Unit 1 timeline-Lightbulbs, Megan Lowe 1862

Lightbulbs throughout the History of Art

The electric lightbulb is a relativley new invention. Invented by Thomas Edison in 1879 this exciting development had now become an everyday convenience. They have become something that we now pay no attention too. Lightbulbs are often used within art works, sometime they are used simply as they are in the scene (for example a domestic scene) or they are used to highlight a specific area in the scene or they are used symbolically to show something that you may not necessarily see on first look. Unfortunatley, due to the mundane value of them in the wordl now, we hardly notice or appreciate the significance of the use of electic light bulbs. Here in this timeline I will look at how artists depicted electric lightbulbs and how they used natural light, where we would now use lightbulbs.

This painting depicts a street light. You can see the street lamp in the centre of the painting and taking up roughly 1/3 of the canvas vertically. The main light is glowing with yellow and white oil painting. Coming off of the main bulb is shards of exploding colours that burst out and off the canvas. The colours are shows in small ‘U’ shapes and create a blur that becomes a firework of colours.

The inner colours are warm, oranges, greens and white and the further out you go the colours change into more bold colours such as red, greens and some cool blue colours. We can see in the right hand corner that the moon is present, however, the street lamp is out shining and taking about the speciality of the mood-­‐therefore commenting on the changing world and how electricity is taking over the world and that the things that used to be important are no longer the most important things. Some also say that the light is shaped like a skull and that the way the world is changing will become the death of humanity, or maybe the death of the old ways of the world.

Balla was an Italian painter and was one of the founders of Futurism signing the Futurist manifesto. Balla’s main objective was to depict movement.

Futurism and particularly Balla celebrated the machine and early futurists were concerned with capturing figures and objects in motion.

Giacomo Balla, Street Light, 1909 Oil on Canvas, Modern Museum of Art, New York

Key events-­‐ 1917-­‐ Russian Revolutuion 1920-­‐ American women franchised

This is primarily a futuristic painting.

Futurism was an Italian art movement starting in 1909 and lastly only a few years. In February 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote and published a futurist manifesto in a French newspaper ‘Le Figaro’ In this manifesto Marnietti summed up the major principles of the futurists, including a passionate, loathing of ideas from the past especially artistic traditions. Futurists were deliberately provocative as Maranetti said in his manifesto “Turn aside the canals to flood the museums!... Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammer and wreck, wreck the vulnerable cities, pitilessly” Mainly all futurists had a love of speed, technology and often violence. Automobiles had only recently started to be manufactured and trains were being used more commercially and so the love of speed and industry was being expressed in the futurists work. They represented the technological triumph of man over nature. Marinetti described himself as a modern centaur piloting his car, swept by “the raging broom of madness.” He also once said that a “roaring car” is more beautiful that The Victory of Samothrace (c. 220-­‐190 BC) Furturists also wanted to capture not just optical sensations but the total psychical experience and to ignore past art/culture especially the Italian past-­‐they did this by taking influence from the changing world around them.

Key works-­‐ 1910-­‐ Boccioni, The City Rises 1912-­‐Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1913-­‐Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist 1915-­‐Nevinson, Bursting Shell