All About Figurative And Genre Art

By Coleen Torres


In the world of art, there are actually two categories that one may see namely abstract styles and figurative styles. Abstract styles are the types that would produce works that have random shapes and generally have no clear meaning. The figurative and genre art on the other hand, is the type of art that would clearly depict a certain object that would come from real life.

Now although this type of artwork would represent real objects in life, it is not an exact copy of the real thing. It is actually an interpretation of what the artist would see when he looks at that certain object. It is because of this that a lot of figurative paintings or sculptures would have some twists added to that.

Now when one would try making artworks that are in this category, he would usually choose between either humans or animals. Now even though these two are the most common subjects to be used for this type of artwork, many artists would actually use objects from nature like trees or mountains. Sometimes they would even use architecture as their subjects like castles or buildings.

Now just to have a brief history on this type of art, the first of this kind was actually discovered in Southern Germany. It was actually a statue of a woman and was dated back to thirty five thousand years ago. Now when it comes to painting, the first one came from a small part of France and would show animals like cows or other types of domesticated creatures. This is a cave painting that dates back sixteen thousand years ago.

Of course if one is an artist of this category of artworks, he will always have to take note of certain elements in the process. Now since the end products are somewhat replicas of the real things, then one would have to pay close attention to certain elements. Elements such as the shapes, the colors, the lighting, the angles, and the texture.

Notice that if one would want to create artworks that are in this category, he would have to pay close attention to the details. Do take note that paintings and sculptures in this category are very detailed and would often contain a lot of things that usually will not be noticed by people. The details would actually be the ones that would make the depiction more realistic.

Now before this type of art reached the popularity that it has today, it first started out in ancient Greece wherein the Greeks believed that art is all about precision and accuracy in copying the subject. The Egyptians, on the other hand believed that it was more on remembering what the subject looked like in the mind then translating it in art form. Of course over time, these two methods were fused and artists would sometimes switch between them.

So as one can see, it takes more than just some creativity in order to create a masterpiece in this category. Now this type of art has a very rich background which stemmed from the Greeks to the Egyptians even up to the artists of the Renaissance period. Even up until now this type of artwork is still growing and evolving.




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