ART LECTURES

Color Theory

 

 

  • What is the color?
  • The difference between the color as light and as paint
  • Color systems: RYB, RGB, CMYK
  • After image, simultaneous contrast
  • Primary, secondary colors
  • Contrary colors (psychological color contrasts)
  • Warm vs cold colors
  • Illusions with colors
  • Color combinations and their physical and psychological effect on us
  • Forms & colors
  • Color tips
  • Color history

Composition & Design

 

  • Different composition traditions
  • Rhythm and form transformations
  • Light, shade, shadow
  • Directions and sizes in the composition
  • Structure & Form
  • Patterns & contrast
  • Planes and volume
  • The use of perspective
  • Human Proportions & how to use them
  • Abstract and objective work

Body Painting & Body Art History

Body Art & Body Painting History

 

 

There are so many ways to be human. How we decorate our bodies tells others who we are as individuals. Around the world, many people use their skin as living canvas, representing past experiences, bravery, status, beauty, protection, fertility, magic, transformations and connections with other realms. These incredible kinds of expression, performance and belonging exist in two parallel worlds, one of old rituals and traditions that distinguish us as human, and the other of body art as a contemporary art form.

 

“A man without tattoos is invisible to the gods,” says an Iban proverb from Borneo.

 

Body painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body:

 

body painting, tattoos, body art performances, body piercings, scarification, branding, scalpelling, full body tattoo.

 

Unlike tattoo and other forms of permanent body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for one day, or at most (in the case of Mehndi, "henna" or temp tattoo, glitter tattoos) a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting.

Body art is also a sub-category of performance art, in which artists use or abuse their own body to make their particular statements.

 

 

Bella Volen has separated the visual development of Body Art and Body Painting in 3 parts.

 

Part 1-Ritual body art

 

Every major society, past or present, has or had it’s own body art culture.

 

Rituals are a universal constant in human society. Beginning with the start of human cultural development, rituals have continued to have space in society, even in the modern world.

There is no shortage of research on rituals, and theories regarding their nature.

In all cultures, rituals coincide with large turning points of life in regard to the individual (birth, puberty, marriage, death).

 

 

North & South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Oceania, India, Middle East, China, Japan, Thailand, Bulgaria, Kosovo and more

 

 

Body painting with clay and other natural pigments existed in most if not all tribal cultures. Often worn during ceremonies, this ancient form of expression is still used among many indigenous people of the world today. (Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific islands, parts of Africa, India, Japan and more.)

Other ritual-based art forms include tattoos, piercing, nose-ears-mouth plugs, Mehndi, henna, and scarification.

All types of body art hold great meaning in these cultures.

 

Body art is a crucial part of social, spiritual, and personal expression.

 

Rite of Passage: (Rites of Passage surround milestone events like puberty, coming of age, marriage and death.)

 

  •     The child becomes adult:
  •     Weddings
  •     Preparation for war or hunt
  •     The birth of a child
  •     Spiritual rituals
  •     Death
  •     Body art also shows the position of a person in a certain group.

 

It can represent:

 

Your origin, your position, symbol of power, what you have reached and experienced, it can be like an ID card (Maori and Polynesia), it protects from evil forces, it shows bravery and beauty, can be an act of transformation, mourning, connecting with the spirits of animals or the earth, symbol of fertility. In the last 100 years in some countries like Japan it has been also connected with the mafia and crime.

 

Some rituals are connected with personal preparation: a period of silence, no sexual activities, isolation, some tribes also have to fast.

 

Part 2- 1960-1980- the birth of a new art form

 

Big changes are coming in times of crisis.

 

 

In the time around 1960, artists are searching of new ways of expression, new forms of painting, provoking and shocking. They need attention and have a massage!

 

  • The work of the Actionists developed concurrently with—but largely independently from—other avant garde movements of the era who shared an interest in rejecting object-based or otherwise commodifiable art practices.
  • In this times body art performances and body painting are in one hand inspired by Fluxus and Happenig moments, where it is all about the moment of creating, sexual freedom and not the final result of the art work. On another hand other artists like Verushka are creating beautiful images of transfigurations where the body melts with the nature and becomes a part of the environment, becomes sometimes an object.
  • One of the main body art movements in this period was in Austria:

 

The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop "action art" (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.). Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. As "actionists", they were active between 1960 and 1971. Most have continued their artistic work independently from the early 1970s onwards.

 

In my Body Art History Workshops I show a lot of their videos!

 

  •     Verushka, born as Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort, can be called The Mother of Contemporary Body Painting.
  •     Yves Klein and his Blue Anthropometries and fire paintings are also a very important part of the Body Art History.

 

 

 

Part 3-Contemporary body painting (after 1980)

 

  •     Fine art body painting
  •     Advertising
  •     Fashion body painting
  •     Commercial body painting
  •     UV body painting
  •     Special Effects
  •     Airbrush
  •     Competition body painting
  •     Paintloon
  •     Action painting
  •     Body painting shows and performances

 

 

Many images and videos from some special unknown and famous artists and projects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Copyright Bella Volen 2016


Bella Volen's e-mail: info@bella-volen.com


+43/699 132 29 826         
Vienna, Austria