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Tenebrism in Baroque art

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  My favorite baroque pieces that I have had the opportunity to study have always been ones that feature tenebrism at their center. The darkness and stark contrast of light and shadow have ways of pulling the eyes from one piece of the canvas to the other. A good example of this is  Rembrandt 's “Simeon’s Song of Praise.” What I have always enjoyed about Rembrandt as an artist is how much he can use darkness and contrast to communicate ideas, without the highly prevalent darkness in the paintings being oppressive.  My eyes are initially pulled at the lower left following the columns and arches to a large black shape. I can’t really decide if that’s a tapestry or something else. It’s hard to make out but my first impression is that it is some sort of tapestry. I am then pulled down following the crowd of people into the bright light where I believe Simeon is presiding over the Messiah as a child.  There are a couple of things I think are interesting. The first is Rembrandt was a Pr
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Zdzisław Beksiński, Painter of Nightmares (Art Analysis)

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  It was difficult for me to find just a single piece of Zdzisław Beksiński's art to talk about. I have a handful of favorite artists: Rembrandt, H.R. Giger, M.C. Escher, and Zdzisław Beksiński certainly makes the list. This is work is untitled, oil on canvas, with the exact timing on when he made it being also unknown. Zdzisław Beksiński is a dystopian surrealist who was born in Poland in the 1929. He died in 2005. He was a young boy during World War II, and when the Soviets took over Poland he was present for the duration of the U.S.S.R. and his country was part of the Warsaw Pact (Banach). This particular piece is probably from his "fantastic period" Which happened between 1960-1980 roughly speaking (Banach). That twenty years of time is when he produced pieces like this and it has some of the strongest works in his portfolio. He insists his works were abstract and have no meaning whatsoever.    The reason I don’t believe that is in Poland in the time when he was at hi
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Introduction and my relationship with art

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          This is the personal and academic blog of Shawn McCarthy. For those of you familiar with me you will know that I have a hot and cold relationship with art in general. I have very intense eras of creation and then there are times when I cannot make any type of art at all. Some of it has to do with the fact that for me art is about an emotion that I am trying to express. If I don't have anything I want to express then I don't. The last time I did anything consistently with art was in North Pole High School's AP art program, in 2006. My primary medium was graphite and charcoal. I started to move into acrylic painting with some mixed media, but I found that to be altogether awful. Acrylic dries incredibly fast in the Alaskan air. Art to me is a refinement in technical skill, a visual organizational tool, and a therapeutic process. If the medium interferes with either of those items then I am not interested in it. It doesn't serve me. I should have perhaps tried oi
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