Thursday, February 27, 2020

Humans Place within the natural world Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Humans Place within the natural world - Essay Example In addition, artists such as Arthur Durand, Thomas Cole, and poet William Cullen Bryant also contributed greatly to past and modern understanding of the place of human being in the natural world. Because of the differing views and the subsequent contributions of these renowned artists, the world today has a better grasp and understanding of the presence and the purpose of human being on earth. People currently have a better perceptive of their purpose in life and the manner in which they should interact not only with humans and non-human animals but also with the rests of the natural world. What is more, the ideas advocated by these people in their artistic works have enabled humankind to make more sense of the social, cultural, economical, and social forces and structures in the civilized world. Although they contributed to the rich artistic history of the American people in different ways, Ralph Waldo, Henry David Thoreau, and Usher B. Durant contributed to the artistic history of America in almost similar manner. Waldo, an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, spearheaded the Transcendentalist movement in the USA the mid-19th century. In so doing, Waldo criticized the societal pressures that dogged peoples’ lives and emphasized individualism in his many published works. In fact, by championing Transcendentalism in many of his published works, Waldo slowly moved away from his contemporaries with whom he had professed rather radical religious and social beliefs. Among the core essences of life as perceived by Waldo included social, cultural, and religious ideas that he did not impose on people but gradually developed to endear people to these perceptions.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Pictorialism and Modernism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Pictorialism and Modernism - Essay Example The essay "Pictorialism and Modernism" compares pictorialism with modernism. The availability of printmaking machinery and materials that were previously reserved for illustration and reproduction allowed the artists to venture into the new artistic era. This led photographers to experiment their divergent techniques, which included the documentary style that involved capturing memorable events and representing them in documentaries. The era of documentary photography raised the need to respect people as humans rather than stereotypic images that had less resemblance to the represented being. This gave rise to the era of modernism, which made a large leap from the previous documentary photography. Therefore, it was during the pictorialism era that real artistic work could be accurately represented, and this was the era that revolution in artistic work was achieved. However, due to the closeness between the two artistic works, pictorialism may be argued to be a modernism approach to p hotography with the feelings of the artist embraced in the art work. Rocco argues that the era of photography dates back to 1888 when George Eastman introduced the first Kodak camera and this changed photography to the better since then. The first camera made photography to be available for the common man in the street, instead of being a preserve of a few artists. This intervention of the camera greatly reduced the apparatus used in films, and was available to many casual amateurs with no particular training.