O China Tree! O China Tree!

Christmas is just round the corner and I’m sure many of you will be thinking about buying a Christmas tree soon. There is one Christmas tree that I found this year that has particularly caught my eye, and it’s in the town of Hasselt, Belgium.

Instead of buying a ‘normal’ Christmas tree, this town has created one out of plates and other pieces of china! From what I’ve learnt from the news, not all the locals love it and would have preferred a real one. One woman even said that she thought it looked too bare.

Thinking about it I think it would be fun if my town had a piece of huge artwork displayed instead of a Christmas tree. The tree that my town has is not that interesting. It has a few lights on it, but it looks just like the one before that and the one before that etc. I think having some art that looks like a tree would be far more interesting. The tree has far more texture to it from the different sized plates. It would also illuminate in the dark because of the vivid white of the china. I think it’s a beautiful piece of work particularly as the plates aren’t all the same. There are also layers of cups randomly placed.

However, if it came to whether I had a piece of art like that for a Christmas tree or a real tree for my home, I think I would always pick the tree. This isn’t because I’m a traditionalist or because I love the smell of a tree (but it is a nice smell!), it’s because a piece of art like that should be appreciated. A piece like that, which is so intriguing and different shouldn’t be locked away from the public, instead it should be in the centre of the town.

 I also love the fact that this art piece isn’t only there to celebrate Christmas; it also is there to celebrate the town’s solidarity. The people of the town donated all the plates and cups and when placed altogether, the tree symbolises the town coming together for this festive season. This is a lovely message to send out, which is why I wish my town did this for Christmas, instead of placing a tree in the middle of town and throwing a few lights round it, then we could send our own message out to celebrate this festive season. Just a thought…

back in the day…

Art in the 13^th Century, the medieval period, was more or less always based on the Bible. Art was for monasteries, churches and such like; people didn’t have it necessarily in their houses, so therefore the main theme would be religion.

Although the art of this time is beautiful, I actually want focus on how different the artists were at this time compared with other periods, like the Renaissance.

First of all, medieval artists were brought up in a very different way. They would start by being apprenticed to a master artist. The artist would be taught techniques by the master and eventually would paint unimportant parts of the painting…under instruction from the master of course. The artist would then learn how to paint apostles, and the Virgin Mary. The artist would then probably be taught how to copy and rearrange scenes from old books into new frames, until he could paint a scene without a pattern/model at all.

With these techniques under an artist’s belt, he could paint any piece of artwork created in the medieval period. However if you asked this artist to sketch the landscape in front of him, he couldn’t do it. This is because artists of this period simply did not sketch. This seems a strange idea to you and me because if you think of an artist you think of them doodling and sketching the whole time.

They also never seem to do actual portraits, which seems strange considering portraits make up a lot of art.  The way in which they would show who they were drawing was to add a crown, or a mitre, and just to make sure they would even write the name below!

It had never seemed to occur to them to sit down in front of the object/person and paint them. This is such a weird idea to me considering some of the greatest pieces art was done like this. So is it right to compare these pieces of art to the paintings of Raphael or Michelangelo? It is important to remember that many techniques had been conquered by the time the Renaissance had come along. But all the same, surely some of the medieval paintings look like sketches when compared to things like the Sistine chapel or paintings of the Madonna.

Both periods have interesting paintings that are good to analyse, but if you had to pick and compare pieces of art from these 2 periods, you would probably say that you think the renaissance art is more ‘arty’ than medieval art, I think I would. Is this because we see ‘art’ as representing scenes of life, therefore art should be representational of the world. Does this mean medieval art isn’t really art? Your decision…

A last point; without 13^th century would the renaissance have happened?