The Four Elements
Please note - the idea of 4 elements is European - other cultures divide the world into different numbers and types of elements. Please let Ms Carmyn know if you want her to include other versions of the elements.
some artists combined all the elements in one painting!
Famous Paintings from European artists
Italian Renaissance painter, Giuseppe Arcimbaldo created a series of artworks based on the elements in 1566. He uses very literal symbols like birds for air and a bellows for fire.
Joachim Beuckelaer was a Dutch renaissance artist who painted the porn of his time - market and kitchen scenes with buxom peasants and lewd symbols such as a chicken on a spit. His 4 elements series links closely to the progression of the seasons and also incorporates literal symbols of he elements. this emphasis on food is both a comment on passions and consumption and also a reminder of how important the concept of the elements was to daily lide back when food was raised much closer to home. If Beuckalaer is your inspiration, you could use your work to comment on current consumption patterns and the way that globalisation has divorced us from our food sources.
The pre-raphaelites were a group of young painters in the mid-nineteenth century who resisted the formal artistic style of heir time and went back to 'classical' ideals and themes. They painted with a highly realistic style and used grand or tragic stories of love and death from classics and literature, as well as making comments on social issues of their day. they are known for their use of nature to create an emotional context for their characters and for the very new ideas about 'beauty', especially with regards to their female models (including red haired and androgynous women and women of colour).
J M W Turner was one of the first impressionists. All of his paintings describe the play of light on the various elements. Lis later paintings are especailly useful for this topic as he often blends all the elements together in powerful, dynamic compositions.
Claude Monet is the quintessential impressionist. While most of his painting evoke he play of light on water, he also painted landscapes (like the famous haystacks) at different times of day and even turned his hand to cityscapes like the train station I used for "air".
Gustav Klimt was a leader in the Austrian Secessionist movement in the early C20th. His paintings, often on walls were highly decorative, turning human emotions into almost two-dimensional representations, so that faces emerge from geometric patterns. I've used a representation of music for 'air' as it is so intangible]
Georgia O'Keeefe is a modernist painter who created abstracted landacapes and still lifes. She is most famous for her large, sexualised portraits of flowers. She did not paint "the four elements" as a theme but some of her paintings could be seen to represent elemental concepts.
Peter Goldsworthy works with the natural elements to create large and small earthworks. You could use him as inspiration for his use of a particular element or take the colours or lines as inspirations for particular elements
Contemporary Artists
Air
Air is traditionally associated with spiritual communication and intellectual pursuits.
I've tried to put a range of artworks here, from art work literally made from air pollution to Jeppe Hein's installations which use air, water and mirrors to comment on the social use of places and Jaume Plensa's enormous but ethereal sculptural portraits.
You might also like to think about materials that represent air - might your artwork float? or in some way be filled with air? or use a material (eg glass) that could be viewed as representing air? or play with negative space in such a way that the viewer focuses on air?
I've tried to put a range of artworks here, from art work literally made from air pollution to Jeppe Hein's installations which use air, water and mirrors to comment on the social use of places and Jaume Plensa's enormous but ethereal sculptural portraits.
You might also like to think about materials that represent air - might your artwork float? or in some way be filled with air? or use a material (eg glass) that could be viewed as representing air? or play with negative space in such a way that the viewer focuses on air?
Fire
Fire is usually correlated with courage, passions (positive and negative) and desire.
Artists have drawn inspiration from fire for millennia - stone age humans painted the first pictures using smoke, much the same as Steven Spazuk does on paper today. Read about British artists' use of fire as inspiration or socialist realist art which celebrates physical labour, or be inspired by Latvian-Australian artist Jan Senbergs' idiosyncratic portrayal of Australian bushfires or objects scultpted from iron by African blacksmiths. You might also look at materials that require fire for manipulation (eg metal, wire and glass), get inspired by the craft of blacksmithing (Ms Carmyn can put you in contact with practitioners if this turns out to be your thing!). Or perhaps you'd like to look at electronics or e-textiles and create somethings using lights (Talk to Ms Carmyn or the TAS staff for this ) |
Water
Water is associated with transience, creativity, healing and renewal. Watch this art talk Water confronting contemporary art which has an overview of water in works from art history. It was an interactive talk, so it's very accessible and has time for you you to brainstorm and listen to other people's responses. If you are interested in theory, try these articles like A vocabulary of water: How water in contemporary art materialises the conditions of contemporeanity and the politics of water and contemporary Art, or listen to Roni Horn discuss her relationship to water.
From Marissa Oosterlee's photo realistic water series and Lisa Reihana's Nomads of the Sea (which unpack colonisation ffrom the real figure of a runawway convict who stole a ship and sailed to NZ) to Bill Viola's creepy video installations of "angels" rising from and entering water (google the individual titles to watch the videos) and the quirky comment on the wellness industry, LA Massage.. More artists can be found at the Gallery of Modern Art's Water exhibition, the arty teacher blog , Follow the Water blog or on this page which looks at artists like zaria foreman and other s who created works about climate change at the 2019 Venice biennale.
From Marissa Oosterlee's photo realistic water series and Lisa Reihana's Nomads of the Sea (which unpack colonisation ffrom the real figure of a runawway convict who stole a ship and sailed to NZ) to Bill Viola's creepy video installations of "angels" rising from and entering water (google the individual titles to watch the videos) and the quirky comment on the wellness industry, LA Massage.. More artists can be found at the Gallery of Modern Art's Water exhibition, the arty teacher blog , Follow the Water blog or on this page which looks at artists like zaria foreman and other s who created works about climate change at the 2019 Venice biennale.
Earth
https://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/jul/21/interview-semiconductor-ruth-jarman-and-joe-gerhar/
Earth usually refers to material things like wealth and business success or domestic things like your home and family. It involves logic and hard work.
Works using this theme range from earthwork artists like Martin Hill or Christo and Jeanne-Claude to ceramic artists (because clay is literally earth!) like Carol Long (whose pottery draws on the traditions of art nouveau and the arts and crafts movement) or even architects like Gaudi who took their inspiration from the colours and textures of nature and contemporary artists such as Anya Gallacio who works with site specific or organic materials (flowers, fruit, chocolate) which decay during her exhibitions.
- have a look at the eARTh and vivoverde websites -
You might also look at the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd who was and earth maiden constructed entirely from flowers.