History Western Art

History of modern and western art. Paris, New York and Italy. expressionist movement, his work convey great emotion, using splashes of vivid color. In his earlier work, we can see he applied paint with thick, bold brushstrokes, using blacks paint and shadow, to note intense emotions. Van Gogh wanted to paint human figures in a natural way, with all the emotion of daily life, and not in a posed awkward way. We can see this attempt at intense natural emotion when we look at The Potato Eaters. This painting showed five figures sitting around a square table eating potatoes illuminated by a single bulb; although the painting is very dark, the mixed emotions residing on the faces of the individual are quiet clear. The figures have a caricaturist quality, their faces show a sort of distortion, and their hand are shown exaggeratedly long which characterized expressionism. The emotions displaying on the figures are so intense, it almost gives the viewer a sense that they are present around the table listening to the conversation. Perhaps the mix of emotion and layered with the darkness in the picture is what draws the viewer to painting making them want to examine all the details of the painting. In Van Gogh later works, for example Starry Night, we see this artist expressing emotion through the use of intense colors, as Van Gogh would say that color was in a way a messenger of emotions. He would go on to say that, red and green expressed the terrible passions of human nature (Soltes, L34, 27:34). In his later works as in Starry night, we saw intense almost manic emotions, with correlated with the way the artist was feeling at that moment.

As we have seen, the Italian Renaissance was instrumental in guiding artist to more naturalistic secular form of art, which would continue and transformed into impressionism and post-impressionism movements. As we see at the end of the post-Impressionist movement, we start seeing a bit more of abstract art, like Van Gogh using a bit of...