Art Making in Cultural Context
Artists’ Practice explores the origins of art making throughout human history by looking at what has been left behind.
Welcome to Artists’ Practice, a cabinet of curiosities filled with stories and pictures accumulated from travel and studies in the history of art making techniques used by artists to transform colors and binders into art works. Artists’ Practice places art making in the context of the technology and raw materials available at the time.
Artists’ Practice explores the origins of art making throughout human history by looking at what has been left behind.
Welcome to Artists’ Practice, a cabinet of curiosities filled with stories and pictures accumulated from travel and studies in the history of art making techniques used by artists to transform colors and binders into art works. Artists’ Practice places art making in the context of the technology and raw materials available at the time.
Artists’ Practice is about the bones.
Why did certain art works moved through history intact; or, relatively easy to glue back together? According to Plato, the purpose of art was to remember. So most ancient art works and artifacts did not move through time, they stood still.
Their caretakers changed as generations inherited art works and the reasons to keep them. Art work increased in value because somebody remembered the story about why saving this art work was meaningful. But once that reason why was lost, even the most beautiful art works without their stories are just antiques.
Stories are the flesh of culture; art works are its bones. Artists’ Practice is about the bones.
Why did certain art works moved through history intact; or, relatively easy to glue back together? According to Plato, the purpose of art was to remember. So most ancient art works and artifacts did not move through time, they stood still.
Their caretakers changed as generations inherited art works and the reasons to keep them. Art work increased in value because somebody remembered the story about why saving this art work was meaningful. But once that reason why was lost, even the most beautiful art works without their stories are just antiques.
A deluxe book made for a Roman emperor with silver ink to make reading the Gospels easier at night.
Engraving star charts on rock varnish near intersections may have been the first conceptual art project 100,000 years ago.
How the phenomenon of luminescence occurs to make invisible frequencies visible as colors we can see.
In ancient Egyptian cosmology, blue was so important that if they couldn’t find it, mine it, or buy it, they made it.