POLITICS AND ART.... HAND AND HAND?

For long time politicians have been using every single way possible to get peoples attention, along with big expensive campaigns, behind the public and direct propaganda, they create indirect propaganda, sometimes supporting them and sometimes attacking their campaigns, philosophies, resources etc... but always being a resource to keep people talking about them.

An example of Art use by politicians to reach their goal is Copley's painting of Samuel Adams(1770), where we see Adams standing behind a desk holding the petition to England to expel their troops from Massachusetts; now we admired this painting as part of the American history, but going back then this painting was just a way for Adams to show his success, let's no forget that he was one of the architects of the principles of American Republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States.

Now lets flip the coin and talk about the most recent Art/political events. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected President of US, which is definitely one of the most influential events of our times, the firs no White President, and finally our country realizing that we are more than Race, ethnicity, Sex Gender, we are all human being and the most smart creature on Earth, I personally feel very proud of being part of this generation it doesn't matter how bad things can go, now days every time more people react and start appreciating the most simple and important things of live and our world.

Part of the indirect Obama Campaign was the utilization of one of his picture turned into an Art piece, then turned into a big creation of T-shirts by a very "smart" Brand, the T-shirts became part of the Pop Culture and a Great advertising campaign, we also heard a lot of singers, singing and writing song to express they feeling for the back then candidate, Celebrities talking about Obama philosophy, all one big massive campaign.

Art is an expression of feelings, social changes create feelings in people, and these people express their feelings through Art.

Blog VI "Rembrandt" SMILE!!!

Self portraits are suppose to be a description of yourself, but the question is: Is it a real description of yourself or is a picture of the way you want people to perceived you? When we create a profile in Social networking the most important thing is t pick the right picture or perhaps the picture that we want other people to see, I'm always surprise when I see pictures of friends from long time ago and they look totally different now days, is like being trap in time, and wanting to stay there but what's the point? I mean if we want people to like us for who we are why are we lying to ourselves with outdated pictures?

the work that I most admired of Rembrandt are his self portraits we can see the progression of time in each one of them and know or guess, how old he was, where was he, time etc... but in almost all of them his facial expression seems pretty much the same, we need to really pay attention to the detail in his eyes, because that's where we can get better sense of his feelings.

My favorite Rembrandt's self portrait is the one where he is laughing, a very unusual pose and expression from any other self portraits done by anyone, he captured all the details of himself laughing, the wrinkles in his face are so detailed and clear, I imagined he stood in front of a mirror and practice, took a picture in his mind and worked on the painting, I tried to research more about this piece but there's no much info, I absolutely enjoyed seeing happy people in pictures it makes me feel good.

from now on when I think of Rembrandt this picture will be the first thing coming to my mind as if it was a profile picture.

Blog V "Caravaggio" and Baroque Art

There's something particular about Caravaggio that got my attention, since I started reading about his life and work, I admired is Chiaroscuro technique and the fact that he wasn't the first Painter using that, but he was the one that elevated it to a point of perfection and Realism, and if we talk about Realism in Caravaggio's work we have to mention the fact that he used actual people as models to create his paintings, (clever right?) maybe not if we think it in our times but at that time the fact that started searching for people and searching for faces that will inspire him to paint and represent human beings that he knew just in his head or by reading in the Bible( in case of religious paintings) in some of his paintings he was h9is own muse, as he appears in a lot of them, they are consider self portraits but in some of them he was representing some else.

another interesting fact about Caravaggio is that he was able to create a real business with his work, selling amazing quantities of the same work making copies,l a perfect example ifs The Fortune Teller, there are 50 copies altought there not identical, they are all the same concept, I also appreciate the fact that he painted people in their real way with the real image of what he was looking at, I feel that these give more credibility to his work, and altought it took him more than a life time to gain a deserved position in the art world as one of the best painters of Italy, he's now one of the main characters in the Baroque Art.