Archive for the ‘art’ Category
Everything in our lives, to a greater or lesser extent, is connected to money and art is no exception. Artists need money for canvases, paints, films, PCs and, of course, they need to eat! This means that any artist sooner or later will be brought reluctantly to face with the problem of getting money.
Yes, art history knows some happy exceptions, such as when an artist was descended from a wealthy family or found a rich sponsor or benefactor. However, the number of these exceptions is small, and the majority of artists in the beginning of their career experience money difficulties, and sometimes this lasts all their life.
Why can’t artists reliably earn a living through their artworks? Why must they so often have a traditional day job and create their as yet unacknowledged masterpieces by night? Why is a Van Gogh a good investment while it is really risky to invest money in contemporary artists?
All answers to these questions come down to the same point, which is that people who are buying art prefer to invest in artists who are known to have a solid reputation, this is more important to them than going for what they really like. This is practical from the point of view of financial investment, but makes no sense in an emotional way – if art doesn’t give you a feeling of beauty, if doesn’t guide you to a different world, then it is not the art for you. The desire to buy a particular artwork should ideally resemble love at first sight.
Money can affect the artist’s scope for free expression. In order to make serious money from their work artists often feel that they need to create artworks that will score big successes in a society and will earn them money. These artworks do not necessarily carry great value; this is like the hit of the season that will be forgotten in the near future.
The key thing is for an artist to remember the reason they chose art as their profession – not in order to get rich quickly, or be incredibly famous and known all around the world. Rather, the point was to be able to create in the way that they wanted to, to give form to the ideas in their head, and to share these things with the rest of the world. When artists bear this in mind, they will be able to be satisfied with the quiet appreciation and steady but unremarkable sales that most artists experience in their lives. It is enough to pay the bills, perhaps have a little over, and keep creating.
The question is, is Art affordable? I guess the answer to this question can vary depending from whom you ask? The affordability of Art is only relative to the pocketbook of the person who appreciates Art. 1 million dollars for an artwork could be affordable for a person who can buy it with ease, and $200 for an artwork can not be affordable for a person who needs that money to put food on the table for his or her family.
For this reason Art can not be looked at as an affordable or unaffordable commodity, Art is really a subjective commodity that accumulates value relative to it’s desirability. It’s price is formed in the eyes of the beholder. The one who can buy Art does not think whether he can afford it or not, he buys it because he likes it, because he has to have it.
If you notice, most people who buy Art, live in abundance. Once the affordability of something comes to mind, that means you are thinking in terms of lack, not in terms of abundance. The people who buy Art usually live in abundance, and continue to live in abundance. They get what they want and do not worry about whether they can afford it or not. They buy it because it is pleasing to them, and having it makes life more pleasing and enjoyable to them, thus the universe gives them more pleasing and enjoyable objects to appreciate and surround themselves with, another words, more abundance.
So Art is really subjective and it’s possession is a state of mind. Art is an essential dynamic or urge that makes life more abundant in beauty and love, and provides harmony to the environment.
Caravaggio is an extremely well known Italian painter who painted in the Realistic Baroque style of art. His dramatic use of light and dark is revolutionary. Many other painters have tried to paint like him and failed.
Caravaggio’s real name is Michelangelo Merisi. He was born in 1571 in the town of Caravaggio; this is where he got his professional name. His father was Fermo Merisi, a steward and architect. At the age of eleven, Caravaggio was orphaned and apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano for four years.
Some time between 1588 and 1592 Caravaggio moved to Rome and became an assistant to Giuseppe Cesari, a pupil of Titian. He painted flower and fruit pieces for him which are now lost. After that, he moved from job to job working for other painters. This was a very unstable period in his life. After a while, Caravaggio decided to set out on his own and sell his paintings.
Caravaggio found a dealer that began to sell his paintings, Maestro Valentino. Valentino eventually showed Caravaggio’s paintings to Cardinal Francesco Del Monte, who had great influence in the court. Del Monte invited Caravaggio to come and live at the house of the cardinal and receive a pension. He painted about 40 paintings for Del Monte, which mostly included paintings about adolescent boys.
In 1597, Caravaggio was commissioned to paint the decoration of the Contarelli Chapel in the San Luigi dei Francesi church in Rome. This caused him to become very well known. For the church, he painted three very large paintings, St. Matthew and the Angel, The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew. In these paintings, he painted them in a very contemporary, realistic way. This was not how saints were usually painted and this caused shock among the public. They even made Caravaggio redo one of the paintings!
After he finished the church, Caravaggio had a swarm of people that wanted his paintings. Some of the paintings he did during this time are The Conversion of St. Paul, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, The Deposition of Christ and the Death of the Virgin. Many of the paintings he did during this time caused violent outrages. He painted the Madonna with Pilgrims for the San Agostino Church which ended up being a scandal because the old people kneeling down had dirty feet and a filthy, torn cap. Other paintings were rejected entirely.
Even though Caravaggio was constantly criticized, he was still very successful. He became more and more popular as a painter. During this time, however, he had many run-ins with the law. He was arrested many times for various reasons. Other painters accused him of several things; he wounded a soldier, threw stones at a Roman guard and wounded another man defending his mistress. Then he had a serious brawl over the score of a tennis game and killed Ranuccio Tomassoni.
Because of what he did, Caravaggio fled Rome and hid with a relative of the Marquis of Caravaggio. He then hid in several other places and eventually ended up in Naples. In Naples, he painted Madonna of the Rosary and The Seven Works of Mercy. During this time his painting style shifted, probably because of his desperate state of mind.
After this, Caravaggio moved from place to place a lot. He went to Malta, where he painted The Beheading of St. John the Baptist for a cathedral. Word of his crime reached Malta and Caravaggio was imprisoned, but soon escaped. He then went to Sicily and painted The Resurrection of Lazarus and The Adoration of the Shepherds. Then he moved to Palermo and painted the Adoration with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Caravaggio was eventually arrested when he went by boat from Naples to Rome. His boat stopped in Palo where he was arrested. However, he was released. When he was released, he found that the boat had already left along with everything he owned. He set out to overtake the vessel and arrived at Port Ercole where he died a few days later. He probably died of either pneumonia or a fever.
Even though Caravaggio spent much of his life running from the law, he is still considered to be one of the best painters of all time. His style is unmatched and is still admired today.