Monday, July 14, 2014

All About Figurative And Genre Art

By Coleen Torres


In the world of art, there are actually two categories that one may see namely abstract styles and figurative styles. Abstract styles are the types that would produce works that have random shapes and generally have no clear meaning. The figurative and genre art on the other hand, is the type of art that would clearly depict a certain object that would come from real life.

When one would depict a subject from real life, he is not necessarily making an exact replica of the subject. What he is doing is he is actually interpreting the subject and recreating it to how he perceives it. Basically, he is creating a replica of that subject with his own special twist to it.

Now when one would try making artworks that are in this category, he would usually choose between either humans or animals. Now even though these two are the most common subjects to be used for this type of artwork, many artists would actually use objects from nature like trees or mountains. Sometimes they would even use architecture as their subjects like castles or buildings.

Now just to give people an idea of how this category came into to place, here is a little history lesson. The very first piece of art was a thirty five thousand year old sculpture of a woman that came from a region in South Germany. It was made out of rock and was carved by the tusk of a mammoth. The second one were cave paintings which were found in France and they dated way back to sixteen thousand years ago.

Now this type of artwork would be dependent on certain elements. Since this would actually try to represent actual figures that would come from real life, it is important that all the elements of objects in real life would also apply to this type of artwork. The elements would be lines, shapes, colors, shades, texture, and angling.

Now if one is an artist, he has to make sure that he really pays attention to the detailing because this is very important in this category. Even though a lot of people would say that they do not notice the small details like the little lines, these details actually make a lot of difference. It is for this reason that one would really need to have a quick eye to see the small things.

Now before this type of art reached the popularity that it has today, it first started out in ancient Greece wherein the Greeks believed that art is all about precision and accuracy in copying the subject. The Egyptians, on the other hand believed that it was more on remembering what the subject looked like in the mind then translating it in art form. Of course over time, these two methods were fused and artists would sometimes switch between them.

So as one can see, it takes more than just some creativity in order to create a masterpiece in this category. Now this type of art has a very rich background which stemmed from the Greeks to the Egyptians even up to the artists of the Renaissance period. Even up until now this type of artwork is still growing and evolving.




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