Painting is the practice of applying paint Paint is any liquid, liquefiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film, pigment A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light, color Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, or other medium^[1] to a surface In mathematics, specifically in topology, a surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The most familiar examples are those that arise as the boundaries of solid objects in ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 — for example, the surface of a ball. On the other hand, there are surfaces, such as the Klein bottle, that cannot be (support base). The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush The term brush refers to devices with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes but other objects may be used. In art Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics the term describes both the act and the result which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls A wall is a usually solid structure that defines and sometimes protects an area. Most commonly, a wall delineates a building and supports its superstructure, separates space in buildings into rooms, or protects or delineates a space in the open air. There are three principal types of structural walls: building walls, exterior boundary walls, and, paper Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets, canvas Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other functions where sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used as a painting surface, typically stretched, and on fashion handbags and shoes, wood Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many plants. It has been used for centuries for both fuel and as a construction material for several types of living areas such as houses. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. In the strict sense wood is produced as, glass Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle, and often optically transparent. Glass is commonly used for windows, bottles, and eyewear; examples of glassy materials include soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, and aluminium oxynitride. The term glass developed in the late Roman, lacquer In a general sense, lacquer is a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required, clay Clay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals. Clay deposits are mostly composed of clay minerals, a subtype of phyllosilicate minerals, which impart plasticity and harden when fired or dried; they also may contain variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure by polar attraction. Organic materials or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf Gold leaf is gold that is beaten into extremely thin sheets. The thin gold sheets are commonly used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. 22-karat yellow gold is the most commonly used, and some modern paintings incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of paper.

Painting is a mode of expression and the forms are numerous. Drawing Drawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. An artist who practices or works in drawing may be, composition In the visual arts — in particular painting, graphic design, photography and sculpture — composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on) in an artificial setting. With origins in ancient times and most popular in Western art since the or landscape painting Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost), photographic Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Photography uses foremost radiation in the UV, visible and near-IR spectrum. For common purposes the term light is used in stead of radiation. Light, abstract Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield. Numerals are symbols for numbers . All language consists of symbols, emotion or be political Politics , is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers in nature.

A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by spiritual Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop an individual's inner life; such practices often lead to an motifs and ideas; examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological The term mythology can refer to either the study of myths or a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story; however, the academic figures on pottery to Biblical The Bible refers to collections of sacred scripture of Judaism and Christianity. There is no single version: both the individual books and their order vary. The Hebrew Bible contains 39 books, while Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. The oldest surviving Christian Bibles scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of The Sistine Chapel Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon's Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro, to scenes from the life of Buddha Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. The earliest paintings were not representational but ornamental; they consisted of patterns or designs rather than pictures. Stone Age pottery was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals. It was only during the Warring States Period that artists began to or other scenes of eastern religious origin Eastern art history is devoted to the arts of the Far East and includes a vast range of influences from various cultures and religions. The emphasis is on art history amongst many diverse cultures in Asia. Developments in Eastern art historically parallel those in Western art, in general a few centuries earlier. African art, Islamic art, Indian.

Overview

"The boundary of things in the second plane will not be discerned like those in the first. Therefore, painter, do not produce boundaries between the first and the second, because the boundary of one object and another is of the nature of a mathematical line In Euclidean geometry, a line is a straight curve. When geometry is used to model the real world, lines are used to represent straight objects with negligible width and height. Lines are an idealisation of such objects and have no width or height at all and are usually considered to be infinitely long. Lines are a fundamental concept in some but not an actual line, in that the boundary of one colour is the start of another colour and is not to be accorded the status of an actual line, because nothing intervenes between the boundary of one colour which is placed against another. Therefore, painter, do not make the boundaries pronounced at a distance."^[2]

What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity. Every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity; by using just color (of the same intensity) one can only represent symbolic shapes. Thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical Geometry "Earth-measuring" is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes, in the 3rd century BC geometry was put into an axiomatic form by figures, various points of view and organization (perspective Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye. The two most characteristic features of perspective are that objects are drawn:), and symbols. For example, a painter perceives that a particular white wall has different intensity at each point, due to shades and reflections from nearby objects, but ideally Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas, the exact philosophical meaning of which is perhaps one of the most disputed questions in higher academic philosophy. At least one may say, with some degree of certitude, that Plato held the realm of ideas to be absolute reality. As for the exact relationship between, a white wall is still a white wall in pitch darkness. In technical drawing, thickness of line is also ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters.

Color Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, and tone are the essence of painting as pitch Pitch represents the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. It is one of the four major auditory attributes of sounds along with loudness, timbre and sound source location. When the actual fundamental frequency can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones, also known as and rhythm The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody; it is a topic in linguistics. Narmour describes three categories of prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions which are additive , cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with are of music Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses.". 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 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] , 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and polymath. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, humanism and science. Goethe's magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-, Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter, and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.[citation needed], Newton Sir Isaac Newton FRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history. His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the, have written their own color theory In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appear in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "colory theory" begins in the 18th century,. Moreover the use of language is only a generalisation for a color equivalent. The word "red The word red comes from the Old English rēad. Further back, the word can be traced to the Proto-Germanic rauthaz and the Proto-Indo European root reudh-. In Sanskrit, the word rudhira means red or blood. In the English language, the word red is associated with the color of blood, certain flowers , and ripe fruits (e.g. apples, cherries). Fire is", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the visible spectrum The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm. In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 400-790 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 C In Western music, the expression "Middle C" refers to the note "C" located exactly between the two staves of the grand staff and near the top and bottom, respectively, of the bass and soprano voices. When calculated in equal temperament with a reference of A above middle C as 440 Hz, the frequency of the middle C note is or C♯ in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic 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: phtalocyan, Paris blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological, 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 "C") is analogous to light in painting, "shades" to dynamics, and coloration is to painting as specific timbre of musical instruments to music—though these do not necessarily form a melody, but can add different contexts to it.

Rhythm is important in painting as well as in music. Rhythm is basically a pause incorporated into a body (sequence). These pauses allow creative force to intervene and add new creations—form, melody, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information is of crucial importance in the given work of art and it directly affects the esthetical value of that work. This is because the esthetical value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom (of movement) of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms of "techne", directly contributes to the esthetical value.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their 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.)

In 1829, the first photograph was produced. From the mid to late 19th century, photographic processes improved and, as it became more widespread, painting lost much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the observable world. There began a series of art movements into the 20th century where the Renaissance view of the world was steadily eroded, through Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and Dadaism. 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 led some to say in the 1960s that painting, as a serious art form, is dead. This has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to practice painting either as whole or part of their work. The vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century belies the premature 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. Important works of art continue to be made in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments, the marketplace being left to judge merit.

Among the continuing and current directions in painting at the beginning of the 21st century are Monochrome painting, Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Appropriation, Hyperrealism, Photorealism, Expressionism, Minimalism, Lyrical Abstraction, Pop Art, Op Art, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Neo-expressionism, Collage, Intermedia painting, Assemblage painting, Computer art painting, Postmodern painting, Neo-Dada painting, Shaped canvas painting, environmental mural painting, traditional figure painting, Landscape painting, Portrait painting, and paint-on-glass animation.

History of painting

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. However the earliest evidence of painting has been discovered in two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. In the lowest layer of material at these sites there are used pieces of ochre estimated to be 60,000 years old. Archaeologists have also found a fragment of rock painting preserved in a limestone rock-shelter in the Kimberley region of North-Western Australia, that is dated 40 000 years old. [1] There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia, India etc.

In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known media, with 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.

Aesthetics and theory of painting

Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty; it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th century philosophers as Kant or Hegel. Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized about art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his philosophical system; he maintained that painting cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting. By the time of Leonardo painting had become a closer representation of the truth than painting was in Ancient Greece. Leonardo da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Pittura est cousa mentale" (painting is a thing of the mind). Kant distinguished between Beauty and the Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the former. Although he did not refer particularly to painting, this concept was taken up by painters such as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.

Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one of the three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music for its symbolic, highly intellectual purpose.^[3][4] Painters who have written theoretical works on painting include Kandinsky and Paul Klee.^[5][6] Kandinsky in his essay maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that Goethe and other writers had already tried to do.

Iconography is the study of the content of paintings, rather than their style. Erwin Panofsky and other art historians first seek to understand the things depicted, then their meaning for the viewer at the time, and then analyse their wider cultural, religious, and social meaning.

In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."^[7] Thus, many twentieth century developments in painting, such as Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world, nature, which had previously been its core subject. Recent contributions to thinking about painting has been offered by the painter and writer Julian Bell. In his book What is Painting?, Bell discusses the development, through history, of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas.^[8] In Mirror of The World Bell writes:

‘A work of art seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards, bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination.’^[9]

Painting media

Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the pigment is suspended or embedded in, which determines the general working characteristics of the paint, such as viscosity, miscibility, solubility, drying time, etc.

Modern painters use a wide selection of media.

Examples include:

Painting styles

Style is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter sense has fallen out of favor in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts. Such movements or classifications include the following:

Western

Far eastern

• Chinese
  • Tang Dynasty
  • Ming Dynasty
  • Shan shui
  • Ink and wash painting
  • Hua niao
  • Southern School
    • Zhe School
    • Wu School
  • Contemporary
• Japanese
  • Yamato-e
  • Rimpa school
  • Emakimono
  • Kanō school
  • Shijō school
  • Superflat
• Korean

Islamic/Persian / Near eastern

• Ottoman miniature
• Persian miniature

Indian

• Mysore
• Tanjore
• Madhubani
• Rajput
• Mughal
• Bengal school
• Samikshavad

African

Contemporary Art

Common painting idioms

Painting idioms include

• Allegory
• Bodegón
• Body painting
• Botanical
• Figure painting
• Illustration
• Industrial
• Landscape
• Portrait
• Still life
• Veduta

Some other painting terms are

See also

• Art
• Acrylic paint
• History of painting
• Image
• Landscape
• List of painters
• Oil painting
• Painterwork
• Portrait painting
• Watercolor painting
• Western painting

References

1. ^ Merriam-Webster Online
2. ^ Martin Kemp, Leonardo on Painting, p. 86–87.
3. ^ Craig, Edward. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, page 278. Routledge, 1998.
4. ^ "Painting and music are the specially romantic arts. Lastly, as a union of painting and music comes poetry, where the sensuous element is more than ever subordinate to the spirit." Excerpted from Encyclopedia Britannica 1911
5. ^ Marcel Franciscono Paul Klee: His Work and Thought, part 6 'The Bauhaus and Dusseldorf', chap. 'Klee's theory courses', p. 246 and under 'notes to pages 245-54' p.365
6. ^ Moshe Barasch (2000) Theories of art - from impressionism to Kandinsky, part IV 'Abstract art', chap. 'Color' pp.332-3
7. ^ http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563353/abstract_art.html Encyclopedia Encarta
8. ^ Review by art historian David Cohen, artnet.com
9. ^ London Review of Books, 29 November 2007.

Bibliography

• A Treatise on Painting by Leonardo da Vinci (Kessinger Publishing)
• Alberti, Leone Battista, De Pictura (On Painting), 1435. On Painting, in English, De Pictura, in Latin
• Doerner, Max – The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting: With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters
• Kandinsky - Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Dover Publications)
• The Journal of Eugene Delacroix (Phaidon Press)
• The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

Further reading

• Daniel, H., (1971) "Encyclopedia of Themes and Subjects in Painting; Mythological, Biblical, Historical, Literary, Allegorical, and Topical". New York, Harry N. Abrams Inc.

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