Aesthetics
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DRAWING VS Craft
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First, one needs to understand that drawing is more than a craft; it is an integral part of the plastic arts. They need to understand what constitutes art and what does not. They need a strong overview and a game plan in order at achieve Mastery. They need to understand the Five Levels of Intent…
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inspirational Painters Series: Leon Bonnat
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The inspirational painters series deals with painters who had a major influence on their students. These are painters and mentors who prized individual expression over technique. We judge these painters not so much on their output but on the mastery of their proteges. Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat was one such Master Mentor. Leon Bonnat was born
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Chardin • Real Realism
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Jean Siméon Chardin was born in 1699 and came to manhood a when the Rococo of Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher was the style de jour. Rococo rivaled in decadent frivolity, depicting erotic nudity, romantic trysts, and carnality. The reality we associate with painting how we see in the manner of Velasques, Vermeer, and Chardin was
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The Twilight of Contour
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Let us begin with what is known as the Boston School of Painters. Key figures in the Boston School were Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, and William McGregor Paxton, all of whom trained in Paris at the Academie Julian and later taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Other painters associated
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ACADEMIC XENOPHOBIA
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Once upon a time, the French Academy dictated what was defined as Fine Art and what was not. If one did not follow the Academies rules, he was considered unskilled, untalented, and scorned by the Academy. We use ‘He’ here because the official Academy did not admit women. These regulated regurgitated governmental dictums held sway
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Post-Card Putti
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The Putti Paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau pose an openly disturbing question. Are these fluttering Putti, naked Ninos and pre-pubescent young girls Angelically endearing or Bacchanalian? These Images of breast caressing maidens awaiting spoil were typical of the Salon paintings of the era that saw the demise of Academic History Painting Bouguereau is, without doubt, objectifying
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AND APPLE A DAY
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We are often asked the difference between Realist and Representational Art. The image to the left is, of course, a photograph. Photographs are what realist art is compared to. This illustration of an apple is an example of what one might find in a vintage seed catalog. It actually describes the apple in terms of
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Plato For Non Philosophers
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We know philosophy and philosophers may cause some confusion amoung artisans that don’t want to dwell to deeply into the web of aesthetics and theory. Basically, Plato taught an approach to ideal form based on abstract, universal concepts that lay beyond nature. His student, Aristotle, believed that nature could provide clues to the ideal. Raphael
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Classical Aesthetics
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https://faculty.mtsac.edu/cmcgruder/index.html (500 B.C.E. – 400 C.E.) Aesthetics is a modern term. It entered the philosophical vocabulary in the eighteenth century. Art and its effects attracted attention of thinkers virtually from the beginning of Western thought. Art is so closely associated with the central cultural and religious forms of life in the classical world that it was
