Thoughts about Art (and the use of ICT)

Reg Eyre
University College Northampton

Editor's note: for copyright reasons we are unable to display the pictures that Reg refers to in this article. Many of them are to be found on the Internet, and URLs have been given where possible. The images that are included are originals worked in the style of the various artists.

Have you noticed how the work of Mondrian is cited and displayed in primary classrooms across the land?

Have you questioned why?

I was pondering this and came to the conclusion that it is something to do with the National Curriculum philosophy that children should 'work in the style of' artists.

So why aren't we working on Seurat, Monet, Klimt, etc.?

Because we have the facility to use ICT to copy and paste repeatedly does it mean that we are working in the style of William Morris?

Question:

I am not an art specialist, what does it mean to work in the style of a particular artist? What do I need to know about them and what they tried to achieve?

It is my contention that to 'work in the style of' means that we need to try to understand what the artist was trying to achieve not just use some techniques which replicate some of their works, (because it is easy to do with ICT).

Take a photograph of a natural object, select part of it, and use ICT to tile and flip... but does this demonstrate an understanding of Morris's work?

An original image of tree branches 'Tile and Flip' of branches

This image shows a modification of the above picture, where an understanding of the work of Morris has been taken into account, i.e. branches only point upwards, as they do naturally, and the use of half image off-setting to create wallpaper.

Working in the style of Piet Mondrian

If we look at the work of Piet Mondrian, such as 'Composition with Blue and Yellow', we should try to understand the he was aiming to balance the large area of yellow by the smaller area of blue on an asymmetric grid. The strong black lines and rectangles of white separate the two primary colours to create an harmonious composition. The art movement which promoted this style of working was known as 'De Stijl'.

'Composition with Blue and Yellow' by Piet Mondrian can be viewed at http://www.coleccioncisneros.org/aw_rel.asp?ID_Gallery=37&CountOrder=1

The original is in Rotterdam.

Theo Van Doesburg is another member of the 'De Stijl' movement and his work, 'Contra-Composition', uses primary colours arranged within the confines of a diamond shaped frame. Most of the artists of this movement rejected representative art believing that art should stand on its own as a balanced combination of lines, shapes and primary colours.

Ellsworth Kelly is only interested in the internal relationship between colour and form. The work, 'Green Relief with Blue', does not have a rectangular frame but the coloured shapes define the outline of his work. Some have compared his work to wall based sculpture.

Examples of Kelly's work can be found at http://www.fineartsite.com/detail.php3?code=2515&room_number=1

If we follow the theme of artists using rectangles and colour, we may find some that are conceptually easier to get into.

This work is called 'Rhythm in Four Squares' by Max Bill. The grid of interlocking rectangles and squares uses a range of colours and sizes that sets the feeling that some colours and forms are closer to the viewer than others. Although he was inspired by the 'De Stijl' group, he referred to his own work as concrete art rather than abstract. This art is also non-representational but has a life of its own. Hence his art is particularly influenced by the mathematics of shapes and flat colours.

'Rhythm in Four Squares' by Max Bill is in the Kunsthaus, Zurich. A similar image came from the following web-site. http://www.nelepets.com/art/artists/b/Bill.htm

Question:

Why use a computer to work in this style? If we are thinking about composition would it not be better to provide children with different rectangles of coloured paper and encourage them to position them on a black background until they achieved the harmonious effect they were looking for? I think ICT might 'get in the way of' art in this case.

'Rhythm in Four Squares'

In the style of Max Bill

In the work by Josef Albers called 'Study for Homage to the Square: Beaming', the artist wishes the viewer to become disoriented after looking at this work for a long time. He has done this by using the interplay of 'similar' colours and concentric squares. His aim is to create contemplative works so that the colours have a meditative quality rather than looking for something that comes out of 'Colour Theory'.

Working in the style of Josef Albers Ð by Matthew aged 9

Josef Albers works on the theme of 'Study for the Homage to the Square' can be viewed at http://www.aisg.on.ca/stained_glass_posters/josef_albers_posters.htm

Question:

What would be the effect of using different colours? Would they still have a disorienting effect on the observer?

Mark Rothko also uses colour to try to obtain the effect of one colour hovering above another. The work called 'Red on Maroon' is painted on a huge canvas. His interest was in exploring basic human emotions rather than exploring abstraction and the relationship between colour and form.

The work 'Red on Maroon' by Mark Rothko is displayed in the Tate Gallery, London and can be viewed at http://www.postershop.com/rothko/rot2012.htm

Question

How easy is it to achieve this sort of effect using a computer? The blocks of colour in the original are not solid.

In this diamond shaped piece of work by Kenneth Noland called 'Another Time' we see the use of simple colours and a geometric design. Noland worked with Albers above but where Albers used geometric abstraction to explore illusion of depth and movement, Noland wants to emphasise the flatness of the picture plane.

Kenneth Noland's work called 'Another Time' can be viewed at the following web-site. The original is displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

http://www.nelepets.com/art/20c/70-79/1978kenneth%20noland%20draws%20plans.htm

The work called 'August' by Bridget Riley shows an arrangement of overlapping colours and patterns creating an optical illusion effect and is quite mesmeric. Riley is an established member of the 'Op Art' movement and enjoys creating an impression of movement on a static canvas. Similar work can be found at http://www.hayward.org.uk/goya_brassai/hayward/remote/exhibition/nte/riley.html

In the style of Bridget Riley.

All of the above artists and their work can be found in 'The 20^th Century Art Book' published by Phaidon Press in 1996. (www.phaidon.com/) Other works by these artists can be accessed by doing a search using the Google search engine, ( www.google.co.uk ) and putting the artist's name in quotes.

What I hope I have done is to show you various pieces of work by artists which may look similar but each was done for different reasons by these artists. We might be able to get children to produce similar work by trying to understand the thinking behind the production of these works. Some of these works are really quite inspirational..... aren't they?

The thinking behind...

Let me now define a method for producing work along the lines of the above artists in which I want to finish with an image that has a geometric feel to it, uses blocks of colour and is based on a picture image taken with a digital camera.

This image could therefore come from anywhere using ICT techniques, (such as the Internet, digital camera, scanner, etc.). We now superimpose a grid to divide up the area of the image into areas of colour, as we perceive it. We then take one of the rectangular partitions and decide which 'pure' colour 'best' represents the predominate colour in that area and fill it with that colour.

The original image is of an Acer tree at Batsford Aboritum which I took using a digital camera.

The second image has lines where I have decided the areas of colour interest are.

Now we need to look at the image and decide which colours could be taken away and still leave an essence of the original picture and still achieve a balance of colours in the 'new' image.

I have chosen the colours which best represent, for me, the colour in each area. The next set of images show how I am trying to minimise the number of colours and still retain the essence of the colour balance from the original camera shot.

I think that this first image contains the 'right' blend and spacing that I was after. The second image here seems to have lost the vibrant red/pink colour that was in the original but it does have good 'balance'.

So I cheated and put it back in!

Is this too radical? Is it moving us somewhere near the thinking that artists, like Mondrian, were trying to achieve? Could we establish procedures for making pictures in other ways that take us towards an understanding about how artists use colour, shape and form? Remember that we may not be able to 'get inside the head of a particular artist'!

Displaying the finished work

When it comes to display, why do we still regress to the traditional format of having print-outs? The images produced on a screen are colour blends of light and not the traditional colour blends of ink pigments.

While working recently with some teachers, I was explaining how we could examine the work of Rothko and casually created a dark red background and put a slightly darker red filled rectangle in the middle. The immediate reaction was that teachers said they could see the rectangle 'floating' above the background. I had not anticipated this as I have only ever seen his work displayed in darkened rooms and had not expected to replicate the effect using a data projector in a light room.

Question:

Why not compare screen and printed versions before using a projector? This might help children appreciate the difference between blends of ink pigments and blends of light. Perhaps pupils will decide that the effect they are after is better achieved using a printer, but the decision will have been informed and their own.

Another radical thought might be that we should use our new projectors to view work at huge size. What about saving the development of a child's work into a folder and then put all the images into a word processor so that they can annotate their work and explain how their work developed and why they made the changes they did. Even more radical, we could insert them into a Power Point presentation and use the interactive white-board to show them at a class assembly with each child explaining their work developments by just tapping the board to bring on-screen the next piece of work.

Question:

Why not set PowerPoint up to cycle through the slides of annotated pictures? Use this for an impressive Parents' Evening or Open Day display.

I have now begun to realise why I am asking you to consider the work of 'modern' artists. When we look at the work of the 'Masters' and are told how well they have used light, shade, colour, etc, it is much harder to consider just one quality in isolation since the 'Master' has obvious skills in all areas. It is quite difficult to replicate one aspect without having some mastery of other skills and techniques. In general, 'modern' artists usually concentrate on just one idea to really test the effects that they are exploring. Hence their work is more accessible to us and the use of ICT can be advantageous in some cases such as the 'de stijl' artists.

Editor's note: if you have been inspired to attempt some art in the style of William Morris don't forget that a CD containing many suitable photographs was included in the MAPE Magazine 5 published in Spring 2002.

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