Renaissance art incorporated many new artistic techniques as well as religious themes from the Middle Ages. The defining style of Renaissance art was realism, realistic depictions of landscapes and the human form. Agony in the Garden features incredibly ideal and accurate human anatomical structure with the figures of Jesus and his disciples Peter, James and John having realistic expressions and positions. The desert landscape contains a very realistic depiction of sand and nature. It also incorporates the law of perspective to give the illusion of three dimensions within a two dimensional artwork by making things appear farther away than the main focus of the painting. Bellini also used light with beams and shadows to achieve this effect and
I’m not the Indian you had in mind; a video that was written and directed by Thomas King challenges the stereotypical image that America has towards Native Americans. King is also the author of a short novel “A seat in the Garden”. This short story also challenges the established perspective that American society has towards the Native Americans. There are various stereotypes and perspectives that a majority of the public has toward a particular group. For example some of the common stereo types that are seen throughout the media are that all Asians are good at math, women are primarily sex objects, All Africans like fried chicken, and all Mexicans are gangsters. These stereo types are not completely true for an entire group, yet they
The Flowers By Alice Walker Written in the 1970's The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop's exploration. In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop's purity and young innocence.
The short story "Death by Landscape" well describes the psychology of Lois, the heroine of the story. One incident that occurred to her when she was 13 years old, affects her whole life. As a thirteen year old, she looses her best friend, Lucy, on a canoeing trip in a summer camp. While Lucy was going to the bathroom behind a tree on the edge of a cliff overlooking a river and Lois waiting where she wasn't able to see her, Lucy disappeared without a trace. The story's setting and characters shows the existence of two egos in one person's life.
The Italians may not have had detailed frescos and vivid colors; however they were the leaders in creating a harmonious scale between the landscape and the objects or figures that adorned it. They developed a focused on perspective and made their art a science. They used mathematical measurements and thus the piece was given a great deal of depth and realism. The fresco appears to be an extended recessed space in the room. In Angelico’s piece, linear perspective is created by the placement and angles of the walls. The edge of the porch, the base of the first column and the lines of the bench establish a linear perspective. Italian painters also focused on the studying of classical art and architecture. In Angelico’s piece, the arches supported by the stance of the ionic columns show the interest and study that the Italians adapted into their work. The Northern Renaissance painters eventually incorporated perspective in their work. Van Eyck used intuitive perspective, making objects appear smaller and closer together as they are placed further in the distance to create the feeling of depth in his piece.
As we continue to progress through the years of art, I am continually impressed by the progression of styles and techniques, as well as their ability to take the best of the "old" and combine it with the "new." I find that Italian Renaissance art is no exception to this progression, experimenting with new ways of twisting and tweaking artistic styles of their fellow Europeans. Some of the characteristics the Italians share with their neighbors include a strong focus on creating an illusion of reality, focusing on recording the details of life accurately. One of the greatest differences, however, is the concept of accomplishing this through a more "mathematical" technique called linear perspective. The polished, weighted, lifelike figures interacted
The book, Orchards by Holly Thompson, captures the responses from the characters in the book when devastation comes upon them. Orchards shows how people respond to suffering and how they try to cope with it. Kana, the main character, has to deal with the deaths of her two classmates. Kana and her family personally know both of these girls, so they are suffering the most. The grief of Kana’s community ties them together and allows their bond to grow stronger. People outside the community blame Kana and the other eighth grade girls, making her very frustrated. She instead blames others to make her feel better, but that changes. This reaction shows the reader that Kana is a very impulsive character.
Everything changes over time. The world faces new challenges, or it reinvents old ones as technology, business, and culture evolve. However, the core concepts that many of us hold dear, including freedom, remain the same.
Another change that occurred during the Italian Renaissance was the artistic perspective of this world. People were no longer painting two dimensional art, and non logical portraits. A new technique, chiaroscuros a technique that involved light and shadows, gave their paintings more depth and a realistic imagery. They also made their paintings more realistic by making the objects relative to one another. They emphasised emotions and belief in a universe full of harmony.
“The Flowers” by Alice Walker is a short story written in the 1970’s. The story focuses on Myop, a ten year old African American girl who loves to explore the land in which she lives. Carefree and naïve, Myop decides to travel further away from her ‘Sharecropper cabin’ and travels deep inside the woods to unfamiliar land where she discovers the decomposed body of an African American man. It is then Myop quickly grows up and suddenly becomes aware of the world in which she lives. The story relies on setting and symbolism to convey the theme of departing innocence.
It is not unusual to associate the Renaissance with Italy, where art was rapidly becoming more and more realistic as artists embraced the Roman style of their past. This trend, however, was by no means exclusive to Italy. In Northern European countries, other artists were also developing their technique. And, because they had no access to Roman or Greek sculptures, their art changed in a different way. Artists began to pay closer attention to the subjects of their work. Van Eyck mastered this skill, and his Ghent Altarpiece shows his ability to perfect even the tiniest details in his work. Albrecht Dürer’s The Great Piece of Turf shows how artists began to use messiness and uneven patterns as a way to achieve realism. Durer walked the fine
Artists painted just enough to get the message across. Using icons, and frontal figures with no depth or dimension. For example, artwork from Byzantine had no realistic detail to it. It was more about the icon symbolism and the story behind it. The Renaissance was more about paying attention to the little details, giving them meaning, and a story.
Perspective was important during the Italian Renaissance because it made artworks look more real and three-dimensional. Perspective was a technique in which an artist would use lines to establish a foreground, middleground, and a background. In centuries past, many of the artists’ works would look flat because they didn’t use perspective. In the Pietá Mary looks farther away from the audience than Jesus’ body does. At the same time, Jesus’ head takes a spot in the middleground of the artwork. He is able to depict a Jesus’ foot to look like it is on top of or mixing with the dress that Mary is wearing. This was important because in the past, many works of arts’ backgrounds would all mix together to create a flat painting. In his sculpture, Michaelangelo uses perspective to give a more realistic feeling to the artwork.
In the Renaissance era, the line perspective has been used for paintings since around the 15th century. The perspective technique developed from architectural industry. Not only was the composition seen by the eyes, but also the scientific theoretical perspective projection method used for the space composition of paintings. Holy Trinity drawn by Masaccio of the Renaissance era incorporates scientific perspectives into the vault part. Another example would be a Mona Lisa. The famous Mona Lisa drawn by Leonardo da Vinci also uses a scientific way of expression as well. Leonardo da Vinci used the aerial perspective
Because it is a phenomenon visualized nearly everywhere in present times, the use of perspective in art is no longer considered as extraordinary as it was when it was first used during the Renaissance. As Hans Belting explains in the first chapter of his book, Florence and Bagdad, there were several reasons why perspective was a success in the pre-modern world. Perspective presented an image as viewers would see with their own eyes. Everything made sense visually, lining up perfectly and mathematically. Artistic perspective reflected the humanistic philosophy of the Renaissance because it allowed the individual to see a work of art as if it were their own eyes creating the image. In addition, the pure wonderment of creating the illusion of a three-dimensional image onto a two-dimensional surface helps to explain the West’s obsession with mimicking the eye’s gaze.