Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Some Information About Figurative And Genre Art

By Coleen Torres


In the world of art, there are actually two categories that one may see namely abstract styles and figurative styles. Abstract styles are the types that would produce works that have random shapes and generally have no clear meaning. The figurative and genre art on the other hand, is the type of art that would clearly depict a certain object that would come from real life.

Now though this type of artwork actually depicts things that would come from real life, it would never become an exact replica. What artists would want to do here is to simply try to create what he thinks that object looks like but in a very clear manner. In short, it would be a replica with some twists from the artist.

Now the two most common subjects that would be used for these types of artworks would of course be humans and animals. Although these two are the main subjects used, many painters or sculptors would also use scenery as the subjects or probably even objects. They would virtually use anything for their subjects and recreate them as a representation of their own views of these subjects.

The earliest artwork that would fall under this category would be the a statue of a woman that was discovered somewhere in Southern Germany. The statue is roughly thirty five thousand years old and was curved by the tusk of a mammoth. The oldest of figurative paintings on the other hand, would come from France and depicts different kinds of animals. This cave painting is at least sixteen thousand years old.

Now this type of artwork would be dependent on certain elements. Since this would actually try to represent actual figures that would come from real life, it is important that all the elements of objects in real life would also apply to this type of artwork. The elements would be lines, shapes, colors, shades, texture, and angling.

Notice that if one would want to create artworks that are in this category, he would have to pay close attention to the details. Do take note that paintings and sculptures in this category are very detailed and would often contain a lot of things that usually will not be noticed by people. The details would actually be the ones that would make the depiction more realistic.

Now before this type of art reached the popularity that it has today, it first started out in ancient Greece wherein the Greeks believed that art is all about precision and accuracy in copying the subject. The Egyptians, on the other hand believed that it was more on remembering what the subject looked like in the mind then translating it in art form. Of course over time, these two methods were fused and artists would sometimes switch between them.

So from the Greeks to the Egyptians even up until the Renaissance artists, this category of art really grew. Of course other sub branches stemmed out because of this like surrealism and others. Up until today this type of art is still very much evolving as artists have created more techniques and methods to do their work.




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