Friday, 7 November 2014

The Wonders Of Figurative And Genre Art

By Christa Jarvis


Art has existed for so many years in different countries with different cultures. It is something that has made our world more beautiful than its actual appearance. It has also inspired people to lead a fruitful life. It might be used as a profession or a hobby for some, but for all of us, it is a magical gift. It has always been in our senses for each of us is a masterpiece.

Historical evidences pointed out that even prehistoric people started showing their creative side by painting on caves. With all of its changes and experimentation, it has indeed come a long way. Painting is one of its most popular genres that inspired a number of artists to think of a new form like the figurative and genre art. It mainly deals with artworks that show something out of the real world. It uses models which are found on our daily life. It is the reason why it is often called as representational art. It represents something that exists in the real world. It is a great experiment of combining imagination and reality.

Questions about its history and origin were raised since time immemorial. It started on the centuries ago and continues to inspire modern artists. It actually came from abstraction when artists started gaining a significant amount of respect from subjects in the real world. Some people consider it as a variation of abstraction, but there are others who believed that it is present even before abstract art exists.

Figuration begun to flourished on the nineteen thirties while the abstraction started on the seventies. Abstraction is synonymous to what is known as nonrepresentational art. Although it has its own representation, unlike figuration, it does not dwell on the real world. Abstract artists did not make use of physical and observable objects. They often view their canvas as a flat setting.

Moreover, figuration deals with the surface level of a specific work while abstraction goes deeper to the point that work became unrecognizable. Both contained ideas that are worth thinking but how they are transported to its audience depends on the form. Such forms continue to motivate young artists of today to experiment and explore.

The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is considered as one of the greatest painter of the figurative genre. Lines and colors that contained energetic human movements are evident in his works. They always attempt to draw something which is specific and present on the real world.

The thirty two Campbell Soup Cans is his most notable painting. It is one of the artworks that ushered figuration in the United States. It is composed of the various canned soup produced by its company. The technique and style he utilized for the work made it a giant success.

His influence did not stop on his works, it goes beyond the school of art produced by his style. One primary school of the figurative art is the Cubism which Picasso pioneered with other artists. In Cubism, a work always has a subject which is depicted in multiple viewpoints in order to widen its context.

Artists of various schools continue to produce something beautiful until today. Figuration is just one of their guides that helped them create the work that they want to share. In a nutshell, form does not really matter, what matters most is how an artwork contributed something in our society.




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