TASK 2

TOPIC: (MIXED MEDIA ART) ON ALL THE ART MOVEMENT

Definition?      

      Mixed media art is any form of art that combines two or more mediums in one work. Use of the term began circa 1912 with Cubist collages and the art of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, but these men weren't the first to create mixed media art. Assemblages and collages are forms of mixed media that are popular in the 21st century.

                                                                                                                                                    

History of Mixed Media Art

       What we know today as mixed media art began in the early twentieth century, when artists seeking an alternative to what they saw as hidebound academic-ism began including objects and images that were not considered to be art materials in their works. Examples of everyday materials being included in ceremonial or aesthetic objects can be found dating back to prehistory, but these were created with different intentions, and served a very different social purpose than the objects we refer to as "art."

The Earliest Mixed Media Artists

        Although they weren't called mixed media artists, artists of the Byzantine Empire, 330 to 1453 A.D., often used gilded gold leaf on their paintings, mosaics, frescoes and manuscripts. The arts stagnated through the Dark Ages, but flourished with the coming of the Renaissance. In addition to working with tempera, a paint medium that dates to ancient Egypt, oil painting became popular. Many artists applied gold leaf to painted wood panels to achieve vibrant skies or shining halos on religious panels

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Picasso and Cubism

        In 1912, Picasso incorporated a piece of chair caning into one of his works. While this act seems tame today, it was quite radical at the time, when the idea of art necessitated a removal from the everyday world. By bridging the divide between paint and reality, Picasso helped to bring on an era of radical change in art, when rules were thrown out and materials of all kinds began to be seen as capable of becoming art.

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Marcel Duchamp

        Five years later, in 1917, Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal in an art show. Whether he was trying to make the point that everything is art, or that nothing is art, has been the subject of discussion ever since. Duchamp's discovery of the "readymade," as he called the urinal and other objects that he chose, erased the line between art and life even more thoroughly than Picasso had done.

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Dada

        In the 1920s, members of the Dada movement incorporated newspapers, detritus off the street, and bits of wood, dressmakers' dummies and many other objects in their artwork. Although Dada was a self-proclaimed anti-art movement, their continuation of Picasso's and Duchamp's use of "non-art" objects within an artistic context helped to promote the creation of mixed-media art, resulting in the continuation, rather than the destruction, of art.

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Arman

        In the 1950s, Arman became very successful as an artist primarily by assembling large numbers of objects in one place. His signature style was a collection of objects--such as wrenches, cutlery or shoes--contained within a plexiglass box. Many have interpreted his art as either a condemnation or a celebration of mass consumption, the true beauty of it being that it could be either.

Tinguely

        In the 1960s, Jean Tinguely built sculptures out of bits of steel and other metals, found objects and gears. The distinguishing feature of Tinguely's creations was that they were animated and self-destroying. When Tinguely had completed a work, he would organize a performance to which hundreds of people would come and watch his chaotic creations smash themselves into oblivion.

                                                   

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Advantages of Mixed Media

-Mixed media art allows both novice and professional artist have some fun with craft because there are really no rules.

-It’s inexpensive

-Using various materials from the world around you sensitizes you to things that you wouldn’t ordinarily see.

References

Seitz, W. C., 1961. The Origins of collage. s.l.:Krieg Art Studio.