many centuries have suffered along with the influences of nearby schools Bolognese, Venetian, Roman, but at the same time allowed also the flowering of artistic personalities who have managed to extend their ideas beyond regional limits. Are also two unpublished Virtues painted by Elizabeth Sirani for Malvasia and two unfinished paintings by Simone Cantarini, to mention just a few of the gems of the collection.

The exhibition, which gathers around 35 paintings covering a period from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth century - with a prevalence of seventeenth-century paintings - is promoted by cultural institutions and services of the Municipality of Cesena and is curated by artist and historian 'Maximum Pulini art. And 'the second appointment reserved for large collections of antiques, a cycle exhibition which opened in 2010 at Cesena with the exhibition "The Study of Swaps", born from the original intention of creating a series of exhibitions and catalogs, dedicated to those that can be considered real hidden museums.

The Lands of the painting between the Marche and Romagna is a collection of sacred and profane (there are landscapes, portraits, religious subjects, etc. ..) that is configured as a rich anthology of memories and memories of places and people, stories individual and group that for more than three centuries have enriched this part of the peninsular.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Artexplora, which contains an essay on the topic of loss and recovery of works of art and the important role played by some antique lighting. And 'thanks to these figures, in fact, working for decades in the world of antiques with the minutiae of a careful scholar, who was now possible to retrieve much of an artistic heritage that, following the Napoleonic suppression of religious orders and confiscation of their property (enacted in 1797), had taken the path of exile and diaspora.

"Rediscovering the work of an artist of the fourteenth century or the eighteenth century, who worked in our area, buy it at auction or in a palace of American English countryside, her education by researchers competent historians, who know how to reconstruct the tracks and maybe find the original location, is a mission of enormous value - underlined the curator of the exhibition, Maximum Pulini - One of the few ways through which continues to be possible to recover the history and development of a country. That this is accompanied by an economic interest, when that work is taken over by a banking institution, a museum or a wealthy private connoisseur, I find it not only legitimate but necessary to reward the work that is to encourage new research, to fund other future discoveries. "

All works reproduced, even those only transited from Pesaro gallery, have a precise reference to the history of the lands of the Marche and Romagna, and each of the paintings comes with a card that reconstructs the events, leaders by the same interpretation critical.

The exhibition and catalog make use of texts and contributions by Annamaria Ambrosini, Ivana Balducci, Alessandro Brogi, Albert Crispo, Davide Gasparotto, Claudio Gardens, Alexander Giovanardi, Alexander Marks, Gabriel Milantoni, Philip Panzavolta, Semenza Julia, Anna and Raffaella Tambini Zama . Read More...

Jewish Art

Judaism is the religion and culture of the Jewish people and it is also one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. Judaism is the first recorded and one of the three main monotheistic religions that arose in the Near East and dominated the spiritual life of the Western world (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

Jews believe that God made a covenant with their ancestors, the Hebrew, and that they are God's chosen people. They await the coming of a savior - the Messiah, "the anointed one." Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah. Muslims believe Muhammad to be God's (Allah's) last and greatest prophet.

The tenets and history of Judaism constitute the historical foundation of many other religions, including Christianity and Islam. From a cultural point of view, Jewish contributions to mankind are enormous. Besides the concept of monotheism, Jews contributed clear-cut standards of law - Ten Commandments. Although these values are collectively understood as the Judeo-Christian ethic, the scope of their influence extends far beyond Christians and Jews. Recognized objects of Judaic art date back to the dawn of history, even before the "common era." Only a few survived the attrition of time. Among them were beautifully illustrated manuscripts, mosaics of Beth Alpha (Israel) and segments of Duro-Europos (Syria), the ruins of an ancient synagogue.

The Jewish people trace their origin to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. His twelve sons founded the twelve tribes of Israel. They migrated to Egypt, where they lived for several hundred years until harshly oppressed by one of the pharaohs. In the 13th century BCE the prophet Moses led them out of slavery in Egypt and back to the promised land of Canaan between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (later called Palestine). The Hebrew Scriptures relate how, on their journey, God reaffirmed his special relationship with the Israelites and gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the Tablets of the Law, on Mount Sinai.

The Tablets of the Law were housed in the profoundly sacred Ark of the Covenant, a gold-covered wooden box whose construction was prescribed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Israelites carried the ark with them on their desert wanderings until they finally conquered Canaan and built a permanent temple in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE under King Solomon. The menorah and ark were placed in the Temple. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple in 586 BCE. About seventy years later, a Second Temple of Jerusalem, smaller, was built and later enlarged by Herod the Great, king of the region. It was destructed and plundered by the Romans in 70CE what was so vividly described by the Jewish chronicler Josephus.

The Jews had the Temple in Jerusalem with organized priesthood, but they also gathered in buildings, later known as synagogues. Contrary to many other religions, specialized architecture was less central in Judaism. Synagogue, with a role as place of study, could be any large room. Early Jewish spiritual life emphasized religious learning and an individual's direct relationship with God. Following the destruction of Jerusalem, there no longer was an organized priesthood and the role of synagogue expanded. They began to serve as places for prayer for the dispersed community.

Judaism's rich ceremonial affirmation of Jewish history and belief inspired the creation of scrolls, books and ritual objects. Because Jews were weak on abstractions, Biblical verbiage was set in concrete terms, with numerous personifications. Bezalel personified art. The name means "standing in the shadow of God." According to Hebrew Scriptures - Exodus, God gave him the intelligence, wisdom and skill "to create marvelous articles." Bezalel became an architect, sculptor and designer of holy garments. He was the first Jewish artist on record, known for making the Tabernacle that contained the Ark of the Covenant, constructed by prescription in the Scriptures. The menorah, typical ritual object kept with the Ark, has a form probably derived from the ancient near Eastern Tree of Life, symbolizing both the end of exile and the paradise to come. Torah scrolls, containing the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), were read publicly and kept in curtained shrines.

Jews were forbidden to make images that might be worshiped as idols, but this prohibition against representational art was applied primarily to sculpture in the round in early Judaism. Jewish art during the Roman Empire combined both Near Eastern and classical Greek and Roman elements to depict Jewish subject matter, both symbolic and narrative. Since Christianity arose out of Judaism, its art incorporated many symbols and narrative representations drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures and other Jewish sources. Almost no examples of specifically Christian art exist before the early third century, and even then it continued to draw its styles and imagery from Jewish and classical traditions. This process is known as syncretism. Orant figures - worshipers with arms outstretched - for example, can be pagan, Jewish, or Christian, depending on the contest in which they occur. Perhaps the most important of these syncretic images is the Good Shepherd. In pagan art, he was Hermes the shepherd or Orpheus among the animals, but Jews and Christians saw him as the Good Shepherd of the Twenty-third Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack". Read More...

World's most expensive painting goes on show in UK

The world's most expensive painting ever sold at auction is going on show in the UK for the first time on Monday.

The work, called Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, was painted in 1932 by Pablo Picasso and is based on his muse, Marie-Therese Walter.

The painting, which was sold in New York last year for $106.5m (£65.5m), will go on display at the Tate Modern in London.

Tate director Nicholas Serota: "This is an outstanding painting by Picasso."

"I am delighted that through the generosity of the lender we are able to bring it to the British public for the first time."

Mr Serota said: "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust is one of the sequence of paintings of Picasso's muse, Marie-Therese Walter, made by the artist at Boisgeloup, Normandy, in the early months of 1932.

'Greatest achievements'
"They are widely regarded as amongst his greatest achievements of the inter-war period."

The painting has been borrowed from the unnamed private collector who bought it.

It is not known what security precautions have been taken at the gallery to protect it from thieves and vandals.

A Picasso exhibition will open at Tate Britain next year.

Picasso first met Ms Walter, a model in 1927 and she became his mistress. He began to paint her four years later.

She died in 1977, four years after Picasso. Read More...

Victorian Painting

The second half of the 19th century has been called the positivist age and one of the most fascinating periods in history. It has been an age of faith in the positive consequences of what can be achieved through the close observation of the natural and human realms.

The spirit of 19th century England could be personified through Queen Victoria and it's known as the Victorian era. It is covering the eclectic period of 64-year reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. British Empire became the most powerful, and England the most modern, and wealthy country in the World.

The faith that science and its objective methods could solve all human problems was not novel.The idea of human progress had been gradually maturing. The world was truly progressing at break-neck speed, with new inventions, ideas, and advancements - scientific, literary, and social - developing. The middle class became self-made men and women who reaped of profits. Prosperity brought a large number of art consumers, with money to spend on art.

When most people think of the Victorian era, high fashion, gilded age, rich with elegance, splendor, and romance, strict etiquette, and plush or eclectic decorating styles come to mind - but it was so much more than that. Victorian era covers Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. Classicism, with the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world, was specially viewed as the opposite of Romanticism. Paintings of the Romantic school were focused on spontaneous expression of emotion over reason and often depicted dramatic events in brilliant color. Impressionism, a school of painting that developed in the late 19th century, was characterized by transitory visual expressions that focused on the changing effects of light and color. Post-Impressionism was developed as a reaction to the limitations of Impressionism. Victorian art was shown in the full range of artistic developments, from the development of photography to the application of new technologies in architecture.

In the midst of these artistic movements, painters Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The avant-garde artists banded together with the common vision of recapturing the style of painting that preceded Raphael, famed artist of the Italian Renaissance. The brotherhood rejected the conventions of industrialized England, especially the creative principles of art instruction at the Royal Academy. Rather, the artists focused on painting directly from nature, thereby producing colorful, detailed, and almost photographic representations. The painters sought to transform Realism with typological symbolism, by drawing on the poetry and literature of William Shakespeare and their own contemporaries.
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Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night" in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence. He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant who may have been a slave from the Middle East. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci."

Leonard's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture. Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters tells of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan.Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.

In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.

Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus' robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again. This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.

Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Michael in Tobias and the Angel.

By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.

Court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy, and acquitted. From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts, although it is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481. He was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in 1478 for the Chapel of St Bernard and The Adoration of the Magi in 1481 for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.

In 1482 Leonardo helped secure peace between Lorenzo de' Medici and Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. Leonardo wrote a letter to Ludovico, describing his engineering and painting skill. He created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head, with which he was sent to Milan.

Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, her list of funeral expenditure suggests that she was his mother.

His work for Ludovico included floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Leonardo modelled a huge horse in clay, which became known as the "Gran Cavallo", and surpassed in size the two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the model was completed, and Leonardo was making detailed plans for its casting. Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable to cast it. In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.

At the start of the Second Italian War in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice, where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.

On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival". In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron. He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on 18 October 1503, and spent two years designing and painting a great mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria, with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina. In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.

In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan, including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione. However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.

From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time. In October 1515, François I of France recaptured Milan. On 19th December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francois I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna. It was for Francois that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies. In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé near the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, may be legend rather than fact. Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament. In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak of good stuff with a fur edge.

Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."
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Oil Painting: Solvents and Resins

Solvents are added to oil paints to temporarily change the way they work and are designed to evaporate evenly and totally as the oil paint dries. (Technically, the more correct term is diluents, as not all are solvents, but it's not the term commonly used.) Solvents are also used to dissolve resins, making mediums, cleaning up, and for cleaning brushes. It is essential to use solvents in a well-ventilated room and remember that they are flammable (catch fire easily).

Turpentine is the traditional solvent used in oil painting. It's based on tree resin and has a fast evaporation rate, releasing harmful vapors. It can also be absorbed through healthy skin. Use only artist quality turpentine as the industrial variety you find in hardware stores probably contains impurities; it should be colorless, like water. Also known as spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, genuine turpentine, English turpentine, distilled turpentine, double rectified turpentine, or simply turps.

Mineral spirits is based on petroleum and has a moderate evaporation rate, releasing harmful vapors. It is said not to absorbed through healthy skin, but it's sensible to take precautions, especially if you've sensitive skin. Mineral spirits is less expensive than turpentine. Some people react less to mineral spirits than to turpentine. Mineral spirits is a stronger solvent than odorless mineral spirits. Also known as white spirits.

Odorless mineral spirits is based on petroleum and has a moderate evaporation rate. It is said not to absorbed through healthy skin, but it's sensible to take precautions, especially if you've sensitive skin. Odorless mineral spirits is, unsurprisingly, more expensive than normal mineral spirits as it has had some of the harmful aromatic solvents removed. Brands include Turpenoid, Thin-ex, Gamsol.

Despite the more pleasant smell of citrus-based thinners, don't simply assume they don't give off any harmful vapors -- check what the product is made from. Look for something like Zest-It, which is made from food-grade citrus oil combined with a non-toxic, non-flammable solvent. (Of course, if you get migraines from oranges, this would not be a good thing to use!)

Alkyd-based Mediums: If you want to speed up the drying time of your oil paint, consider using an alkyd-based medium such as Liquin (W&N) or Galkyd (Gamlin).

Tip: Test the quality of a solvent by putting a little on a drop of paper and letting it evaporate. If it doesn't leave any resident, stain, or smell, it should be good enough for oil painting.

Resins are used to increase the gloss of oil paint, reduce the color and drying time of a medium, and add body to drying oils. The most commonly used is a natural resin known as Damar, which should be mixed with turpentine as it will not thoroughly dissolve when mixed with mineral spirits. Damar can also be used as a varnish.

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Invention of the Paint Tube

In the small museum on art materials at the Winsor & Newton factory in London, one of the displays is about the invention of the paint tube. Buying paint in a tube is something we take for granted these days, being able to reach out and instantly have some fresh paint in however many colors we have bought. In fact, the squeezable tube with a screw-on lid is the one thing invented for art materials that found its way into everyday life. Think about how many things come in this container, toothpaste, ointments and creams, even food pastes.

Originally artists made up their own paint (or, rather, the studio apprentice did) using the pigments they bought. The first ready-made paint was sold by colormen in pig's bladders, which you punched a hole in to get the paint out and then sealed with a tack. The next invention was a glass syringe, with the plunger squeezing the paint out, invented by the English artist James Hams in 1822. Then in 1841 the American portrait painter John Goffe Rand invented the squeezable or collapsible metal tube.

Rand took out patents in 1841 London, and in America (on 11 September 1841) for his Improvement in the Construction of Vessels or Apparatus for Preserving Paint.
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The sign as a gesture of Ethics

True artist is always someone with more open eyes on the world, gives us a vision of reality is not trivial, but a critical rereading, a reinterpretation that poetry can sometimes be too sharp.

The Modern Art, as well as Conceptual Art, Body Art, Pop Art, etc.. Has always opened a gap between it and reality, has always marked a distance. The waiver illusionism realistic and aware of the deformation of objects have been constant for many decades now.

In this society of false myths, fast communication, through the bombing of the mass media and internet, but for the most trivial, shouting from time to nothing, there are only two ways: either to praise the "blank page" Mallarmé's education to silence, not to add more chaos to chaos, or the reinterpretation original, poetic and detached from external reality. In this big bang painting by Francesco de Marco takes on the character of an intimate conversation, the sign of individuality, of solitude and reflection.
His works evoke the "depth psychology" of Nietzsche and Freud, as we have shown that the clear and manifest psychic life often does that veil and distort the real reasons for the feelings and actions.

Behind the conscious life of man is the transparent veil of the unconscious. The themes dear to him are the female figure, the sunflowers, the landscape. Evokes the passive condition of man and machinist in a society made up only of conventions.They accentuate the dramatic aspects and the painting takes on the role of a complaint.
The painting is not "pretty", or results in key formalist or purely visual element, it is not appealing or asking consent, or to indulge aestheticism is a sign, it's color is evocative force. It is uncompromising.

His painting is both communication and language. Communication is one of a kind abstract, taken as a pretext. It is there but is rejected. The landscape is not realistic, the faces are not exactly the figures, and the Tsunami is a sinister, violent, improviser blue mark that identifies with the horror and death. Three sunflowers are both three flowers on a yellow background and a perfect abstract, perhaps deadly gear.

The crowd is a group of people, but an aggregation of masks, the review of "human types" of sadness, of awe, of ambiguity, of falsehood, the sneer, the melancholy, of which emerges, even if only a hope for mankind: a simple smile. Painting of deep introspection, also addresses "the question and the logic of the Superman", with the red circle hung or supported by a slender rod gray. The strength of the sign addresses the issue of balance and gravity, gravity, and stability with the red bottom, unstable equilibrium with the red top, depending on how each feels to hang the picture.

The color palette emphasizes the contrast, the rich articulation, lack of perspective.In other works also as "The reed" or "The Neverland", he shows a compositional and technical unparalleled happiness, for the sign and the loose coupling and strong color and the message goes far beyond the visual perception. The latest works are not looking, but found himself in deeper and then ourselves. The sign becomes material. In order not to lead to technical improvements, working with the spatula.What matters is the composition in its entirety and the ability to grasp the idea immediately and fix.

Looking through the cracks of our everyday experience, Francis de Marco shows us the gaps in our lives and moving along that thread, already traveled by van Gogh, from all over the German Expressionism, Nolde, Kirkner, Munch, Ensor, up toPollock, Fontana and the last Bacon, suggests that to get to the "Truth" and "Beauty", ethics and aesthetics, the way is also the explanation of a drama that can find their own artistic practice in its catharsis .
Is still true artist who, by the newspaper and a condition of space and time, transfers the problems of man to the highest level by giving the characters of universality and indicating those values where everyone, without distinction, and deep, we recognize.
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Francis de Marco - Group Exhibition of Painters Tricesimani

Meeting Francis De Marco in his studio near Udine, in the natural beauty of the ancient hills of Friuli and a tower that collects inside the works of an artistic able to renew the act sought through a planning or instinctual intellectual and emotional in which are interwoven colors, words, feelings, regrets, to emphasize a style that consists of different styles of magic in his eyes become curious and attentive musicality and poetry.

This combination, which is inseparable in his personality, translates between present and future moments of his soul lived giving pause for reflection onomatopoeic: the sounds seem to take the canvas, while the lights of a sunrise or a sunset become a "place- non-place "of the reception.
The artist welcomes and converses with the newspaper, but it does not exhaust the immediacy of the work of delicate or vigorous brushstrokes, aware that a 'will call another painting of him in either an indefinite space of a morning or l' course of a night.

Art for de Marco is the most beautiful journey is more important, an inner journey that allows him to relate and engage with others, a profound truth that the reading of his works (portraits, landscapes, visual and informal) is the essence and the essentiality of his painting. Of him also involves the dream dimension that goes far beyond the real one, because sometimes it's true.
The perfect synthesis of music and poetry is therefore the ability to translate what his eye perceives space and time: fading images depicting the many faces and feelings of human nature. Warm colors, cool, shy and bright, along with lines, points and segments make up the grammar of signs dear to the artist, who has a dowry communicability uncommon.
A chromatic scale, his, able to remember the great artists of the past, through abstraction, to the avant-garde futurism without resorting to the heavy covering of imitation at all costs.

Perhaps de Marco does not imitate even if it is taken from the same world that revolves around and never has suggested reflection but also momentum, reality and appearance, body and mind. A relentless work and precious, never irreverent, always full of new stimuli that reward her, even her style, because many are the stories and some stories seem as if the artist-child would somehow still talking to the man- artist.
So the creative fervor comes to light and artistic impulses are renewed by their very existence, but the choreography is never the same.
Now look at forever, now the waves of the sea, then will rest on the hills and wait for the 'dawn of a new day.
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The Art Of Tribal Face Painting

Remember, the Indians are preparing for war in western movies? Tribal face painting was offered long before the bile and expressive face paintings in today's society. It 'still possible, respected face painting of American Indians in the area of festivals in the United States is seen today.

Tribal face painting is not alone and has never been but a prelude to war. It 'is included in many types of festivals in other countries. Tribes have faces for weddings, religious reasons, celebrations of new birth, victory over successful hunt, and as a way to paint their help fire stories.

Native American tribes have their face painting seriously. They developed their own paints from earthy materials, such as roots, berries, bark and clay. (Woe to him who is the potential for severe allergic reactions to these natural substances!) The colors of her make-up instead of meanings, such as: red for war, black for living (sounds strange, but true) , white for peace, green for night vision, yellow for mourning.

African tribal art made with relevance as well, with a spiritual significance. Red blood, and fire is associated with sexuality.

Aboriginal art face is used in ceremonies. The Tiwi tribe in practice initiation rites in Australia for children with tribal face painting as part of their performances. Yanyuwa people in the Northern Territory of Australia practice rituals on a beach. They paint their faces and bodies with ocher clay and enact the deeds of the mythical beings of the past. Then rinse in water to develop people. (For more information about the true clay is reddish-brown or yellow ocher containing iron, is used as a pigment).

Hunters from around the world, not to those who are limited as tribal, often paint their faces with camouflage paint. Dedicated American hunters believe firmly in the art of camouflage from head to toe! Tribal hunters can paint their faces and bodies of signal they are going to hunt or to distinguish them in their group, such as those who do the hunting for food.

In Kenya, Kikuyu men don highly stylized headdresses and wear face paint for warrior dances.

A place, a person is almost certain to see painted faces, is located in a parade or a festival. There is a Japanese festival called Shichi-go-san, instead of November 15.And 'for girls aged between 3 and 7 and boys aged between 3 and 5 Parents bring their children to shrines for special blessings for healthy growth. The boys wear dresses. The girls wear kimonos. Often you will see, Japanese dolls dressed in brightly colored kimonos, wearing wooden clogs called geta. Their faces will be painted entirely white except for red lips. The hair will be decorated with floral ornaments.

The tribes have also been known to paint the faces of wooden masks for dances.They wear costumes, often with painted designs on the arms, chest and legs. In general, there are the shoes worn in the dances and the dances often tell stories or celebrations.
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10 World's Most Famous Painting (part 2)

5. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer January

This is a plain portrait of a girl, probably before her marriage. The lack of background and color displays tears drop pearl earrings.











4. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre Auguste Renoir

The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on the balcony along the Seine River. In this painting Renoir has captured the joy of the middle class of late 19th-century France, this is a painting of life that brings happiness and joy to any room.






3. The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt, the Vienna master painted the painting Kiss in 1907. This painting illustrates some surrounded by a gold blanket and ornaments share a passion when sliding - the perfect kiss.













2. Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

One painting that is currently best known, Van Gogh's Starry Night is a classic painting that calls the emotions of peace in the church tower to the wild abandon of color used for the sky that night.









1. Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci

Mona Lisa, the world's most famous painting, owned by the French government and hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The painting shows a woman looking at viewer with what is often described as "enigmatic smile". Mona Lisa is probably the most famous in the history of art; several other works of art are as romantic, celebrated, or reproduced. Read More...

10 World's Most Famous Painting (part 1)

10. From the Lake by Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keefe spent her days at Lake George, New York in the early 1900s, which has inspired much of his work. This painting shows the gentle waves and ripples of Lake George.

9. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

Perhaps the most famous painting by Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory was created in 1931 and now displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Dali introduced the melting pocket watches in this sheet. You also can see in the middle of painting the human figure.






8. The Dream by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso pioneered the modern art movement called Cubism and is widely recognized as the most important artists of the 20th century.














7. Corner of the Garden at Montgeron by Claude Monet

This famous painting by Monet was originally created in 1877. Known as the classic Impressionist Monet. At Angle Park in Montgeron, Monet has captured the ever-changing nature of light and color.







6. Café Terrace at Night by Vincent Van Gogh

In this painting Van Gogh depicts a cafe in Arles, then Cafe Terrace and today it is called Cafe van Gogh. Unique style of painting to Van Gogh with warm colors and depth of perspective Read More...

Photography

Soon after photography had been born in the early 1830s, endless discussions whether photography was an art or a technique began. For some, the birth of photography foretold the end of painting, drawing, lithography, engravings and prints, but many artists maintained that a machine could never produce a work of art.

Throughout the 19th century, photography was used for many different purposes. Photography was used for the first time for the photographic police files after the overthrow of the Paris Commune (1871). Scientists Muybridge and Marey used photography to break down movement. Painter Degas made use of photographs for his paintings. A great number of unknown photographers set up their shops and produced posed portraits, and explorers compiled albums of pictures taken in distant lands. Photography was ideally suited to recording the problems of modern life. One who contributed importantly to its rich documentary tradition was Eugene Atget.

But photographers consistently espoused the idea that photography was an art. They shared the belief that photography was a set of physical and chemical operations in which the artist played a key part by measuring, filtering and softening matter, shade and light, and specially by choosing subjects and settings. In the 1890s in Europe and the United States, these photographers were known as pictorialists - they were retouching their works with brushes.

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.[1] Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. The result in an electronic image sensor is an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result in a photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically developed into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the American photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz responded to this movement of pictorialists by advocating a return to a pure form of photography, with no interference other than framing the subject. The magazine Camera Work contributed to the dissemination of photographs in this school, such as the pictures of Paul Strand.

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Renaissance Painting

Renaissance marks the period of European history at the close of the Middle Ages and the rise of the Modern world. It represents a cultural rebirth from the 14th through the middle of the 17th centuries. Early Renaissance, mostly in Italy, bridges the art period during the fifteenth century, between the Middle Ages and the High Renaissance in Italy. It is generally known that Renaissance matured in Northen Europe later, in 16th century.

The term renaissance means rebirth and is used to mark an era of broad cultural achievement as a result of renewed interest in the classical art and ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome. The main idea of rebirth lies at the belief that through the study of the intellectual and artistic treasures of the Greco-Roman antiquity, inspired by Humanism, can be reached the artistic greatness, wisdom and enlightenment.

The rediscovery of classical world radically altered the art of painting. By the year 1500, the Renaissance revived ancient forms and content. The spiritual content of painting changed - subjects from Roman history and mythology were borrowed. Devotional art of Christian orientation became classically humanized. Classical artistic principles, including harmonious proportion, realistic expression, and rational postures were emulated.

During this artistic period two regions of Western Europe were particularly active: Flanders and Italy. Most of the Early Renaissance works in northern Europe were produced between 1420 and 1550.

Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of that period of European history known as the Renaissance, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science. Renaissance art, perceived as a "rebirth" of ancient traditions, took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, but transformed that tradition by the absorption of recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by application of contemporary scientific knowledge. Renaissance art, with Renaissance Humanist philosophy, spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early modern age.

The 'birth' of new interest in Classical Greco-Latin world, that artistic revolution of the Early Renaissance matured to what is now known as the High Renaissance. There has never been growth as lovely as that of painting in Florence and Rome, of the end of 15th and early 16th centuries. High Renaissance in Italy is the climax of Renaissance art, from 1500-1525. It is also considered as a sort of natural evolution of Italian Humanism (Umanesimo.

It has been characterized by explosion of creative genius. Painting especially reached its peak of technical competence, rich artistic imagination and heroic composition. The main characteristics of High Renaissance painting are harmony and balance in construction.

Italian High Renaissance artists achieved ideal of harmony and balance comparable with the works of ancient Greece or Rome. Renaissance Classicism was a form of art that removed the extraneous detail and showed the world as it was. Forms, colors and proportions, light and shade effects, spatial harmony, composition, perspective, anatomy - all are handled with total control and a level of accomplishment for which there are no real precedents.

We find it in the works of the greatest artists ever known: the mighty Florentines, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; the Umbrian, Raffaello Sanzio; along with the great Venetian masters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

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Islamic Painting

Although there has been a tradition of wall-paintings, especially in the Persianate world, the best-surviving and highest developed form of painting in the Islamic world is the miniature in illuminated manuscripts, or later as a single page for inclusion in a muraqqa or bound album of miniatures and calligraphy. The tradition of the Persian miniature has been dominant since about the 13th century, strongly influencing the Ottoman miniature of Turkey and the Mughal miniature in India. Miniatures were especially an art of the court, and because they were not seen in public, constraints on the depiction of the human figure were much more relaxed, and indeed miniatures often contain great numbers of small figures, and from the 16th century portraits of single ones.

The largest commissions were usually classics of Persian poetry such as the epic Shahnameh, although the Mughals and Ottomans both produced lavish manuscripts of more recent history with the autobiographies of the Mughal emperors, and more purely military chronicles of Turkish conquests. Portraits of rulers developed in the 16th century, and later in Persia, then becoming very popular. Mughal portraits, normally in profile, are very finely drawn in a realist style, while the best Ottoman ones are vigorously stylized. Album miniatures typically featured picnic scenes, portraits of individuals or (in India especially) animals, or idealized youthful beauties of either sex.

Chinese influences included the early adoption of the vertical format natural to a book, which led to the development of a birds-eye view where a very carefully depicted background of hilly landscape or palace buildings rises up to leave only a small area of sky. The figures are arranged in different planes on the background, with recession (distance from the viewer) indicated by placing more distant figures higher up in the space, but at essentially the same size. The colours, which are often very well preserved, are strongly contrasting, bright and clear. The tradition reached a climax in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but continued until the early 19th century, and has been revived in the 20th.

Unlike the strong tradition of portraying the human figure in Christian art, Islamic art is often associated with the arabesque style. Early Islam forbade the painting of human beings, including the Prophet, as Muslims believe this tempts followers of the Prophet to idolatry. A prohibition against depicting representational images in religious art, as well as the naturally decorative nature of Arabic script, led to the use of calligraphic decorations, which usually involved repeating geometrical patterns that expressed ideals of order and nature. It was used on religious architecture, carpets, and handwritten documents.

The Arabesque, one of aspects of Islamic art, usually found decorating the walls of mosques, is an elaborate application of repeating geometric forms that often echo the forms of plants and animals. The choice of which geometric forms are to be used and how they are to be formatted is based upon the Islamic view of the world. To Muslims, these forms, taken together, constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world, they in fact symbolize the infinite, and therefore nature of the creation of the one God (Allah).

Geometric artwork in the form of the Arabesque was not widely used in the Islamic world until the golden age of Islam came into full bloom. During this time, ancient texts were translated from Greek and Latin into Arabic. Like the following Renaissance in Europe, math, science, literature and history were infused into the Islamic world with great, mostly positive repercussions. The works of Plato and especially of Euclid became popular among the literate. It was Euclid's geometry along with the foundations of trigonometry codified by Pythagoras that became the impetus of the art form that was to become the Arabesque. Plato's ideas about the existence of a separate reality that was perfect in form and function and crystalline in character also contributed to the development of the Arabesque.

To the adherents of Islam, the Arabesque is symbolic of their united faith and the way in which traditional Islamic cultures view the world. There are two modes to Arabesque art:

The first mode recalls the principles that govern the order of the world. These principles include the bare basics of what makes objects structurally sound and, by extension.

The second mode is based upon the flowing nature of plant forms. This mode recalls the feminine nature of life giving.

In addition, upon inspection of the many examples of Arabesque art, some can argue that there is a third mode, the mode of Arabic calligraphy. But calligraphy (as seen by the Muslims) is a visible expression of the highest art of all; the art of the spoken word - the transmittal of thoughts and of history. In Islam, the most important document to be transmitted orally is, of course, the Qur'an. Proverbs and complete passages from the Qur'an can be seen today in Arabesque art.

The coming together of these three forms creates the Arabesque, and this is a reflection of unity arising from diversity (a basic tenet of Islam). The Arabesque can also be equally thought of as both art and science, some say. The artwork is at the same time mathematically precise, aesthetically pleasing, and symbolic. So due to this duality of creation, they say, the artistic part of this equation can be further subdivided into both secular and religious artwork. However, for many Muslims there is no distinction; all forms of art, the natural world, mathematics and science are all creations of God and therefore are reflections of the same thing (God's will expressed through His Creation). In other words, man can discover the geometric forms that constitute the Arabesque, but these forms always existed before as part of God's creation.

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Graffiti

Graffiti is a type of deliberate marking on property, both private and public. It can take the form of pictures, drawings, words, or any decorations inscribed on any surface usually outside walls and sidewalks. When done without the property owner's consent, it constitutes illegal vandalism.

The term graffiti referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Usage of the word has evolved to include any graphics applied to surfaces in a manner that constitutes vandalism. The earliest forms of graffiti date back to 30,000 BCE in the form of prehistoric cave paintings and pictographs using tools such as Animal bones and pigments. These illustrations were often placed in ceremonial and sacred locations inside of the caves. The images drawn on the walls showed scenes of animal wildlife and hunting expeditions in most circumstances. This form of graffiti is subject to disagreement considering it is likely that members of prehistoric society endorsed the creation of these illustrations.

The only known source of the Safaitic language, a form of proto-Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE.

Graffiti has existed at least since the days of ancient civilizations. Graffiti originally was the term used for inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs, or at Pompeii.

In the modern era, in early 1970s young New Yorkers, belonging to the black and Puerto Rican communities, started to adopt tags - signatures and signs made with aerosol sprays and markers in public places. Tags started to cover the city's walls, buses and, above all, subway trains, with spectacular "whole car" works covering entire trains. Tags, like screen names, are sometimes chosen to reflect some qualities of the writer. Some tags also contain subtle and often cryptic messages.

The first modern identified tagger in New York was Taki. The Greek-American artist signed himself Taki 183 (probably the number of his apartment block). At the same time the "grafs" also made their appearance. These were real urban frescoes painted with spray-paint. Futura 2000, Dust and Pink all earned recognition and fame, although their celebrity was limited to the hip-hop culture and its circles.

The difference between tagging and graffiti is arguable, but some say it's a clear one: tagging is gang-motivated and/or meant as vandalism (illegal) or viewed as too vulgar or controversial to have public value; while graffiti can be viewed as creative expression, whether charged with political meaning or not.

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