Stay tuned for additional NEO MAX designs to be released throughout the summer!

American Apparel has collaborated with American artist, Peter Max, who is best known for his cosmic ‘60s art style and bold, saturated colors.

His diverse body of work has been exhibited in museums throughout the world. This limited edition collection of garments, NeoMax, are inspired by Max's iconic work and is the result of a journey through his archives spanning several decades.

Stay tuned for additional NEO MAX designs to be released throughout the summer.

Enjoyment of Art

When people ask, "What is Art?" or state that something "is not art," they usually are not seeking a philosophical definition but are instead expressing an opinion that a painting is not realistic enough, that it is offensive, or that it does not use traditional materials. Defining art too narrowly, or in a way that only affirms what we already believe, deprives us of many delightful and thought-provoking experiences. An awareness of all the things that art can be should encourage us to enjoy many different types of art, or at least to wonder why we value one type above another.

The art museum is a natural place to start learning more about the visual arts, but many people find it difficult to sustain interest when faced with so many objects by so many artists they have never heard of. Next time you are in an art museum look first at the other people. Count how many are looking carefully at the art; then look at how many simply read labels, walk away, or do other things without looking at the art itself. Most of us share a tendency to look for works by artists we already know something about, especially those we know about through their odd or interesting lives. This is one way to appreciate art, but it is not the only way.

Try looking for only one specific thing: kinds of paint strokes or particularly energetic brushstrokes, the use of a particular color, or sculptures that are constructed of many parts or from different materials. Or you might seek out more conventional groupings, such as portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.

Make judgments, but get specific. Go into a room at a museum and decide which painting shows the most interesting use of light and dark. Which painting is most colorful? Which artist is the best at capturing emotions?

With a painting, try to imagine the steps the artist took to paint the work. Does the canvas or wood backing show through? Did the artist paint quickly or slowly? How do the paints sit on top of each other? Look at the way shapes are repeated or ordered. If you had no idea what the painting was about - and with some modern art, you really might not - would you still feel something simply by looking at the colors or brushwork?

If you are looking at a sculpture, think about how it might have been seen in its original position, perhaps in a church or on the front of a building. Can you walk all the way around the sculpture? Is it more interesting from a particular point of view? Is it on a pedestal, and if it is, does its added height make you feel smaller or more distant from the subject? As with painting, you might think about how the artist made the piece. Is it wood, stone, or metal, or something else entirely?

With architecture, try to become aware of the shape and size of the spaces around you. Notice how doors and windows are spaced. Sometimes they frame special views, sometimes they create pleasing patterns when seen from the outside, sometimes they are framed or made of special materials for interesting visual effect.

With decorative arts and craft objects, consider their use and whether the changes that the artist has made to the basic form add to or detract from their function. How would it feel to hold the teacup, sit on the chair, or wear the clothing on exhibit? Museums often display decorative arts in rooms that replicate historic rooms. If this is the case, can you sense a pattern of how the people of that time might have felt about ornament, wealth, or simplicity? How might you think differently about these objects if they were displayed on pedestals?

As with the decorative arts, museums often display arts of non-Western cultures in an evocative setting, to demonstrate not just their form but also their function. Here, too, you might ask what the display itself is telling you. Would you respond differently to these objects if they were displayed like the masterpieces of Western art?

New media - video, film, digital arts - can sometimes be difficult to appreciate as art because we so commonly see these same forms in advertising and entertainment. As viewers, we may find them intriguing or amusing but still wonder if they are art. Some artists who work in these media try to set their work apart from commercial uses, while others consciously use commercial imagery and techniques. Rather than decide on a verdict (art or nonart), consider works like these as a starting point for a dialogue. What do these pieces say about images in our lives, or about the distinctions and values we give to certain art forms?

Similarly, many works made today are deliberately provocative. Conceptual art sometimes seems to mock everything we value about art, from beauty and craftsmanship to the precious and timeless nature of art. Many works take stabs at cultural traditions that we value enormously, including religion, patriotism, and morality. It is not necessary to agree with every artist, to like every work of art, or to visit every gallery or museum. But it is important to think and talk about the art before passing judgment.

What is a woodcut?

This is the oldest method of printmaking. For centuries the basic technique of relief printing has been the cutting away of a portion of the surface of a wood block so that the desired image remains as a printing surface. Traditionally, fruitwoods such as cherry and pear are used; the surfaces of maple and oak are too hard for cutting. In the 20th century, artists have favored softer woods, such as pine. The surface, first smoothed, may be hardened by treating it with a shellac, which makes it more durable under the pressure of a press and facilitates the carving of strong, bold images. The artist may paint or draw the image on the surface; the wood is cut away between the drawn lines, and only the drawn image is left standing on the surface of the block. In essence, this is a relief image.

A roller holding a film of oil-based ink is rolled completely over the block. A sheet of paper - ideally a highly absorbent type such as rice paper - is placed over the block, and the artist may then print the image by hand rubbing the surface with the bowl of a spoon or with any other burnishing instrument. The block and paper may also be run through a press; under the pressure of the press the image is transferred to the paper. The impression is pulled by carefully lifting a corner of the paper and peeling it off the block. Separate blocks are used for color woodcuts, with one block for each color.

What is art?

Art, the product of creative human activity in which materials are shaped or selected to convey an idea, emotion, or visually interesting form. The word art can refer to the visual arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, decorative arts, crafts, and other visual works that combine materials or forms. We also use the word art in a more general sense to encompass other forms of creative activity, such as dance, drama, and music, or even to describe skill in almost any activity, such as “the art of bread making” or “the art of travel.” In this article art refers to the visual  arts.

The Elements of Art

To talk about art we need to describe it precisely. One way to begin is to think about how the artist has created the forms we see. Color, line, shape, texture, and shading are some of the elements of form we can describe in two-dimensional arts. In three-dimensional works we might also think about mass, solids and voids, balance, and scale. Architecture has a specialized vocabulary related to structures, proportions, and patterns of decoration. Yet some of the formal elements found in the other arts, such as color and scale, also apply to architecture.

COMPOSITION
Of the formal elements in art, composition is probably the term most commonly used and most confusing. Composition is the arrangement of elements in a work of art. All works of art have an order of some sort determined by the artist: They may be balanced and symmetrical, swirling and dynamic, or even chaotic and seemingly random. We can describe some compositions by referring to a geometric figure - for example, figures may be grouped to form a triangle - but not all works are designed this way. It sometimes helps to squint at a work or step back from it to see its composition. Look for general patterns of organization, no matter what shape they may take.

ILLUSIONISM
With painting, drawing, and printmaking, people often speak of illusionism—that is, the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. The techniques of illusionism range from overlapping shapes, to using light-to-dark shading that models or rounds out a shape, to using full linear perspective. Perspective creates the illusion of three-dimensionality through lines that seem to extend back in space and meet at a single point known as the vanishing point. The history of Western art is more often than not a history of the quest to create perfect illusionism. At times, however, artists have turned their backs on this pursuit.

REALISM, NATURALISM, AND IDEALISM
The terms realism and naturalism are used to describe how closely objects seen in a work of art resemble those we experience in everyday life. The terms are closely related but not quite interchangeable. Realism suggests a precise copying of the actual appearance of objects, warts and all. Naturalism is a way of depicting objects as they might exist - in other words, it implies a certain amount of improvement of the actual appearance.
Idealism refers to a perfected, or idealized, view of nature. Sometimes this idealized image comes from an idea in the mind, rather than anything actually observed in nature. Idealized works also may be naturalistic in that they are based upon nature, but at the same time they ignore imperfections. Idealized portraits, for example, show the subjects in flattering ways, whereas realistic portraits show them with more flaws, but also with more individuality.

ABSTRACTION
 Abstract and nonobjective are terms most often used in reference to modern art, although abstraction also commonly occurs in ancient art and in the art of many world cultures. Abstract art usually begins with a recognizable object, that the artist then simplifies to show some purer underlying form. Nonobjective, or nonrepresentational, art goes a step further and removes any references to recognizable objects. From a Western perspective, the elimination of a recognizable subject from painting or sculpture seems a radical development of the 20th century, but in other traditions people have long placed higher value on abstraction. In Islamic art, for example, elaborate patterns and calligraphic lines enrich the surfaces of book pages and places of worship.

EXPRESSION
No matter how realistic or abstract a work is, it can also be expressive. Clashing colors or rough brushstrokes often convey violent emotions, such as anguish or anger. Gentle curves and subdued colors can elicit quieter emotions, such as maternal love. It is easy to assume that artists express the emotions they are feeling when creating a work, but more often the artist chooses an expressive style appropriate for the subject matter, genre, or setting of the piece.

STYLE
The works produced by an individual artist usually have in common distinctive and identifiable visual qualities. These qualities form what is called the artist's personal style. Because artists from a particular time or place share ways of working, it is also possible to talk about the style of a period - for example, a Renaissance style - or regional styles - Polynesian style, for instance.

SUBJECT MATTER
All of the formal elements of art and the more general idea of style are separate from subject matter. Artists working in 16th-century Italy and 19th-century France may paint the same mythological subject, but their styles will be quite different. Literary sources, such as classical writings or the Bible, can help us understand the subjects of many works of art. Even when we recognize a work’s subject matter, further interpretation by experts often reveals additional messages about the work or the artist's time.

The Origins of Photography

Photography is a method for producing lasting images by means of a chemical reaction that occurs when light hits a specially prepared surface. It was invented during the first three decades of the 19th century as a direct consequence of advances in chemistry and optics (the science of the behavior of light). The word photography comes from two Greek words that mean "writing with light."

Although the technology is fairly recent, the origins of photography lie in an artistic technique known as single-point or linear perspective, which was developed in the early 1400s. Pioneered in Italy by architect Filippo Brunelleschi and others, the system of single-point perspective provided painters with a method for depicting three-dimensional space on a flat surface. It is based on the notion of a single observation point and results in lines that appear to recede into the distance by converging on a fixed point on the horizon, called the vanishing point.

In the 16th century many artists employed a boxlike device known as a camera obscura (Latin meaning "dark room") as an aid to depicting space with single-point perspective. This consisted of a box with a pinhole on one side and a glass screen on the other. Light coming through this pinhole projected an image onto the glass screen, where the artist could easily trace it by hand. Artists soon discovered that they could obtain an even sharper image by using a small lens in place of the pinhole. The camera obscura was used by Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Also essential to the invention of photography was knowledge of the light sensitivity of certain materials. More than 2000 years before the invention of the camera obscura, the ancient Phoenicians knew that a certain snail, the purpura, left a yellow slime in its wake that turned purple in sunlight. In the 18th century a German anatomy professor, Johann Heinrich Schulze, observed that silver salts darkened when exposed to light. But the idea of making pictures using this phenomenon did not occur to him. That innovation required the talents of a later generation of scientists.

By 1800 a young English chemist, Thomas Wedgwood, had succeeded in producing images of leaves on leather that he had treated with silver salts. However, he could find no way to halt the darkening action of light and his leaf images eventually faded into blackness. His attempts to capture the image displayed by a camera obscura also proved unsuccessful. For the birth of photography two key discoveries were still needed: a way to combine a light-sensitive material with the camera obscura, and a way to fix, or make permanent, the resulting image.