Visual Culture-Late 20th. Century to now.

Fine art photography is photography created in accordance with the vision of the artist as photographer. Fine art photography stands in contrast to representational photography, such as photojournalism, which provides a documentary visual account of specific subjects and events, literally re-presenting objective reality rather than the subjective intent of the photographer; and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services.

One photography historian claimed that "the earliest exponent of 'Fine Art' or composition photography was John Edwin Mayall, "who exhibited daguerreotypes illustrating the Lord's Prayer in 1851".Successful attempts to make fine art photography can be traced to Victorian era practitioners such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander and others. In the U.S. F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen were instrumental in making photography a fine art, and Stieglitz was especially notable in introducing it into museum collections.

In the UK as recently as 1960, photography was not really recognized as a Fine Art. Dr S.D.Jouhar said, when he formed the Photographic Fine Art Association at that time - "At the moment photography is not generally recognized as anything more than a craft. In the USA photography has been openly accepted as Fine Art in certain official quarters. It is shown in galleries and exhibitions as an Art. There is not corresponding recognition in this country. The London Salon shows pictorial photography, but it is not generally understood as an art. Whether a work shows aesthetic qualities or not it is designated 'Pictorial Photography' which is a very ambiguous term. The photographer himself must have confidence in his work and in its dignity and aesthetic value, to force recognition as an Art rather than a Craft"

Until the late 1970s several genres predominated, such as; nudes, portraits, natural landscapes (exemplified by Ansel Adams). Breakthrough 'star' artists in the 1970s and 80s, such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Cindy Sherman, still relied heavily on such genres, although seeing them with fresh eyes. Others investigated a snapshot aesthetic approach.

American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have done much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts.American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have done much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts.

 

 

 

 

 

Not my own work copied of various websites

Visual Culture-1950s and 1960s.

The 1960s featured a number of diverse trends. It was a decade that broke many fashion traditions, mirroring social movements during the time.In the middle of the decade, culottes, go-go boots, box-shaped PVC dresses and other PVC clothes were popular. The widely popular bikini came into fashion in 1963 after being featured in the musical Beach Party.

Mary Quant invented the mini-skirt, and Jackie Kennedy introduced the pillbox hat, both becoming extremely popular. False eyelashes were worn by women throughout the 1960s, and their hairstyles were a variety of lengths and styles.While focusing on colors and tones, accessories were less of an importance during the sixties. People were dressing in psychedelic prints, highlighter colors, and mismatched patterns. The hippie movement late in the decade also exerted a strong influence on ladies' clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye, and batik fabrics, as well as paisley prints.

In the early-to-mid-1960s, the London Modernists known as the Mods were shaping and defining popular fashion for young British men while the trends for both changed more frequently than ever before in the history of fashion and would continue to do so throughout the decade.

Designers were producing clothing more suitable for young adults, which led to an increase in interest and sales.

The 1960s photography was in sharp contrast to the models of the 1920s, which photographers carefully posed for the camera, and portrayed as immobile. To represent this new Single Girl feminine ideal, many 1960s photographers shot models outside, often having them walk or run in fashion shoots. Models in the 1960s now promoted sportswear and working wear. This sportswear trend exemplified the trends of the 1960s: the modern fascination with speed, and the quickening pace of the 1960s urban life.

Fashion photographers also photographed the Single Girl wearing working wear, calling her the Working Girl. The Working Girl motif represented another shift for the modern, fashionable woman. Unlike earlier fashionable periods, when formal evening gowns and the European look trended, the 1960s Working Girl popularized daywear and “working clothing”. Now, new ready to wear lines replaced individualized formal couture fashion. The Working Girl created an image of a new, independent woman who has control over her body.

 

 

 

 

 

^{This is not my work and has been took from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_in_fashion}

Visual Culture-1940s and 50s

The Great Depression of the 1930s was an era of such extreme poverty and dramatic economic decline that it remains permanently etched on our collective psyche.

One major reason for the lasting impression made by the most widespread and deepest depression of the 20th century is that it coincided with the growth of photography as an art form and the period was well-documented as a result.

The why we fight Series depicts the Nazi propaganda machine.

Propaganda can be defined as the ability "to produce and spread fertile messages that, once sown, will germinate in large human cultures.  However, in the 20th century, a “new” propaganda emerged, which revolved around political organizations and their need to communicate messages that would “sway relevant groups of people in order to accommodate their agendas”. First developed by the Lumiere brothers in 1896, film provided a unique means of accessing large audiences at once. Film was the first universal mass medium in that it could simultaneously influence viewers as individuals and members of a crowd, which led A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films may be packaged in numerous ways, but are most often documentary-style productions or fictional screenplays, that are produced to convince the viewer on a specific political point or influence the opinions or behavior of the viewer, often by providing subjective content that may be deliberately misleading.

to it quickly becoming a tool for governments and non-state organizations to project a desired ideological message As Nancy Snow stated in her book, Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech and Opinion Control Since 9-11, propaganda "begins where critical thinking ends."

 

 

not my work copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_film

Visual Culture-1930s USA

The Great Depression of the 1930s was an era of such extreme poverty and dramatic economic decline that it remains permanently etched on our collective psyche.

One major reason for the lasting impression made by the most widespread and deepest depression of the 20th century is that it coincided with the growth of photography as an art form and the period was well-documented as a result.

One of the most famous American photographers documenting the era was Walker Evans, who’s beautiful and sometimes haunting photographs captured such detail and emotion that the subjects feel more alive and closer to the present than the past.

During a decade of profound transformation, Evans created a collective portrait of the Eastern United States through his work for the Farm Security Administration that now acts almost as a Modernist history of photography.

The 2013 installation of Walker Evans' work maintains the bipartite organization of the originals: the first section portrays American society through images of its individuals and social contexts, while the second consists of photographs of American cultural artifacts - the architecture of Main streets, factory towns, rural churches, and wooden houses.

The pictures provide neither a coherent narrative nor a singular meaning, but rather create connections through the repetition and interplay of pictorial structures and subject matter.

 

 Not my own work copied from varies of websites

Visual Culture-1920s in Europe and Russia

Man Ray's The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse (1920) refers to this quotation.

This approach to art was radical! Art schools and studios from time immemorial stressed the methodical application of one's skill. To let go of deliberate action - however, quickly or slowly executed it might be - seemed antithetical to the whole concept of art itself.

For the Surrealists, the idea of skill from training was understood. Their philosophy was to let go of the constraints of learned skills and tradition methods of making art. They sought out children's art, naïf art (for example, Henri Rousseau), "primitive" art and "outsider" art (such as the art made by patients in mental institutions) to stoke the fires of their almost incoherent inventions.

The Origin of the Word "Surreal"

The word "surreal" was coined by the poet/art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), and appeared for the first time in the program notes for ballet Parade (May 1917), a Ballets Russes production that enlisted the talents of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie and Leonid Massine. Apollinaire also describe his play The Breasts of Tiresias (June 1917) as "surreal."

However, Apollinaire died six years before André Breton published his "Manifesto of Surrealism" (1924), and therefore his use of the word surreal may not be exactly the same as Breton's.

Today, we associate the word "surreal" with strange juxtapositions or absurd combinations, like those experienced in dreams. This concept belongs to Breton's interpretation of the word.

A Surrealist Parlor Game: "Exquisite Cadavers," a.k.a. "The Exquisite Corpse"

This exercise was used to suppress the guarded mind, let chance play its role and get the creative juices flowing. Its name comes from the first time the game was played. The first sentence composed was: "The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine." To play:

• Write down any word at the top of a blank piece of paper.
• Fold the paper down so that it hides the word and pass the paper to another person.
• Have that person write down a random word and fold the paper over the word.
• Pass the paper to another person and have him/her repeat: write the random word and fold to hide that word.
• When the paper is completely folded, open the paper to expose the list of words.
• Read the list of words as if it were a sentence.

Or

• Draw one image, fold down the paper and pass the paper along to the next person.
• The chain of random words or images would be considered a cadavre exquis - an exquisite corpse.

How Long Was Surrealism a Movement?

Surrealism officially began with "The Manifesto of Surrealism," published in 1924. However, it grew out of Dada.

Surrealism never died, it simply splintered into numerous directions and influenced new movements, with different names. Some artists still identify themselves as Surrealists and some founding Surrealist artists are still alive (see the list below).

What Are the Key Characteristics of Surrealism?

• The exploration of the dream and unconsciousness as a valid form of reality, inspired by Sigmund Freud's writings.
• A willingness to depict images of perverse sexuality, scatology, decay and violence.
• The desire to push against the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviors and traditions in order to discover pure thought and the artist's true nature.
• The incorporation of chance and spontaneity.
• The influence of revolutionary 19th century poets, such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Isidore Ducasse.
• Emphasis on the mysterious, marvelous, mythological and irrational in an effort to make art ambiguous and strange.
• Fundamentally, Surrealism gave artists permission to express their most basic drives: hunger, sexuality, anger, fear, dread, ecstasy, and so forth.
• Exposing these uncensored feelings as if in a dream still exists in many form of art to this day.
• Two stylistic schools: Biomorphism and Naturalistic Surrealism.

What Are the Best Examples of Surrealism?

• Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924. (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
• Joan Miró, Carnival of Harlequin, 1924-25. (Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY)
• René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
• Jean (Hans) Arp, Head with Three Annoying Objects, 1930. (Estate of the artist).
• Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

 

 

 

 

 

Not my work copied from http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/Surrealism-Art-History-101-Basics.htm

 

Visual Culture-1900-1920

One photography historian claimed that "the earliest exponent of 'Fine Art' or composition photography was John Edwin Mayall, "who exhibited daguerreotypes illustrating the Lord's Prayer in 1851” Successful attempts to make fine art photography can be traced to Victorian era practitioners such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander and others. In the U.S. F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen were instrumental in making photography a fine art, and Stieglitz was especially notable in introducing it into museum collections.

In the UK as recently as 1960, photography was not really recognized as a Fine Art. Dr S.D.Jouhar said, when he formed the Photographic Fine Art Association at that time - "At the moment photography is not generally recognized as anything more than a craft. In the USA photography has been openly accepted as Fine Art in certain official quarters. It is shown in galleries and exhibitions as an Art. There is not corresponding recognition in this country. The London Salon shows pictorial photography, but it is not generally understood as an art. Whether a work shows aesthetic qualities or not it is designated 'Pictorial Photography' which is a very ambiguous term. The photographer himself must have confidence in his work and in its dignity and aesthetic value, to force recognition as an Art rather than a Craft"

Until the late 1970s several genres predominated, such as; nudes, portraits, natural landscapes (exemplified by Ansel Adams). Breakthrough 'star' artists in the 1970s and 80s, such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Cindy Sherman, still relied heavily on such genres, although seeing them with fresh eyes. Others investigated a snapshot aesthetic approach.

American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have done much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts.

 

 

 

 

 

Not my work just copied from Wikipedia

Visual Culture-The Late Nineteenth Century.

The birth of Cinema and moving images at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

 

 

The history of film cannot be credited to one individual as an oversimplification of any his-tory often tries to do. Each inventor added to the progress of other inventors, culminating in progress for the entire art and industry. Often masked in mystery and fable, the beginnings of film and the silent era of motion pictures are usually marked by a stigma of crudeness and naiveté, both on the audience's and filmmakers' parts. However, with the landmark depiction of a train hurtling toward and past the camera, the Lumière Brothers’ 1895 picture “La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon” “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”, was only one of a series of simultaneous artistic and technological breakthroughs that began to culminate at the end of the nineteenth century. These triumphs that began with the creation of a machine that captured moving images led to one of the most celebrated and distinctive art forms at the start of the 20th century. Audiences had already reveled in motion pictures through clever uses of slides and mechanisms creating "moving photographs" with such 16th-century inventions as magic lanterns. These basic concepts, combined with trial and error and the desire of audiences across the world to see entertainment projected onto a large screen in front of them, birthed the movies. From the “actualities” of penny arcades, the idea of telling a story in order to draw larger crowds through the use of differing scenes began to formulate in the minds of early pioneers such as Georges Melies and Edwin S. Porter. This Discovery Guide explores the early history of cinema, following its foundations as a money-making novelty to its use as a new type of storytelling and visual art, and the rise of the film industry. The first moving picture was of a train coming to a stop at the train station which frightened everyone one in the room. The Lumires also taped people coming out of their factory as well but I think that these must have been tests to see if it worked or how it turned out. As they got more confident with it, film started to evolve by telling little storys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Website

 Moving Pictures: The History of Early Cinema

Visual Culture-The Nineteenth Century

War Photography in the 19^th century

 

Perhaps no event susceptible to being photographed has received more attention than war. Many groups have been interested in the camera's precise visual documentation of the people, places, and activities of warfare: military officers and decision makers in the field; political decision makers at home; opponents of war seeking visual proof of its horrors and inhumanity; ordinary citizens trying to visualize the places in which armies confront each other, and loved ones are fighting or have fought; and ex-combatants seeking mementoes of their comrades-in-arms, camps and equipment, and the people and landscapes encountered on campaigns far from home. When wars are over, societies seek visual means of commemorating the sites of heroic turning points or tragic loss.

Artists fulfilled these needs entirely before 1839. Photography first supplemented, then in the 20th century largely replaced the artist as visual recorder of the preparations preceding combat, the fighting itself, and its horrific consequences for humans and their environment. From photography's beginnings, even when the bulky and cumbersome equipment needed for daguerreotypes, calotypes, and wet-plate photographs narrowly restricted photographers' movements in the field, photographic entrepreneurs were quick to seize opportunities to act either as independent operators or as official observers of military operations.

War photography went through several stages before 1920, corresponding roughly to advances in photographic technology. Before the wet-plate process was announced by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, the earliest war photographs were daguerreotypes or calotypes which, with their long exposures, produced relatively static, staged photographs of men in uniform, landscapes, and buildings (whole or ruined). Although it cut exposure times, the wet-plate process obliged photographers to carry both a darkroom or dark-tent and supplies of water and chemicals with them into the field. This meant in practice that subjects were still limited to static personnel, fortifications and other installations, and the human and material debris of battle. Notwithstanding the assumption that photography (unlike art) produced true images of reality, for aesthetic, practical, or propaganda reasons photographers could and did frame or stage the images they captured. Even after the advent of dry-plate technology c.1880 freed photographers from the need to process their pictures immediately, large-format cameras continued to make the best-quality negatives, requiring photographers to carry bulky tripods. Throughout the 19th century, therefore, the camera remained a ‘distant witness’.

The majority of war photographs taken before c.1900 did not reach broad audiences through publication, although many served as the basis for engravings published in popular journals such as Harpers Illustrated Weekly or the Illustrated London news. By the end of the 19th century, photographs could be reproduced in daily newspapers, and photographers began to function as war correspondents. War photographers attempted to support themselves by exhibiting in galleries, or publishing books of their photographs: commercial enterprises which ensured that the most repulsive images of carnage tended to be avoided.

 

 

 

 

not my own work taken from varies websites

visual culture-17th and 18th Centuries

Johannes Vermeer

 He was born in 1632  and died in December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women.

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

While I was in the lecture learning about Vermeer I was told how all his paintings looked like they were painting in the same room, and how he had perspective in his paintings. That his work looked like he had used an early form of a camera There has been a 100 years of speculation that he has used a camera obsurea in his work. This intellectual detective story starts by exploring Vermeer's possible knowledge of seventeenth-century optical science, and outlines the history of this early version of the photographic camera, which projected an accurate image for artists to trace. However, it is Steadman's meticulous reconstruction of the artist's studio, complete with a camera obscura, which provides exciting new evidence to support the view that Vermeer did indeed use the camera. This intellectual detective story starts by exploring Vermeer's possible knowledge of seventeenth-century optical science, and outlines the history of this early version of the photographic camera, which projected an accurate image for artists to trace. However, it is Steadman's meticulous reconstruction of the artist's studio, complete with a camera obscura, which provides exciting new evidence to support the view that Vermeer did indeed use the camera. I really like his work and in all these types of paintings he seams to use natural light.

 

 

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn  was born on the; 15 July 1606 and died on the 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age when Dutch Golden Age painting, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative.

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt's later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high  and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters.Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.

In his paintings and prints he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam's Jewish population.Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization. He was know for the way he used light in all his portraits and how he lighted his subjects face which has now been come to be known as Rembrandt lighting.

 

Rembrandt lighting is a lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment. Rembrandt lighting is characterized by an illuminated triangle under the eye of the subject, on the less illuminated side of the face. It is named for the Dutch painter Rembrandt, who often used this type of lighting.

Normally, the key light is placed high and to one side at the front, and the fill light or a reflector is placed half-height and on the other side at the front, set to about half the power of the key light, with the subject, if facing at an angle to the camera, with the key light illuminating the far side of the face.

The key in Rembrandt lighting is creating the triangle or diamond shape of light underneath the eye. One side of the face is lit well from the main light source while the other side of the face uses the interaction of shadows and light, also known as chiaroscuro, to create this geometric form on the face.

The triangle should be no longer than the nose and no wider than the eye. This technique may be achieved subtly or very dramatically by altering the distance between subject and lights and relative strengths of main and fill lights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

not all my own work took of varies websites

Visual Culture-The Renaissance

 Leonardo Da Vinvi was born in April 15, 1452  and died May 2, 1519,  He was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person that ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.

Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait  and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam.  Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number because of his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a tank, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull, also outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,  but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded  He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.

 

Da Vinci was one of the great creative minds of the Italian Renaissance, hugely influential as an artist and sculptor but also immensely talented as an engineer, scientist and inventor.

Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452 near the Tuscan town of Vinci, the illegitimate son of a local lawyer. He was apprenticed to the sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence and in 1478 became an independent master. In about 1483, he moved to Milan to work for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, sculptor, painter and architect. From 1495 to 1497 he produced a mural of 'The Last Supper' in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

Da Vinci was in Milan until the city was invaded by the French in 1499 and the Sforza family forced to flee. He may have visited Venice before returning to Florence. During his time in Florence, he painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous 'Mona Lisa' (1503-1506).

In 1506, da Vinci returned to Milan, remaining there until 1513. This was followed by three years based in Rome. In 1517, at the invitation of the French king Francis I, Leonardo moved to the Château of Cloux, near Amboise in France, where he died on 2 May 1519.

The fame of Da Vinci's surviving paintings has meant that he has been regarded primarily as an artist, but the thousands of surviving pages of his notebooks reveal the most eclectic and brilliant of minds. He wrote and drew on subjects including geology, anatomy (which he studied in order to paint the human form more accurately), flight, gravity and optics, often flitting from subject to subject on a single page, and writing in left-handed mirror script. He 'invented' the bicycle, airplane, helicopter, and parachute some 500 years ahead of their time.

If all this work had been published in an intelligible form, da Vinci's place as a pioneering scientist would have been beyond dispute. Yet his true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: an 'artist-engineer'. His painting was scientific, based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. His science was expressed through art, and his drawings and diagrams show what he meant, and how he understood the world to work.

 

'The Last Supper'

In 1482, Lorenzo de' Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci to create a silver lyre and bring it to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to Ludovico's court. His letter successfully endeared him to Ludovico, and from 1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It was during this time that da Vinci painted "The Last Supper."

'Mona Lisa'

Da Vinci's most well-known painting, and arguably the most famous painting in the world, the "Mona Lisa," was a privately commissioned work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507. Of the painting's wide appeal, James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University, once explained, "It is the inherent spirituality of the human creature that Leonardo was able to ingenuine to the picture that raises the human figure to some kind of majesty."

It's been said that the Mona Lisa had jaundice, that she was a pregnant woman and that she wasn't actually a woman at all, but a man in drag. Based on accounts from an early biographer, however, the "Mona Lisa" is a picture of Lisa Gioconda, the real-life wife of a merchant, but that's far from certain. For da Vinci, the "Mona Lisa" was forever a work in progress, as it was his attempt at perfection. The painting was never delivered to its commissioner; da Vinci kept it with him until the end of his life. Today, the "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bullet proof glass, and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.

His observations and inventions were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines (some 400 years before the Wright brothers' first success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and architecture. His ideas were mainly theoretical explanations, laid out in exacting detail, but they were rarely experimental. His drawings of a fetus in utero, the heart and vascular system, sex organs,

and other bone and muscular structures, are some of the first on human record.

One of da Vinci's last commissioned works was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal a bouquet of lilies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

not all my own work and took off a varied of websites but for got to reference it