Celebration Of Creativity

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Celebration of Creativity: Three Centuries of Masterworks on Paper, from the Columbus Museum

Celebration of Creativity is an eclectic display of artists’ research and social-commentary from the past three centuries. This exhibit contains 88 masterworks on paper organized by the Columbus Museum in Georgia from a recent gift of drawings. The works are predominantly by American artists and represent the changes in artistic styles and techniques. This exhibit is organized in five parts, including From European Traditions to the Face of a New Nation, American Renaissance and Cosmopolitanism, Realism, Modernism and the Avant-garde, Regionalism, Socialism and American Visions, and Beyond Modernism: Post-war Abstraction and Resurgence in Realism.
From European Traditions to the Face of a New Nation, includes an extraordinary selection of landscape drawings and watercolors as well as portraiture. The artistic styles in this section include Neoclassicism (1780-1820) and Romanticism (1800-1850). Neoclassicism is a style developed during the enlightenment. Art made in the neoclassic style reflected Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic works are easy to spot by their order and solemnity. These works are intended to be uplifting and inspirational. Most neoclassic artists stressed drawing with lines instead of separation in color. They also were excellent painters and left no trace of brushstrokes. Another key aspect of neoclassic art is rhythm through geometry. Benjamin West, an American, was a painter of historical and religious subjects for the court of King George III. His work greatly resembles the neoclassic style. West accurately recreates time periods by depicting characters in similar costumes while also creating an actively organized, theatrical representation of the events that occurred. West’s exhibited drawing is typical of his work. It is a study for a painting he created to represent Moses’ triumph over Pharaoh....