Spartan Warriors
& Greek Hoplites; Homer's The Iliad & The
Trojan Horse of History: Historical Illustrations and a brief introduction to the
legendary warriors of Ancient Greece. Information and illustrations featuring Ancient
Spartan Warriors; The battle of Marathon, Thermopylae & the 300 Spartans: Greek
Hoplite Warriors; The Trojan Wars, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Alexander the Great, and
History versus Mythology... A fun and informative multi-media presentation in word
paintings, music, and visual art... Featuring exciting new scientific &
historical illustrations with word paintings by Contemporary American Visual Artist Howard David Johnson.
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ANCIENT GREEK
HOPLITE WARRIORS of HISTORY and LEGEND:
"Achilles Triumphant" the classic scene from Homer's
"The
Iliad" by Howard David Johnson
Achilles Triumphant
( Trojan War Circa 1194 B.C. ) Achilles, shown here in his chariot
humiliating the defeated Trojan champion Hector - was killed seconds later by Paris
with a poisoned arrow ( guided by Apollo to his one vulnerable spot ) - the
classic Achilles' heel. Achilles' death was not mentioned in The
Iliad, but hinted at and The Odyssey only mentions his funeral. The
Aethiopsis took up the story of Achilles after The Iliad with
his slaying the Amazon Penthesilea and his legendary death. Achilles
was worshipped in many ancient places including Sparta. This demigod's legend
was certainly based on a real man. We can only guess what he looked like as no
certain statue nor clear written descriptions remain, but artistic representations on
pottery do. The oldest of these only dating back to the 7th century B.C. - six hundred
years after the event.
PRELUDE
TO THERMOPYLAE: THE BATTLE OF
MARATHON
(Click on the
illustrations to learn how to order poster size reprints...)
In the
early days of history the Greeks differed vastly from the other two great civilized
systems on the Nile and the two rivers of Mesopotamia. Persian King Darius was displeased
with Greek settlements in Asia and attacked Greece directly in 490 B.C. A great naval
force fashioned to carry horses and entire armies was long and carefully prepared to
subdue all of Greece, beginning with Athens. The Athenians hoped to delay battle until
elite reinforcements from Sparta should join them, but the landing of the invasion force
at Marathon being reinforced by Persian sympathizers nerved them to attack first. The two
pronged attack was designed to lure the Athenian army away from Athens. The Greeks
advanced their phalanx (a wall of shields & spears) slowly until they came within
range of the Persian archers, when they broke into a run. The arrows were ineffective at
close range compared to the Greek spears. Soon they retreated, but the Greeks ran them
down them from behind and killed them and war as we know it was born. After Pheidippides
made his famous run from Marathon to Athens he cried out the news; "Rejoice! we
conquer!" and then he died from exhaustion. The Greek City-states had proven that
they could fight and win even without the elite Spartans.
So Greece, united for a while by fear,
gained her first victory over Persia. According to Herodotus the Persians lost 6,400 men,
the Athenians only 192. The decisive victory gave Athenians confidence in the future of
their city and their civilization. Darius received the news of this and of a rebellion in
Egypt and died while planning his response. Xerxes, his son and heir quickly dealt
with Egypt and then set out to re-invade Greece.
"Return with your
shield or on it" was every Spartan Mother's wartime farewell to her son.
Not even a Spartan Mother
could forgive cowardice...
... the heavy shield made flight
impossible ...
The REAL Battle of THERMOPYLAE and
the REAL 300 SPARTANS
Legendary in the annals of history are the Spartan Warriors of Ancient
Greece. Fearless defenders of liberty, they followed a strict military way of life.
In 480 B.C. three hundred Spartans under King Leonidas stood alone at the end against the
enormous Persian army under the tyrannical King Xerxes who was sweeping
southward into Greece. The 300 Spartans fought to the
death against these impossible odds in the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae
(Gates of Fire ). The Persians took shocking casualties. Their narrow lines of
wicker shields and short javelins were no match for the highly disciplined Spartan lines
with their large bronze shields and long spears who slaughtered the Sea of Persians wave
after wave.
It was only after a betrayal of a secret path and the 700 Greek allies were ordered home
to warn Greece that the 300 Spartans were finally overcome. Although the Spartans contributed
little to the artistic and intellectual development of Greece, ironically,
without them Democracy and Freedom would have been wiped out in their
infancy...
The TROJAN Wars and the TROJAN
HORSE
Earlier
Spartan legends: Helen of Troy ( circa 1194 B.C. ) was often called"the
face that launched a thousand ships" and "the most beautiful woman
who ever lived". The Trojan War resulted when Paris, the prince of Troy
carried her off during the reign of her husband the Spartan King Menelaus.
Here Helen has just seen the sea lights of her husband's enormous
amphibious invasion fleet on the horizon. To recover Helen, the Acheans
under Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus lay ferocious
siege to Troy
to no avail for ten years until Troy's champion Hector was
killed by Achilles, the bravest, handsomest, and swiftest of the army of
Agamemnon, and he by in turn by Paris with a poisoned arrow guided by Apollo
to his one vulnerable spot - the classic Achilles' heel while he rode in his
chariot parading Hector's corpse...
"Let us make an armed reconnaissance round the city and
find out what the Trojans mean to do next, whether they will abandon their fortress now
that their champion has fallen, or make up their minds to hold it without Hector's
help." ~Homer
At last a wooden horse was contrived. Odysseus
had masterminded a strategy to break the stalemate...
The Trojan Horse...
In whose hollow
interior many elite Achean Warriors hid themselves... leaving
Their Giant Gift outside the city and withdrawing their army and fleet to Tenedos,
feigning to have raised the siege. The Trojans conveyed the
wooden horse into the city. Later that night the Greeks stole out and
opened the gates, and Troy was taken. The Spartan King Menelaus
recovered Helen and forgave her. She was long thought to be merely a part
of mythology - partly because of lack of
evidence and partly because of the colorful portrayals of the Olympian gods as real beings
in Homer's "The Iliad"- prejudiced
the scientific and academic communities to disregard the testimony of our surviving
ancient histories
- until Archaeologists excavated
Troy.
Also from Homer's The Iliad- "Achilles and Patroclas"
MMVII mixed media
Now, The Trojan
War is one of the Legends of History as well... Herodotus
and Thucydides, like ancient pagan writers generally, accepted the Trojan
War as historical, but criticized what they politely called "epic
statements" in detail. Traditional genealogies, collated by Hecataeus of Miletus
and others , enabled Eratosthenes to date the fall of Troy to
1194 B.C. This is consistent with the accounts of the Roman scholar Pliny
the elder and Egyptian records from Rameses' time as well.
Alexander the Great, Conqueror
of the World
Alexander
the Great (356-323 B.C.) conquered the known world. When Alexander saw the
breadth of his kingdom he wept, "for there were no more new worlds to conquer".
Although he built the city of Alexandria with it's legendary lighthouse, he was not a
great builder or statesman like other notables of history. The real creator of this Legend
of History is his father, Phillip of Macedonia. Just as a great playright does not bask in
the limelight, but the actors, so it was with Phillip and his son Alexander the Great.
Phillip conceived and planned
everything, building the army and beginning the Persian expedition before his death. For a
time the whole world, from the Adriatic to the Indus, was under one ruler; realizing the
dreams of his father. He and 90 of his generals and friends married Persian brides.
This was called the marriage of Europe and Asia. At 31, he had been in possession of the
Persian empire for six years and wore the robes and tiara of a Persian monarch. He broke
with Greek tradition by shaving his face, becoming notoriously violent, vain, and
egotistical in his last days. His career marks an epoch in human history and he remains a
controversial figure to this day.
*****
VISIT POD PUBLISHING FOR BEAUTIFUL
POSTER SIZE REPRINTS
AND A VARIETY OF PAYMENT OPTIONS,
SIZES, PAPERS, AND PRICES
Howard David
Johnson works in a wide variety of media * Oil paintings * Acrylic Paintings *
Prismacolor Paintings * Drawings * Chalk & Oil Pastel Paintings *
Photography * and last but not least: Digital Artistry & Mixed Media * Because
of the use of photography in everything he does, even Johnson's all-oil
paintings can be termed mixed media.*
This gallery is dedicated to our modern
day defenders of freedom - serving in our armed forces
Like to see more art? Visit these other
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Thank You for Visiting...
The belief in Olympian gods
and monsters was as commonplace then as our superstitions are today and some people are
still prone to embellish true events with "epic statements".
Coming soon from
Brandywine Press!
These beautifully
printed 11" x 8.5" 64 page hardcover and trade paperback
versions feature 48 full page interior plates in full color starting at
only $24.99 USD. Less than the price of a single poster! Featuring A concise
and entertaining Outline of History written and illustrated by American
Artist & Photographer Howard David Johnson.
The Galleries of Contemporary American
Historical & Fantastical Illustrator Howard David Johnson
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Gates
of Fire by Stephen Pressfield (Danish Cover)
Howard David Johnson is a contemporary visual artist and photographer with a background in
the natural sciences and history. He works in a wide variety of media ranging from
traditional oils, pastels and others to cutting edge digital media. After a lifetime
of drawing and painting, Howard David Johnson's Traditional Realistic Art was exhibited in
the British Museum in London in 1996, ( 3 years before he got his first computer ) as well
as numerous American ones since, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His illustrations
have appeared in every major bookstore and gameshop chain in America as well as magazines
and educational texts around the world. Some of his more prestigious clients have included the
National Geographic Society, University of Texas, the Book of the Month Club, Paramount Studios, PBS TV, Adobe
Photoshop Auto FX, and J Walter Thompson Advertising. Licenses to print his existing work
are available at surprisingly affordable prices. Oil Paintings, Colored pencils, Pastels,
Mixed media, and Digital art can also be commissioned for select projects - Click on
commission new art below... Working in a variety
of traditional and cutting edge digital media he offers his customers a variety of options
and more than thirty years of experience. As a commercial illustrator HDJ has not only
used the computer but has been involved in the development of imaging software. On his existing works license offers start as
low as $100.00
If
you liked this gallery of Spartan Warriors, you might enjoy
"The Legends of King Arthur" Gallery too...
Thank you for visiting this
multi- media educational art gallery... for More Art Gallery Links see below...
*****
STYLE and
TECHNIQUE
"Those who are enamoured of
practice without science are like a pilot who goes into a ship without rudder or compass
and never has any certainty where he is going. Practice should always be based upon a
sound knowledge of theory, of which perspective is the guide and gateway, and without it
nothing can be done well in any kind of painting."
Howard David Johnson is
a contemporary visual artist and photographer with a background in
the natural sciences
and history. He works in a wide variety of media ranging from traditional
oils, pastels and
others to cutting edge digital media. He loves mixing media. This site features
examples of
his Realistic Art, including illustration, photography, experimentalism, and fine art
The various galleries linked to by the icons
above show many examples of His Realistic Art, and are grouped by theme rather than media.
There are also sample illustrations from his upcoming books on Celtic Myth and
Legend and World Myth & Legend. Since boyhood he has passionately copied the old
masters. To create his work, he usually starts with a thematic concept followed by a
rough realistic pencil sketch, then followed by his photography, often traveling to find
suitable scenes and locations and then working in his Photography studio with live models
from his sketches. He then assembles a variety of elements which are realistic and
original. As a boy he dedicated his life to art in 1960. From 1965- 1999 he used
xeroxes and tracings to make his preliminary photo montages. This is patterned after
the manner used by Maxfield Parrish and other 19th century notables. Beginning with a
tracing, he then draws or paints from these complex original Computer Photo Montages. Many
of these are on display on this web and slated for future completion in a variety of
traditional realistic art media. As this happens, the finished work is substituted
in the exhibit.
He has built up an enormous
library of original source photos to use in his realistic art. Recently he shot
hundreds of aerial photos of clouds at marvelous angles and perspectives and also looking
down on the mighty mountains, rivers, and deserts of the American west while flying from
Texas to Oregon and back for dynamic source material for realistic flying scenes in
upcoming paintings, drawings, and pictures. For decades he has sought out the most
beautiful models and brought them in for sessions in his photography studio. Using a
strategy employed by J. W. Waterhouse, the old master HDJ imitates most- see Helen of Troy
( a recognizable tribute ) and The Messenger ( in the spirit of Waterhouse ) both
featuring Grace- his wistful and graceful models cannot be underestimated in their
contribution to the stunning beauty and the potential for lasting appeal of his work.
His favourite medium for
traditional realistic art is colored pencil because of the high speed and low expense, and
people began expressing difficulty in telling his colored pencil drawing from photographs
in the early 1980's. In the last 35 plus years he has also mastered Oils, Pastels,
Acrylics, Watercolors, Inks, Scratchboard, Gouache, Photography, and most recently, the highly
controversial digital media ( Art Numérique ).
As a commercial illustrator Johnson has not only used the computer to create art but has
been involved in the development and marketing of computer imaging software for Adobe
Photoshop. Working in a realistic style inspired by classic illustrators HDJ is deeply
rooted and grounded in the Greco-Roman artistic tradition, Feeling that espescially with
realistic art - that the human form is the ultimate arena for artistic expression.
His lifelong dream came true when his Traditional Realistic Art was exhibited in the
British Museum in London England in 1996. His mixed media has also been displayed in
numerous other ones since such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having achieved
international acclaim as a traditional visual artist he discovered digital media ( Art
Numérique ) in 1999. Because of his passion for realistic art and
photography he elected to embrace it and joyfully be a part of this historic era in the
visual arts as a 21st century realistic visual artist.
( UnblendedSpectracolor
pencils on # 400 Strathmore Bristol board )
Miss Ann -
rendered in Prismacolor Colored Pencils
Since
1972 when he began his career as a scientific illustrator for the University of Texas he
has earned his living illustrating all kinds of books, magazines, CD covers, and all sorts
of games, greeting cards, calendars, portraits, murals and the like with his contemporary
realistic art... HDJ's Realistic Art has appeared in every major bookstore chain and
fantasy gaming shop in The United States and has been used in educational texts and
magazines all over the world. This site features realistic paintings & pictures for
the twenty-first Century including some oil paintings, as well as lots of
other exciting realistic art media such as colored pencil drawings, pastel paintings,
acrylic paintings, gouache paintings, water color paintings, and pencil drawings, and also
featuring studio, field, & aerial photography, digital painting and
photo-montage and all these media mixed in an assortment of experimental
combinations...Working in a wide variety of media to create his realistic art he offers
his customers a host of payment and product options. He delivers the rights to these
custom made copyright free realistic illustrations and old fashioned customer service when
he does work-for-hire.
HDJ's creations take their inspiration from the realistic paintings of the old masters.
From Romeo and Juliet came West Side Story. Our shared cultural heritage, great works of
art, literature, music and drama, cinema, folk tales and fairy tales are all drawn upon
again and again by the creators of new works. These works in the public domain are both a
catalyst and a wellspring for creativity and innovation. Where would Walt Disney be
without the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, or Victor Hugo? Where would Aaron
Copeland have been without American folk music? Thomas Nast's Santa Claus without
traditional images of Father Christmas? Picasso without African art? Public domain
appropriators, one and all. He accepts select commissions to paint custom oil paintings with down
payments starting at only one thousand dollars. He grants permission for most educational
purposes simply for the asking. To use his existing realistic art works outside the
classroom he offers low cost license offers starting around $100.00.
Use the e-mail links above or below to
contact him...
*****
Bonus
Section:
Personal Opinion Essays on Realistic Art
yesterday and today by the artist.
"Painting, in art, the
action of laying colour on a surface, or the representation of objects by this means.
Considered one of the fine arts"
~Encyclopaedia Britannica.
"Painting. noun. 1.) The act
or employment of laying on colors or paints. 2.) The art of forming figures or objects in
colors on canvas or any other surface, or the art of representing to the eye by means of
figures and colors any object; the work of an illustrator or painter. 3.) A picture; a
likeness or resemblance in shape or colors. 4.) Colors laid on. 5.) Delineation that
raises a vivid image in the mind; as in word painting.
~ Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
of the English Language
Essay One:
Realistic Art: THE MORE
THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME...
(A Brief essay
dealing with attitudes toward Traditional Realistic Paintings, Pastels, Colored Pencils
and Art Numérique )
Soft Pastels, Acrylics, and Colored Pencils combined
Snobbism in the arts is nothing new. Some people will tell
you that oils are the only valid medium for realistic paintings. That Colored Pencil,
Digital, and other Realistic Painting and Drawing Media are not valid for
"real" art. Young artists, Don't let them bother you. Their forerunners used to
condemn Pastels before they gained acceptance and called them "crayons" when
Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752) invented them. Mercilessly
disrespectful art critics of the time could not stop the Experimentalists no matter
how viscously they attacked and derided them. "Crayon-painting" as it was called
in England was practiced early on by persecuted pioneers in Switzerland and many other
nations. What a debt we owe to these master artists who refused to knuckle under to the
pressure of those short-sighted critics during those historic and experimental times. It
took until 1870 with the founding of the "Societe` Des Pastellistes" in France
that respect came at last to these heroic & immortal visual artists.
In England the liberation of the Pastellists from slight regard and
undeserved disrespect came with the first exhibition of "The Pastel Society" at
the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880. Pastel Painters like Mary Cassat and others from
America and other nations forever silenced the snobs with their masterworks and
gained recognition at long last for Thiele's invention as a valid art medium. I am
persuaded that history will repeat itself. Like Pastels, I believe these wonderful
new colored pencils and even Digital Realistic Art Media will one day
receive the
recognition they deserve as powerful mediums of artistic expression just as pastel
paintings did. What is your definition of art? Have you thought about it?
Mine is: "anything that
makes you feel or think."
Consider
dancing... it can be a little skip in the step or rise to the level of the incomparable
Russian Ballet. Did you know that just the materials alone for a single oil painting cost
up to a thousand dollars these days? Did you know that they are toxic? Even paying the
artist less than minimum wage no one but the super rich can afford them anymore.
Something's got to give. Realistic paintings in oil have been highly prized for centuries
and the appeal and following of realistic art is undiminished to this day. Oil paintings
featuring Abstract Art and Realistic Art are generally the most treasured form of all the
visual art media and with good reason. But snobbish art critics favoring abstract
art have declared that realistic paintings, or illustrations are not art for a
century. With so many representationalist paintings by so many immortal master
artists hanging in the Louvre, the Hermitage, and the British Museum and others I think
the disrespect for realistic illustrators that dominated the 20th century is academically
ridiculous as well as vain and intolerant, insisting theirs is the only valid
opinion. What is your definition of Art? I believe almost any form of human
expression can be raised to the level of "high art" especially visual art
and Realistic illustration...
The detail reveals Realistic
art and abstract art combined
By my own definition of art, which is: "anything that makes you feel or
think" most abstract paintings are not "real art "tome personally,
because abstract paintings usually neither make me feel or think, generally focusing
obsessively on technique and avoiding any coherent content. I usually draw a complete
blank mentally and emotionally when I look at them. In 1979 the Houston Metropolitan
Museum of Art displayed a triptych of 3 giant paintings they paid fifty thousand dollars
for- three blank white canvasses entitled "untitled". Then there was
"The incredible new artistic Genius "with an I.Q. of 62 ...Congo the chimpanzee
with his gala New York art exhibition...an elaborate prank played on the Snobbish American
Art critics about a generation ago by research scientists in the field of primatology.
Imagine how upset they were when he created one of his "ingenious masterpieces"
right before their eyes.
( My Source for this is the Time Life
Science Library volume entitled "The Primates". )
Art education has been almost completely removed from American
Schools as a result of generations of this kind of fabulous nonsense contributing to
America's cultural illiteracy crisis. Now, the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michaelangelo,
and other notables are being removed from school libraries. After generations of
this, most American college graduates today cannot name even one living visual artist,
abstract or realistic.
There is no way that mandating
more math, requiring more reading, or scheduling more science will replace what we have
lost as a culture.
What is your definition of Art?
~HDJ
*****
Note:
Abstract Paintings by Congo the Chimpanzee outsold Warhol and Renoir by over
25,000 dollars in June 2005 at a London art auction. Born in 1954, Congo
created more than 400 drawings and paintings between the ages of two and
four. He died in 1964 of tuberculosis. There is no precedent for this kind
of sale.
But how does
this new Digital Art media fit in with formal definitions of Art?
Art ( noun ) [ Middle English, from Old French, from Latin ars
(stem art-). ] 1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of
nature. 2. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or
other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty; specifically, the production
of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. 3. The product of these activities; human
works of beauty, collectively. 4. High quality of conception or execution, as found in
works of beauty; aesthetic value. 5. Any field or category of art, such as painting,
music, ballet, or literature. 6. A non-scientific branch of learning; one of the liberal
arts. 7. a. A system of principles and methods employed in the performances of a set of
activities: the art of building. b. A trade or craft that applies such a system of
principles and methods: pursuing the baker's art. 8. A specific skill in adept
performance, conceived as requiring the exercise of intuitive faculties that cannot be
learned solely by study: the art of writing letters. 9. a. Usually plural. Artful
devices; stratagems; tricks. b. Artfulness; contrivance; cunning. 10. In printing:
Illustrative material as distinguished from text.
~ The American Heritage College
Dictionary of the English Language
*****
Essay Two
Realistic Art :The
Rebirth of Realism in the 21st Century
More thoughts on realistic art yesterday
and today by the artist
Art History has entered a new era with the birth of Art
Numérica,
or digital art media in the 21st century. Artists never stop exploring with
mediums. Artists have been developing techniques, experimenting with different tools since
at least twenty- five thousand years ago, when the first artist picked up a charred stick
and scratched a picture out on the wall of his cave. You'd think everything would have
been tried by now, but it hasn't. Exploring new mediums this very day is just as exciting,
just as full of freshness and newness as it ever was.
Photography, Drawing, Painting and Digital Artistry
combined
The creation
of Realistic art has been the goal of most artists since the dawn of civilization.
Realistic art was the pride of ancient Greece. The world's greatest museums are full of
realistic art. Realistic art WAS art until the advent of the abstract expressionist
movement in the twentieth century. The coming of the camera in the nineteenth century
changed realistic art forever. Suddenly, realistic art was not the only way to create
realism in portraits and historical records. The work of the realistic artist was suddenly
made into an expensive luxury. The political power of the realistic artist was broken and
they were no longer an indispensable member of society. Hostility to the
creators of realistic art goes back to ancient times and the jealousy of advisers to the
Pharaohs and others who were not able to spend as much time with their rulers as their
portraitists. Although with the aid of photographs, realistic art achieved
levels of excellence undreamed of, the realistic art movement of the late nineteenth
century was short.
None
of these people earning their living creating realistic art could compete with the speed
and low cost of photographic portraiture. Determined to survive, great realistic
artists like Pablo Picasso ingeniously turned inward and began to explore things that could
not be photographed in a new school of art, abstract expressionism. ( I was astonished to
discover that even HE often referenced photographs! ) The day of the fine art superstars
had arrived. It was now largely just a hobby to abstract and realistic artists alike.
Illustration, because of advances in printing technology enabled an elite few to earn a
living with their realistic art. These illustrators working in realistic art media
were condemned and ridiculed in much the same way Europe's great symphonic composers were
condemned for working in motion pictures after fleeing the nazis during World War Two. The
rift between realistic and abstract art grew wider and wider. The universities and key
media usually sided with the abstract camp and derided anyone working in any realistic art
media declaring boldly that realistic art was not "real" art. Immortal giants of
realistic art such as Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth were mistreated their entire lives.
They were accused of selling out for creating beautiful pieces of realistic fine art to
earn a living. The attitude that the true artist must suffer and starve and die in poverty
became a rule. There were the Abstract art superstars, the professional realistic
illustrators, and the hobbyists who, although cut off from gainful employment and social
influence still recognized their artistic gifts as a calling rather than a profession.
( Pandora's Box- rendered in Prismacolor
pencils )
Early
abstract art masters proved themselves as realistic artists before delving into
realms of the intangible. They had to do this at that time to prove themselves because of
the challenges they faced from the establishment for going against the status quo. In the
latter part of the 20th century, realistic artists like HDJ were challenged to do abstract
art to prove themselves as shown in the example above (Deirdre of the sorrows). Later
realistic art training was abandoned in most schools and things like splattering paint in
fits of rage were deemed more than enough. By the end of the 20th century something
as destructive and ridiculous as nailing a pack of cigarettes to a shoe was considered
fine art but NOT realistic art or realistic paintings which were referred to as "Mere
illustrations". Fashions in art have often been as silly as fashions in ladies
hats. As the century drew to a close, many people had had enough.
The realistic revolt was at hand.
The rebirth of realism was fueled by the advent of the digital era. Now, for
the first time in almost two centuries, a realistic artist or illustrator could earn a
decent living again with his realistic art. This is historic. Realistic art is not going
to go away, especially now that photography has truly merged with traditional realistic
visual art. Photography comes from the Greek words meaning "painting with
light". Now with the advent of digital media the capability of realistic art has
become almost limitless, truly, "painting with light". The merger of all the
world's art forms to realize the potential of motion pictures has come now to still
realistic art media. This website has many examples of combining music, prose, &
poetry with photography and traditional realistic art media to create an experience beyond
merely looking at realistic paintings.
The
twenty- first century is already seeing a new renaissance in the arts because of the world
wide web. There has never been anything like it. Abstract art, computer art, photographic
art, and realistic art are continuing to be separate schools of art but are also blending
to create exciting new horizons. Although Digital art does offer completely new horizons
to the realistic artist and the abstract artist in the 21st century it does not mean the
end of our time honored art traditions. Instead, it offers additional ways to keep these
traditions and schools of thought fresh and alive.
~ HDJ
*****
All these images &
text are legally copyrighted & were registered with the U.S. Library of Congress
Office of Copyright in 2004 by the author, Howard David Johnson All rights reserved
worldwide. Permission for many legal non-commercial uses is freely available by simply
contacting the author or visiting www.howarddavidjohnson.com/permission.htm
