WHY IS PAINTING THE MOST POPULAR AMONG

THE FINE ARTS?

• It is because the materials used for painting are FLEXIBLE, DURABLE, and
INEXPENSIVE.
• It is because painting ATTRACTS MANY TEMPERAMENTS.
• It is because ALMOST ANY THEME CAN BE TREATED THROUGH THIS
GENRE.
INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY
PAINTING
• There are different STYLES IN PAINTING and DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE
ACCURACY.
• There are things that the VIEWER has to CONSIDER to appreciate a painting.
• The lesson is of two parts:
I. Part I: Art Production
II. Part II: Art Appreciation
ART PRODUCTION

• It is necessary to understand how art is produced to be able to appreciate how artworks

come to be.
• Every art-making process is DICTATED by the ARTIST’S STYLE.
• STYLE – has many meanings. It can mean the art produced in a particular historical
period. It can also refer to the art of a nation or a region within a country. In addition, it
can be a certain technical approach to the making of art.
• EVOLUTION OF STYLE – the growth of a single artist’s way of working.
• Style may be discerned not only by how it looks like but also based on the quality of the
painting.
ELMER BORLONGAN’S
DRIVER’S LOUNGE
ART PRODUCTION

• CONTEMPORARY PAINTING – made in many styles at one time throughout the

globe. For this reason, we cannot refer to style as the art produced in a particular
historical period. Neither can we refer to it as the art of a nation or region.
• STYLLISTIC TENDENCIES – manifested in artwork.
• STYLLISTIC CHANGES – apparent in stylistic tendencies, which are attributed to
the creative inventions of artists working at certain times and in specific places.
 PACITA ABAD
• Born in Batanes and learned art-making in New York, USA.
• In the early 1980s, while she was in Boston, Massachusetts, she developed
trapunto painting.
• TRAPUNTO PAINTING – a technique of stitching and stuffing her
painted canvas to give a three-dimensional sculptural effect.
• In 1983, she made more than 110 wayang paintings in Indonesia.
• She then traveled to Papua New Guinea and made 15 large masks in tribal
colors, combining her trapunto technique with local cowry shells, feathers,
bones, and vegetable dyed colors.
 PACITA ABAD
• In 1985, she showed 10 of her “political expression” paintings in Manila.
• She learned how to scuba dive and made a large underwater installation.
• In 1986, she exhibited 35 “Oriental abstraction” paintings in Hong Kong. In
the following year, she held exhibition of 24 large “canvas collages” in
Washington, DC.
• She continued to paint, often alternating or combining all of the styles that
we have cited until she passed away in 2004.
 BRENDA FAJARDO
• She maintains her style in tarot cards series through which she
takes local historic and mythical stories and renders them in
paintings of contemporary sociopolitical relevance.
4 STYLES BASED ON STYLISTIC TENDENCIES

A. OBJECTIVE ACCURACY
-not easy to achieve.
-many contemporary artists face the problem of creating
an impression of reality through a selective use of visual facts.
-artists imitate appearance to convey moving drama
about human life.
-sometimes, artists combine their representational skill
to create a psychological impact.
OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

a. The Artist as DETACHED OBSERVER

-the artist here presents himself/herself as somebody who selects,
arranges, and represents reality without his/her identity revealed.
b. The Artist as SELECTIVE EYE
-the “illusion of reality” is created by elimination of details that the
eye might see.
-the artist must “know” the subject as well as “see” its surface
characteristics.
DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

How does one achieve objective accuracy? Through correct

drawing, control, focus, color, and perspective.
1. Accuracy of size and shape relationships.
 CORRECT DRAWING – the most common
device.
⁻ It takes mastery acquired through formal studies and serious
practice to make beautiful artworks.
⁻ Learning how to draw accurately teaches the artist to see and to
understand what he/she is looking at.
DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

2. The artist’s control and handling of illumination

-help in creating realistic images.
-the amount of light an object receives, the shapes of its
shadows, the transition from light to shadow, the source of light-
these the artist learns to observe and control in the medium that
he/she uses.
DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

3. Focus
-achieved through sharpness or softness,
distinctness or vagueness of form and contour.
DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

4. Color
-a powerful instrument.
-mainly connected with the description of the
objects.
DEVICES FOR OBJECTIVE ACCURACY

5. Perspective
- the pictorial device that relates to the artist’s ability to
create the illusion of deep space within the painting.
-the technical features of linear and serial perspective-
the perspective of shadows and reflections, or receding
measured forms, of advancing and foreshortened forms, of
single- and two-point systems, of the interaction of perspective
with color and illumination- are exceedingly complex (Feldman,
1981: 158-165).
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!!