Showing posts with label ArtLovers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ArtLovers. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2025

21 Famous Paintings With Backstories You Won’t Believe Are True 

Georges Seurat,Wikipedia

While we might recognize most of these masterpieces and their artists, we probably don’t know much about the stories behind them. From personal experiences to hidden messages, each painting has an origin story that’s as captivating as the artwork itself. Some artworks weren’t understood, while others received critical acclaim…….Continue reading….

By: Mariia Tkachenko and Emily Nyoni

Source: Bored Panda

.

Critics:

Painting is a visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called “matrix” or “support”). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush. Other implements, such as palette knives, sponges, airbrushes, the artist’s fingers, or even a dripping technique that uses gravity may be used. One who produces paintings is called a painter.

In art, the term “painting” describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called “a painting”). The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate other materials, in single or multiple form, including sand, clay, paper, cardboard, newspaper, plaster, gold leaf, and even entire objects.

Painting is an important form of visual art, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction.[3] Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in portraits, still life and landscape painting–though these genres can also be abstract), photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolist (as in Symbolist art), emotive (as in Expressionism) or political in nature (as in Artivism).

A significant share of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha (or other images of Eastern religious origin).

Cave paintings depicting a wild boar hunt in the Maros-Pangkep karst of Sulawesi are estimated to be at least 43,900 years old (2014). This finding was recognized as “the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history.” The oldest known paintings are more than 40,000-60,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia).
The oldest are often constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes. In November 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the then-oldest known figurative art painting, over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old, of an unknown animal, in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian island of Borneo. In December 2019, cave paintings portraying pig hunting within the Maros-Pangkep karst region in Sulawesi were discovered to be even older, with an estimated age of at least 43,900 years.
This finding was recognized as “the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history.” In 2021, cave art of a pig found in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and dated to over 45,500 years ago, has been reported. On July 3, 2024, the journal Nature published research findings indicating that the cave paintings which depict anthropomorphic figures interacting with a pig and measure 36 by 15 inches (91 by 38 cm) in Leang Karampuang are approximately 51,200 years old, establishing them as the oldest known paintings in the world.

There are examples of cave paintings all over the worldin Indonesia, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, China, India, Australia, Mexico, etc. In Western cultures, oil painting and watercolor painting have rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media, with equally rich and complex traditions. 

The invention of photography had a major impact on painting. In the decades after the first photograph was produced in 1829, photographic processes improved and became more widely practiced, depriving painting of much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. A series of art movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries notably Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism challenged the Renaissance view of the world.

Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time. Modern and Contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in favour of concept. This has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to practice painting either as a whole or part of their work.

The vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century defy the previous “declarations” of its demise. In an epoch characterized by the idea of pluralism, there is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. Artists continue to make important works of art in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments their merits are left to the public and the marketplace to judge. The Feminist art movement began in the 1960s during the second wave of feminism.

The movement sought to gain equal rights and equal opportunities for female artists internationally. Painting is a visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called “matrix” or “support”). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush. Other implements, such as palette knives, sponges, airbrushes, the artist’s fingers, or even a dripping technique that uses gravity may be used. One who produces paintings is called a painter.

In art, the term “painting” describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called “a painting”). The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate other materials, in single or multiple form, including sand, clay, paper, cardboard, newspaper, plaster, gold leaf, and even entire objects.

Painting is an important form of visual art, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in portraits, still life and landscape painting–though these genres can also be abstract), photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolist (as in Symbolist art), emotive (as in Expressionism) or political in nature (as in Artivism).

A significant share of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha (or other images of Eastern religious origin). Cave paintings depicting a wild boar hunt in the Maros-Pangkep karst of Sulawesi are estimated to be at least 43,900 years old (2014).

This finding was recognized as “the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history.” Redrawing of hunting scene from the Caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst. The oldest known paintings are more than 40,000-60,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The oldest are often constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes.

In November 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the then-oldest known figurative art painting, over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old, of an unknown animal, in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian island of Borneo. In December 2019, cave paintings portraying pig hunting within the Maros-Pangkep karst region in Sulawesi were discovered to be even older, with an estimated age of at least 43,900 years.

This finding was recognized as “the oldest known depiction of storytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history.” In 2021, cave art of a pig found in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and dated to over 45,500 years ago, has been reported. On July 3, 2024, the journal Nature published research findings indicating that the cave paintings which depict anthropomorphic figures interacting with a pig and measure 36 by 15 inches (91 by 38 cm) in Leang Karampuang are approximately 51,200 years old, establishing them as the oldest known paintings in the world.

There are examples of cave paintings all over the world in Indonesia, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, China, India, Australia, Mexico, etc. In Western cultures, oil painting and watercolor painting have rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media, with equally rich and complex traditions. The invention of photography had a major impact on painting.

In the decades after the first photograph was produced in 1829, photographic processes improved and became more widely practiced, depriving painting of much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. A series of art movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries notably Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism challenged the Renaissance view of the world.

Eastern and African painting, however, continued a long history of stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time. Modern and Contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in favour of concept. This has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to practice painting either as a whole or part of their work.

The vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century defy the previous “declarations” of its demise. In an epoch characterized by the idea of pluralism, there is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. Artists continue to make important works of art in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments their merits are left to the public and the marketplace to judge.

The Feminist art movement began in the 1960s during the second wave of feminism. The movement sought to gain equal rights and equal opportunities for female artists internationally. Color, made up of hue, saturation, and value, dispersed over a surface is the essence of painting, just as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, white is.

Some painters, theoreticians, writers, and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction of color equivalent. The word “red”, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as F or C♯.

For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic (primary) and derived (complementary or mixed) colors (like red, blue, green, brown, etc.). Painters deal practically with pigments so “blue” for a painter can be any of the blues: phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, Cobalt blue, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, means of painting.

Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear sound in music (like a C note) is analogous to “light” in painting, “shades” to dynamics, and “coloration” is to painting as the specific timbre of musical instruments is to music. These elements do not necessarily form a melody (in music) of themselves; rather, they can add different contexts to it.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as metal, plastic, sand, cement, straw, leaves or wood for the texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer.

There is a growing community of artists who use computers to “paint” color onto a digital “canvas” using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required.Ink paintings are done with a liquid that contains pigments or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing with a pen, brush, or quill.

Ink can be a complex medium, composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter, fluorescers, and other materials. The components of inks serve many purposes; the ink’s carrier, colorants, and other additives control flow and thickness of the ink and its appearance when dry.

Earlier Today
Wednesday
Tuesday
Monday
Sunday
Saturday

Leave a Reply

Why We All Need Sisu The Finnish Concept of Action and Creativity In Hard Times

  Guardian Design; Howard Kingsnorth/Getty Images I n 2023, I was in the top 0.05% of Spotify listeners of Manic Street Preachers. It was on...