Richard Avedon brief.

Richard Avedon was an American based photographer normally famous for his outstanding fashion photography works; his fashion photos had been celebrated and used for Life, Vougue, and Harper's Bazaar, etc. Avedon was described as the person whose photographs represent the American images of beauty and style for half of a century. 

Avedon often captured his model in a special motion; it could be exact moment or position as his model was posing; that way the photographs that came out were usually dramatic because of the model's motion and the way of composing in the frame. 

His portrait photographs were also extremely expressive in a wide range from celebrities to his acquaintances and ordinary beings; his objective contains from public figures and politicians to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe in his work body, as he self claimed that he was always a portrait photographer. 

 The composition of the entire piece was outstanding without a doubt, but what really makes the difference would be the way of how Avedon position the model in each of his photographs; no matter it is a portrait scape or a fashion cover shot, the art of human form
always stands out and provides an incredible sense of emotion; dramatic, humorous, sometimes scary, emphasizing the dynamic of the picture.

Marcel Duchamp brief.

Marcel Duchamp (Heri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp) is an American artist mostly recognized in painting and sculpting. He was famous as a chess-player beside as a great figure of experimental art as well. He was considered as one of the three artist who helped define and promoted the development of plastic art and in 20th century along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. As a prominent figure in art history, he redefined the art in some way by introducing conceptual art to the world, where the term "Ready made" comes from.
A ready made is a piece of art but almost completely based on a found object; Duchamp took the found object and simply sign it or reposition it to turn the ordinary object to a piece of modern art.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

Bicycle wheels by Duchamp

Robert Capa

Robert Capa was a Hungarian photographer born in Budapest, and within his time he began as a darkroom assitant and a journalist photographer; Capa left German because of the rise of Nazi and headed to Paris where he started his career of photojournalist and shared a darkroom with the Henry Cartier-Bresson, one of the greatest figure of candid photographic. He helped Bresson founding the Magum, which turned out to be the most famous world-wide photo agency with a lot of photographer members in it. The influence from masters were shown, as Capa traveled to Spain several times to document the civil war.

 Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936)

                                 

Above is publicly considered as the most famous and representative work of Robert Capa:  Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936) .  The shocking moment was exceptionally expressive in terms of composition.

Taken during D-Day Invasion.

His pictures taken in the extremely earthy environment have shown a great level of realism with the stunning impact of the moment, as Picture Post titled him "the greatest war photographer in the world." I think the pictures itself are typical examples of documenting reality, but more importantly, the moment he captured in most of his pieces reminds of Bresson's 'decisive moment' theory; so to speak, a decisive moment is a photographer's intuition of capturing the exact moment that could be used as a photo. Capa's body of work express the exact idea of a war photojournalist, which is documenting and recording the real war lives, but meanwhile the impact and the power in his picture is also a evidence showing his great understanding of craftsmanship in photography, that is, to capture the most representative moment from those massive moments in real life. 

Captured German Soldier  in Normandy

Fauvism brief.

Fauvism is an art style usually expressed in painting with  extremely strident color and relatively wild brush works; being the very first movement of modern art in 20th century, the birth of Fauvism came from the inspiration from artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Gauguin. The French word "Fauve" represents "wild beasts", which in some way explains the wild, uninhibited brush works and expressive colors used in fauvism painting. Henri Matisse was unquestionably a prominent figure in the development of fauvism; he was a draughtsman and was regarded as a representative figure of French painting, but initially he was considered as a Fauve depending on his work style.

Dance

Self-Portrait by Henri Matisse

Andre Derain is another French painter who is also the co-founder of Fauvism in the early 20th century with Henri Matisse; they worked together in 1905 through a couple of years and he later on shifted from fauvist palette to new classicism, which is a relatively more muted tone.

'Henri Matisse'  portrait by Andre Derain

Goya .brief.

 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes , as known as Francisco Goya (1741-1828), is considered as the one of the greatest Spanish painter and printmaker of the late 18th century. He traveled to different places through his long career and was extremely valued as an artist at his time. With being an successful and valued painter, Goya jumped through different styles as he was growing as an artist and eventually became pessimistic in some way. He moved Italy at the age of 14 and began to study with José Luzán Martínez. His contribution to Spanish art was huge, and to a great extent he promoted the Spanish enlightenment. His work were relatively romantic later in career, expressing the relationship between naturalism and ideal beauty, but some of his pieces (like Black Painting series) showed an opposite approach in which loneliness and fear, the feeling of struggle and desperate were strongly expressed.

The Second of May 1808, 1814

Plate 4

Yard with Lunatics, c. 1794

Witches' Sabbath or Aquelarre

Sacrifice to Pan, 1771.

                                       

Arts and Crafts movement .brief.

The Arts and Crafts movement emerged from Britain in mid 19th, attempting to reform the art design and trying to present a new appreciation of decorative art forms. The movement began in the second half of 19th century, when designer William Morris dedicated himself into reform the "craftsmanship."

The room: furniture by Phillip Webb and decor by William Morris.

As the picture shown above proofed, artists' collaboration were flourishing during the the movement; the painters provided the original designs and skilled craftsman were responsible to produced it, so there were so many furniture manufacturing, jewelry and metal making going on to that date, and different kinds of material like painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative art, textile, wallpaper, graphic and books were involved because of the collaborative "firm" in the movement.  William Morris and Phillip Webb, the architect, Ford Madox Brown, the painter pushed the movement through their spirit of craftsmanship and the movement were widely spread and reached a new level by 1880s.

William Morris's "Trellis" wallpaper design

vase and bowl from the Paul Revere Pottery

The movement had a great influence left from industry revolution which we could see in some of the architecture work, but the products at this time involved a large amount of artistic value besides machinery. Also, the craftsman were refusing to accept the idea of modern industries because they thought it lost the traditional craft method in the work. Therefore, the movement had produced many finished structure done with traditional craftsmanship and the spirit.

William Morris's Red House designed by Phillip Webb done in 1860.

The Robert Owen Museum, Newtown, by Frank Shaylor.

Edward Weston .brief.

Edward Weston is widely respected as an art photographer in 20th century who mainly focuses on photographing still life, portraits and human form artistically. Majority of black-and-white photographs are grainy and sharp focused, also a large numbers of his work are close-up shots: the images are extremely rich in details.

Nude

Weston's photography pieces have the texture of oil paintings in many ways if you look from distance; when looking more closely what really stands out the most is the subject itself. 

Pepper

Cabbage

Weston's interest and his passionate about nature and form provides him the unique style of combining them together. From 1927-1930, Weston kept taking close-up shots from different nature subject in daily life like rocks, shells and vegetable (pepper and cabbage) ; he brought out the detailed texture of nature and was interpreted that he was trying to express the American lifestyle that emerged from California.

The most attracting factor in Weston's work would be the way he set up the subject; the pepper would be a great example-Weston presented the pepper in a uncanny form that transformed the pepper from a still life to a human form. It had the sense of motions and the curve really spoke a lot for human form. Also in general, it was really interesting for Weston's work that there was always a sort of absurdism in his pieces: the low key lighting, the oil texture and the uncanny forms of the subject.