Task 2

Graffiti

Banksy

Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.

His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.

Banksy's work was made up of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco and the book Home Sweet Home, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s." Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and Jef Aerosol who sprayed his first street stencil in 1982 in Tours (France), and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, which maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However Banksy claims that he based his work on that of 3D from Massive Attack, stating, "No, I copied 3D from Massive Attack. He can actually draw."

Reference:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Gnasher

Dave started out in 1985 doing graffiti in Harlow, Essex, at that time he was predominantly painting 'letters' or words spray painted in a graffiti style. At the time, there was a growing graffiti scene and lots of well-known artists visited the town. Dave was inspired by the images of characters some the artists of that time were creating, he was hooked from that point and spent years developing his own style of graffiti.

In 1993 Dave studied art, graphic design, stopped doing graffiti and instead spent his time doing working in graphic design, travelling the world and DJing (his tag 'Gnasher' comes from his DJing days). Sixteen years later in 2009, a friend invited Dave out to go spray painting again, so he bought some paint and spent the day painting - he has been hooked ever since.

Reference: http://www.gnashermurals.com/

Expressionism

Vincent Van Gogh:

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.

Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Edward Munch:

Edward Munch 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch