Tessellation, Islamic Art & Why Edvard Munch Painted The Scream | Artrageous With Nate | Perspective

You going to book me? I might get a muggy. Is that gorgeous or what, eh? And I believe I can run feet. Download Veely now. Some of the most well-known artworks in the world were created by Paul Klee, M.C. Escher, and Edvard Munch. But where these artists found inspiration for their work is fascinating. Everything from Islamic culture and design to the tragedies of war and insane bedtime stories no child should hear. You definitely won't look at this painting the same way again. I'm traveling the globe discovering where creativity is happening. That's artrageous. Today we're talking about Islamic art and Dutch artist M.C. Escher, who was not Muslim but found Islamic art super inspiring. By the way, did you know he was left-handed as well? More on him in a minute. Islamic art dates back to the 7th century and continues today. It's used both in holy places in the Middle East, such as a mosque, but has influenced designs used all over the world in architecture, fashion, and probably even in your kitchen. When used in religious spaces, Islamic art does not represent figures, as this is seen as idolatry, but instead uses shapes and calligraphy repeated in patterns over and over again. Did you know this form of writing is the third most widely used in the world? It's also written from right to left, something we are definitely not used to. Many Islamic designs are arranged in beautiful mathematic patterns called tessellations, which are hand-carved in this amazing window. And check out these graceful, interlacing curved lines that look like vines, which are actually called arabesque. One of the most beautiful surviving examples of this art form is the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This huge complex was built in the 13th and 14th centuries and was used as a palace when the region was ruled by an Islamic or Moorish kingdom. Artists spent years carving these intricate designs out of wood, stone, and plaster. Everything is done by hand, something I always respect about Islamic art and architecture. Many of these designs were once brightly whitewashed, but over the centuries, most of the paint has worn away. When M.C. Escher first visited in 1922, he was amazed by all of the tessellating patterns. In the Alhambra, all 17 possible plane symmetry patterns are represented, demonstrating how advanced the Moorish kingdom was at this time. An inspired M.C. Escher returned in 1936 making sketches of the tiles and continued to use the idea of tessellation and repeating patterns throughout his work. He said about tessellation, It remains an extremely absorbing activity, a real mania to which I have become addicted and from which I sometimes find it hard to tear myself away. Guess it's a good thing his high school art teacher convinced him to be a graphic artist rather than an architect. Worlds away from his native Netherlands, Escher found inspiration in a foreign and beautiful art form, something Escher and I have in common, a love for other cultures. Now let's take our own trip around the world without leaving the Midwest. We're going to check in with the Cincinnati Art Museum to see a room that has traveled hundreds of years and thousands of miles from Damascus, Syria. Let's check it out. We're here in Ohio at the beautiful Cincinnati Art Museum where we're going to get a behind the scenes look at some of the museum's most prized pieces from around the world. Let's get inside and take a look. Follow me. We are here in a very dark room with one of the curators, Cynthia Anais, who is going to tell us a little bit more about the room. Thank you so much for joining us, by the way. And I have to ask, of course, as I just mentioned, why is it very dimly lit in here? Well, first of all, this is how you would have seen the room if you lived in the house where this room was originally. It would have been dim, but also the materials and the paints in this room are light sensitive. So as a museum, we need to care for our objects so that they're preserved for future generations. And we need to keep the light low. Where is this from? And then how in the world did it get in here, in the museum, in its hole here? Right. So this room is from Damascus. We call it the Damascus Room. And it was purchased by Andrew Juergens in the 1930s on his travels to the Middle East. And he brought it back and installed it in his home in a Cincinnati neighborhood. And then it was donated to the museum years later. So what originally was the purpose of this room? This was originally a kind of a parlor room in a wealthy person's home in Damascus. So it's very ornate, as you can see the painting on the walls and the gilding. The designs are typical of Islamic style in the period, in the 18th century. They combine floral and geometric motifs. But there's also a European influence, kind of Baroque European influence. So you see lots of arabesques and scrolling types of motifs. Is this something typical, like that they would cover everything or every piece of art with that much detail? You see that in ceramics and textiles, absolutely. This kind of convergence of lots of geometry and lots of floral and vegetal motifs. The ceiling in here is each design is called a coffer. And it is designed with a specific repeat in mind. So you'll see repeated designs across the surface of the ceiling. What makes this so unique to the museum? Well, it's one of very few rooms like this from this period anywhere in the world that still exists. There's another piece similar to it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. But this this is a very rare room to have intact with all of this decoration. Well, thank you so much, Cynthia, for showing us this room, which is fantastic to get into to stand in the space and learn a little bit more from you. So glad you were here. For this project, I want to use both repeated floral inspired patterns and calligraphy, two hallmarks of Islamic art we saw in the Damascus room. Let's check out the supplies. First thing we need is a canvas. Next, we need some paint. I'm using simple watercolor paint, but you can use whatever you like. We also need some brushes, water and a towel. I also have paint and permanent markers. Most importantly, we need an idea. I printed off this pattern to work from and this Islamic calligraphy text, which means creativity. I also love this design I found online. Pretty cool, right? Let's get started. Remember, symmetry in Islamic art is incredibly important. The more often you can use a ruler to help keep that symmetry, the better. Quick tip. This type of watercolor paint only requires a tiny bit of paint and an incredible amount of water. I'm really experimenting with the application of watercolor paint here. Sometimes I use a lot of water and less paint and then I switch it up. After the paint dried, I'm going back over my design with my pencil so I can better apply the marker and paint. I definitely do not have a black belt in making a straight line, hence why you see me use a ruler. Next up, I'm sketching out the calligraphy text I printed off. Having a couple different brush sizes would be awesome. Also remember to use the tip of your brush when you're doing those fine lines. I'm going to stop there for now, but I hope this left you with some ideas of what you could do with Islamic calligraphy and designs. Edvard Munch was a very famous expressionist painter from Norway who had anything but a normal childhood background. Let me explain. To begin, Munch lost his mom to tuberculosis when he was only five years old. His dad, who happened to be a medical doctor in the army, was left to raise five kids on his own, which was definitely not easy. Then, just a few short years after, Munch lost his favorite sister Joanne to the same dreadful disease. Terrible. To make things worse, Munch was almost always sick as a kid. Often during the winters, he would miss lots of school simply because he was too sick to attend. His father also loved to tell Munch scary stories right before bedtime. Not your normal bedtime routine, right? Seriously, why would you do that? Taking all these things into consideration, let's take a look at the screen painting. Actually, a better translation of the original title would be The Scream of Nature. One day, Munch and a couple of friends decided to go for a walk along the water's edge. Any idea what time of day it is? Yep, you're right. It's during sunset. Have any of you ever been near water at sunset? If so, have you ever seen the colors in the sky? Yeah, you see these yellows, yellow oranges, and reds. Well, Munch saw those two, but this time his eyes saw something else. To Munch, these colors reminded him of blood. So, if you've ever been by the water during a sunset, where do you also see these colors from the sky? That's right, in the water. Well, Munch sees these two, but again, he sees something totally different this time. He looks in the water and sees blood again. Check out the background of this painting. Do you see these two figures in the background? Yep, those are Munch's friends. Are they with him? Nope, and here's why. When Munch saw these colors both in the sky and the water, he was so scared. Have you ever been scared before? Yeah, and have you ever been so scared that you can't even move? That's exactly what is happening here. So Munch is standing here in the middle of the boardwalk, frozen and scared. But look at his hands, where are they? Yep, on his ears. The reason why is after seeing the blood in the sky and the blood in the water, all of a sudden Munch said he felt as if nature was screaming at him. If you hear something so scary, what is the first thing you're going to do? Put your hands on your ears. Now that you understand what Munch was seeing and that he felt as though nature was screaming at him, does this seem like something that could really happen? Do you think Munch felt like he was not on this planet? Nope, he sure didn't. Which is probably why he painted himself almost looking like an alien or even mummy-like. I'm guessing all those scary stories at bedtime wasn't such a good idea, was it? Let's take a look at what we're going to need to make this project. The first thing we're going to need is some paper. Let's not use anything too big, so that way we can try to get this finished. The next thing we're going to need is a pencil and a ruler, since we need to draw some straight lines. The next thing you're going to need, let's print off something to look at. I found this online and was able to find it pretty quick. You don't have to have it in color, but it's going to really help to be able to see it, since we are going to be using oil pastels for this project. Reason being, I want this to look as much like an oil painting as possible. Since these things are packed with so much oil, they're going to be perfect for what we're going to do. Let's get started. How many guys know what a light bulb looks like? Me. Boom. Let's start with the head. Let's start with what's closest to us and work from the background. You could go ahead and do the background first, but I'm going to start off with his head because I need to know about where it's at. I honestly start off with just making a simple circle, and then I'm going to overlap it with an oval. Literally, I think of his head as the shape of a light bulb, and then I'm just going to trace around those two shapes. Ta-da. Next thing I'm going to do is go ahead and use some simple ovals for his arms, some ovals for his head, and I'm just going to kind of sway down his body in kind of a rectangle. I've already got his mouth working here, and his eyes are crazy, hands contouring just a little bit around there. Bam. Remember, this does not need to look just like it. Just kind of plain. Next, I'm going to use a ruler for the boardwalk because it's just going to be much easier. I'm going to make a mark down here where I think the big rail goes on and off the paper. Next thing, I'm going to sketch lightly, in case I mess up, right, and start putting in some of these lines. I see three rails, so to start off, I'm going to go ahead and make all three of these lines, and I'll create the others to give it that 3D depth so it actually looks like a piece of wood in a bit. One comes off the page here. I'm telling you, having something to look at is really, really, really helpful, especially with a project like this. Next thing I'm going to do, and I'll come back and kind of refine this. We talked about the sky, right? So I'm going to go ahead and put in that horizon line. Real simple. Doesn't need to look just like it. Almost looks like a wave. Next thing I'm going to do, I see this little lake back here where we were talking about the two little boats back there. So I'm going to put that in, and it looks as though this is like this big current kind of coming right at him. Again, some smooth, quick lines for that. And just for fun, I'm going to put, real simple, these two little, you can just barely see the silhouette of them, these two little sailboats. That should get us started. Don't try to over-sketch it, because we're going to cover most of it up with oil pastel. To give you a quick idea, because I want you to really take it from here, what I'm going to do to use these oil pastels is really think of them like I'm painting them with some really, really thick oil paint. So first thing I'm going to do is lay down some orange, and you can hear and you can see, I am putting this stuff on thick. I'm going to work from there into some of this red-orange. Now if you notice, I'm not blending them together yet, am I? I'm going to wait. Next thing I'm going to do is this red, and I waited to use the red last because, and we'll know that as well with the darker colors when we get into using black, the darker the color, the stronger it is, right? So if I want to come back and go over that color later, it's not going to be that easy. So I'm going to be pretty careful with the dark colors. Next thing I'm going to do is bring in that yellow wherever I see white now. And you can already tell with these oil pastels, it's what I love, the difference between these and crowns, the minute I start overlaying the color, it's going to start blending. You might want to find some place or put something underneath your paper because we're going edge to edge with this baby. So don't be afraid to accidentally get it off the paper. Next thing I'm going to do, I may come in with some white later, but the first thing I'm going to do, taking my finger, and I'm going to blend those colors in the direction that I see the lines going. Love oil pastels. Be careful, right? It's coming off on my finger, which is okay, it's going to do that. The thing you need to be careful about is if you keep, keep pushing and going, going over, all of a sudden all the color's gone. And we want these colors to be vivid and bright. I think you guys have a basic idea. Let's go ahead and start sketching this out, and let's get the oil pastels out. Just remember, as you're working through this, keep it simple. We're going to be covering up most of the pencil, so don't get caught up in trying to make everything look so refined. The idea is we need to get started with the color. I'm going to let these guys finish up. Be sure to finish the whole picture. I'm really excited to see what you create. Paul Klee was a Swiss-German painter and one of my favorites. Klee's parents both were musicians, so creativity certainly ran in the family. Klee took up the violin and was so good by age 11 that he was asked to play with the Bairn Music Association. But once Klee reached his teenage years, the typical rebellious side settled in, and he moved away from music toward painting. After receiving a fine arts degree in Munich, he got married and had a son. It was also during this time that Klee discovered a passion for travel and found himself fascinated by ancient Roman art and architecture, as well as Tunisian art. In fact, it was while traveling in Tunisia that Klee was inspired by the beautiful colors, which led him into experimenting with abstract art. Check out this quote from Klee. Color has taken possession of me. No longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has a hold of me forever. Color and I are one. I am a painter. This inspiration seems to have found its way into nearly all of his work, including this piece, Red and White Domes. However, what impresses me the most about Klee is what he accomplished while serving in World War I in 1916. Even though he had to serve in the military, he was still able to continue creating. He actually converted a closet into a small painting area just outside his barracks. Talk about incredible dedication. This pen and ink piece titled Death for the Idea is incredibly thought-provoking. Do you see the figure in this picture? Yeah, he is laying down, dead, while covered in different types of lines. In the background, you see how these lines slowly progress from abstract shapes into what appears to be a city. I think Klee was maybe asking what the real cost of war was and what he thought countries were actually gaining from it. Klee continued to pursue a career in art after the war, and he even held several teaching positions, including at the Bauhaus, which had to have been an awesome experience. Just to let you know, the Bauhaus was an art school in Germany that was focused on design. In fact, the word Bauhaus actually means construction house. This school is often referenced as having the most influence within the design world ever. Just check out this famous chair design called the Wassily Chair. I bet you've seen this timeless design before. It seems to be around the 1930s that Klee hits his creative stride. You definitely see this growth when looking at his piece entitled Ad Parnassum, which has a very pointless quality to it. Look closely, and you can see all the details he added. During the year 1933, Klee created nearly 500 pieces of artwork. This passion to create reminds me of Van Gogh's Intensity. It's a great reminder that an artist often has to create hundreds of paintings to find the few that remain timeless. As I often say, we only see about 10% of the work an artist creates, but it took the other 90% to get there. Unfortunately, in 1933, Klee started feeling symptoms of a terrible disease called scleroderma, which slowly hardens the skin. And for Klee, it made it very difficult to swallow. Despite feeling terrible, he continued to create. His condition continued to get worse until his death in 1940 at the young age of 60. Amazingly, Klee was able to produce some 10,000 artworks, consisting of etchings, paintings, and sketches. He stands as an incredible example of pushing the limits, working hard, and never giving up creating. I want to leave you with my favorite Klee quote, A line is a dot that went for a walk. Knowing the creative stories behind some of the most iconic works of art changes everything. I will definitely never look at this screen the same way again. Until next time, be artrageous.