Resources to support teachers and students on the AS Fine Art Edexcel exam paper 2013.

1. AS FINE ART 2013
UNIT 2
COVERT AND OBSCURED

2. ASSESSMENT OBJECTIVES
AO1
Develop their ideas through sustained and focused investigations
informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical
and critical understanding.
AO2
Experiment with and select appropriate resources, media, materials,
techniques and processes, reviewing and refining their ideas as their
work develops.
AO3
Record in visual and/or other forms ideas, observations and insights
relevant to their intentions, demonstrating an ability to reflect on their
work and progress.
AO4
Present a personal, informed and meaningful response demonstrating
critical understanding, realising intentions and, where appropriate,
making connections between visual, oral or other elements.

3. COVERT
cover
ADJECTIVES
not openly acknowledged or
displayed: covert operations
against the dictatorship.
ORIGIN Middle English (in the
general senses ‘covered’ and
‘a cover’): from Old French,
‘covered’.

4. OBSCURED
ADJECTIVES( obscurer, obscurest )
1 not discovered or known about; uncertain: his origins and parentage
are obscure.
• not important or well known: a relatively obscure actor.
2 not clearly expressed or easily understood: obscure references to
Proust.
• hard to make out or define; vague: grey and obscure on the horizon
rose a low island | I feel an obscure resentment.
verb [ with obj. ]
keep from being seen; conceal: grey clouds obscure the sun.
• make unclear and difficult to understand: the debate has become
obscured by conflicting ideological perspectives.
• keep from being known: none of this should obscure the skill and
perseverance of the workers.
DERIVATIVES
obscuration noun
obscurely adverb
ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French obscur, from Latin
obscurus ‘dark’, from an Indo-European root meaning ‘cover’.

5. USE THIS AS A STARTING POINT THEN ADD MANY
MORE...THE MORE YOU ADD THE MORE IDEAS
YOU CAN GENERATE.

6. Use this sheet to help you respond to art work.

7. This is also a
great sheet to
help you think
and write
about
others’ art
work.

8. INTERIORS/
EXTERIORS

9. DANIELA GULLOTTA (b.1974)
Her work depicts large empty
interiors, often of an industrial
nature. Her intention is to draw
the viewer's attention to the
dramatic nature of space.
Sometimes individual objects
are emphasised and human
presence is always suggested
though never depicted.
http://www.marlboroughfineart.com/artist-Daniela-
Gullotta-97.html

10. CASPER DAVID
FRIEDERICH
A painter and draughtsman, Friedrich is
best known for his later allegorical
landscapes, which feature
contemplative figures silhouetted
against night skies, morning mists,
barren trees, and Gothic ruins. His
primary interest as an artist was the
contemplation of nature, and his often
symbolic and anti-classical work seeks
to convey the spiritual experiences of
life.
http://www.caspardavidfriedrich.org
The Cemetery Gates 1825-30

11. CAROLINE
WALKER
www.carolinewalker.org

12. NINA
MURDOCH
Corridors, steps, wedges of light
and otherworldly colour, Nina
Murdoch’s paintings evoke an
uninhabited but haunting world in
which the sun and moon seem to
rise and set in chambers indoors.
Although some of these images
may in fact be street subjects, the
sense of enclosure is strong, partly
because the focus has been taken
inwards, and instead of wider
views of architecture (as appeared
in her earlier work), we are offered
broad yet confined spaces. This
contradiction goes to the heart of
her work: she engages with macro
as well as micro, with the inner
world as much as with external
reality. Her paintings were never
especially descriptive of place,
more evocative of mood, and now
they are increasingly about
emotional states.
From a series of works www.ninamurdoch.co.uk
titled
‘Concrete Fields’

13. Other possible artists to study
ADRIANA VAREJAO http://www.adrianavarejao.net/home/
DAVID HEPHER www.flowersgallery.com
EDWARD HOPPER www.edwardhopper.net
ANDREW WYETH http://www.andrewwyeth.com

14. SCULPTURE
FIGURATIVE AND NON-FIGURATIVE

15. CHRISTO
AND
JEANNE-
CLAUDE
http://www.christojeanneclaude.net
Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo's wrappings as a "revelation through
concealment." To his critics Christo replies, "I am an artist, and I have to have courage ... Do
you know that I don't have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they're finished.
Only the preparatory drawings, and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary
character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create
things that will remain."

16. JOSEPH
BEUYS
Coming to terms with his involvement in the war was
a long process and figures, at least obliquely, in much
of his artwork. Beuys often said that his interest in fat
and felt as sculptural materials grew out of a wartime
experience--a plane crash in the Crimea, after which
he was rescued by nomadic Tartars who rubbed him
with fat and wrapped him in felt to heal and warm his
body. While the story appears to have little grounding
in real events (Beuys himself downplayed its
importance in a 1980 interview), its poetics are strong
enough to have made the story one of the most
enduring aspects of his mythic biography.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-beuys-747

17. ANTHONY GORMLEY
http://www.antonygormley.com
Antony Gormley has over the past 30 years revitalised the human form in sculpture through a
radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation. “I am interested
in the body”, he says, “because it is the place where emotions are most directly registered.
When you feel frightened, when you feel excited, happy, depressed somehow the body
registers it.”

18. ABSTRACT PAINTING
AND COLLAGE

19. ROBERT
RAUSCHENBERG
American painter, sculptor,
printmaker, photographer and
performance artist. While too much of
an individualist ever to be fully a part
of any movement, he acted as an
important bridge between Abstract
Expressionism and Pop art and can be
credited as one of the major
influences in the return to favour of
representational art in the USA. As
iconoclastic in his invention of new
techniques as in his wide-ranging
iconography of modern life, he
suggested new possibilities that
continued to be exploited by younger
artists throughout the latter decades
of the 20th century.
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/robert-rauschenberg-1815

20. KURT
SCHWITTERS
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kurt-schwitters-1912
Schwitters worked in several genres and
media, including Dada, Constructivism,
Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting,
sculpture, graphic design, typography
and what came to be known as
installation art. He is most famous for his
collages, called Merz Pictures.

21. RICHARD
DIEBENKORN
Richard Diebenkorn
achieved a rare feat in the
life of an artist, which is to
approach painting from
many different angles and
to take earnest inspiration
from other artists while
maintaining originality.
Although Diebenkorn did
not reach the level of fame
of Abstract Expressionists of
the New York School, his
influence on artists of the
latter half of the twentieth
century is undeniable.
latimesblogs.latimes.com

22. FIGURATIVE
PAINTING
TRADITIONAL, MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY

23. CARAVAGGIO http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
culture/art/art-news/
Layers of traditional paintings
8376970/Caravaggio-
reveal the story and history of exhibition-gives-fresh-
how paintings were made. insight-into-painters-
Revealing secrets and technique.html
unknown facts.

24. FRANCIS
BACON
http://www.francis-bacon.com
Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28
April 1992) was an Irish-born British
figurative painter known for his bold,
graphic and emotionally raw
imagery.[1] Bacon's painterly but
abstracted figures typically appear
isolated in glass or steel geometrical
cages set against flat, nondescript
backgrounds.

25. These pictures are characterized by
depictions of the human figure
isolated in landscapes or interior
JUSTIN
chambers and surrounded by
medical apparatus, machinery and
in several works acid coloured
MORTIMER balloons which hover around these
anonymous figures. While the
justinmortimer.co.uk specific subject or location of the
paintings remains mysterious, they
suggest an underworld of

26. STILL LIFE
THE HUMDRUM OF EVERYDAY LIFE

27. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jan/13/morandi-
lines-poetry-review-giorgio
Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) is not known for his
MORANDI
lines. Rather the opposite: in the hazy world of
his painted still lifes, everything appears muzzy
and soft. The famous objects appearing on the
miniature stage of his table – the bottles, bowls,
decanters and jugs – do so in something as
hazy as limelight. You would not expect to look
deep into these masterpieces of 20th-century
art and see a sharp edge, an outline or
anything as concise as a dot.

28. http://www.winifrednicholson.com
Flowers mean different things
to different people - to some
they are trophies to decorate
their dwellings (for this plastic
flowers will do as well as real
ones) - to some they are
buttonholes for their conceit -
to botanists they are species
and tabulated categories - to
bees of course they are honey
- to me they are the secret of
the cosmos.
This secret cannot be put into
image, far less into the
smallness of words - but I try to.
Their silence says to me - 'My
rootlets are moving in the dark,
in the wet, cold, damp mud -
My leaflets are moving in the
brightness of the sky - My
flowerface has seen the
darkness which cannot be
seen, and the brightness that is
too bright to see - has seen
earth to sun and sun to earth.'
WINIFRED
NICHOLSON

29. JANET FISH
Known for large still
lifes of common
objects with bright
colors--lime green,
pink, yellow--, Janet
Fish works from a loft in
the SoHo section of
New York City and
takes pride in the fact
that she paints
"forbidden subjects,"
realistic still lifes. Her
work, expressive of her
highly independent
spirit, is a reaction
against the pure
abstraction that has
been prevalent for so
many years in the
American art world,
especially in New
York.

30. PHOTOGRAPHY
PORTRAITS, FIGURES AND ABSTRACT

31. CINDY
SHERMAN
http://www.cindysherman.com
By turning the camera on herself, Cindy
Sherman has built a name as one of the
most respected photographers of the late
twentieth century. Although, the majority of
her photographs are pictures of her,
however, these photographs are most
definitely not self-portraits. Rather,
Sherman uses herself as a vehicle for
commentary on a variety of issues of the
modern world: the role of the woman, the
role of the artist and many more. It is
through these ambiguous and eclectic
photographs that Sherman has developed a
distinct signature style. Through a number
of different series of works, Sherman has
raised challenging and important questions
about the role and representation of women
in society, the media and the nature of the
creation of art.

32. BILL BRANDT
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/b/bill-brandt/
Perspective of Nudes
'Instead of photographing
what I saw, I
photographed what the
camera was seeing. I
interfered very little, and
the lens produced
anatomical images and
shapes which my eyes had
never observed.'
Bill Brandt

33. AARON SISKIND
Siskind's work focuses on the
details of nature and
architecture. He presents them
as flat surfaces to create a new
image out of them, which, he
claimed, stands independent of
the original subject.
http://www.aaronsiskind.org