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African art came to European notice c.1905, when artists began to recognize the aesthetic value of African sculpture. Such artists as Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, and Modigliani were influenced by African art forms. Interest in the arts of Africa has flourished, and many modern Western artists have rediscovered the enduring qualities of African art. In the latter part of the 20th cent., African art has come to be appreciated for its intrinsic aesthetic value as well as continuing to be a source of inspiration for the work of Western artists.

Pablo Picasso’s African-influenced Period from 1907–1909 begins with the two figures in his painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which were inspired by African artefacts. His formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows. This work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Avinyó Street in Barcelona. Each of these figures is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two are shown with African mask-like faces and three more with faces in the Iberian style of Picasso’s native Spain, giving them a savage aura. The masterpiece is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and modern art. Demoiselles were revolutionary and controversial, and led to wide anger and disagreement, even amongst his closest associates and friends.
PRIMITIVISM MOVEMENT

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Micronesian and Native American art. A new and innovative movement has emerged, characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs and stark contrasts. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and other artists in Paris had acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and tribal masks, in part because of the compelling works of Paul Gauguin that had suddenly achieved centre stage in the avant-garde circles of Paris.
Primitivism is the belief that life has a greater moral/purpose during the early stages of mankind. A type of primitivism is the work done by artists who might be self-taught. An example would be Paul Gauguin’s inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings. Borrowings from primitive art have been important to the development of modern art.
The canvas is curious in its mixture of the immense modelled figures and the flat patterns of motifs from nature, abstract and repetitive in form. It is almost as though Gauguin were saying that the myth, product of the imagination, is more real than any observation of nature. Contrary to traditional allegory, the scale of the symbolic figures is out of all proportion to their surroundings, so that far from being humanized, these gods loom before us powerful and terrible.
Richard Mock (1944-2006) was perhaps most familiar to the public through his linocuts whose topical sting enlivened the op-ed pages of the New York Times during the 1980’s. Mock worked both as a printmaker and a fine abstract painter. This image was cut on battleship linoleum; it is from a numbered edition of 22 color prints celebrating the centennial of Ernest Hemingway’s birth. A black and white edition of this image was also produced.

William Eggleston is one of the most influential photographers of the last half-century. Born in 1939, Eggleston has lived and worked in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee throughout most of his sixty-year career. Hailed as the father of colour photography, his ability to find beauty in the banal has changed the way we look at the world. Along with Gary Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, Eggleston forms part of a generation of post-war photographers whose works liberated the medium from the restrictive rules and conventions of the period. A Southerner raised on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, Eggleston has created a singular portrait of his native South. His colour prints monumentalise the everyday: the parking lots, diners, motel rooms and lives of the people of his native environment. Behind Eggleston’s deceptive casualness lies an acute and instinctive sense of colour and form, and under his gaze the ordinary is invested with powerful significance.


Eggleston’s ground-breaking use of color was both controversial and celebrated at a time when black-and-white was standard for “art” photography. In the mid-1960’s, color photography was mostly used for commercial advertisements and journalism, but had also become accessible to the average consumer, allowing people to take color snap shots of friends and family. Eggleston was deeply inspired by the unplanned compositions of “ordinary” pictures, and saw in them an ability to access an intimacy and narrative voice unguarded by the carefully planned exposures of art photography’s prevailing canon. His images, some 40 years later, continue to offer an intimate and personal sensibility of the world he documents. 


What I like about him is that he brings true images come to life. Normally, you would seen artists doing complex works that are outstandingly good. But Eggleston’s work reminds me of Richard Hamilton’s “What makes a home so appealling?” Its very ingenius, ordinary and abstractively brilliant. But for me the masterstroke of this exhibition is in it’s curation, the bringing together of seemingly disparate, unrelated images in to small sets, each image feeding and bouncing off the others around it to create a show which intrigues, envelopes and ultimately rewards.

Tate Modern presents the first major exhibition in the UK devoted to the Dutch artist and pivotal figure of the European avant-garde, Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931).
Van Doesburg, who worked in disciplines within art, design and text, founded the far-reaching movement and magazine De Stijl. This artistic movement of painters, architects and designers sought to build a new society in the aftermath of World War I, advocating an international style of art and design based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals.

Van Doesburg is perhaps best known for founding the De Stijl (Dutch for “The Style”) magazine and movement. This artistic collective of painters, architects and designers sought to build a new society in the aftermath of World War I, advocating an international style of art and design based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals. Van Doesburg travelled extensively in Europe in the 1920s making connections and collaborating with avant-garde contemporaries of the time. This exhibition explores Doesburg’s role as promoter of Dutch Neoplasticism, his Dada personality, his efforts to influence the Bauhaus, his links with international Constructivists, and his creation of the group Art Concret. Including over 350 works (many unseen in the UK before) by key artists as Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Gerrit Rietveld, Kurt Schwitters and Sophie Taeuber, the exhibition features van Doesburg’s rarely-seen Counter-Composition paintings and designs for the Café Aubette in Stasbourg, furniture such as Rietveld’s iconic Red-Blue chair, as well as typography, magazines, stained glass, film, music, sculpture and more.
The exhibition I went was very abstractive compare to Terry Frost’s. There are a lot of shapes in both artists I’ve seen, but van Doesburg has been another 1 of my influence as well. I like the use of his clour range of DeStijl: very compact, bright and discintive.This exhibition explores Doesburg’s role as promoter of Dutch Neoplasticism, his Dada personality, his efforts to influence the Bauhaus, his links with international Constructivists, and his creation of the group Art Concret. I maybe might be able to follw his style…

My Task for this was to communicate an event, act or situation through use of sequential images.

My work was a Giant A0 Poster. It was set up to be a part of my final 4 panels, but I decided to have chosen my 1 piece. The 4 panels was about predicting the future of what events can happen from something to anything to everything. My theme is the Disaster Events, to be known as flooding/ Global Warming. What I really want to try to achieve it is to address the audience why I have put on the ice image, because the ice caps. It’s a major issue today as we speak. And that people, need to stop the emission gas around, otherwise the world will be flooded. That why I wanted to do it.

I love my work, as it has abstract, colourful shapes. I love the composition of my work as well. It’s eye-catching because of the colours is so bright, u literally wanna pay more attention of the whole image. It makes it more powerful to watch too.

My Personal Development

My recent development of this was to design a t-shirt creating awareness and sense into things today. I call it “Stop Melting Me!” The phrase says it all because my work consists on people to stop creating hot or bad gases that are polluting the earth. There will be more idea development to come, and I will be able to create a good abstractive t-shirt.

On the weekend, I went to see the Fund-raising exhibition. It’s an event where my colleagues have been working together to form a charity eveny based for the people in Haiti. As you may heard of on-going events happening around the country, my colleagues have made an exhibition in Brick Lane, Whitechapel. It was at the Real World Gallery

This fund-raising was part of the association with the Disasters Emergrncy Commitee. featuring artists like:
Peter Kennard, Mark Long, Joe Wilson and Carl Jason.

There’s something about this print that I like about it. I like the picture when everything is all black and white, showing an old-fashion, legendary picture of the mafia. But what I also like is the colour red, it symbolises murder or rage, passion, basic amount of playing poker. This pic tells quite a myth, there is in fact a myth about it.

I like this graphical technique about this piece of work. The use of repetitive leaves, I think, really helps create an amazing image of a tiger. That is something quite inspiring, and technically brilliant. I like the use of green colours, representing the nature fell about it.