Exploring Art Matter & Methods Across Time
Explores art-making materials, especially plaster, pigments, and binders.
Aurignacian masters first painted the sacred places into Chauvet Caves 35,000 years ago. The master makers of Göbekli Tepe established a pilgrimage site 10,000 years ago for the faithful on a plateau in central Türkiye (Anatolia). There, believers experienced their cultural heritage chiseled into foundation walls and standing blocks of stone. To the east, wide-eyed statues of mythical humans kept watch over Mesopotamia temples.
Artworks connect people to how a memory feels. Memories are the flesh of culture; and artworks are its bones. Artists’ Practice is about the bones.
Artworks that are kept safe have purpose for those willing to protect them through culture wars as well as style changed. As W. B. Yeats wrote: “Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truths, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.”
The site is organized into three sections:
- Art of the Matter
- Caves to Cathedrals
- Methods of the Masters
Explores art-making materials, especially plaster, pigments, and binders.
Aurignacian masters first painted the sacred places into Chauvet Caves 35,000 years ago. The master makers of Göbekli Tepe established a pilgrimage site 10,000 years ago for the faithful on a plateau in central Türkiye (Anatolia). There, believers experienced their cultural heritage chiseled into foundation walls and standing blocks of stone. To the east, wide-eyed statues of mythical humans kept watch over Mesopotamia temples.
Traces the origins of art-making.
Art works were also made for political purposes. 4500 years ago, the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built to display awesome power over those who saw the monument rise over the Nile as they sailed toward Cairo. Christianity relied on visual arts to share stories of the faithful among diverse congregations, many of which were non-literate. For over 2000 years, their chapels, churches, and cathedrals have stored cultural memories one generation to the next. By the Renaissance, salons and schools stored painting until the establishment of modern museums.
Examines art-making techniques and practices.
Artists’ Practice is a digital vault to keep a bit of what’s old on view because what’s old will be new again.
About the Author
After owning and operating an artists’ paint manufacturing company for 20 years, I earned my mastery of factory arts and my expert knowledge about the chemical composition and working properties of the pigments and binders used to make traditional art media since the Renaissance.
I have often consulted with studio painters to customize their art materials. I have talked with art students about the basics of contemporary color science so they know why they can’t find digital colors in the paint box.
When I retired, I realized I had spent too much time talking about the history of art making and too little time exploring it. I set off to see the real deal, the bona fide works of art made by master artists. I finally had enough time to look at art works until I figured out how they were made.
I roamed through American and European museums looking at what’s been left behind and wondering why. I traveled to ancient places around the Mediterranean, to Anatolia and Egypt to see landscapes where art making traditions originated more than 10,000 years ago.
My conceptual cabinet of curiosities started to fill up with details, trivia and unusual ideas about hundreds of ways to make art works. I took what I had accumulated from my travels to fuel my contemplation when I went back to studio during the recent pandemic. Fully stocked with five media, I experimented with various binders on marble, plaster, wood and metal. I mixed ancient recipes and concocted a new color media for a friend who could tolerate no solvent or dust.
Then I started writing my book, PLASTERED: Gesso’s Storied History. A friend asked me what I was going to do with all the leftover stories.
Martha Bergman’s recent paintings inspired by Bottticelli
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