The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts (photography, video, and filmmaking) and architecture. These definitions should not be taken too strictly as many artistic disciplines (performing arts, conceptual art, textile arts) involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.

As indicated above, the current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term artist was often restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of art.

The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist, and the furthest removed from manual labour - in Chinese painting the most highly valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes.

Education and training

Training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop system. In Europe the Renaissance movement to increase the prestige of the artist led to the academy system for training artists, and today most train in art schools at a tertiary level. Visual arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems. (See also art education.)

Drawing

Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface using dry media such as graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools which simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a ''draftsman'' or ''draughtsman".

Early history

Drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture. Drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC.

Renaissance

With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters such as Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci who sometimes treated drawing as an art in its own right rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture.

Painting

Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The Sistine Chapel to the human body itself.

Origins and early history

Like drawing, painting has its origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet and Lascaux caves in southern France. In shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer.

Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. In the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to the development of painting but much of their work has been lost. One of the best remaining representations is the mosaic of the Battle of Issus found at Pompeii which was probably based on a Greek painting. Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC which initiated a tradition in icon painting.

The Renaissance

Apart from the illuminated manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages, the next significant contribution to European art was from Italy's renaissance painters. From Giotto in the 13th century to Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at the beginning of the 16th century, this was the richest period in Italian art as the ''chiaroscuro'' technique was used to create the illusion of 3-D space.

Painters in northern Europe too were influenced by the Italian school. Jan van Eyck from Belgium, Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the Netherlands and Hans Holbein the Younger from Germany are among the most successful painters of the times. They used the glazing technique with oils to achieve depth and luminosity.

Dutch masters

The 17th century saw the emergence of the great Dutch masters such as the versatile Rembrandt who is especially remembered for his portraits and Bible scenes, and Vermeer who specialized in interior scenes of Dutch life.

Impressionism

Impressionism began in France in the 19th century with a loose association of artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne who brought a new freely brushed style to painting, often choosing to paint realistic scenes of modern life outside rather than in the studio. They achieved intense colour vibration by using pure, unmixed colours and short brush strokes.

Post-impressionism

Towards the end of the 19th century, several young painters took impressionism a stage further, using geometric forms and unnatural colour to depict emotions while striving for deeper symbolism. Of particular note are Paul Gauguin, who was strongly influenced by Asian, African and Japanese art, Vincent van Gogh, a Dutchman who moved to France where he drew on the strong sunlight of the south, and Toulouse-Lautrec, remembered for his vivid paintings of night life in the Paris district of Montmartre.

Symbolism, expressionism and cubism

Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist, developed his symbolistic approach at the end of the 19th century, inspired by the French impressionist Manet. The Scream (1893), his most famous work, is widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man. Partly as a result of Munch's influence, the German expressionist movement originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century as artists such as Ernst Kirschner and Erich Heckel began to distort reality for an emotional effect. In parallel, the style known as cubism developed in France as artists focused on the volume and space of sharp structures within a composition. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the leading proponents of the movement. Objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form. By the 1920s, the style had developed into surrealism with Dali and Magritte.

Printmaking

Printmaking is creating for artistic purposes an image on a matrix which is then transferred to a two-dimensional (flat) surface by means of ink (or another form of pigmentation). Except in the case of a monotype, the same matrix can be used to produce many examples of the print. Historically, the major techniques (also called media) involved are woodcut, line engraving, etching, lithography, and screenprinting (serigraphy, silkscreening) but there are many others, including modern digital techniques. Normally the surface upon which the print is printed is paper, but there are exceptions, from cloth and vellum to modern materials. Prints in the Western tradition produced before about 1830 are known as old master prints. There are other major printmaking traditions, especially that of Japan (''ukiyo-e'').

Chinese origins

In China, the art of printmaking developed some 1,100 years ago as illustrations alongside text cut in woodblocks for printing on paper. Initially images were mainly religious but in the Song Dynasty, artists began to cut landscapes. During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1616–1911) dynasties, the technique was perfected for both religious and artistic engravings.

European history

In Europe, from around 1400 AD woodcut, was used for master prints on paper by using techniques for printing on cloth which had been developed in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Michael Wolgemut improved German woodcut from about 1475, and Erhard Reuwich, a Dutchman, was the first to use cross-hatching. At the end of the century Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to a level that has never been surpassed, increasing the status of the single-leaf woodcut.

Photography

Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects are recorded onto a sensitive medium or storage chip through a timed exposure. The process is done through mechanical, chemical or digital devices known as cameras.

The word comes from the Greek words φως ''phos'' ("light"), and γραφις ''graphis'' ("stylus", "paintbrush") or γραφη ''graphê'', together meaning "drawing with light" or "representation by means of lines" or "drawing." Traditionally, the product of photography has been called a photograph. The term ''photo'' is an abbreviation; many people also call them ''pictures.'' In digital photography, the term ''image'' has begun to replace ''photograph.'' (The term ''image'' is traditional in geometric optics.)

Filmmaking

Filmmaking is the process of making a motion-picture, from an initial conception and research, through scriptwriting, shooting and recording, animation or other special effects, editing, sound and music work and finally distribution to an audience; it refers broadly to the creation of all types of films, embracing documentary, strains of theatre and literature in film, and poetic or experimental practices, and is often used to refer to video-based processes as well.

Computer art

Visual artists are no longer limited to traditional art media. Computers have been used as an ever more common tool in the visual art since the 1960s. Uses for computers in the visual arts include the capturing or creating of images and forms, the editing of those images and forms (including exploring multiple compositions) and then the final rendering and/or printing (including 3D printing).

Computer art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers have been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithmic art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits, though it has yet to prove its legitimacy as a form unto itself and this technology is widely seen in contemporary art more as a tool rather than a form as with painting.

Computer usage has blurred the distinctions between illustrators, photographers, photo editors, 3-D modelers, and handicraft artists. Sophisticated rendering and editing software has led to multi-skilled image developers. Photographers may become digital artists. Illustrators may become animators. Handicraft may be computer-aided or use computer-generated imagery as a template. Computer clip art usage has also made the clear distinction between visual arts and page layout less obvious due to the easy access and editing of clip art in the process of paginating a document, especially to the unskilled observer.

Sculpture

''The following is a copy of the introductory summary on the Sculpture page''

The Plastic arts

Plastic arts is a term, now largely forgotten, encompassing art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by moulding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics. The term has also been applied to ''all the visual (non-literary, non-musical) arts''.

Materials that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete or steel, have also been included in the narrower definition, since, with appropriate tools, such materials are also capable of modulation. This use of the term "plastic" in the arts should not be confused with Piet Mondrian's use, nor with the movement he termed, in French and English, "Neoplasticism."

Thus even the narrower definition could include Architecture, Ceramics, Collage, Conceptual art, Drawing, Glass art, Land art, Metalworking, Mosaic, Painting, Paper art, the use of plastics within the arts or as an art form itself, Printmaking, Sculpture, Textile art, Welding, Woodworking, Film, Film Photography, New media art.

Copyright definition of visual art

In the United States, the law protecting the copyright over a piece of visual art gives a more restrictive definition of "visual art". The following quote is from the Copyright Law of the United States of America- Chapter 1:

A “work of visual art” is — (1) a painting, drawing, print or sculpture, existing in a single copy, in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author, or, in the case of a sculpture, in multiple cast, carved, or fabricated sculptures of 200 or fewer that are consecutively numbered by the author and bear the signature or other identifying mark of the author; or (2) a still photographic image produced for exhibition purposes only, existing in a single copy that is signed by the author, or in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author. A work of visual art does not include — (A)(i) any poster, map, globe, chart, technical drawing, diagram, model, applied art, motion picture or other audiovisual work, book, magazine, newspaper, periodical, data base, electronic information service, electronic publication, or similar publication;   (ii) any merchandising item or advertising, promotional, descriptive, covering, or packaging material or container;   (iii) any portion or part of any item described in clause (i) or (ii); (B) any work made for hire; or (C) any work not subject to copyright protection under this title.

See also

Art materials

Asemic writing

Avant-garde

Collage

Comics

Composition

Conceptual art

Contemporary art

Craft

Décollage

Decorative arts

Design

Eastern art history

Fine art

Found art

Graffiti

Graphic design

Handicraft

History of art

History of graphic design

History of film

History of painting

History of sculpture

Illustration

Installation art

Landscape art

Mail art

Mathematics and art

Media (arts)

Mixed media

Portraiture

Old master print

Recording medium

Sketch (drawing)

Sketchbook

Sound art

Textile arts

Video art

References

Further reading

Barnes, A. C., The Art in Painting, 3rd ed., 1937, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., NY.

Bukumirovic, D. (1998). ''Maga Magazinovic''. Biblioteka Fatalne srpkinje knj. br. 4. Beograd: Narodna knj.

Fazenda, M. J. (1997). ''Between the pictorial and the expression of ideas: the plastic arts and literature in the dance of Paula Massano''. N.p.

Gerón, C. (2000). Enciclopedia de las artes plásticas dominicanas: 1844-2000. 4th ed. Dominican Republic s.n.

Oliver Grau (Ed.): ''MediaArtHistories''. MIT-Press, Cambridge 2007. with Rudolf Arnheim, Barbara Stafford, Sean Cubitt, William Mitchell, Lev Manovich, Christiane Paul, Peter Weibel a.o. Rezensionen

Laban, R. V. (1976). ''The language of movement: a guidebook to choreutics''. Boston: Plays.

La Farge, O. (1930). ''Plastic prayers: dances of the Southwestern Indians''. N.p.

Restany, P. (1974). ''Plastics in arts''. Paris, New York: N.p.

University of Pennsylvania. (1969). ''Plastics and new art''. Philadelphia: The Falcon Pr.

External links

ArtLex - online dictionary of visual art terms.

''Art History Timeline'' by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Category:Communication design Category:Art media

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Jeremy Deller (born 1966) is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. He is a Turner Prize winner.

Deller is best-known for his ''Battle of Orgreave'' (2001), a recreation of the actual Battle of Orgreave which occurred during the UK miners' strike in 1984.

Life and work

Jeremy Deller was born in London, educated at Dulwich College, Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London); did his MA in Art History at University of Sussex under David Alan Mellor.

In 1995, Deller exhibited at EASTinternational which was selected by Marian Goodman and Giuseppe Penone. He was invited to select EASTinternational in 2006 with Dirk Snauwaert.

In 1997, Deller embarked on Acid Brass, a musical collaboration with the Williams Fairey Brass Band from Stockport. The project was based on fusing the music of a traditional brass band with acid house and Detroit techno.

For the opening of Manifesta 5, the roving European Biennial of Contemporary art Deller organized a ''Social Parade'', in 2004, through the streets of the city of Donostia-San Sebastian. Drafting in cadres of local alternative societies and support groups, to participate.

Deller was winner of the Turner Prize in 2004. His show at Tate Britain included documentation on ''Battle of Orgreave'' and an installation ''Memory Bucket'' (2003), a documentary about Crawford, Texas – the hometown of George W. Bush – and the siege in nearby Waco.

In 2006, he was involved in a touring exhibit of contemporary British folk art, in collaboration with Alan Kane. In late 2006, he instigated The Bat House Project, an architectural competition open to the public for a bat house on the outskirts of London.

Much of Deller's work is collaborative. His work has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the devaluation of artistic ego through the involvement of other people in the creative process. ''Folk Archive'' is a tour of "people's art", outside of the contemporary art institution. Much of his work is ephemeral in nature and avoids commodification.

In 2007, Deller was appointed a Trustee of the Tate Gallery.

In 2008, 'The Posters Came from the Walls', a documentary co-directed with Nick Abrahams about Depeche Mode fans around the world was premiered at the London Film Festival, and followed by festival screenings around the world.

In 2009, Deller created a free and uniquely Mancunian Procession through the city centre along Deansgate, a co-commission between Manchester International Festival and Cornerhouse. ''Procession'' worked with diverse groups of people drawn from the 10 boroughs of Manchester and took place on Sunday 5 July at 14:00.

Commissioned in 2009 as part of The Three M Project (a group composed of the New Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, LA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, to exhibit and commission new works of art), Deller created ''It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq''. The project was designed to foster public discussion by having guest experts engage museum visitors in a free-form, unscripted dialogue about issue concerning Iraq.

On October 1, 2010, in an open letter to the British Government's culture secretary Jeremy Hunt—co-signed by 28 former Turner prize nominees, and 18 winners—Deller opposed any future cuts in public funding for the arts. In the letter the cosignatories described the arts in Britain as a "remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity."

In 2010, he was awarded the Albert Medal of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) for 'creating art that encourages public responses and creativity'.

See also

Book Works

Notes and references

External links

Jeremy Deller site

Bat House Project site

Turner Prize 2004: Jeremy Deller

Watch The Battle of Orgreave on FourDocs

Turner Prize 2004 – BBC News

''Artforum'' review (01/2002)

zingmagazine review (1996)

Interview

(fr) Article sur son exposition au Palais de Tokyo, Art and You

It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq

''The Battle of Orgreave'' section on Artangel website

Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:English artists Category:Contemporary artists Category:Old Alleynians Category:Turner Prize winners Category:Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art Category:Alumni of the University of Sussex

de:Jeremy Deller ru:Деллер, Джереми

William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.

Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, and educated at King Edward VII School in Houghton, Johannesburg. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and then a diploma in Fine Arts from the Johannesburg Art Foundation. In the early 1980s, he studied mime and theatre at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He originally hoped to become an actor, but he reflected later: "I was fortunate to discover at a theatre school that I was so bad an actor [... that] I was reduced to an artist, and I made my peace with it.". Between 1975 and 1991, he was acting and directing in Johannesburg's Junction Avenue Theatre Company. In the 1980s, he worked on television films and series as art director. Many in his family were Jewish lawyers who took on civil rights cases against apartheid.

Career

In 1979, Kentridge created 20 to 30 monotypes, which soon became known as the "Pit" series. In 1980, he executed about 50 small-format etchings which he called the "Domestic Scenes". These two extraordinary groups of prints served to establish Kentridge's artistic identity, an identity he has continued to develop in various media.

In 1987, he began a group of charcoal and pastel drawings based, very tenuously, on Watteau's "Embarkation for Cythera". These extremely important works, the best of which reflect a blasted, dystopic urban landscape, demonstrate the artist's growing consciousness of the flexibility of space and movement. The animated films were an obvious next step.

In 1989, Kentridge created his first animated Movie, ''Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris'', in the series ''Drawings for Projection''. For the series, he used a technique that would become a feature of his work - successive charcoal drawings, always on the same sheet of paper, contrary to the traditional animation technique in which each movement is drawn on a separate sheet. In this way, Kentridge's videos and films came to keep the traces of the previous drawings. His animations deal with political and social themes from a personal and, at times, autobiographical point of view, since the author includes his self-portrait in many of his works.

The political content and unique techniques of Kentridge's work have propelled him into the realm of South Africa's top artists. Working with what is in essence a very restrictive media, using only charcoal and a touch of blue or red pastel, he has created animations of astounding depth. A theme running through all of his work is his peculiar way of representing his birthplace. While he does not portray it as the militant or oppressive place that it was for black people, he does not emphasize the picturesque state of living that white people enjoyed during apartheid either; he presents instead a city in which the duality of man is exposed. In a series of nine short films, he introduces two characters - Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. These characters depict an emotional and political struggle that ultimately reflects the lives of many South Africans in the pre-democracy era.

In an introductory note to ''Felix In Exile'', Kentridge writes, "In the same way that there is a human act of dismembering the past there is a natural process in the terrain through erosion, growth, dilapidation that also seeks to blot out events. In South Africa this process has other dimensions. The very term 'new South Africa' has within it the idea of a painting over the old, the natural process of dismembering, the naturalization of things new."

Not only in ''Felix In Exile'' but in all of his animated works do the concepts of time and change comprise a major theme. He conveys it through his erasure technique, which contrasts with conventional cel-shaded animation, whose seamlessness de-emphasizes the fact that it is actually a succession of hand-drawn images. This he implements by drawing a key frame, erasing certain areas of it, re-drawing them and thus creating the next frame. He is able in this way to create as many frames as he wants based on the original key frame simply by erasing small sections. Traces of what has been erased are still visible to the viewer; as the films unfold, a sense of fading memory or the passing of time and the traces it leaves behind are portrayed. Kentridge's technique grapples with what is not said, what remains suppressed or forgotten but can easily be felt.

In the nine films that follow Soho Eckstein's life, an increasing vehemency is placed on the evanescing health of the individual and contemporary South African society. Conflicts between anarchic and bourgeois individualistic beliefs, again a reference to the duality of man, indicate the idea of social revolution by poetically disfiguring surrounding buildings and landscapes. Kentridge states that, although his work does not focus on apartheid in a direct and overt manner, but rather on the contemporary state of Johannesburg, his drawings and films are certainly spawned by, and feed off of, the brutalised society that it left in its wake. As for more direct political issues, Kentridge says his art presents ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted movements and uncertain endings, all of which seem like insignificant subtleties but can be attributed to most of the calamity presented in his work. In a mixed-media triptych entitled "The Boating Party" (1985), based on Renoir's painting of a similar name, the havoc caused by a seemingly-uninterested aristocracy is perhaps his most severe comment on the state of South Africa during apartheid. The languid diners sit at ease while the surrounding area is ravaged, torn and burned, an interesting contrast that is reflected in his style and choice of colours.

William Kentridge's work is heavily context-dependent, coming as he does from South Africa, a nation whose native people became second-class citizens under an only recently abolished apartheid set by colonising Europeans. Kentridge himself is of European descent, and as such has a unique position as a third-party observer. His parents were lawyers, famous for their defence of victims of the apartheid, giving Kentridge the ability to remove himself somewhat from the atrocities committed. The basics of South Africa's socio-political condition and history must be known to grasp his work fully, much the same as in the cases of such artists as Francisco Goya and Käthe Kollwitz.

Kentridge is of expressionist lineage: form often alludes to content and ''vice versa''. The feeling that is manipulated by the use of palette, composition and media, among others, often plays an equally vital role in the overall meaning as the subject and narrative of a given work. One must use one's gut reactions as well as one's interpretive skills to find meaning in Kentridge's work, much of which reveals very little actual content. Due to the sparse, rough and expressive qualities of Kentridge's handwriting, however, the viewer sees a sombre picture upon first glance, an impression that is perpetuated as the image illustrates a vulnerable and uncomfortable situation.

Aspects of social injustice that have transpired over the years in South Africa have often acted as fodder for Kentridge's pieces. "Casspirs Full of Love", viewable at the Met Museum, appears to be nothing more than heads in boxes to the average American viewer, but South Africans know that a casspir is a vehicle used to put down riots, a kind of a crowd-control tank. The box, then, is the casspir and the heads are those of people who have been killed in riots and demonstrations, people who have been "put down".

The title itself, "Casspirs Full of Love", written along the side of the print, is suggestive of the narrative and is oxymoronic. A casspir full of love is much like a bomb that bursts with happiness - it is an intangible improbability. The purpose of a machine such as this is to instil "peace" by force, but Kentridge here is pointing to the fact that it was used as a tool to keep lower-class natives from taking colonial power and money.

"My drawings don't start with a 'beautiful mark'," writes Kentridge, thinking about the activity of printmaking as being about getting the hand to lead the brain, rather than letting the brain lead the hand. "It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion."

In 1985, Kentridge co-founded Free Film-makers Co-Operative in Johannesburg. In 1999, he was appointed a film-maker by Stereoscope. "Purely in the context of my own work," he wrote in a published playscript of his celebrated ''Ubu and the Truth Commission'', "I would repeat my trust in the contingent, the inauthentic, the whim, the practical, as strategies for finding meaning. I would repeat my mistrust in the worth of Good Ideas. And state a belief that somewhere between relying on pure chance on the one hand, and the execution of a programme on the other, lies the most uncertain but the most fertile ground for the work we do [...]. I think I have shown that it is not the clear light or reason or even aesthetic sensibility which determines how one works, but a constellation of factors only some of which we can change at will."

His political perspective is also present in his opera directions, which involves different layers: stage direction, animation movies, influences of the puppet world. He staged Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Monteverdi), Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) and The Nose (Shostakovich). He also made a short show with the French composer François Sarhan called Telegrams from the Nose.

Kentridge's artworks are among the most sought-after and expensive works in South Africa: "a major charcoal drawing by world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge could set you back some R250 000".

Despite his ongoing exploration of non-traditional media, the foundation of his art has always been drawing and printmaking.

In 2009, Kentridge, in partnership with Gerhard Marx, created a 10m-tall sculpture for his home city of Johannesburg entitled Fire Walker.

Kentridge's Five Themes exhibit was included in the 2009 Time 100, an annual list of the one hundred top people and events in the world.

Kentridge's Five Themes exhibit was awarded First Place in the 2009 AICA (International Association of Art Critics Awards) Best Monographic Museum Show Nationally category.

In parallel of the Five Themes exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris (2010), the artist is featured at the Louvre. The Louvre show, ''Carnets d'Egypte'', includes drawings of the artist, presented next to works from the museum collections, and videos shown in Louis XIVth’s bed.

An article about Kentridge by Calvin Tomkins appears in the 18 Jan 2010 issue of The New Yorker.

Family

William Kentridge is married to Anne Stanwix, an immunologist, and they have three children. He is the son of the prominent South African lawyer Sydney Kentridge.

Films

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1989 ''Johannesburg:2nd Greatest City After Paris''

1990 ''Monument''

1991 ''Mine''

1991 ''Sobriety, Obesity & growing old''

1994 ''Felix in Exile''

1996 ''History of the Main Complaint''

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1996-97 ''Ubu Tells the Truth''

1998 ''Weighing and Wanting''

1999 ''Stereoscope''

2001 ''Medicine Chest''

2003 ''Automatic Writing''

|- |} His films were shown at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Exhibitions

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1997 Documenta X, Kassel

1998 São Paulo Biennial

1998 The Drawing Center, New York

1999 Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art

1999 Venice Biennial

2000 Bienal de la Habana, Havana

2003 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

2004 Metropolitan Museum, New York

2005 Musée d'art Contemporain, Montreal

2006 Johannesburg Art Gallery

2006 Salzburg Museum der Moderne

2006 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

2007 Smith College Art Museum

2007 Museum of Modern Art, New York

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2007 University of Brighton Gallery

2007 Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brasil

2008 Williams College Museum of Art

2008 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2008 Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

2009 Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art

2009 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

2009 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

2009 Henry Art Gallery, Seattle

2009 The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

2009 The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach

2010 Museum of Modern Art, New York

2010 Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima

2010 Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

2010 Jeu de Paume, Paris

2010 Louvre, Paris

2010 Albertina, Vienna

2011 Israel Museum, Jerusalem

2011 MOMA, New York City

2011 MACO, Oaxaca

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Awards

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1982 Red Ribbon Award for Short Fiction

1986 Market Theatre Award for New Vision exhibition

1986 AA vita Award at Cassirer fine Art

1987 Standard Bank Young Artist Award

1992 Woyzeck on the highveld awards for production, set design & direction

1994 Loerie Award memo

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2003 Goslar Kaiserring

2004 Carnegie Medal

2004 Honorary Doctor of Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand

2006 Jesse L Rosenberger Medal from the University of Chicago

2010 Kyoto Prize

|- |}

References

Cameron, Dan; Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn; Coetzee, JM. ''William Kentridge''. New York: Phaidon Press, 1999.

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn. ''William Kentridge''. Societé des Expositions du Palais de Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, 1998.

Cole, William. "On Some Early Prints by William Kentridge", Print Quarterly vol. XXVI no. 3 (2009), 268-273.

Edmunds, Paul. "William Kentridge's SANG Retrospective", Artthrob: Contemporary Art in South Africa 65 (2003).

Greg Kucera Gallery. "William Kentridge". 2007.

Kasfir, Sydney. ''Contemporary African Art''. London: Thames & Hudson, 1999.

Kentridge, William. "Director's Note". In ''Ubu and the Truth Commission'', by Jane Taylor, viii-xv. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2007.

Taylor, Jane. ''Ubu and the Truth Commission''. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2007.

Notes

External links

Artworks by William Kentridge

William Kentridge Prints, a book detailing his extensive printmaking oeuvre

Book launch (photograph of William Kentridge and discussion by Jane Taylor)

Interview with William Kentridge, by Lilian Tone

William Kentridge at Who's Who

Wits honours top artist

Get ready for Grahamstown

SA artists in Barcelona

SA artists at Havana Biennale

William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible PBS, Art-21, October 21, 2010

Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:South African artists Category:Animators

af:William Kentridge de:William Kentridge fr:William Kentridge ru:Кентридж, Уильям sv:William Kentridge

Peter Schjeldahl, (born 1942), is an American art critic, poet, and educator. Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, North Dakota. He grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, and attended Carleton College and The New School. He began his professional writing career as a reporter in Minnesota, Iowa and New Jersey.

Art critic

In 1964 he traveled to Paris for a year before settling in New York City in 1965. Since coming to New York he has worked as an art critic for ''ARTnews'', ''The New York Times'', ''The Village Voice'' (1980 to 1998), and 7 Days (The Cooper Union). In 1998 he joined ''The New Yorker'' where he is currently the head art critic. His writings have also appeared in Artforum, Art in America, ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''Vogue'', and ''Vanity Fair''. During his career Schjeldahl has written several books of poetry as well as art criticism. He taught at Harvard University in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies for four years as well.

Poet

Schjeldahl’s poetry falls in line with many of the characteristic themes and styles of the New York School. As a contemporary postmodern poet, Schjeldahl believed fervently in the idea that poetry should be enjoyed and understood by all readers. In an interview with the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Blackbird Schjeldahl commented on how ''“there are no rewards in being obscure or abstruse or overbearing”'' (Wolgamott). Schjeldahl’s work reflects this attitude and his beliefs against institutionalizing art and poetry.

His poetry succeeds without a great deal of complexity in language usage or style while maintaining a definite seriousness and poignancy in his themes. Schjeldahl’s poetry often addresses common experiences or familiar events in a way which grounds his work and accentuates his messages. This can be seen in poems like “My Generation” where he opens with: ''“Vietnam/ Drugs/ Civil Rights/ Rock/ Watergate/ (in that order?)/ Are the blows of history/ That have left my generation/ Its peculiar battered silhouette.”'' As this passage shows, Schjeldahl fuels much of his poetry with historical and biographical contexts which help audiences relate more intimately with his work.

As an art critic and as a poet Schjeldahl’s main ambition has been seeded in his desire to help people enjoy art. In the same interview with Blackbird Schjeldahl stated how “''writing things that people want to read is my bread and butter''” (Wolgamott). Schjeldahl’s poetry exists as poetry that demands to be read and enjoyed rather than studied in classrooms. The significance of his work comes from the lively nature his poetry manages to maintain while simultaneously delivering very impacting messages. Schjeldahl’s lasting influence comes from his ability to write poetry and criticize art in the late twentieth century where most audiences have tended to stray away from the arts in favor of more commercialized entertainment. Schjeldahl’s poetry stands out influentially among the works of the New York School of poets and the current American art communities.

Awards

Schjeldahl was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1995. In 1980 he received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism by the College Art Association. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute named Peter Schjeldahl the winner of the 2008 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. The prize was established in 2006 to recognize writers who advance public appreciation of visual art in a way that "is grounded in scholarship yet appeals to a broad range of audiences." It comes with a $25,000 honorarium and an award designed by architect Tadao Ando.

Personal life

Schjeldahl currently resides in New York. He is married to Brooke Alderson, an actress.

Bibliography

Books

''Let's See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker'', Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 2008

''De Kooning and Dubuffet: The Late Works,'' Pace Gallery Publications, New York, NY, 1993.

''The Hydrogen Jukebox: Selected Writings of Peter Schjeldahl,'' 1978-1990. Edited by Malin Wilson, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1991.

''The 7 Days Art Columns,1988-1990, ''Figures Press, New York, NY, 1990.

''Jean Dubuffet: Recent Paintings,'' October 31–29 November 1980 The Pace Gallery: Exhibition, The Gallery. New York, NY, 1980.

''Since 1964: New and Selected Poems,'' SUN, New York, NY, 1978.

''Dreams,'' Angel Hair Books, New York, NY, 1973.

''An Adventure of the Thought Police,'' Ferry Press, London, England, 1971.

''White Country,'' Corinth Books, New York, NY, 1968.

Contributed to

Cindy Sherman. Whitney Museum of American Art. New York, NY, 1987.

De Kooning: Drawings, Sculptures: An Exhibition Organized by Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, March 10-April 21, 1974. Dutton. New York, NY, 1974.

Dean Sobel, Jackie Winsor. Milwaukee Art Museum. Milwaukee, WI, 1991.

Edward Hopper: Light Years, October 1 to November 12, 1988. Hirschl & Adler Galleries. New York, NY, 1988.

Elizabeth Prelinger and Michael Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch: The Vivian and David Campbell Collection. Yale University Press. New Haven, CT, 1996.

Eric Fischl. Edited by David Whitney, Art in America: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. New York, NY, 1988.

Jean Dubuffet. 1943-1963: Paintings, Sculptures, Assemblages: An Exhibition. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, DC, 1993.

Liza Lou: Essays by Peter Schjeldahl and Marcia Tucker. Smart Art Press. Santa Monica, CA, 1998.

Louis Carlos Bernal and others, Ten Photographers, Olympic Images. Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies. Los Angeles, CA, 1984.

Lucas Samaras, Samaras Pastels: Denver Art Museum, October 3-December 27, 1981. edited by Marlene Chambers, The Museum. Denver, CO, 1981.

Olav Christopher Jenssen: Bilder 1990-1994. Kestner-Gedellschaft. Hannover, Germany, 1995.

Picasso’s Dora Maar/ De Kooning's Women. C&M; Arts. New York, NY, 1998.

Richard Bosman, Gifts of the Sea: Mandeville Gallery, University of California, San Diego, May 19 through June 25, 1989. The Gallery. San Diego, CA, 1989.

Richard Deacon. Phaidon. London, England, 1995.

Salle. Vintage Books. New York, NY, 1987.

Shards: Garth Clark on Ceramic Art. Art Publishers. New York, NY, 2003.

The Inward Eye: Transcendence in Contemporary Art. Contemporary Arts Museum. Houston, TX, 2001.

William Wegman. Museo de Monterrey. Monterrey, Mexico, 1993.

-Compilation of Schjeldahl’s work comes in large part from the list found on Galenet’s Contemporary Authors Online.

Articles

Retrospectives of Franz West and Mary Heilmann. "The New Orleans Biennial beckons." "Skin Fruit" at the New Museum, New York.

References

External links

Watch Peter Schjeldahl lecture at Boston University's School of Visual Arts on BUniverse.

Peter Schjeldahl

Wolgamott, Kent. Interview with Peter Schjeldahl. Blackbird Archive

Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:American art critics Category:American poets Category:People from Fargo, North Dakota Category:Writers from North Dakota Category:Carleton College alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:The New Yorker people Category:The New Yorker critics Category:The New Yorker staff writers Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:Frank Jewett Mather Award winners