Casting

Man on Fire by Luis Jimenez is created through casting. Luis Jimenez likes to create his artwork through casting because he wants to create an “American art” using materials that come from his time. Man on Fire is made of fiberglass and was created to demonstrate himself because his audiences considered his work to be on fire. The concepts behind his work are the current symbols of America. He wanted to create pieces that were important to American society and the country as a whole. Man on Fire is a little different because it talks about himself as an artist, but his other pieces of art were created to demonstrate his idea of what was important to America.   

Carving

Michelangelo's Pieta demonstrates the medium called carving. He starts with a slab of stone, and carves a sculpture into it. This way, he is breaking away all of the excess stone that is not needed in order to create the sculpture. The bottom of Pieta shows the size of the original slab of stone. The reason that Michelangelo carves statues is to see what secret the rock holds. He believed that each stone decided what would come out of it.  

Low Relief Sculpture

King Sahure and a Nome God was created by the Egyptians between 2458 and 2446 B.C. It is an example of a low relief sculpture. In ancient Egypt, people would have sculptures made of themselves with Gods and Goddesses or other people of importance to them. They did this in order to show themselves as an independent spirit or a ka in the afterlife. Having the sculpture buried with them was a sign of their immortality. King Sahure is placed next to a Nome God because that was the God that he prayed to the most. He felt connected to the God and wanted him placed next to his ka. 

Manipulated Photography

Jerry N. Uelsmann's Rumples Market demonstrates the medium of manipulated photography. In order to complete manipulated photography, Uelsmann takes pictures of multiple different objects and whites out the background behind these objects. He then combines the objects into one final picture to show what he is trying to portray. In Rumples Market he has used random objects such as the arrows on the street, and the pictures of Coke bottles to create a face on the brick wall and street. The whole reason he takes pictures is because he likes to explore. Where ever he is, if he likes what he sees, then he takes the picture. The concepts take place in the darkroom. He believes that is where the art blossoms because it's all based off of what he can create. In Rumples Market each portion of the face was taken in a different area. He then combined them all in the darkroom to create a final portrait. 

Portrait Photography

Annie Leibovitz creates art through portrait photography. Her portrait of Bob Dylan, Los Angles, shows Bob Dylan making a face at the camera. The white backdrop offsets his skin and hair color. She tries to photograph the spirit of her subject. Looking at this picture, it looks as if Bob Dylan is trying to be funny. By photographing him making a funny face, she has captured that emotion. Her concept is the ability to photograph the personality of the public figure that isn't always seen by the press. In other words, she tries to capture their private life and personality.  

Instant Collage

Walker Evans portrays Instant College through his piece called A Miner's Home Vicinity Morgantown, West Virginia. He created a new way to take photographs called a calotype. In other words, Walker Evans printed pictures from the negative. His medium of choice was instant collage. He believed that the idea of capturing a picture was an instant collage. Walker Evans enjoyed capturing pictures of “real America”. This was the concept and context of his instant collages. This is shown through his artwork A Miner's Home Vicinity Morgantown, West Virginia. It captures the true image of a miner's home.  

Woodcut

The medium of Tropical Sun by Emil Nolde is ink. Tropical Sun is an example of a woodcut, which means, the artist carves out some of the wood so that only the raised pieces will have ink on them. The ink is thick and sticky so that it will not flow into the cutout areas of the wood. Tropical Sun shows this idea because each color has it's own place on the picture. They don't intersect or blend like a painting would. Emil Nolde's career was a huge mark on the German Expressionism time period. His considered his work experimental but brought to life many moral dilemmas of the first generation German Modernists. The context of his work focused around the concepts of moral dilemmas.  

Collage

Jess (Collins) creates collages and above is an example called Bridal Spell. The medium for a collage is glue. A collage is put together with anything that is flat and of the natural element. Some examples would be a printed object from a magazine or the computer, or a fabric of some sorts. The artist then glues the objects onto the paper that they are using. Bridal Spell shows different people pasted all over her picture. Each one sticks out because they looks different from the person next to them. Jess Collins was originally a chemist that became an artist after he had a dream about the end of the world. This is what influenced his artwork because he gets his pictures for his collages from children's books and science textbooks. Each collage is based off of different science ideas such as density and seamlessness.      

Oil Paint

Jackson Pollock's artwork called Circle is an oil painting. The medium of the painting is oil paint. It can be combined with different colors on the canvas to create different shades and hues. You can see the combinations by looking at the many different shades in each color. They fade in and out from dark to light. For example, the green outside circle goes from dark green to light green and back again. Jackson Pollock's artwork was strongly influenced by nature and his farmhouse in Guggenheim. He converted the barn into a studio and let the nature flow through him onto the paper.   

Encaustic

The medium of False Start by Jasper Johns is made by combining color with hot wax. This medium is hard to use because the artist needs to create the painting before the hot wax cools. In other words, they need to work quickly. The words written within False Start show how quickly Jasper Johns needed to work because he used a stencil to write them in. Jasper Johns began doing encaustic paintings because he found them extremely interesting. He liked the idea of being able to experiment and then repeat the idea over and over again.  

Wood Engraving

Albrecht Durer's Knight, Death, and the Devil was created using the grainy side of a piece of wood. Hatching is used to carve a design into the wood. Because they use the grainy side of the wood, wood engraving can become extremely delicate and detailed. Knight, Death, and the Devil prove this through the individual hairs that you can see on the horse and the branches on the trees in the background. Italy had a huge impact on Albrecht Durer's work. He liked to include the Italian culture and heritage into his artwork. He especially liked using the Italian colors and designs. His concept and context was all about the country of Italy.

Etching

The Hundred Guilder Print by Rembrandt Van Rijn has a medium of ground and an etching pencil. A ground is an acid- resistant substance. Depending on how hard the ground is, some artists can use their finger as their etching pencil. After the artists draws their idea on the paper, it is placed in an acid bath. The areas that have been drawn are eaten by the acid which makes them etched into the paper. The Hundred Guilder Print shows the details of an etching. You can see the folds of each person's clothing within the picture. Rembrandt Van Rijn used his family issues and losses as his reason to create. Losing most of his family forced him into his work which is when he created his most famous pieces.