To what extent do you consider these stereotypes accurate, and to what extent do you consider them distortions of the ways in which the sciences and the arts give us their knowledge?

Jane Kwong 679 words Popular stereotypes frequently present the scientist and the artist as extreme opposites in their pursuit of understanding- the scientist as being objective, disciplined and rational, and artist as being subjective, impulsive and imaginative. Yet are they really so different in the ways they look at the world? To what extent do you consider these stereotypes accurate, and to what extent do you consider them distortions of the ways in which the sciences and the arts give us their knowledge? Our world has been accelerated due to the advancement of both artists and scientists. For that, people have made stereotypes of these two professions in hopes of understanding them. These stereotypes are useful when it allows us to classify people that belong in each profession and have a general overview of them. However, it is catastrophic when it conjures wrong ideas about each expert as it would prevent people from really understanding who they are. Stereotypes occur as a result of attributing the supposed characteristic of a group to all of its individual members. Stereotyping assumes and emphasizes the uniformity within a group and exaggerates the differences between them. Scientists are stereotyped as being objective, disciplined and rational while artist are to bee subjective, impulsive and imaginative. These stereotypes are ultimate opposites in their way

  • Word count: 1834
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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Banksy - Bristols' graffiti stencil artist.

Banksy. Banksy is a graffiti stencil artist, borb and raised in Bristol in 1974. Banksy was involved in the Bristol graffiti boom of the late 1980s. He desined his first stencil as a favour for his father who was away on holiday. He was a photo copier engineer, and banksy was required to help out one day as a one off. Since that day Banksy has refined a distinctive iconic style which he has plastered all over walls, and bridges, car tunnels, books records and evan cows. Banksy is renowned strongly for his sense of the ridiculous. He once inside the Penguin and Elephant enclosures of London zoo, he painted, In large lettering as if the animals had wrote it themselves. " I want out his place is too cold, keeper smells, boring, boring, boring." Banksy found in stencils the potencial for strong powerfull images to captivate an audience and twist their perceptions. In this picture, Banksy has painted a soldier seated with his rifle in his hand and a bird perched o the end of the rifle, they are both sat looking at each other face to face. This is what Banksy is about, He also painted Lenin ice skating, and used the the old outline of a flyer which had once been stuck to the wall, to frame his piece. Banksy says that evan a rabbit playing a piano looks 'hard' as a stencil. Graffiti artists are constantly making a mark in different ways such as what poke did from the 'ITM'

  • Word count: 457
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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Van Gogh - paintings and letters

July 27, 1890 On July 27, 1890, a red haired young man of 37 had walked out into a grassy field with his canvas, easel and oil paints. Within minutes, the crack of a revolver was heard though out the seemingly empty countryside. The birds flew up from the wheat fields and scattered, then settled back down to the stalks. Life went on just as before. Born in 1853, Van Gogh wrote approximately 847 written letters and prolifically painted throughout his life. What is relevant is the correlation in the simplest of observations of specific paintings to specific excerpts from his letter that give insight into the cycling state of his mental health. Dr. Jan Hulsker, one of the world's foremost authorities on the letters of Vincent van Gogh, once wrote of them," [His letters] enable us to know more about Van Gogh's life and mentality than we do of any other artist. The letters form a running commentary on his work, and a human document without parallel." Those letters correlated with the psychodynamics as seen in his renderings and paintings point to often blending of ground and boundary lines through his use of color and imagery ( sans clear image boundaries) with depression and sometime verbalized suicidal ideation in his letters. Boundaries of depicted images are define as the viewer being able to see quite definitively the image as separate to the surrounding images. For

  • Word count: 1287
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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The Life of Henri Matisse.

The Life of Henri Matisse This is a project on the life of Henri Matisse the painter. A selection of his work throughout his painting career of nearly 60 years are displayed in the text starting with the Attic Studio painted in 1903 and ending with Nu Bleu 1 painted in 1952. Henri Matisse was born in December of 1869 in Le Château, France. He was born and brought up in a middle-class family and was well educated, eventually qualifying and then practising as a lawyer. The Attic Studio- 1903 His life changed in 1890, however, while recovering slowly from an attack of appendicitis, he became very interested in painting. In 1892, when he was aged 23 he had become so interested that he was ready to give up being a lawyer and study art and painting full time. He made that decision and having given up his law career, he went to Paris to study art properly. His first teachers were trained and very good so he had a solid grounding. Matisse's own early style was an ordinary form of naturalism although it was also realistic, meaning that it was about everyday life. Also, he made many copies after the old masters to develop his skills. The French painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, whose work he studied closely beginning about 1899, first influenced Matisse's early work. Around 1904 Matisse came across the paintings of George

  • Word count: 1086
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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from midnight to first light

This wall hanging, 'From Midnight to First Light', by Prudence Mapstone on a first glance appears to look like coral on a sea bed or giant flowers on tiny fields. If this piece was a garment you could expect it to be a soft and cosy woolly jumper. Made up of harmonic and contrasting colours of purples, blues, greens and oranges, with the purples and blues harmonising one and other while contrasting the harmonising greens and oranges. The subtle shades of these colours almost give a dark and depressing feel, when actually in the artist own words she says that the piece was "inspired by the changes in light just before the crack of dawn", which almost gives the piece a sense of celebrating new life after loss. The purple and blue tones are clustered together as are the orange and green tones, which represent the rising of the sun and the going down of the moon. The orange tones give a sense of warmth and welcoming as do the greens, whereas the blue and purple tones give a sense of doom and gloom as if to say that the previous days occurrences are in the past and that the beginning of the new day brings with it the prospect of happiness. The orange tones are busy giving the impression that the sun is rising, whereas the green and blue tones are quieter and give the impression that they are being eaten up by the sun. The 'field' areas have the appearance of brail, and you can

  • Word count: 384
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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How accurate are modern pictorial representations of the castles development over time?

How accurate are modern pictorial representations of the castles development over time? When assessing the accuracy of castle representations, it is important to consider the purpose of the piece. If it is intended to be highly accurate, showing every possible detail known, from sources and the current ruins, then it is far easier to criticise the picture as there would undoubtedly be some flaws No-one today was alive when the castle was at its peak so no reconstruction can be totally accurate. However some reconstructions are drawn with the intention of giving the feel of the castle and what it would have been like to be there. For example the great hall reconstruction shows a feast with many people and tables. This occasion is most likely to be fictional and there are details in the picture, which do not match up with any evidence. The floor for instance is shiny, probably marble, which gives the impression of grandeur, this is perfectly true, as marble would have been extremely expensive and probably too heavy to be supported as a first floor. The bay window probably has the incorrect amount of inner windows too, but it does not affect the quality of representation as the picture as it still helps you get to know how the place would feel. Kenilworth castle today is in ruins, nearly all of the buildings are badly damaged and it is hard to see

  • Word count: 456
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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Helvetica Essay

Helvetica: Its significance and its impacts on our society Several years have passed since the birth of the modernists' typeface that had revolutionised the way typography has been depicted in the last 50 years. "What has Helvetica told you today?" (Huswit, Helvetica Trailer, 2007) is a clever metaphor as Helvetica has and is still playing a significant role in our lives; it speaks to us on a daily basis and provides us with important information. We do not realise that Helvetica is everywhere; in fact it is right it front of you. Helvetica is not a raw typeface; the job itself was a re-design of Akzidenz-Grotesk for Max Miedinge. Eduard Hoffmann commissioned it in 1957. In the Haas Type Foundry in Munchenstein, Switzerland, Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger completed the typeface. Originally the typeface was going to be named 'Neue Haas Grotesk', but it was renamed Helvetica, which is Switzerland in Latin, because the typeface was going to be used globally. Since the typeface was going to be utilized world wide, Helvetica had to adhere to different languages and thus had to include special characters, such as the German umlaut. Helvetica was initially released in 1961 and gradually transformed into a corporate typeface. An example of its impact would be taking a Coca Cola advertisement from the 1950's (which was filled with illustrative graphics and cursive typography; it

  • Word count: 1681
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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"Public art and architecture encapsulates a fundamental relationship between those who commission works, the artist, the artwork and the audience."

"Public art and architecture encapsulates a fundamental relationship between those who commission works, the artist, the artwork and the audience." The relationships between artist, artwork and audience are evident and significant in the study of any artwork. This interrelationship is particularly prominent in an examination of architecture and public art, as the artists of the works in question have undoubtedly created the artwork with audience and world in mind, more so than in other types of art. This increased awareness of the audience and world highlights the significance of the connections of the conceptual framework. The Cenotaph inscribed "To Our Glorious Dead" and "Lest We Forget" is situated in Martin Place, the centre of Sydney's CBD. The New South Wales state government's Premier Lang commissioned the 'empty tomb' after a request from the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of New South Wales. The Cenotaph was to be erected in 1926, and completed in 1929. The designer of The Cenotaph was Sir Bertram Mackennal, a sculptor born in 1863 in Melbourne, and the first Australian to be knighted. The construction of such a monument occurred as a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died for Australia during World War I. Thus the placement of the memorial is significant, as Martin Place was not only considered the "heart of the nation"1, but was also the site

  • Word count: 1923
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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Design a poster to promote transport

Introduction Posters in the 1920s signalled a new age of travel and leisure. With motor cars, aeroplanes and boats coming to be used by the people posters were required to advertise the fact that your travels can be made shorter and more enjoyable. It also showed through its messages that distant destinations were also potentially accessible. Poster designers like Adolphe Mouron Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer, Edward Wandsworth and F. C. Herrick were among the first to create such posters thriving on the spirit of travel. Each one of them developed a personal response to their own distinctive style. The graphics needed to support holiday programmes, travel documentaries and any of those related to the organisation of the finer points needed to assist the actual journey might be used for designing. The design of brochures, tickets, aircraft livery etc. can all be related to this theme In the following project I will use my ability of graphics in relation to the theme of 'Journeys' and try to develop a personal response to the designer's styles. I will firstly show my understanding about the 1920s art movement, study each artist and their styles and make comparisons. I will also create a poster for my time advertising the fastest train in the world - The Bullet Train. The Constructivist Movement The above model displays the ideals of abstraction, functionalism and

  • Word count: 3942
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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Compare two or three local museums that you have visited

Compare two or three local museums that you have visited Henriette Sultana B.A. Tourism Studies Year 4 Museology Dr. Anthony Pace Introduction The traditional understanding of a museum is that it is a permanent non-profit institution housing collections of objects of artistic, historic, or scientific interest, conserved and displayed for the edification and enjoyment of the public. The main aim is to collect, preserve, study and interpret this assortment of objects. I tried to keep this concept in my mind during my visits to two prominent museums in Malta. My choice fell on the Inquisitor's Palace, due to the fact that at the moment it is housing one of the most intriguing collections in the world and the second choice fell on the Museum of Fine Arts due to the debate that I often hear regarding the present situation of this building. The Inquisitor's Palace The Inquisitor's Palace is a grim reminder of the days of the Inquisition in Malta. Established in 1562 and abolished by the French in 1798. It is situated at the very heart of Vittoriosa and many described it as "one of the very few surviving examples of such palaces found in Europe and South America". Arriving there resulted to be no hassle at all. The road signs were very clear and I was thankful that parking did not present a problem. As soon as I went in, I was greeted by a pleasant man who offered

  • Word count: 1830
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Art & Design
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