Essays on Pastel

William Kentridge (South African artist)

William Kentridge is a famous South African artist who draws and erases with charcoal. What is interesting about him is that he records his compositions at each stage and creates a video projection of the re-worked source drawings. This makes his aesthetic concerns linked intimately with the descriptive power of his work. There is a palpable tension in his quiet works because of the brutality of the content. Kentridge shows his concerns of post-Apartheid South Africa with an unparalleled lyricism in his compositions 1. Kentridge is a filmmaker and sculptor too and has been heavily involved in theatre. One ...

Personal Statement – Reflections in the Garden

The butterfly garden has an ethereal quality about it. I have found a warm and quiet spot to sit. As I observe the little garden around me, I study its features to determine what gives it this special mood. Spring is arriving and I am grateful for the warmth of the sun on my back, through my jacket to my skin. It reminds me that warm weather and longer days are coming. Anticipation of better weather ahead lifts my mood. Perhaps even the butterflies and insects that fly around here are also excited for warm days ahead – they seem ...

Evolution of the Renaissance Style

Through the history, human perception of reality and subsequently depiction of it had evolved just human civilization itself. The divine world perception of Middle Ages was embodied in the Byzantine art and painting style, in which the main emphasis was placed on worshipping and divine nature of saints, making them as unreachable to a mortal being as the very comprehension of God Himself. Finally, human world perception was ready for the next step – self-realization and humanization of art in all of its perspectives, even such matters as saints and religious descriptions. Thus, the era of Renaissance and contemporary human-centric world ...