Airbrush in Japan 1 [antikvár]

The airbrush technique was invented by Charles Burdick as long ago as 1 893, and is thus by no means such a new medium as one might be inclined to think in view of the bright, mostly super-realistic pictures produced en masse today via an airbrush. (The airbrush or spray-gun is used to discharge liquid paint by means of air pressure. Altering the setting enables one to apply the paint to the surface in a finer or coarser jet.) At the beginning of this century, the airbrush technique was employed primarily as a means of touching up photographs. It was later to establish an important position for itself in advertising graphics and technical illustrations. However, it was not until two important art movements of our century - the Bauhaus in the 1920s and 1930s, and especially Pop Art in the 1960s - that the airbrush technique also became accepted as an artistic medium. Pop Art decisively altered the iconography of 20th-century art. Thereafter, the artists of hyper-realism, who copied photography with artistic means, found it relatively easy to gain acceptance. They were the first to make intensive use of the airbrush technique for purposes of artistic creation.