Critical studies

 Authorship talk  

After our talk on Tuesday we were asked to go away and research two artists that have a distinguishable authorship to there work. The first artists work I've decided to look at is L.S. Lowry. 

When being asked to find and write about an artist with a distinctive style i immediately thought of Lowry and his cityscapes. Lawrence Stephen Lowry was a painter and artist from greater Manchester who mainly took direct inspiration from his surroundings creating depictions of busy town life in an industrial society. He took much of his inspiration directly from the towns he lived in, Salford and Pendlebury. Lowry's authorship of his work comes through his overall distinctive style and approach but i think the main definer is his approach to depicting people. Across his many different cityscape paintings almost all of them contain huge groups of people all in the same style. Many refer to his approach at people as "match stick men" with him having a simplistic approach, all flowing the same basic forms. He creates a difference in the people in the crowds only through changing the attire slightly. Moving away from the "match stick men" and looking at the works as a whole there are still other distinctive qualities to his work that make it easy for his work to be know to be his. He has a melancholy sense to all of city scenes, through use of dismal tones and framing of the normal working class life. His simplistic approach also slips through to the buildings, simple but precise using mainly straight and harsh lines but capturing each window, chimney and spire at the same time. All of this adds up to make a very distinctive style that holds his authorship over his work long after he's died.