I thought this was pretty cool…The fingerprints of the Italian mystic(which is an entirely different matter altogether) and scientist Leonardo da Vinci were found on ‘La Belle Principessa’ on October 14th. It’s cool because before all this, the profile potrait of a woman was thought to be created by a 19th century artist from Germany and two years ago was sold for $19,000.

But apparently, Leonardo da Vinci himself dispelled all the doubts regarding the creation of the painting by his fingerprint signature on it. The 13 x 10 inches work has got a fingerprint and a palm print on it. Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal based forensic arts expert, confirmed that the index or middle finger print matched with the fingerprint found on Leonardo’s St. Jerome in the Vatican.

The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil drawing of a lady’s profile bear distinct stylistic and technical evidence that it was created by the famous Florentine. Forensic experts have become sanguine after using carbon dating technique, that the painting belongs to Leonardo da Vinci and no one else. Art dealers have put a tentative price of 150 million USD on the Leonardo painting. The use of fingers and palms to smudge the paints was a well used technique of Leonardo da Vinci.

Biro used multi-spectral analysis method with the help of Lumiere Technology Laboratory in Paris to determine the exactness of the fingerprints. This method uses a special digital scanner to show successive layers of an artwork. Based on the style of the portrait, ‘The Beautiful Princess’ has been dated to 1485-1490, probably painted while he stayed in Milan from 1452 to 1519.

The curator of the Leonardo Museum of Vinci in Italy, Alessandro Vezzosi expressed his happiness at the findings. Vezzossi also said there are thousands of other lost works of Leonardo, “mainly pages from codexes or drawings.”

I read about this at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Vower

It was made pretty clear to me that the students who pay to take these classes are usually serious artists, so there is no need to to be nervous, as there would almost never be any lewd comments or crazy looks from students, which makes perfect sense.

After the newness of the experience wears off you’ll find yourself getting bored and your body aching from the posing. Your body will start to ache because no one is used to sitting or standing for an hour at a time in one position. You’ll get an occasional break now and then but then you’ll return to taking the same position. Until your body becomes used to not moving for so long you may experience cramps (if sitting) or muscle twitches (if standing).

It would be prudent to start practicing posing in awkward positions so that your body can become used to doing it before you actually start posing in class.

It’s not likely that you’ll actually be picking the position you’ll be posing in because the teacher will usually be selecting or suggesting the poses with you in advance because the teacher will be wanting the poses that will best benefit the learning process. Beginning classes: simple poses. Advanced art classes: more complex poses.

As for the boredom, there is no fix for that. It may be smart to learn some exercises that help clear your mind and sort of stand there or sit there as if in an awakening sleep mode.

I suggest trying some Hermetic meditation practices, or some Taoist Yogic techniques….

Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming (1912-1956)

Jackson Pollock began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students’ League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of Surrealism.

From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash’ style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives’ (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter’. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.

Pollock’s name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas — indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

During the 1950s Pollock continued to produce figurative or quasi-figurative black and white works and delicately modulated paintings in rich impasto as well as the paintings in the new all-over style. He was strongly supported by advanced critics, but was also subject to much abuse and sarcasm as the leader of a still little comprehended style; in 1956 Time magazine called him `Jack the Dripper’.

By the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as the most important figure in the most important movement of this century in American painting, but a movement from which artists were already in reaction (Post-Painterly Abstraction). His unhappy personal life (he was an alcoholic) and his premature death in a car crash contributed to his legendary status. In 1944 Pollock married Lee Krasner (1911-84), who was an Abstract Expressionist painter of some distinction, although it was only after her husband’s death that she received serious critical recognition.

To learn more about Jason pollock, shop for books and film about, or to talk with others about Jason Pollock, check out the Jason Pollock website.

per Wikipedia

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist and anti-consumerist messages around the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names as ‘De Zoot’, ‘Vendex’ and ‘Dr Rat’. To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there already was a vibrant graffiti culture.

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchist, and situationist slogans such as L’ennui est contre-révolutionnaire (“Boredom is counterrevolutionary”) and Lisez moins, vivez plus (“Read less, live more”). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the millenarian and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

“I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we’re not a bunch of p—- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we’re a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.”

—Sandra “Lady Pink” Fabara

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as “on the street” or “underground”, contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints for a variety of reasons—but primarily because is it difficult for the police to apprehend and for the courts to sentence or even convict a person for a protest that is as fleeting and less intrusive than marching in the streets. In some communities, such impermanent works survive longer than works created with permanent paints because the community views the work in the same vein as that of the civil protester who marches in the street—such protest are impermanent but effective nevertheless.

In some areas where a number of artist share the impermanence ideal, there grows an informal competition. That is, the length of time that a work escapes destruction is related to the amount of respect the work garners in the community. A crude work that deserves little respect would invariably be removed immediately. The most talented artist might have works last for days.

Artists whose primary object is to assert control over property—and not primarily to create of an expressive work of art, political or otherwise—resist switching to impermanent paints.

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences forced onto them as a means of further protest.

The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each others’ practices. Anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers, for example, did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

On top of the political aspect of graffiti as a movement, political groups and individuals may also use graffiti as a tool to spread their point of view. This practice, due to its illegality, has generally become favored by groups excluded from the political mainstream (e.g. far-left or far-right groups) who justify their activity by pointing out that they do not have the money – or sometimes the desire – to buy advertising to get their message across, and that a “ruling class” or “establishment” control the mainstream press, systematically excluding the radical/alternative point of view. This type of graffiti can seem crude; for example fascist supporters often scrawl swastikas and other Nazi images.

One innovative form of graffiti that emerged in the UK in the 1970s was devised by the Money Liberation Front (MLF), essentially a loose affiliation of underground press writers such as the poet and playwright Heathcote Williams and magazine editor and playwright Jay Jeff Jones. They initiated the use of paper currency as a medium for counterculture propaganda, overprinting banknotes, usually with a John Bull printing set. Although short lived the MLF was representative of London’s Ladbroke Grove centered alternative and literary community of the period. The area was also a scene of considerable anti-establishment and humorous street graffiti much of it also produced by Williams.

Both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland produce political graffiti. As well as slogans, Northern Irish political graffiti include large wall paintings, referred to as murals. Along with the flying of flags and the painting of kerb stones, the murals serve a territorial purpose, often associated with gang use. Artists paint them mostly on house gables or on the Peace Lines, high walls that separate different communities. The murals often develop over an extended period and tend to stylization, with a strong symbolic or iconographic content. Loyalist murals often refer to historical events dating from the war between James II and William III in the late 17th century, whereas Republican murals usually refer to the more recent troubles.

Territorial graffiti serves as marking ground to display tags and logos that differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

Art History Timeline

ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 3000 BC – 331 BC (BCE)

Egyptian Art 3200 – 1070 BC

Amarna Art 1370 – 1340 BC

Mesopotamian Art 3500 – 331 BC

Sumerian/Akkadian 3500 – 1750 BC

Assyrian/Neo-Babylonian 1000 – 539 BC

Persian 539 – 331 BC

Aegean Art 3000 – 1100 BC

Minoan (Crete) 3000 – 1475 BC

Mycenean (Greece) 1650 – 1100 BC

Greek Art 800 – 323 BC

CLASSIC CIVILIZATIONS 800 BC – 337 AD (BCE-CE)

Hellenistic Art 323-150 BC

Etruscan Art 6th – 5th century BC

Roman Art 509 BC – 337 AD

MIDDLE AGES 373 – 1453 AD (CE)

Celtic, Saxon, & Hiberno 200 – 732 AD

Byzantine Art 400 – 1453 AD

Justinian 527 – 565 AD

Islamic Art 622 – 900 AD

Carolingian Art 732 – 900 AD

Ottonian Art 900 – 1050 AD

Romanesque Style 1000 – 1140 AD

Gothic Style 1140 – 1500 AD

RENAISSANCE 1400 – 1800 AD (CE)

Renaissance: Italy 1400 – 1600 AD

Renaissance: Europe 1500 – 1600 AD

Baroque 1600 – 1700 AD

Rococo 1700 – 1750 AD

PRE-MODERN 1800 – 1880 AD (CE)

Neo-Classicism 1750 – 1880 AD

(USA: Federal/Greek Revival)

(Canada: Georgian Style)

Romanticism 1800 – 1880 AD

(Canada: Victorian)

Realism 1830’s – 1850’s AD

Impressionism 1870’s – 1890’s AD

MODERNISM 1880 – 1945 AD (CE)

Post Impressionism 1880 – 1900 AD

Expressionism 1900 – 1920 AD

Fauvism 1900 – 1920 AD

Cubism 1907 – 1914 AD

Dada 1916 – 1922 AD

Bauhaus 1920s – 1940’s AD

Harlem Renaissance 1920s – 1940’s AD

Surrealism 1924 1920s – 1940’s AD

International Style 1920s – 1940’s AD

MODERN & POST-MODERN 1945 AD – Present (CE)

Abstract Expressionism 1945 – 1960 AD

Op Art 1960s AD

Pop Art 1960s AD

Minimal Art 1960s AD

New Realism 1970s – 1980s AD

Conceptual Art 1970s – 1980s AD

Performance Art 1970s – 1980s AD

Neo-Expressionism 1980s – 1990s AD

Computer Art 1980s – 1990s AD

Post-Modern Classicism 1980s – 1990s AD

Victorian Revival 1980s – 1990s AD

I learned about this on wikipedia….I never thought about it like that, but being a musician I was able to see the parallels and abruptly agree.

In the beginning of 1990, the Republic of China saw the upheaval of a major contemporary movement in Chinese Artistry. Since the Cultural Revolution in China, there existed a beaten path and line for artists. Cynical Realism broke away all the shackles of the collective conservative mindset and concentrated on new themes. The artists took a pot shot on socio-political issues and events from the beginning of revolutionary China until date. The new angle and the point of view for all those events and happenings of Chinese history and present were visited. Contemporary artists in Modern China projected the changes in China, through their paintings, a reflection of ‘grassroots’ pain, uncertainty, and cynicism. Often humorous but always trying to send across a message to the viewer, Cynical Realism really gave a fresh lease of life to Chinese Art, especially painting. From Communism to industrialization and modernization they took it all with equal fervor.

The Artworks

Cynical Realism was in many ways, a strong reflection of the western influence on the Chinese art and culture. Chinese art historians and critics named it “Western Gaze.” It was indeed the influence of westerners. The volume of buyers from west enforced the faith of the artists that their work is in demand. The exhibitions of these paintings were organized on foreign soils. Artist Fang Lijun (born 1963), in October 2006, organized the first solo show in Mainland. His ‘baldheads’ are internationally accepted icons of Contemporary Chinese Art, Cynical Realism to be specific.

The Artists

As always, Cynical Realists are heavily criticized for the western influence in their artworks. These artists however, stay unfazed and are persistent on their efforts. Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun (born 1962), Yang Shaobin (born 1963), Wang Jinsong (born 1963), and Song Yonghong (born 1966) are some of the most famous Cynical Realists. They started their creative journey together, bonded together in bitter poverty, painting, drinking, and cavorting on the fringes of modern Chinese society.