XVIII century

Visual Art of the United States

Art versus Science.

PART 1.

Part 4. Arts. How is America inspired?

Pre-reading task. Discussion club.

Get in pairs and discuss:

-) what form of art is America famous for

-) comment on your attitude to modern art

-) recall some names of American people of art and comment on their creations

1) Reading. Read the text carefully and retell it close to the original. Be ready to discuss it.

One can distinguish two branches of human work: the arts and the sciences. The sciences require knowledge, observation, identification, description, experimentation and theoretical explanation. The arts on the contrary require skill. That means the ability to work well with a part of the body. It is the combination of talent and technique. An artist is a man who can do something well with his own hands and tools. Some time ago everything that was made with tools was "artificial", not natural. The word "manufacture", for example, once meant "to make by hand".

Everything is a bit different nowadays. The word "art" has a special meaning. It means something beautiful. The paintings of skilled painters are appreciated and admired by millions of people today, by those who can see the beauty. Art comprises weaving rugs, tapestries, ceramic work and what not. So there are a lot of types of art. Nevertheless one can trace basic principles in art. All kinds of it require the same characteristics. The separate parts of a work of art should be arranged in pattern. The form itself, a pleasing shape and balance are extremely important.

Art inspires the human spirit. Painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, weavers - they all contribute to a better life for us.

American art encompasses the history of painting and visual art in the United States. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted landscapes and portraits in a realistic style based mainly on Western painting and European arts. A parallel development taking shape in rural America was the American craft movement, which began as a reaction to the industrial revolution. Developments in modern art in Europe came to America from exhibitions in New York City such as the Armory Show in 1913. After World War II, New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world. Since then many American movements have shaped Modern and Postmodern art. Art in the United States today covers a huge range of styles. Let’s go chronologically…

After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which marked the official beginning of the American national identity, the new nation needed a history, and part of that history would be expressed visually. Most of early American art (from the late 18th through the early 19th century) consists of history painting and especially portraits. As in Colonial America, many of the painters who specialized in portraits were essentially self-taught; notable among them are Joseph Badger, John Brewster, Jr., and William Jennys. The young nation's artists generally emulated the style of British art, which they knew through prints and the paintings of English-trained immigrants such as John Smibert and John Wollaston.

Robert Feke (1707-52), an untrained painter of the colonial period, achieved a sophisticated style based on Smibert's example. Charles Willson Peale, who gained much of his earliest art training by studying Smibert's copies of European paintings, painted portraits of many of the important figures of the American Revolution. Peale's younger brother James Peale and four of Peale's sons – Raphaelle Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale – all with their telling names – were also artists. Painters such as Gilbert Stuart made portraits of the newly elected government officials, which became iconic after being reproduced on various U.S. Postage stamps of the 19th century and early 20th century, while John Singleton Copley painted emblematic portraits for the increasingly prosperous merchant class, including a portrait of Paul Revere. The original version of his most famous painting, Watson and the Shark, is in the collection of The National Gallery of Art while there is another version in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a third version in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Benjamin West painted portraits as well as history paintings of the French and Indian War. West also worked in London where many American artists studied under him.

John Trumbull painted large battle scenes of the Revolutionary War. When landscape was painted it was most often done to show how much property a subject owned, or as a picturesque background for a portrait.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23