Cyclical Art Style

Here is a very interesting idea about a cyclical nature of artistic expression mirroring the cultural life-stage. Most people I've read tend to express art history as a linear progression from cave-man stick figures up to post modern art. I really like this take better. Posted on a sculpting forum by Wayne Hanson http://www.figuresculpture.net/bio.htm


 


 

I use the analogy of art styles below for my kids in sculpting class:
the 3 or 4 styles of art:


1. STOIC: any early culture and beginning artist use the stoic style automatically.
Examples would be cubist art, early Egyptian art and architecture, Mycenae art, early Greek art and sculpture. Characteristics of the stoic style are religion-dictated figural rules, Masculine/ patriarchal, no emotion, symmetry, geometrical, powerful, monumental, immortal or long-lasting.
Typical forms are equilateral triangle, pyramid, square.


2. CLASSICAL: any culture at its peak in the bell curve.
Examples: Athens during the reign of Pericles, Egypt during the reign of Nephretiti.
Characteristics are figural art based on observation of nature, a balance of things like male/female, Restrained use of emotion, dynamic curves used with restraint.
Typical forms are sine wave, Golden rectangle, Golden triangle proportions, spiral and sphere/circle.


3. NEOCLASSICAL: any culture past its peak and in decline. Examples are Rocco styles, neoclassical, Cretan, Victorian. An all Female style with more curves than form, overly-dramatic with contemporary art used as reference rather than nature. We are currently in this era of culture. Anything new and/or bizarre is preferred to reality. Comic books and video games inspire our current creations.


4. I add COMIC ACTION STYLE: take a dash of stoic and blast it into action with loads of diagonal lines and forms. Example is any comic book slash page. Video game culture and characters.
Artistic statements and designs can be made better by integrating chosen art styles above to enhance any particular artwork from performance art to sculpture and mixed media.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Epic Weekend

Image
Wow… I am worn out.  My team’s big project at work is live now, and we just released a big patch to fix some terrible difficulty spikes.  The last time we released Super Adventure Box: World 1 it got pretty universal praise.  (Which I put up here back in April)  Since then our founder/president has used it (Along with the Mad King Clock Tower I designed and built back in October 2012) as examples of content we release that raises retention rate, and therefore revenue.  So expectations were high for this World 2 release which came out on Tuesday.  The day after Labor Day and the Penny Arcade Expo.     Saturday (3 days before SAB World 2 launched) my company held a party at a hotel near PAX for fans, and my project, Super Adventure Box was the main feature.  We were running speed run competitions all night where players tried to be the first to get to the end of the new zones.  I ended up MCing the whole night.  I guess there’s a first time for everything.  Seems like people had a re
Read more

Covid: 4 Years Later

Image
Before I begin let me quickly sketch the readers I'm writing this for, so you can decide if it's worth your 10 minutes. Firstly, this is for those of you who are at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are still worried about Covid and are sincerely curious why we are this way. I'm trying to present our case as coherently as I can, with references. (As well as I, a not-quite-professional writer can.) I'd like to convince you our stance is not based on fear, hypochondria, conspiracy theory, etc. But based on peer reviewed science. I'm also writing for myself and other folks who are taking Covid very seriously. I'm an ambassador by nature, so I like to facilitate understanding between groups where there is none. Many in my cohort simply cannot fathom how most of the world is not seeing the problem. Here's the agenda. First I'll quickly cover history of this pandemic, then some of what the science says about infectious disease and protecting ourselves.
Read more

A Covid Mask Prediction

Image
In speaking with several other covid conscious people I got a very nicely detailed prediction I wanted to record for posterity. They do not want to be credited with this out of concern for messenger-shooting. So I asked them if I could post it here anonymously and they agreed. Anon:"We are going to have mask requirements. I've done the math on all the possible interventions, and masks are the only one which can get the Rt down below 1 and actually stop the pandemic. Without masks, you can't do it; the other tools put together just aren't good enough (the best one, air filtration, maxes out at 80% effective, and so does Far-UVC, and this simply isn't enough with the infectiousness of Covid -- short-range transmission, which neither intervention stops, will keep it going at pandemic levels). Therefore we're going to get masks. I don't know how many maskless people will die before we get masks. But the math is inescapable. We start using respirator masks. Or m
Read more