The Art Institute of Chicago

Los Angeles: LACMA [B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden]

2012-02-25T17:20:00.007-08:00

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden and Plaza
Location: LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art]

The marker reads..
Since the opening of LACMA in 1965, B. Gerald Cantor [Bernie] demostrated a profound devotion to the arts and the citizens of Los Angeles. In 1974, a donation of fifty-two Rodin Sculptures, established the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture garden which features Rodin's "Monument to Honore de Balzac" as the work of art welcoming all visitors to the museum. Bernie and his wife Iris, served as trustees 0f the museum and established the Iris and B. Cantor Sculpture Plaza and Iris and B. Cantor Sculpture Gallery; they have also generously funded online LACMA programs. The tradition of philanthrophy is continued today by this foundation, led by Iris Cantor, which funds medical, educational, cultural and arts programs throughout the world..

Monument to Honore de Balzac / 1897..

Jean de Fiennes, Draped..
First modeled 1885-86
Musee Rodin cast 1987..

Jean d' Aire
First modeled 1886
Musee Rodin cast 1972..

Orpheus
First modeled probabaly, 1890-1900
Musee Rodin cast 1969..

The Prodigal Son
First modeled 1884/1894-99
Musee Rodin cast 1967..

The Shade
First modeled 1880, enlarged 1901.
Musee Rodin cast 1969.

Eve
First modeled 1881
Cast 1968..

Left: Monumental head of Jean d' Aires
First modeled 1884-86, enlarged 1909-10
Musee Rodin cast 1971

Right: Monumental head of Pierre de Wissant
First modeled 1884-85, enlarged 1909
Musee Rodin cast 1971

Marsyas
[Torso of "The Falling Man"]
First modeled 1882-89
Musee Rodin cast 1970..

Thus far, from entrace at Wilsire Blvd. to the steps; I saw sculptures only by Auguste Rodin. But once I climed the steps, I saw sculptures by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle. Unfortunately only two of his works were open for public-view. I dont know how many were cordoned off [for renovation, I guess]. I know, for sure that I did not see, "Head of the Figure of Eloquence" by Bordelle..

Herakles - The Archer
By Emile Antoine Bourdelle /1909..

Bust of Rodin
By Emile Antoine Bourdelle / 1909-10..

RELATED LINKS..
Auguste Rodin: Various Sculptures..
MAM: Auguste Rodin, "The Kiss" ..
..

Los Angeles: LACMA [Pablo Picasso - Various Paintings]

2012-02-24T09:28:00.008-08:00

Pablo Picasso - "Weeping Woman with Handkerchief", 1937..

Pablo Picasso..
Pablo Picasso unceasing stylistic experimentation transformed the conventional notion of portraiture yet remained rooted in the history of art. His early shift from realistic rendering to a conceptual presentation of the image can be seen in "Head of a Woman" [1906], a portrait of his companion Fernande. This painting was influenced by the masklike feature of ancient Iberian sculptures and foreshadows Picasso's interest in cubism, exemplified by "Woman with hat in an Armchair' [1915] and "Still Life on a Pedestrail Table in front of a Window" [1919]..

Picasso conveyed a unique combination of artistic and emotional experience in his portrait. His depiction of Dora Maar - "Bust of a Seated Woman" [1938], "Head of a Woman" [1941] - represents his lovers real spiritual restlessness and at the same time function as allegories of the violence of war. In contrast, the images of the printer Piero Crommelynck - "Head of a Bearded Man with Cigarette [1964] - and Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's second wife - "Head of a Woman" [1961-62] and "Head of a Woman in Profile" [1970] - are variation of the double-face theme that the artist explored in numerous portraits.

Pablo Picasso - "Portrait of Sebastia Juner Vidal" / 1903

Pablo Picasso - Head of A Woman / 1906..

Pablo Picasso - "Head"/ 1913..

Pablo Picasso - "Harlequin"/ 1923..

Pablo Picasso - "Still Life"/1927..

Pablo Picasso - "Figure"/ 1930..

Pablo Picasso - "Weeping Woman with Handkerchief"/ 1937..

Pablo Picasso - "Bust of a Seated Woman"/ 1938..

Pablo Picasso - "Head of a Woman with Hat"[Dora Maar]/ 1939..

Pablo Picasso - "Bust of a Woman" [Dora Maar]/ 1941..

Pablo Picasso - "Portrait of Helene Parmelin"/ 1952..

Pablo Picasso - "The Woman of Algiers of Delacroix" / 1955

Pablo Picasso - "Man and Woman" /1969..

Pablo Picasso - "Head of a Woman" [Jacqueline]/ 1961-62..

Pablo Picasso - "Head of a Woman in Profile" [Jacqueline] / 1970..

RELATED LINKS..
AIC: Picasso's Women [& their Tragic Tales]..
AIC: Pablo Picasso [Different phases / periods of his work]..

MOMA - Picasso at MOMA ..
AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various Paintings.. ..
..
..

AIC: The Potter Palmer Collection

2012-01-25T02:01:00.001-08:00

In the Sculpture Court [American Galleries] are two portrait bust sculptures by American sculptor Hiram Powers click here.. These are of Bertha and Potter Palmer, wealthy Chicagoans, whose interest in Impressionism changed the face of the museum.

Bertha Palmer
1849-1918..
An American businesswoman, socialite, and philanthropist..
She was one of the earliest champions of Impressionists in the US.
Her collection of about 70 Impressionst work, are now form the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Born Bertha Matilde Honoré in Louisville, Kentucky, her father was businessman Henry Hamilton Honoré. She married the Chicago millionaire Potter Palmer in 1871. She was 21, he was 44.

On a trip to Paris, Bertha Potter met with Mary Cassatt, an expatriat American Impressionist. The two became friends. Mary Cassatt advised her on purchasing many of the Impressionists paintings by Degas, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, and many others. These purchases were eventually bequested to the AIC...

"On the Stage" - by Edgar Degas was Bertha Potter's first Impressionist purchase, on suggestion of her friend, Mary Cassatt..

From the AIC website.. click here....
Mrs. Palmer’s favorite possession was Renoir’s, "Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando" (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg); legend has it that she always kept this work with her, even when she traveled.

After they earned a fortune in department stores and real estate, the Palmers resided in an extravagant mansion overlooking Lake Michigan. One of its rooms was a spacious gallery with three tiers of paintings. In 1891 alone, Mrs. Palmer bought 25 paintings by Claude Monet, with whom she was personally acquainted. Two years later, she organized the exhibition of modern European paintings at the World’s Columbian Exposition. This event gave many Americans their first exposure to the Impressionist movement..

Some paintings from the Potter Palmer collection at AIC..

Near the Lake, 1879/80
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Young Peasant Woman Drinking Her Café au Lait, 1881..
By Camille Pissarro

The Departure of the Boats, Étretat, 1885
By Claude Monet..

Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890/91..
By Claude Monet..

REFERNCES and very interesting reads..
# Historic Collections: Potter Palmer Collection..
# Potter Palmer Collection....
# A Conversation with Bertha Palmer...
# A Painter and Her Patron: Two Modern Women...

AIC: Sculpture Court [Mr and Mrs. Potter Palmer - By Hiram Powers]

2012-01-24T06:31:00.000-08:00

Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer..
By Hiram Powers [1805-1873]
1871 / Marble..
Location: American Galleries - Sculpture Court

The marker reads..
The prominent Chicago art collectors and philanthropists Bertha and Potter Palmer commissioned these marble portraits during their wedding trip to Europe in 1871. Among the first works of arts they purchased, these busts are indicative of the naturalistic, yet classically refined style of Hiram Powers, a well-known American sculptor who resided in Florence. Powers immortalized the couple in a dignified and graceful manner suitable for their social status. The Palmer's were among the first Americans to avidly collect French Impressionist paintings and much of their collection now belongs to the Art Institute. They were advised on many of their purchases by Mary Cassatt...

AIC: European Galleries [Claude Monet - Various paintings]

2012-01-23T16:58:00.001-08:00

On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt / 1868..
Claude Monet depicts his future wife, Camille Doncieux, sitting near the River Seine. Monet began the painting while he, Camille, and their new son, Jean, were staying at an inn near the village of Bonnières-sur-Seine..

The Artist's House at Argenteuil / 1873..
Calude Monet and his familt lived at Argenteuil, outside Paris from 1871-1878. Here he depicted his five-or-six year old son Jean playing with a hoop and his wife, Camille, stands, in the doorway of their vine-covered house.

The Beach at Sainte Adresse / 1867..

Cliff Walk at Pourville /1882..

The Petite Creuse River / 1889..

Bordigher / 1884..

Boats on the Beach at E'tretat / 1885..

Poppyfield [Giverny] / 1890-91..

Haystacks / Wheatstacks Series.. click here..

London Series.. click here..

Vetheuil Series.. click here..

Waterlilies Series.. click here..

AIC: European Galleries [Claude Monet - London Series]

2012-01-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

I love the way this Gallery [G243] is organised. It has paintings by Claude Monet. Of the four sides of the gallery; one side is Haystacks/ Wheatstacks Series, one side is Waterlily Series, one side is Vetheuil Series and one side is London Series. Here we are talking about the London Series..

Claude Monet's painted his London series at the turn of the 20th century [beginning 1899]. He pained over a hundred canvases, but oply three views of London..
- Charing Cross Bridge
- Waterloo Bridge
- Houses of Parliament

Houses of Parliament, 1900-01..
By Claude Monet [French, 1840-1926]

During his London campaigns, Claude Monet painted the Houses of Parliament from a terrace at Saint Thomas's Hospital. This view point was close to that of English artist J.M.W. Turner in his visionary paintings of the fire that had destroyed much of old Parliament complex in 1834. In his response to the poetry of dusk and mist, however, Monet was actually inspired by the work of a more recent painter of the Thames, the American James McNeil Whistler..

Charing Cross Bridge, London 1901..
By Claude Monet [French, 1840-1926]

..Beginning in September 1899, Claude Monet made about a hundred paintings of the River Thames in London. These works show only three different views - Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, both painted from Savoy Hotel, and Houses of parliament, painted from Saint Thomas's Hospital. In the smoggy industrial ity, Monet challenged himself to capture effects of light through a dense atmospheric screen. Beyond the rectilinier skeleton of Charing Cross Bridge - reminiscent of bridge in Japanese prints, which the artist collected - rises the ghostlike silhouette of the Houses of Parliament...

Waterloo Bridge, "Gray Weather", 1900

Waterloo Bridge, "Sunlight Effect" 1903.

If not for the fog.. Claude Monet once remarker, "London woudn't be a beautiful city. It is the fog that gives it its magnificient breath". While working on his London series, he rose early every day to paint Waterloo Bridge in the morning, moving to Charing Cross bridge at midday and in the afternoon.. he observed booth motiifs from the fifth-floor window at the Savoy Hotel. The Art Institute's two Waterloo Bridge paintings are dated 1900 and 1903, but both were likely begun in 1900 and dated only when Monet Monet felt that they were finished. He worked on all of his London paintings at his studio at Giverny, refusing to send them to his dealer until he was satisfied with them as an ensemble..

AIC: European Galleries [Claude Monet - Vetheuil Series]

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Calude Monet series of 15 canvases depicting the village of Vetheuil, 7 miles from his home in Giverny, dates from July, 1901. During that summer, the artist and his family rented a small riverside house in Lavacourt, across the Seine River from Vetheuil, to escape the heat. The Vetheuil Series shows the view across the river from Monet's balcony at various times of day. This painting depicts misday, and the one to right represnts senset. As he did for many works beginning with the canvases for the series Morning on the Seine, he used a nearly square canvas so that the decorative effect takes precedence over the details of the scene itself..

Beach of the Seine near Giverny [Mist]..
From the series, "Mornings on the Seine", 1897..

Sandvika, Norway / 1895..

AIC: European Galleries [Claude Monet - Haystacks /Wheatstacks ]

2012-01-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

The Art Institute boasts the largest group of Monet's "Stacks of Wheat" in the world, five of the six in the collection numbered among the original canvases Monet placed on view in 1891.

On May 4, 1891, an exhibition of recent works by Claude Monet opened at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, including a Series of Haystacks (1890-1891) as the pictures were identified in the catalogue. These paintings were an important breakthrough, not only in Monet's career but in the history of French art. Curiously, their novelty was less the result of their style than of their subject matter, and less because the subject was in itself unusual than because each of the fifteen paintings had the same subject, and were intended to be seen together. It seems amazing that, in 1891, these images of mundane haystacks, with their various seasonal and temporal backgrounds and their scumbled, almost corrugated, facture, were explained by the critics in such evocative, poetic prose. The subject of the paintings was essentially ignored in the various attempts to render into words Monet's pictorial transcriptions of time. For Gustave Geffroy, they represented "the poetry of the universe in the small space of a field.., a synthetic summary of the meteors and the elements." And, for Desire Louis, the viewer was "in the presence of sensations of place and of time in the harmonious and melancholic flow of sunsets, ends of day, and gentle dawns."

Stacks of Wheat
(End of Day, Autumn), 1890/91..

Stack of Wheat
(Snow Effect, Overcast Day), 1890/91..

Stacks of Wheat
(End of Summer), 1890/91..

Stacks of Wheat
(Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890/91

Stack of Wheat
(Thaw, Sunset), 1890/91

Stack of Wheat,
1890/91

AIC and MOMA [Claude Monet - Waterlilies]

2012-01-23T06:32:00.000-08:00

In 1915 Claude Monet [1840-1926] built a large studio near his house in Giverny, a town forty-five miles northwest of Paris, for the creation of what he would call his "grande decorations." The subject of these works is the elaborate water lily pond and garden that Monet had created on his property - already a primary focus of his painting for nearly twenty years. Monet created more than forty large scale panels and scores of smaller related paintings between 1914 and 1926, the year of his death, at the age of eighty-six. Twenty-two panels hang permanently at the Musee de l'Orangeric in Paris, in an installation designed by the artist.

Around 1950s, Monet's son Michel began to display and sell some of the Water Lilies paintings that remained in his father's estate, and in 1955 Museum of Modern Art became the first place in the United States to acquire one of the large scale panels. MOMA curator's interest in Monet at that time had much to do with currents in Contemporary Art; the grand scale and all-over composition of Abstract Expressionist painting by artists as Jackson Pollock made Mont's large scale painting newly relevant. Since then the Water Lilies have held a cherished position in the Museum, affirming Monet's conviction that art can provide a balm to the modern soul.

The Waterlilies [triptych].. above and below images..

The Waterlilies [triptych]
Claude Monet [French, 1840-1926]
1914-26 / Oil on canvas
Three panels, Each 6' 6 3/4" x 13' 11 1/4"
Overall 6' 6 3/4" x 41' 10 3/8"
Location: MOMA, New York City..

In this triptych Monet depicted his Japanese-style pond covered with water lilies, at center, shimmering with reflections of clouds overhead. The water's surface fills the expansive composition so that conventional clues to the artist's—and the viewer's—vantage point are eliminated. Monet wished for the paintings to encompass the viewer: in his designs for the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, he specified that the Water Lily canvases be displayed on curved walls..

Water Lilies 1914- 26.. Above and below images..

Water Lilies 1914- 26..
Location: MOMA, New York City..

The thick surface of this panel indicates the prolonged duration of the making. Monet worked on this and other paintings over a period of several years building up layers of paints as he altered and refined the composition. The etereal image features softly flowing passage of cloud reflection on the tranquil surface punctuated by pink lilies. The notable delicate palette of this painting differentiates it from others and suggests a silvery light suffusing the pond surface. Since the 1890s Monet had indelged a passion for exploring a single subject in an extensive series that chronicles its appearance at various times of day and in different kinds of weather.

IMAGES above are from MOMA..
Images below are from Art institute of Chicago..

Water Lily Pond
1900 / Oil on canvas..
LKocation, Art Institute of Chicago..
In 1893, three years after buying property at Giverny, Claude Monet began transforming the marshy ground behind his home into a pond, on the narrow end of which he built a Japanese style wood-bridge. Additing both exotic and domestic plating, including the famous waterlilies, the artist created a garden that would be one of his principle subject for the rest of his life. Water Lily Pond was among the 18 similar version of the motif that he made in 1899-1900. Their common theme was mingling of the lilies with reflection of other vegetation in hte pool's surface.

Water Lilies
1906 / Oil on canvas..
Location: Art Institute of Chicago..
"Know that I am absorbed by my work", Claude Monet wrote to a friend in 1908. "These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It is beyond my power as an old man , and yet I want to manage to render what I feel. I have destroyed some.... Some I have begun again... and I hope that out of so many efforts, something will emerge". Indeed the artist's painting of water lilies truthfully depict nature, and, at the same time, anticipate the abstract painting that would flourish later in the 20th century.

Water Lily Pond
1917-22 / Oil on canvas..
Location: The Art Institute of Chicago..
During World war I, after several years of inactivity because of bad health and grief over the death of his second wife, Claude Monet embarked on a period of intense work. Building a large studio and improving his garden, he begun a group of monumental paintings of water lilies that he would later offer to the French State. Alongside the project, he painted s suite of 19 smaller canvases, including the present one. There is evidence-including a few photographs of the artist working in the garden - that Monet conceived these painting outdoors and then reworked them in his studio. By the last stage of his career, however, the distinction between observation and memory in his work is intangible, and perhaps even irrelevant.

RELATED LINKS..
# Wheatstacks - by Claude Monet..
Exploring some .."isms'..
Impressionism..
Post-Impressionism..
Modern and Contemporary Art [Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Abstract Expessionism]..

AIC: Asian Galleries [Buddha, Bodhisattva, Maitreya Buddha and Pair of Buddhist Monks: China]

2012-01-20T13:45:00.001-08:00

Buddha
China: Tang dynasty
[618-904]early to mid 8th century
Limestone with traces of polychrome pigments..

The marker reads..
Buddhism flourished in China's religious and cultural life during the powerfully cosmopolitan Tang dynasty. Characteristic of Tang dynasty is its robust, tapered physique, this monumental figure exhibits iconographis features of the Buddha: tightly curled hair covering a cranial mound symbolizes his enlightenment; a forhead depressed that originally held a stone or jewel represents wisdom. The stepped pedestral rises from a base encircled by petals of the lotus, a pure white flower that evokes spiritual purity attained through the buddhist search for enlightenment. Musicians encircle the tapered stem, suggesting a celestial realm. This sculpture came to the museum in 1930, together with two bodhisattvas [enlightened beings] in this gallery. Their scale and production in stone suggests that these figures were commisioned for a cave temple or shine..

Opposite from the sculpture of Buddha [above images] are two Bodhisattvas, on the two sides of the staircase, as seen in the above image..

Buddha and two Bodhisattvas.. The Buddha sculpture came to the museum in 1930, together with two bodhisattvas [enlightened beings] in this gallery. Their scale and production in stone suggests that these figures were commisioned for a cave temple or shine..

Bodhisattva
Above image is sculpture to the right of staircase..
Below image is sculpture to the left of staircase..
China / Tang dynasty
[618-907] 8th century
Limestone with traces of polychromy..

The marker text is the same for both the Bodhisattvas sculptures..
In eighth century China, Buddhist sculptors adopted new standards of secular beauty for spiritual figures. Whereas the Buddha in the center of this gallery appears sterny formal, bodhisattvas, the merciful deities that guide men towards salvation often display more humanistic features.

The bodhisattvas graceful proportion, unswept hair, sinuous drapery, and delicate jewelry convey an appealing physical elegance. Seated crossed-legged, the deity leans informally, its head is greatly tipped and one arm [now broken] rests on a knee. Together with the sculpture to the left of the staircase, this figure likely formed part of a larger group that originally flanked the Buddha displayed between the door in the gallery. The large scale of all three figues uindicates that they probably furnished a cave temple that was carved into the face of a mountain or cliff.

Right of the staircase... Bodhisattvas and Maitreya Buddha..

Maitreya Buddha [Mi-le]
China/ Tang dynasty
[618-907]8th century / Stone

Seated depictions of the Buddha originated in Indian art, perhaps in the portraits of Indian royalty. The Chinese reserved this imagery for Maitreya Buddha [Chinese Mi-le], the Buddha of the Future, who waits in coamis heaven before descending the earth. This figure of Maitreya is about to step off the throne into the world, fulfilling hopes and prayers of the faithful. His right hand is raised in mudra [gesture] meaning, "fear Not". Flames, emphasizing radiance and holy presence, border his outer halo, and his head is framed by an open lotus whose blossoms also rise beneath his feet. Because it emerges pure white from muddy water, the lotus is pervasive symbol of the Buddhist nature within all living things.

Left of the staircase... Bodhisattva and Pair of Buddhist Monks..

Pair of Buddhist Monks..
China / Sui dynasty /[581-618]
Expressing serene dignity, these youthful monks standing erect, their eyes downcast and hands firmly joined in reverent prayer. Their earlobes allude to earrings that were worn by the Buddha as a young Indian prince and his rejection of such symbols of material wealth. Characteristic of Sui dynasty sculpture, the monks sharply defined facial features and the folds of their robes enhance the figures flat, understated modeling. Each of their robes were originally painted with different color rectangles, signifying the patchwork mantle worn by the Buddha and his pious monks, who emulated his humble values. Only shadowdy traces of these pigments are now evident..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [Yakshi standing on Mythical Beast]

2012-01-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

Yaksi standing on a Mythical Beast
India, Andhra Pradesh
possibly, Nagarjunakanda
2nd century BC - 2nd century AD / Limestone..

Who are Yakashi??
Wikipedia informs click here..
Yaksini are mythical beings of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain mythology. A yakshini is the female counterpart of the male yaksha, and they both attend on Kubera (also called Kuber), the Hindu god of wealth who rules in the mythical Himalayan kingdom of Alaka. They both look after treasure hidden in the earth and resemble that of fairies. Yakshinis are often depicted as beautiful and voluptuous, with wide hips, narrow waists, broad shoulders, and exaggerated, spherical breasts. .

RELATED LINKS..
Asian Galleries..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [Lion and Lion Capital]

2012-01-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

Lion
India / Uttar Pradesh
2nd century/ Spotted red sandstone..

Lion Capital..
India, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura region
1st century / Spotted red sandstone..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [Marriage of Shiva and Paravati]

2012-01-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Left of the image: Dancing God Shiva [Natesha].. click here..
Right of the image: Marriage of Shiva and Paravati..

Marriage of Shiva and Paravati
[Kalyanasundara[ with Brahma and Vishnu in Attendence..
India, Uttar Pardesh
10/11 century/ Buff sandstone..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [God Shiva: God of Music & Dancing God Shiva]

2012-01-20T10:15:00.001-08:00

Shiva as Lord of Music, with a Vina
Seated on his Bull, Nandi [ Vinadhari]
India, Uttarkhand, Almora
10th/11th century / Greenish gray schist..

Left of the image: Dancing God Shiva [Natesha]
Right of the image: Marriage of Shiva and Paravati.. click here..

Dancing God Shiva [Natesha]
India, Rajasthan
10/11 century / Red sandstone..

RELATED LINKS..
Asian Galleries..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [God Vishnu [Varaha/ Boar Incarnation of God]]

2012-01-20T09:21:00.000-08:00

Vishnu [Varaha / Boar incarnation of God]
12th century/ Black phyllite.

From Bhagavat Gita..
Narrates Krishna to Arjuna..
Whenever Dharma, or the situation of law and order, is endangered on this world, I incarnate onto this world to re establish Dharma, law and order, and to protect the Sadhus or saints and to destroy the evil elements of the society.

From this website.. Dasavtar The 10 Incarnations of Lord Vishnu.. click here
The Avatar concept is a corner stone in Hindu philosophy. Avatar is a descent or a direct incarnation of God to ascent the mankind. Periodically the Supreme Lord Vishnu descents upon the earth, in animal or human forms and the mission is to preserve the world from the increasing evil. There are 10 avatars of Vishnu..
The 10 Vishnu Avatars / Incarnations ..
Matsya [the fish], Kurma [the Tortoise], Varaha [the Boar], Narashima [giant lion-man], Vamana [the dwarf], Parasurama [Rama with the axe], Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, Buddha and Kalki [is believed as the next Avatar of Vishnu]..

RELATED LINKS..
Asian Galleries..

AIC: Alsdorf Galleries [Karttikeya, God of War; seated on a peacock]

2012-01-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

Karttikeya, God of War; seated on a peacock..
India, Andhra pradesh..

AIC: Temporary Exhibit: "Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson"

2012-01-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

Inside Marina City: A Project by Iker Gil and Andreas E.G. Larsson
Temporary Exhibit..
From September 17, 2011.. to.. January 15, 2012
Modern Wing / Gallery 286

For more than two years, Iker Gil and Andreas E. G. Larsson documented the lives of residents in Bertrand Goldberg’s iconic Marina City (1959–67). Celebrating the architect’s original vision for affordable apartments in a central, high-density location, this exhibition provides a rare behind-the-scenes view of the diverse array of people and living spaces within the popular cylindrical residential towers.

Gil and Larsson’s illuminating compositions reflect their respective training and professional interests. Spanish-born Gil is a Chicago-based architect and founding principal of MAS studio whose research-based portfolio includes buildings, public spaces, and more theoretical projects. Larsson, a Swedish-born photographer now residing in Los Angeles, is known for his visually expressive portraits of musicians, dancers, and other creative people, which have been featured in publications such as i-D, GQ, Nylon, and The New York Times.

Drawing on their individual backgrounds, the photographers explored the relationships between Goldberg’s rigorous modular framework for the apartments and the gradual, informal development of the interiors by their inhabitants. Unlike the vacant landscapes of traditional architectural photography or the scripted architectural scenes of such masters as Julius Schulman, Gil and Larsson’s Marina City “portraits” let the apartment dwellers speak for themselves. The result is a rich portfolio of images that pay tribute to Goldberg’s visionary architecture and affirm his place in Chicago’s rich architectural history, while emphasizing the inhabitants who bring these spaces to life.

This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Architecture & Design Society. Additional sponsorship is provided by the Print Lab.

And here is my post on Marina City.. click here..

Chicago cityscape from Marina City rooftop..

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Temporary Exhibits ...

AIC: Bluhm Family Terrace [Lunar - by Spencer Finch]

2012-01-17T17:35:00.000-08:00

Lunar, 2011
By Spencer Finch..
Location: Bluhm Family Terrace
Temporary Exhibit: October 8, 2011 – April 8, 2012..

Throughout his career, American artist Spencer Finch has used color and light as primary subjects—and materials—in his drawings, photographs, mixed media projects, and large-scale installations. Best known for exploring ideas about memory and perception, the artist often employs a colorimeter, a device that measures the average color and temperature of light that exists naturally in a specific place and time. With this information in hand, Finch reconstructs the luminosity of the location through artificial means.

The marker reads..
Lunar, Spencer's first solo project at the Art Institute, harness the power of the sun, gathering energy during the day and releasing that energy after dark. Equipped with his colorimeter, Finch collected data during the July 2011 full moon in Chicago. His solar powered sculpture transforms sunliht into moonlight on the Bluhm Family Terrace, it glows the exact color of a midsummer moon throughout the evening hours.

The project references distinct areas of culture and science, particularly space explorations and visionary architecture. The base of the sculpture alludes to the Apollo Lunar Module, used by United States on space mission 1969-72, which carried astronauts from the spacecrafts command /service Module to the moon's surface and back. Resting on top of Finche's model is an enlarged verseion of the Buckministerfullerene or buckuball. Discovered in 1985, buckyball are solid carbon molucules named after the American architect R Buckminister Fuller, who earlier devised a geodesic dome with the same essential symmetry of hexagonal and pentagons.

Finche's intent in the buckyball is both formal and fantastical. He stated.. "Like just about everyone, I wanted to make a picture of the moon or, more specifically, of moonlight. I have always loved nocturnes and the impossible attempts to paint near-darkness in near-darkness. I figured there were probably enough literal pictures of the moon, so I began thinking about the form of moonlight and how it is actually reflected sunlight. This led me to explore the use of solar power to generate the light of the moon. The structure of the lunar module and the buckyball followed in short order—I thought it would be fun to imagine that a lunar module returning from the moon with moonlight on board landed on top of the Art Institute.”

Personal Comment: It makes sense to take picture of this sculpture in the evening-night, when it is glowing. But I wonder if that is possible..
One can enjoy the image at the AIC website.. click here..

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: The Bluhm Family Terrace..
# AIC: Temporary Exhibits ...

AIC: Griffin Court [Vater Staat - by Thomas Schutte]

2012-01-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

Vater Staat..
By Thomas Schutte [German, born 1954]
2010/ patinated bronze..
Vater Staat, which translates to “Father State", Schuttë’s ongoing interest in the effect of totalitarian regimes on the human condition.

The marker reads..
The sculpture of Thomas Schutte mines both his own earlier work and the art of previous eras - particularly monumnetal and memorial genres - to address the burden of traumatic history. He is primarily concerned with human condition and the effect that contemporary political structure have on the lives of individulas. In Vater Staat [which translates as "Father State"] an imposing bronze statue towers over the viewer, immediately establishing a power dynamics within the space. The Patriarchal figure, representative of a totalitarian regime or state, is shrouded in a cloak that binds his arms, rendeing him helpless and immobile. Schutte selection of material, in this case, patinated bronze, allowed him to address the historical use of the figure as a staple of public art. Here, is in other works, the artist engaged in the tendency toward monumentality in order to subvert it - this figure is actually an antihero.

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Temporary Exhibits ...

Auguste Rodin - Various sculptures

2012-01-16T05:50:00.000-08:00

The Walking Man [1877]
by Auguste Rodin
Location: AIC: European Galleries..

Many of Rodin's sculptures at the AIC, are kept in the same gallery that display the works by Claude Monet. Arguably Rodin was an Impressionist sculptor and his contribution to aesthetics of sculpture, is similar to that of Monet's contribution to aesthetics of paintings.. as evident in the rough textured surfaces and interplay of light and shadow.

Monet and Rodin not only admired each other professionally, but also, were close friends. Their works were shown together in 1889 at a joint exhibition held at the Galerie Georges Petit. Rodin's admiration for Monet can is expressed in one of the mails.. as seen on The Musée Rodin website, click here ..
“the same feeling of fraternity, the same love of art, has made us friends for ever… I still have the same admiration for the artist who helped me understand light, clouds, the sea, the Cathedrals that I already loved so much, but whose beauty awakened at dawn by your rendering touched me so deeply.”

In 1888, Monet apparently gave this painting, Belle- Ile to the sculptor in exchange for his "Young Mother in the Grotto"..

Head of Pierre de Wissant - 1889
Sorrow - 1882
Carytide - 1891

Head of Pierre de Wissant - 1889
click here..
"Monumental Head of Pierre de Wissant" is an enlarged cast of the head of one of the figures from Rodin’s famous "Monument to the Burghers of Calais", one of the greatest works of public art of the nineteenth century. The latter, signifying patriotism and heroism, depicts six burghers from Calais, a town in the north of France, who volunteered to sacrifice their lives to save their homeland during England’s invasion in 1347. Pierre de Wissant was one of the burghers and Rodin’s rendition of him was considered as the most moving and popular.

Sorrow - 1882
click here..
Rodin made particularly bold use of this practice, exhibiting fragments as works in their own right. Thus the head of one of the children of Ugolino, which also belonged to "The Prodigal Son", was removed from its context and enlarged circa 1904 to become the "Head of Sorrow", which seems to cry out in grief. Enlargement smoothed forms by erasing details and conferred a stronger physical presence on works. The title of a work almost always came to Rodin after its completion and could be modified in the course of time: translated into marble, the present work was also known as Joan of Arc, Orpheus or even Head of Medusa.

Carytide - 1891..

Adam..
Bronze - 1881
The marker reads..
Adam and Eve were originally intended to flank Rodin's monumental... "Gates of Hell", the bronze door that was commissioned by the French government for a new museum of decorative arts. The inclusion of these biblical figures in the depiction of a scene from Dante's "Inferno" would have stressed the legacy of original sin. The museum was never built, and the doorway never finished. So Rodin turned these figures into independent statues..

Eve after the Fall..
Marble- 1886
The marker reads..
Auguste Rodin's sculpture "Eve" owes it's genesis to the "Gates of Hell", the artists major commission from the French government in 1800. The associations posed by these sculptural portals of that project led Rodin back to the art of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Michelangelo, particularly their depiction of biblical stories from the book of Genesis. A number of elements from the Gates - such as The Thinker, Adam, and Eve - gradually evolved into independent events. In Particular, Eve recalls the most sculptural of Renaissance paintings. Michelangelo's panels from the Sistine Chapel and Masaccio's "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden". It's naturalism shocked critics when it was first exhibited, since Eve seems to them more like a flesh-and-blood woman than an idealized creation...

Portrait of Balzac [1893]..

All the above images are taken at the Art Institute of Chicago..
Below are some images taken at other places..
- Milwaukee Art Museum [MAM]
- Philadelphia [Rodin Museum]

Milwaukee Art Museum..

Monumental Head of Balzac [1897]
Milwaukee Art Museum [MAM]..

"The Kiss" at Milwaukee Art Museum [MAM].. For more, click here..

The Thinker
Rodin Museum, Philadelphia..
Speaking of The Thinker, Rodin siad..
"What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."

Some of the most famous works of Rodin..
The Age of Bronze [1877]..
The Walking Man [1877]
The Gates of Hell [1880-1917]
The Kiss.. [1886]
The Thinker [1903]..
The Burghers of Calais.. [1884-86]
Monument to Balzac [1893]

AUGUSTE RODIN [1840 - 1917]

Auguste Rodin and Women in his life..
Rose Beuret and Camille Claudel..
Excerpts from wikipedia.. click here..
In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret, with whom he would stay — with ranging commitment — for the rest of his life. The couple had a son, Auguste-Eugène Beuret [1866–1934]..

In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise a course for sculptor Alfred Boucher in his absence, where he met the 18-year-old Camille Claudel. The two formed a passionate but stormy relationship and influenced each other artistically. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his figures, and she was a talented sculptor, assisting him on commissions.

Though Rodin's career was on the rise, Claudel and Beuret were becoming increasingly impatient with Rodin's "double life". Claudel and Rodin shared an atelier at a small old castle, but Rodin refused to relinquish his ties to Beuret, his loyal companion during the lean years, and mother of his son. During one absence, Rodin wrote to Beuret,
"I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices... I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin."
Claudel and Rodin parted in 1898, and Claudel's mental health deteriorated.

More on Rodin from Musee Rodin..click here..

1916:
When Rodin was 76 years old he gave the French government the entire collection of his own works and other art objects he had acquired. They occupy the Hotel Biron in Paris as the Musee Rodin and are still placed as Rodin set them.

1917:
Rodin marries Rose Beuret on 29 January in Meudon, two weeks before her death on 14 February. Rodin passed away in November of that same year. He was buried on 24 November beside Rose in Meudon. A large-scale cast of "The Thinker" is erected on their grave.

Death under tragic circumstances...
click here..
Rodin died of cold, neglected by friends and officials of the state, while his sculptures, which he had given to the nation, were kept warmly housed in a centrally heated museum at public expense. His case was so desperate that he asked to be permitted to have a room in the museum—the Hotel Biron, formerly his own studio. The official in charge of the museum refused. Other officials and friends promised coal but never sent it, though his situation at Meudon, ill, and freezing to death, was apparently well known to all of them.

REFERENCES:
Auguste Rodin..

Milwaukee Art Museum [Auguste Rodin - The Kiss]

2012-01-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

The Kiss [Paolo and Francesca], 1886..
Auguste Rodin [1840-1917]
Painted plaster, cast from original clay.
Location: Milwaukee Art Museum..

Auguste Rodin, one of the greatest sculptors of all time. His most productive period, 1880-1900, coincided with the rise of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, avant-garde styles and aesthetic attitudes that dramatically impacted his own art..

"The Kiss" is a result of a commission that French sculptor Auguste Rodin received in 1880, for his "Gates of Hell", a decorative relief door, for a future Musee des Beaux Arts. It was inspired by Dante's The Divine Comedy. But it was removed shortly thereafter and became an independent work. Many of Rodin's independent works, were originally made for this door..
- The Thinker
- Adam, Eve
- The Kiss..

The sculpture is based on the the adulterous love of Francesca da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta. Their passion grew as they were reading the story of "Lancelot and Guinevere". The book is seen in Paolo's hand. But Francesca's husband Gianciotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, discovered them, and slayed them with a rapier. They were buried together in the same tomb. It's a story of forbidden love and eternal damnation. A popular theme of the 19th century artists. However, "The Kiss" does not evoke the agony of forbidden love rather the ecstacy of it. This is said to be one of the reasons, it was removed from the Rodin's relief door "Gates of Hell"..

Rodin confronted the negative aspects of humanity, including moral weaknesses and distress. Apart from digressing from the classical tradition, on the social theme, he also moved in the technical aspects of sculpting. His deeply textured surface was a departure from smoothness of the classics. He was criticised for the lack of decorative details, which he believed distracted the viewers from the strength of emotions.

There are three original marble versions of "The Kiss"..
- In 1888, Rodin was commissioned by the French government to have his plaster carved into marble, double the size of the original. The result was shown at Salone of the Societe Nationale des Bauxe Arts in 1898, along with another of Rodin's work Balzac. However, was the Kiss that was more popular. This version is now at Musee Rodin, Paris, France.
Two other marble replicas were ordered from Rodin..
- Carl Jacobson, ordered one for the sculptural museum Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark.
- Edward Perry Warren, ordered one fro his own collection. It is now in Tate Modern, London, England.

Notice the convulsive contraction on Paolo's right foot...
I have to mention a book that helped me understand the nuances of this sculpture.."Rodin's Art", by Albert Edward Elson..
One interesting aspect of this sculpture is that many of anatomical details and been obscured in favor of gesture and body languange. In fact it is very difficult to see the kiss, which actually is not a kiss. Rodin's sculpture shows the moment just before the kiss and not after the kiss.

Rodin also departed from Dante, in depicting Francesco as the instigator or initiator of the kiss. She leans towards Paolo, who still seem to be stitting in a position of reading the book. His eyes are open, her closed. In one hand he still holds the book, while his other hand barely touches her. His right foot is tensed and shows the convulsive contraction. Paolo seems to be hesitant, while she is more relaxed.

"The Kiss" is really a masterpiece and one of the most censored works of Rodin.. Altough this piece I saw at the Milwaukee Art Museum, there are some very good work by Auguste Rodin at the Art Institute of Chicago.. Like Adam, Eve, The Walking Man, Balzac.. and more..

REALTED LINKS:
# Milwaukee Art Museum..
# For more on Chicago's World's Fair, click here..
# My FB Album, From Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition, 1893..

Matisse and Rodin

2012-01-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

Left image: "The Serf" by Henri Matisse [1900 -1904]
Right image: "Walking Man" by Auguste Rodin [1877-78]..

Both Matisse and Rodin used the same Italian model Bevilaqua for these sculptures. Matisee was a generation younger to Rodin, and their sculptures show marked similarities..
Auguste Rodin [1840-1917]
Henri Matisse [1869 - 1952]
- Both used models for their sculptures
- Both were in traditional theme of nudes
- Both reduced forms to simple shapes that later became hallmark of Modernist Art.
- And they both also used the same Italian model for their sculptures, Bevilaqua.. who is supposed to have posed for Henri Matisse's "The Serf" [1900-1904] and for at least three of Rodin's famous sculptures, St. John the Baptist Preaching [1878], Walking Man [1877-1900] and Portrait of Balzac [1893]..

Above image: St. John the Baptist Preaching [1878], Walking Man [1877-1900] and Portrait of Balzac [1893]..
* The image of "St. John the Baptist Preaching" was taken at the Sculpture Garden at MOMA. click here..

The Serf - by Henri Matisse [1900-1904]

Henri Matisse often turned to sculpture early in his career in an attempt "to put into order into my feelings and find a style to suit me". More than half of his total output of sculptures dates to between 1900 and 1909, and these works reveal a deep interest in the human figure, as well as ancient and Old Master works of art. "The Serf", one of Matisse's earliest sculptres consumed him: he was reported to have spent upto 500 sessions with his model Bevilaqua, who also posed for Auguste Rodin. The Art Institute's work is an early cast [1908] of total edition of 10 and was once owned by Matisse's most enthusiastic early supporters Michael and Sarah Stein.

The Walking Man - by Auguste Rodin [1877-1900]

The Walking Man originated from one of Auguste Rodin's early successes, his life-size Saint John the Baptist Preaching of 1878. Rodin made separate plaster studies of the sculpture's components, and much later he returned to the legs of the Baptist, grafting onto them a torso from another composition. In 1900 he exhibited a half-life-size version of this work in plaster, and it made a deep impression on younger artists, notably Henri Matisse. The bronze cast of The Walking Man delibrately preserves the raw styles of artistic creation while elevating the fragmentory and unfinished to a new aesthetic plane..

RELATED LINKS..
# Henri Matisse - Various sculptures..
# Henri Matisse - Large Seated Nude..
# Henri Matisse - The Geranium...
# Henri Matisse - La Serpentine..
# Henri Matisse - Various paintings

REFERENCES:
Musée Rodin, Paris, France had an exhibition titled "Matisse & Rodin" [October 23, 2009 – February 28, 2010]
For details, click here..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Marc Chagall - Various paintings]

2012-01-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

White Crucifixion, 1938..
By Marc Chagall
French, born Russia [present day Belarus], 1887-1985..

The Praying Jew, 1923..

Birth, 1911/12..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Henri Matisse - Various paintings]

2012-01-12T10:38:00.001-08:00

Bathers by A River [1917]..
Arguably his most famous painting..

The Geranium [1906].. ..
This work is one of a number of early still-life paintings in which Henri Matisse incorporated his own figurative sculptures, Woman Leaning on Her Hands and The Thorn Extractor..

Apples [1916]

Lorette with Cup of Coffee [1916-17]

Interior at Nice [1919 or 1920]

Woman before an aquarium [1921-33]

Daisies [July 16, 1939]

Lemons on a Pewter Plate, 1926..

Also very interesting are the various sculptures by Henri Matisse, click here..

Now some images from MOMA
click here..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Henri Matisse- The Geranium]

2012-01-11T23:31:00.000-08:00

The Geranium / Autumn, 1906..
By Henri Matisse [French, 1869-1954]

The marker reads..
This work is one of a number of early still-life paintings in which Henri Matisse incorporated his own figurative sculptures. The Geranium also demonstrates the artist's interest in merging traditional themes with avant-garde practices: he transformed this simple still life into a populated Arcadian landscape painting and rendered this classical subject in the brilliant color, thick paint, and rapid brushwork characteristic of the group of young painters known as the Fauves.

NOTE: Henri Matisse incorporated two of his own figurative sculptures in this painting..
Woman Leaning on Her Hands [1905, Bronze]..
The Thorn Extractor [1906, Bronze]..

Matisse’s original sculptural figures are exhibited next to the artist’s painting 'Geranium". All three works were created about the same time..

Woman Leaning on Her Hands [1905, Bronze]..

The Thorn Extractor [1906, Bronze]..

Someone deserves a whole lot of credit for this complete set!!!

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Piet Mondrain]

2012-01-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

Farm near Duivendrecht, c. 1916..
By Piet Mondrain.. [Dutch, 1872–1944]

Piet Mondrian was a pioneer in the development of abstraction, drawing early inspiration from, among other sources, the Cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Mondrian based his unique geometric style, which he termed “Neo-plasticism” on the utopian belief in the absolute harmony of straight lines and pure colors derived from the natural world. His basic vision was rooted in landscapes, and in particular, the flat topography of his native Holland.

At the outbreak of World War I, Mondrian was in Holland, where he found himself, in effect, trapped for the next four years. During that time, he returned to the subjects and themes of his early career, describing them in simple horizontal and vertical lines and colors. Although he continued to develop the abstract style he had begun in the years before the war, he also worked in a more representational style, which some of his patrons preferred. Farm at Duivendrecht (c. 1916) balances both of these approaches, merging naturalistic description with simplified forms and a reduced palette of pale lavender, orange, pink, and brown..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Gabriele Munter]

2012-01-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

Still Life with Queen, 1912
By Gabriele Munter [German, 1877–1962]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Alexie Jawlensky]

2012-01-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

Girl with the Green Face, 1910..
By Alexei Jawlensky [ German, born Russia, 1864–1941]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Emil Nolde]

2012-01-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

Red-Haired Girl, 1919
Emil Nolde [German, 1867–1956]

German Expressionism : The Blue Rider

2012-01-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

Today focus on Germany, especially The Blue Raider group..

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists from the Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexie Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. Der Blaue Reiter was a movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905..

In 1911, Vasily Kandinsky along with Alexie van Jawlensky, organized "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider). It included a group of nine artists like Paul Klee, August Macke, and Franz Marc. Though their aims and approaches varied from artist to artist, the group in general believed in the promotion of modern art and the possibilities of spiritual experience through symbolic associations of sound and color..

Vasily Kandinsky..
Alexie Jawlensky ..
Gabiele Münter ..
Franz Marc..
Paul Klee..
August Macke
Alfred Kubin
Marianne von Werefkin

More on The Blue Raider later..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Franz Marc - Various paintings ]

2012-01-11T09:12:00.000-08:00

The Bewitched Mill, 1913..
By Franz Marc [German, 1880–1916]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Vasily Kandinsky - Various paintings]

2012-01-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons)
By Vasily Kandinsky [Russian, 1866–1944]
1913 /Oil on Canvas..

Painting with Troika,
1911 / Oil on cardboard..

Painting with Green Center
1913/ Oil on canvas..

Landscape with Two Poplars, 1912..

Houses at Murnau, 1909..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Vasily Kandinsky - Improvisation No 30]

2012-01-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons)
By Vasily Kandinsky [Russian, 1866–1944]
1913 /Oil on Canvas..

The marker reads..
In his 1912 book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", Vasily Kandinsky sought analogies between music and painting as a way to abstraction, a style that freed color and lines from the traditional, representational function. Between 1910 to 1914, he produced "improvisations", works he described as unconsious, spontaneous expressions. He commented on "Improvisation No. 30", in a letter to Arthur Jerome Eddy, a friend and collector from Chicago, "The cannons.... could probably be explained by the constant war talks going on throughout the year, [but] the true contents are what the spectators experience while under the effects of the form and color combination of the picture.

From the AIC website..
Vassily Kandinsky advocated an abstract art that moves beyond imitation of the physical world. Believing that lines, shapes, and colors possess the power to provoke emotions, he imbued such works as Improvisation No. 30 with symbolic meanings to help orient the viewer to his new visual language.

Though abstract, the canvas contains recognizable elements: a crowd in the lower left, a towering castle in the upper right, and two cannons in the lower right. In a letter to Chicago collector Arthur Jerome Eddy, the artist explained such representational forms: “The presence of the cannons, could probably be explained by the constant war talk going on throughout the year. But I did not intend to give a representation of war; to do so would have required different pictorial means. These contents are indeed what the spectator lives, or feels while under the effect of the form and color combinations of the picture.”

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Jean Metzinger - Woman with a Fan]

2012-01-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

Woman with a Fan, 1913
By Jean Metzinger.. [French, 1883–1956]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Gino Severini - Various paintings]

2012-01-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

Still Life (Centrifugal Expansion of Colors), 1916..
By Gino Severini [Italian, 1883–1966]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Philip Guston - Various paintings]

2012-01-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Philip Guston
American, born Canada, 1913-1980..
Wikipedia informs..
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. In the late 1960s Guston helped to lead a transition from Abstract expressionism to Neo-expressionism in painting, abandoning the so-called "pure abstraction" of abstract expressionism in favor of more cartoonish renderings of various personal symbols and objects..

An established painter of some of the most poetic Abstract Expressionist work of the late 1950s, Philip Guston gradually abandoned absrtraction in the 1960s in favor of seemingly crude, disturbing images drawn from memory.

Couple in Bed, 1977..
At times, Guston's personal struggles are explored in his paintings. "Couple in Bed" considers the ongoing conflict between Guston's marriage and his all-consuming preoccupation with studio life. In bed with his wife he wears shoes and grasps three paintbrushes. Missing its hands, and thus unable to track time, the artist's wristwatch symbolize the enduring nature of his and his wife's love for each other, as well as their ongoing conflict over his priorities...

Red Box, 1977..
In Red Box, a grizzled, outstretched arm drives the last nail into Guston's imagined coffin..

Green Sea, 1976..

The radical stylistic shift Guston recaptured in the final decade of his life is fully evident in the paintings in this gallery - once misuunderstood and now widely admired for its bravery and independence - Guston used unusual repertoire of images, reminiscent of bitter slapstick in George Herriman's Krazy kat comic strip and R. Crumb's undulating line that included conspiracy hood figures resembling Ku Klux Klansmen, piles of dismbodied legs and enormous worksmen boots [all evident in Bad Times and Green Sea]..

Bad Times, 1970..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Mark Tobey]

2012-01-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

Untitled, 1964,
By Mark Tobey [American, 1890-1976]

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Jasper Johns - Corpse and Mirror II]

2012-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

Corpse and Mirror II
1974/75/ Oil on linen
By Jasper Johns [American, born 1930]..

In his work from 1972 to 1983, Jasper Johns used a distinct arrangement of crosshatched marks, traditionally considered a graphic method of adding depth and volume to an image or conveying the illusion of light in space. John first glimpsed this pattern on a passing car, recalling: “I only saw it for a second, but knew immediately that I was going to use it. It had all the qualities that interest me—literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning.” Emphasizing the flatness of the painting, Johns’s cross-hatching is gestural without being emotive; in this sense, the technique extends his larger critique of overtly expressionist models of painting. Johns forged a new model of painterly abstraction, using a schema that is repeatable and ordered but not strictly geometric or reductive..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Mark Rothko - Various paintings ]

2012-01-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Untitled (Purple, White, and Red), 1953..
Untitled (Purple, White, and Red) follows the characteristic format of Mark Rothko’s mature work, in which stacked rectangles of color appear to float within the boundaries of the canvas. By directly staining the canvas with many thin washes of pigment and paying particular attention to the edges where the fields interact, he achieved the effect of light radiating from the image itself. This technique suited Rothko’s metaphysical aims: to offer painting as a doorway into purely spiritual realms, making it as immaterial and evocative as music, and to directly communicate the most essential, raw forms of human emotion.

Untitled (Painting), 1953-54..
Describing his art as the “elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, between the idea and the observer,” Mark Rothko was one of the leading proponents of color field painting, a type of non-gestural Abstract Expressionism that entailed large canvases distinguished by monumental expanses of form and tone. In his mature paintings, which he began in 1949, in place of overt symbolism, color and surface luminosity are meant to encourage an emotive, profound response from the viewer. This radiant canvas burns with subtle variations of orange and yellow hues, which glow and undulate as light, atmosphere, and space.

AIC: European Galleries [Jules-Joseph Lefebvre ]

2012-01-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

Odalisque / 1874..
By Jules-Joseph Lefebvre [French 1836-1911]

From wikipedia..
The word "odalisque" is French in form and originates from the Turkish odalık, meaning "chambermaid", from oda, "chamber" or "room".
An odalisque was a female slave in an Ottoman seraglio. An odalisque was not a concubine of the harem, but it was possible that she could become one. Odalisques were ranked at the bottom of the social stratification of a harem, serving not the man of the household, but rather, his concubines and wives as personal chambermaids. If an odalisque was of extraordinary beauty or had exceptional talents in dancing or singing, she would be trained as a possible concubine and she might rise in status to become one of them.

*seraglio - is the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in a Turkish household.

AIC: European Galleries [William Adolphe Bouguerean]

2012-01-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

The Bathers, 1884
William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)

From wikipedia..
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.

AIC: European Galleries [Luca Cambiaso - Venus and Cupid]

2012-01-08T06:21:00.000-08:00

Venus and Cupid
1570 / Oil on canvas
By Luca Cambiaso [Italian, 1527 - 1585]

The marker reads..
The most important and inventive painter in the 16th century Genoa, Luca Cambiaso developed a highly personal style characterized by a geometric simplification of anatomy and dramatic, often silvery light. Here the canopied bed and choice of profile view klend an unusual intimacy to the representation of the goddess of love and her son. The doves in the lower left corner are an emblem of Venus; the discarded quiver with an unbuckled strap indicates that she has disarmed her son, who was notorious for wounding lovers with his arrows. Cupid appears to seek his mother's comfort and holds up his index finger in a gesture like that found in images of Cupid the honey seeker, stung by a bee. This theme from classical poetry was revived as a subject for painting during the Renaissance..

AIC: European Galleries [Jan Sanders van Hemessen - Judith]

2012-01-08T05:48:00.000-08:00

Judith
1540 / Oil on canvas
By Jan Sanders van Hemessen.. [Neatherland, 1500-1556]..

For saving the Jewish people from the armies of the Assyrian general Holofernes, the biblical Judith was viewed as a model of civic virtue in the renaissance. The beautiful widow cut off the head of the drunken and besotted general after willingly entering his camp. Jan van Hemessen's interpretation of Judith as a powerful nude stresses her courage and also reflects contemporary ambivalence towards the seductive viles she used against Holofernes, the dangerous power of woman was a recurrent and ironic theme in the art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance in Northern Europe..

Wikipedia informs...
He was a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter. He was born in Hemiksem, then called Hemessen or Heymissen. Following studies in Italy, in 1524 he settled in Antwerp. A mannerist, his images focused on human failings such as greed and vanity. Like his daughter, Catarina van Hemessen, he specialised in painted portraits..

AIC: European Galleries [Guido Reni - Salome with the head of Saint John, the Baptist]

2012-01-08T05:23:00.000-08:00

Salome with the head of Saint John, the Baptist
1639/42, Oil on canvas..
By Guido Reni [Italian, 1575 - 1642]

The most famous and successful Italian painter of his day, Guido reni worked in Rome and then in Bologna, where his highly refined, intensely spiritual style became dominant. Despite its horrific subject-matter, this unfinished work displays the graceful movement, delicate colors, and transparent paint application of Reni's late style. It represents an episode from the New Testament that had long been popular in Italian art. Having pleased her stepfather herod, with her dancing, the seductive Salome receives the head of Saint John, the Baptist, as her reward. The combination of religiosity, violence and eroticism appealed to the morbid aspects of the 17th century sensibility..

Still Life - Twentieth Century

2012-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Still Life with Flowers [1905]
Odilon Redon [French, 1840-1916]

Still Life with Queen, 1912
By Gabriele Munter [German, 1877–1962]

Still Life (Centrifugal Expansion of Colors), 1916..
By Gino Severini [Italian, 1883–1966]

Abstraction [Guitar and Glass]
By Juan Gris [Spanish 1887-1927]

Still Life - Nineteenth century

2012-01-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

Apples and Grapes [1880]
Claude Monet [French, 1840-1926]

Fruits of the Midi [1881]
Pierre-Auguste Renoir [French, 1841–1919]

Chrysanthemums [1881/82]
Pierre-Auguste Renoir [French, 1841–1919]

Fish (Still Life) [1864]..
Édouard Manet [French, 1832-1883]

Still Life: Corner of a Table [1873]
Henri Frantin Latour [French 1836-1904]

Still Life with Fruit and Wine Jug [1874]
Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli [French, 1824-1886]

Grapes, Lemons, Pears, and Apples [1887]
Vincent van Gogh [Dutch, 1853-1890]

Still Life with Fruits [1890]
Emile Bernard [French, 1868-1941]

The Vase of Tulips [1890]
Paul Cézanne [French, 1839-1906]

The Basket of Apples [1893]
Paul Cézanne [French, 1839-1906]

AIC: European Galleries [Abraham Janssens - Jupiter Rebuked by Venus]

2012-01-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

Jupiter Rebuked by Venus/ 1612/13
By Abraham Janssens..

In the painting Venus clasps the hand of her son Cupid, and lectures a scowling Jupiter, while the rest of the ancient gods crowd together on the clouds of Olympus. the reason for this domestic squabble is unclear, but it may relate to the episode of Trojan War. Abraham Janssens was the first artist to introduce Caravaggio's dramatic light into flemish painting, combining it with bold classical form and striking patterns and colors of Northern Mannerism. Janssens and peter Paul Reubens were rivals in the production of large scale history paintings like this one in the years after Reubens returned to Antwerp from Italy in 1608.

Wikipedia informs....
Abraham Janssens (ca. 1567/1576 - 1632)
was a Flemish Baroque painter. Till the appearance of Rubens he was considered perhaps the best historical painter of his time. The styles of the two artists are not unalike. In correctness of drawing Janssens excelled his great contemporary; in bold composition and in treatment of the nude he equalled him; but in faculty of color and in general freedom of disposition and touch he fell far short. A master of chiaroscuro, he gratified his taste for strong contrasts of light and shade in his torchlights and similar effects. Good examples of this master are to be seen in the Antwerp museum and the Vienna gallery. The stories of his jealousy of Rubens and of his dissolute life are quite unfounded.

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted.

AIC: European Galleries [Peter Paul Rubens - The Capture of Samson]

2012-01-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

AIC: European Galleries [Titian and Workshop - Danae]

2012-01-07T03:03:00.000-08:00

Danae
By Titian and Workshop [Italian]
1554 / Oil and Canvas

Read more on wikipedia..
Danae - Titian series..

AIC: European Galleries [Tintoretto - Tarquin and Lucretia]

2012-01-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Tarquin and Lucretia
1578/80 / Oil on canvas..
Jacopo Robusti [Tintoretto].. [Italian, 1518-1594]
From wikipedia..
[His] real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso. His work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures and bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style, while maintaining color and light typical of the Venetian School.

The marker reads..
According to Roman history the rape of virtuous matron Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, son of King of Rome, incited people to overthrow the monrachy and establish a republic in 510 BC. Lucretia subsequently committed suicide rather than bring dishonor to her family. With his characteristic expressive distortions of anatomy and space and a vibrant treatment of light, Tontoretto dipicted one of the most violent moments of the story. AS Tarquin and Lucretia struggle, a pillow flies through the air, her pearl necklace breaks apart and the canopy of her bed collapses [the fallen statue in the foreground served as a bedpost]. The dagger at Lucretia's feet besides her fallen pearls, refers to both Tarquin's threats and to her suicide..

AS Tarquin and Lucretia struggle, a pillow flies through the air, her pearl necklace breaks apart ..

canopy of her bed collapses [the fallen statue in the foreground served as a bedpost]. The dagger at Lucretia's feet besides her fallen pearls, refers to both Tarquin's threats and to her suicide..

AIC: European Galleries [El Greco - Various paintings ]

2012-01-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

The Feast in the House of Simon..

Saint James, The Less
1610/14..

The Assumption of the Virgin..
For more, click here..

AIC: European Galleries [El Greco - "The Assumption of the Virgin"]

2012-01-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Assumption of the Virgin
By Domenikos Theotokopoulos, called El Greco
[Spanish, born Crete, 1541–1614]
1577–79

El Greco’s treatment of the theme is striking. He divided his canvas into two zones, an earthly sphere of apostles and the heavenly sphere of angels. The apostles, arranged in a circle, turn toward each other in amazement and confusion..

Above, angels express their joy. Mary rises from her tomb on a crescent moon, a symbol of her purity. Although she has almost completely entered the divine realm, the hem of her dress falls lightly over the crescent, connecting her to earth.

From the website Art Acess, click here..
This enormous painting by El Greco (The Greek) was the artist’s first major commission when he arrived in his adopted country of Spain after training in Italy. It was commissioned for the central panel of the high altar of the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo. The story of the Assumption—when the Virgin Mary was taken up to heaven—is based on the apocryphal account by Saint James, who is depicted holding his book. The subject was represented often by artists, but El Greco’s treatment of the theme is striking. He divided his canvas into two zones, an earthly sphere of apostles and the heavenly sphere of angels. The apostles, arranged in a circle, turn toward each other in amazement and confusion. Above, angels express their joy. Mary rises from her tomb on a crescent moon, a symbol of her purity. Although she has almost completely entered the divine realm, the hem of her dress falls lightly over the crescent, connecting her to earth.

El Greco’s work is an example of the Mannerist style he helped define in which figures are elongated, cloaked in ample drapery, and twist and turn dramatically. The narrative of the Assumption unfolds through the emphatic gestures of the characters: the praying hands of the angels, the outstretched arms of the Virgin, the pointing finger of the apostle, and the gracefully upturned palm of the unidentified man to the left, which is emphasized by a break in the clouds. The artist’s use of flickering, high-keyed colors and broad brushwork further lend the work an ecstatic feeling sought after by Catholic Church patrons during the Counter-Reformation. El Greco used such bold colors and figural arrangements to arouse a spiritual fervor in the viewer and impart the deep sense of faith he himself felt.

AIC: European Gallery [Carlo Carra]

2012-01-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

Horsemen of the Apocalypse [1908]..
By Carlo Carra [Italian: 1881-1966]

AIC: American Galleries [Grant Wood - American Gothic]

2012-01-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

American Gothic..
By Grant Wood [American, 1891,1942]
1930 / Oil on beaver board..

In August 1930, Grant Wood visited Eldon, Iowa, where he saw a modest residence built in the 1880s in a style known as Carpenter Gothic. The house inspired the painter to imagine its residents: an insular Victorian pair clinging to old values, or "American Gothic people," as he described them. Wood asked his dentist, Dr. B. H. McKeeby, and his sister, Nan Wood, to serve as the models for the farmer and his unmarried daughter. He constructed the painting to convey the couple's gendered roles, pairing the man with a pitchfork to suggest his labor, and placing house plants behind the woman as a symbol of her domesticity. It was exhibited here at the Art Institute in December 1930, American Gothic was an immediate popular sensation - in time becoming the most iconic - and most parodied - painting of the 20th century.

AIC: American Galleries [Georgia O'Keeffe - Various paintings]

2012-01-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

Sky Above Clouds IV, 1965
Oil on canvas..
For more, click here...

Blue and Green Music, 1919/21
Oil on canvas

Red Hills with Flowers, 1937
Oil on canvas..

Yellow Hickory Leaves with Daisy, 1928..
Oil on canvas

Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929

from the AIC website..
The pioneers of American abstraction responded to modern European movements in individual ways. Georgia O'Keeffe approached her subjects, whether buildings or flowers, landscapes or bones, by intuitively magnifying their shapes and simplifying their details to underscore their essential beauty. Black Cross, New Mexico was painted during a summer visit to that state, where O'Keeffe eventually settled. The large, dark cross seems to stand watch over the rolling hills at sunset, proclaiming man's presence in this stark landscape.

AIC: American Galleries [Georgia O'Keeffe - Sky Above Clouds IV]

2012-01-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Sky Above Clouds IV
by Georgia O'Keeffe..

Painted in the summer of 1965,when Georgia O' Keeffe was 77 years old, this monumental work culminates a series based on the artist's experiences as an airplane passenger during the 1950s. Working in Abiquiu, New Mexico, O'Keeffe began around 1963 to capture the endless expanses of clouds she had observed from airplae windows during trips all over the world. Beginning with a relatively realistic depiction of small white clouds on a three-by-four foot canvas, she progressed to more stylized images of the motif on large surfaces, ultimately extending her ideas across a canvas that spanned the entire 24-foot wide of her garage. Given it's scale and the predominance of rounded shapes in the composition, Sky Above Clouds IV has often been compared to Claude Monet's famous waterlilies murals.

O Keeffe wrote..
"I painted a painting eight feet high and twenty four feet wide - it kept me working every minute from six am till eight or nine at night as I had to finish before it was cold - I worked in the garage and it had no heat - Such a size is of course ridiculous but I had it in my head as something I wanted to do for a couple of years, so I finally got at it and had a fine time - and there it is - Not my best and not my worst".

In 1970 a retrospective of O'Keeffe work was scheduled for installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art institute of Chicago, and the San Franciso Museum of Art; Sky Above Clouds IV was never shown in San Franciso, however, because it would not pass through any door of the museum The painting thus remained on loan to the Art Institute for more than a decade, while the artist and public minded collectors of her art arranged for it to become one of the highlight's of the museum's permanent collection..

The special relation between O'Keeffe and the Art Institute began in 1903, when she enrolled briefly as a student at the School of the Art Institute. Her first museum retrospective was organized here in 1943. Later as executor of the estate of her husband, the pioneering American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, O'Keeffe presented the Art Institute with an important group of Modernist works, including a number of her own. She continued to make significant additions to this bequest until her death, at age 98, in 1986...

RELATED LINKS..
American Galleries [Georgia O'Keeffe - Various paintings] ..

AIC: American Galleries [Edward Hopper- Nighthawks]

2012-01-05T04:46:00.000-08:00

Nighthawks (1942)
By Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967)

Edward Hopper stated that "Nighthawks" was inspired by "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet," but the image, with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative, has a timeless quality the transcends its particular locale. The painting depicts a brightly lit, sparsely adorned diner peopled by four figures whose relationships to one another remain frustratingly ambiguous. It is unclear whether they bear some tense, potentially explosive relationship, or whether they have been drawn into the diner from the forbidding darkness to take refuge in the silent company of strangers. "Nighthawks" is Hoppers most famous painting - reworked and parodied countless times, it has become an icon of American culture." ..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Jackson Pollock - Various paintings]

2012-01-04T02:42:00.000-08:00

Untitled / 1938-41
Oil on linen

From AIC website..
The late 1930s marked a key period of transition for Jackson Pollock, in which he began to separate himself from the influence of his early mentor, the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock became engaged in an intense dialogue with the work of the Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros; he was inspired by their social commitment and use of primitive, archetypal imagery. The expressionistic style and oblong format of Untitled recall Orozco’s murals at Pomona and Dartmouth Colleges, which Pollock had seen firsthand. The bullfight imagery evokes the work of Pablo Picasso, whose Guernica (1937) made a powerful impression on Pollock when he saw the painting in New York in 1939.

The Key, 1946
Oil on linen..

From the AIC website..
The Key belongs to Jackson Pollock’s Accabonac Creek series, named for a stream near the East Hampton property that he and his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, purchased in late 1945. Marking a crucial moment in his evolution as an artist, this quasi-Surrealist painting was created on the floor of an upstairs bedroom and worked on directly from all sides. Although there is a general suggestion of landscape, here the process of painting became primary, expressing the power of spontaneous action and chance effects. The resulting abstraction, with its expressive, gestural appearance, prefigured the allover compositions of Pollock’s celebrated drip paintings, which debuted the following year.

Greyed Rainbow, 1953
Oil on linen..

From AIC website..
In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock developed a revolutionary form of Abstract Expressionism by dripping, pouring, and splashing paint onto large-scale canvases. Emphasizing the expressive power of the artist’s gestures, materials, and tools, Pollock often applied paint with sticks, trowels, and palette knives instead of brushes. With no apparent beginning or end, top or bottom, his works imply an extension of his art beyond the edges of the canvas. Among the last great purely abstract paintings Pollock made before his untimely death, and a quintessential example of action painting, Greyed Rainbow is predominantly black, white, gray, and silver; in the bottom third of the canvas, however, the artist thinly concealed orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The title presumably refers to these grayed sections of hidden color.

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Willem de Kooning - Various paintings]

2012-01-04T02:13:00.000-08:00

Excavation, 1950
Oil on canvas

From the AIC website..
Excavation, Willem de Kooning’s largest painting up to 1950, exemplifies the artist’s innovative style of expressive brushwork and distinctive organization of space into loose, sliding planes with open contours. According to de Kooning, his point of departure was an image of women working in a rice field from Bitter Rice, a 1949 Italian Neorealist film. The mobile structure of hooked, calligraphic lines defines anatomical parts—bird and fish shapes, human noses, eyes, teeth, necks, and jaws—revealing the particular tension between abstraction and figuration that is inherent in de Kooning’s work. Aptly titled, the composition reflects his technically masterful painting process: an intensive building up of the surface and scraping down of its paint layers, often for months, until the desired effect was achieved.

Untitled, 1948-49
Oil and enamel on paper, mounted on composition board..

From the AIC website..
Willem de Kooning established his reputation as a key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement with a series of black-and-white paintings that he created in the late 1940s using household enamels and paper. Characterized by lyrical brushwork and biomorphic abstractions, these works marked the artist’s shift from a figurative drawing style, largely influenced by Arshile Gorky and other European artists, to the evolving gestural tradition of the New York School. Having eliminated color from his palette at that moment, de Kooning became more spontaneous with his application of paint, pushing his compositions to the edge of the paper. The resulting works embodied the physical act of painting, a defining characteristic of what would later become termed “action painting..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Georges Braque - Various paintings]

2012-01-03T15:22:00.000-08:00

Landscape at L'Estaque, autumn 1906
Oil on canvas..

Antwerp, 1906
Oil on canvas..

Little Harbor in Normandy, spring 1909
Oil on canvas

Woman at an Easel (Green Screen), 1936
Oil on canvas..

Still Life with Fruits and Stringed Instrument, 1938

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Pablo Picasso - Nude under A Pine Tree]

2012-01-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Nude under A Pine Tree / Jan, 1959..
By Pablo Picasso..
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

For many artists living amidst the destruction and rebuilding of postwar Europe, the great painters and sculptors of the past offered an important sense of continuity and order. In "Nude under A Pine Tree", Pablo Picasso looked to the long tradition of figurative painting invoking the seductive female nude in Francsisco de Goya's "Nude Maja" [1789-1800, Museco del Prado, Madrid]. Radically transforming Goya's model, however, Picasso placed the monumental figure on rocky terrain, rather than plush chaise. he also used bold, modernist forms that referenced his own earlier artistic styles: flattened face, segmented legs and torso, and multiple viewpoints recall some of his cubist works, while the color palette evokes his classical style of the 1920s..

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Pablo Picasso - The Red Armchair]

2012-01-02T18:52:00.000-08:00

The Red Armchair /Dec 16, 1931..
Oil and Ripolin on panel..
By Pablo Picasso..
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

In 1931, Pablo Picasso began a series of paintings of his mistress, Marie Therese Walter, of which "The Red Armchair" was the first. Perhaps acknowledging the double life they were leading, Picasso invented a new motif - a face encompassing the both frontal and profile views. A constant innovator Picasso experimented beyond form and style, exploring different materials - including found objects and even studio scraps - in his work. The Red Armchair demostrates the artists use of Ripolin, an industrial housepaint that he first employed as early as 1912 and used here, mixed with oil paint, to produce a variety of surfaces, from the yellow roughened background to the almost brushless finish of black paint..

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Pablo Picasso - Head]

2012-01-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

Head / 1927..
Oil and chalk on canvas..
By Pablo Picasso
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

Head is an example of Pablo Picasso's constant experimentation with style and techniques: to make this work, he laid the canvas flat and sprinkled powedered pigment, in a manner similar to Native American sand painting, onto the still-wet painted surface. In some areas Picasso left layers of the powderey material undisturbed, making a rough surface; in others he scraped the pigment off, producing a flat and blurred effect. The experimental qualities of "Head" certainly appealed to its first owner, English Surrealist artist Gordon Onslow Ford, who asked Andre Breton to contact him if he found any "marvelous" work for sale. Ford enthusiastically purchased this painting after seeing a photograph that Breton sent to him in response to his request..

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [ Pablo Picasso - Mother and Child]

2012-01-02T16:16:00.000-08:00

Mother and Child / 1921..
By Pablo Picasso..
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

In 1917,Picasso traveled to Rome to design sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. Impressed by the ancient and Renaissance art of that city, he began painting monumental figures inspired by antiquity. His new classical style was influenced by finely modeled odalisques of Jean- Auguste Dominique Ingres and the late nudes of Pierrie Auguste Renoir. "Mother and Child" was also inspired by Picasso's own life. Three years earlier, he had married Olga Koklova, a Russian dancer, with whom he had a son in 1921. For the next few years Picasso produced at least 12 images of mothers with children, returning to the theme that he had explored during the Blue Period, though his new works were radically different in their sculptural quality and monumental scale...

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Pablo Picasso - "Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler"]

2012-01-02T05:24:00.000-08:00

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler /autumn, 1910
By Pablo Picasso..
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

The subject of this portrait is the art dealer, writer and publisher Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who opened his gallery in Paris in 1908. Kahnweiler introduced the artist to Georges Braque and was a great champion of cubist works. The dealer sat as many as 30 times for this portrait. In it, Picasso rejected conventional representation, instead, he featured and submerged Kahnweiler's form within a network of shimmering, semitransparent planes that merge with the atmosphere and objects around him. Despite the portrait highly abstract character, however, Picasso added physical attributes - a lock of hair and the knot of a tie - to identify his very special subject..

"Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler" [1910] at display at AIC, along with two other paintings, "Head of a woman" [1909] by Pablo Picasso.. and .. "Harbor in Normandy" [1909] by Georges Braque..

The development of cubism can be attributed to two men, George Braque and Pablo Picasso. They worked side by side in the same studio during their cubist period, and their work was almost indistinguishable.

Display at MOMA, New York City..
Left painting: "Ma Jolie" [1911-12]- by Pablo Picasso
Right painting: "Man with a Guitar" [1911-12] - by Georges Braque..
The two look almost indistinguishable.

Ma Jolie..
1911-12/ Oil on canvas..
Location: MOMA, New York City..

Ma Jolie (My pretty girl) was the refrain of a popular song performed at a Parisian music hall Picasso frequented. The artist suggests this musical association by situating a treble clef and music staff near the bold, stenciled letters. Ma jolie was also Picasso's nickname for his lover Marcelle Humbert, whose figure he loosely built using the signature shifting planes of Analytic Cubism. This is far from a traditional portrait of an artist's beloved, but there are clues to its representational content. The central triangular mass subtly indicates the shape of a woman's head and torso, and a group of six vertical lines at the painting's lower center represent the strings of a guitar, which the woman strums. In Cubist works of this period, Picasso and Georges Braque employed multiple modes of representation simultaneously: here, Picasso combined language (in the black lettering), symbolic meaning (in the treble clef), and near abstraction (in the depiction of his subject).

Man with a Guitar..
1911-12 / Oil on canvas..
Location: MOMA, New York City..

Braque painted "Man with a Guitar" in a mode that came to be called Analytic Cubism. In works created in this style, he and Pablo Picasso experimented with different types of representation to challenge the orthodoxy of illusionistic space in painting. Here Braque paired an accessible, lifelike rendering of a nail and rope, at left, with a nearly indecipherable rendering of a human figure playing a guitar. Braque and Picasso's collaboration was so close when they developed Analytic Cubism that Braque later compared them to two mountaineers, bound together. In order to remove the mystique of the maker from their paintings, they both habitually signed the back of their works instead of the front.

RELATED LINKS..
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Pablo Picasso - Half Length Female Nude]

2012-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Half Length Female Nude / autumn, 1906..
By Pablo Picasso..
From the post, AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..

From 1904 through 1906, Pablo Picasso moved away from the melancholic subjects of his Blue Period to the more optimistic themes of his Rose Period. In the summer of 1906, the artist traveled to the Catalan village of Gosol; upon his return to Paris that autumn, he painted Half-Length Female Nude. In stark contrast to the gaunt visage of "The Old Guitarist", the angular mask-like qualities of the figure's face reveal Picasso's growing interest in the ancient Iberian sculpture and non-Western art. In this way this work anticipates the artist's iconic painting of the following year, "Les Demoiselles d' Avignon" [MOMA, New York City]..

AIC: "The Old Guitarist" - by Pablo Picasso ...

MOMA: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - by Pablo Picasso...

RELATED LINKS:
# AIC: Pablo Picasso - Various paintings..
# AIC: "The Old Guitarist" - by Pablo Picasso ...
# MOMA: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - by Pablo Picasso ...

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Pablo Picasso - Various paintings]

2012-01-01T17:37:00.000-08:00

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
- Pablo Picasso..

Just a glimse of the artist's evolution from 1906 to 1954. Picasso's "Half-Length Female Nude" [1906] .. and.. "Portrait of Sylvette David" [1954]..

Picasso's trasition from, Blue Phase, to Rose Phase, to African Art Phase, to Cubism, to Classicism.. his innovative techniques, his experimentation with styles and materials, all have intrigued me. Also his "Bohemian Casanova" ways, and the various women who where the driving force in his life, all add to my curiosity!! Strangly [or not] Picasso's Women [And their Tragic Tales] .. has been one of the most viewed articles that I have posted. Here are a few posts on the most prolific and conssumate artist, Pablo Picasso..

Pablo Picasso..
25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973..
A Spanish painter and sculptor, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Articles..
# AIC: Picasso's Women [And their Tragic Tales]
# Pablo Picasso - Different phases / periods of his work..
Picasso at AIC..
# Pablo Picasso - Various paintings
# Pablo Picasso - "Overpainting" on "The Old Guitarist"..
# Pablo Picasso - "Half-Length Female Nude" [1906]..
# Pablo Picasso - "Daniel-Henry Khanweiler" [1910]...
# Pablo Picasso - "Mother and Child" [1921]..
# Pablo Picasso - "Head" [1927]
# Pablo Picasso - "The Red Armchair" [1931]..
# Pablo Picasso - "Nude under A Pine Tree" [1959]..
Picasso at MOMA..
# MOMA Picasso at MOMA ..
# MOMA - "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" [Picasso]..

The Old Guitarist/ 1903..
"Overpainting" on "The Old Guitarist"..

Nude with a Pitcher/ 1906

Half-Length Female Nude / 1906..

Head of a woman / 1909..

Daniel-Henry Khanweiler / 1910...

Man with a pipe /1915

Mother and Child / 1921..

Still life /1922

Head / 1927

The Red Armchair / 1931..

Portrait of Sylvette David /1954

Nude under A Pine Tree / 1959..

AIC: European Galleries [Georges Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte ]

2012-01-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte /1884-86..
By Georges Seurat [French, 1859-1891]

In his best-known and largest painting, Georges Seurat depicted people relaxing in a suburban park on an island in the Seine River called La Grande Jatte. The artist worked on the painting in several campaigns, beginning in 1884 with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colors. He later added small dots, also in complementary colors, that appear as solid and luminous forms when seen from a distance.

Seurat’s use of this highly systematic and “scientific” technique, subsequently called Pointillism, distinguished his art from the more intuitive approach to painting used by the Impressionists. Although Seurat embraced the subject matter of modern life preferred by artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he went beyond their concern for capturing the accidental and instantaneous qualities of light in nature, seeking instead to evoke permanence by recalling the art of the past, especially Egyptian and Greek sculpture and Italian Renaissance frescoes. As he explained to the French poet Gustave Kahn, "The Panathenaeans of Phidias formed a procession. I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color." Some contemporary critics, however, found his figures to be less a nod to earlier art history than a commentary on the posturing and artificiality of modern Parisian society.

Seurat made the final changes to La Grande Jatte in 1889. He restretched the canvas in order to add a painted border of red, orange, and blue dots that provides a visual transition between the interior of the painting and this specially designed white frame, which is reproduced here.

The Art Institute of Chicago [AIC] has an important role in shining spotlight on this painting.. As this painting is Seurat's first major painting to enter a public collection, La Grande Jatte has become an icon, one of the art world's most recognizable images..

The very informative AIC website has some writeup on this painting..
Seurat, and the making of La Grande Jatte, click here..
Seurat was only 26 when he first showed A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 at the eighth annual and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886. In scale, technique, and composition it appeared as a scandalous eruption within Impressionism, a deliberate challenge to its first practitioners, such as Renoir and Monet. It immediately changed the course of vanguard painting, initiating a new direction that was baptized "Neoimpressionism."

Seurat died at age 31. He created other ambitious canvases, but La Grande Jatte has remained his definitive achievement. Although the picture was only rarely seen in the three decades following his death in 1891, its visibility was dramatically increased in 1924, when Frederic Clay Bartlett purchased the picture and placed it on loan at the Art Institute. It has hung there ever since. Seurat's first major painting to enter a public collection, La Grande Jatte has become an icon, one of the art world's most recognizable images.

Some details of the painting..

In the same gallery where Seurat's "La Grade Jatte" is at display, are two miniature paintings by Georges Seurat..
- Final Study for "Bathing Place, Asnières" [1883]..
- Oil sketch for "La Grande Jatte" [1884]

Final Study for "Bathing Place, Asnières" [1883]..
Miniature version of great masterpiece of Seurat's early career..

Final Study for "Bathing Place, Asnières" [1883]..
The marker reads..
Georges Seurat's monumental "Bathers at Asnieres" [1884] for which this is a preparatory work, is now in the National Gallery, London. A scene of men and boys on the bank of Seine River in working class suburb of Asnieres, it differs greatly in mood from the sparkling scenes of riverside painted by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste renoir. Nevertheless, the focus on modernity, use of pure, light pigments, and airy brushwork shows how this young artist furthered the most progressive tendencies of "classic" Impressionism. The same year he exhibited this painting he also began making studies of a site directly across the river for his monumental, "Sunday on La Grand Jatte", also on view in this gallery.

Oil sketch for "La Grande Jatte" [1884]

Oil sketch for "La Grande Jatte" [1884]
The marker reads..
This small oil on a thin wood panel is one of the 24 painted studies Georges Seurtat made while conceiving the large celebrated painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Although at first glance, the panel seems close to the larger canvas, it's 20 or more figures have little to do with the final composition. The trio at right, for example with the elderly seated figure, was completely rethought in the final composition, in which a man in top hat and a woman walking a monkey convey a sense of grand solmnity and wry humor - a sophisticated way that is completely absent in the clumsily positioned figures of the oil panel...

A man in top hat and a woman walking a monkey convey a sense of grand solmnity and wry humor..

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte /1884-86..

REFERENCES..
# Seurat and the making of La Grande Jatte..
# Introduction: Seurat's Final Study for "The Bathers at Asnieres"..
# Examination: Seurat's Artistic Process for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte ..
# Biography: Georges Seurat ...

AIC: European Galleries [Paul Gauguin - Various paintings]

2012-01-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

The Ancestors of Tehamana / Tehamana Has Many Parents
[Merahi metua no Tehamana]
1893/ Oil on canvas..
By Paul Gauguin [French, 1848-1903]

Merahi metua no Tehamana..
Tehamana was a Tahitian girl who became Paul Gauguin's companion and, in some ways, the embodiment of his feelings about Tahitian culture. Here he showed her wearing the prim dress imposed on native women by European missionaries, a sign that Tahiti was not quite the 'primitive' paradise the artist had hoped to find. The Tahitian title Gauguin inscribed on the canvas refers to the local custom of sharing children between real and foster parents. He later adopted the French title Les Aïeux de Tehamana (The Ancestors of Tehamana), which suggests the ancient belief that Tahitians descended from the union of the deities Ta'aroa and Hina. The figure on the wall to the left is Hina, presented in a pose borrowed from Hindu sculptures.

Day of the God
1894, oil on canvas..

Day of the God..
Day of the God is one of a small number of paintings of Tahitian subjects that Paul Gauguin made in France between his stays in the South Pacific. An imaginary rather than realistic depiction of the South Seas, it is dominated by an idol of the goddess Hina. To the right of her, women dance the upaupa, a suggestive ancient Tahitian dance that missionaries and colonial authorities tried to suppress. In a middle ground of pink sand sits a female bather flanked by ambiguously gendered figures lying on their sides. Although the arrangement of this trio seems symbolic - perhaps of birth, life, and death - Gauguin made its exact meaning an enigma.

Polynesian Woman with Children..
1901 / Oil on canvas..
In this painting, the young boy in the woman's lap may be Paul Gauguin's son, born to his Tahitian lover, Pahura. The boy was named Emil after the artist's eldest legitimate child. The older woman may be the boy's grandmother. This composition recalls the common Christian image of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child and the young Saint John the Baptist, although here the older child is presumably a girl.

Woman in Front of a Still Life by Cézanne, 1890..

Why Are You Angry? (No Te Aha Oe Riri), 1896..

The Hibiscus Tree (Te Burao), 1892..

Arlesiennes [Mistral] 1888..
Oil on jute..
This painting dates from the two months Paul Gauguin spent living and working with Vincent van Gogh at the Yellow House in Arles, France.

AIC: European Galleries [Henri de Loutouse-Lautrec - Various paintings]

2011-12-31T20:18:00.000-08:00

At the Moulin Rouge..
1892/95 / Oil on canvas..
By Henri de Loutouse-Lautrec [French, 1861-1901]

Moulin de la Galette
1889 / Oil on canvas..

Equestrienne (At the Cirque Fernando)..
1887–88 / Oil on canvas..

Portrait of Jeanne Wenz..
1886 / Oil on canvas..

Ballet Dancers..
1885/86 / Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas

AIC: European Galleries [Vincent van Gogh - Various paintings ]

2011-12-31T11:31:00.000-08:00

Self-Portrait..
1887
By Vincent van Gogh [Dutch, 1853-1890]

Vincent van Gogh painted his first known self-portrait in 1886, following the model of the 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt. But by the time he made this work, a year later, he had clearly shifted his allegiance from the Old Masters to the Parisian avant-garde. Under the influence of Neo-Impressionist color theory, he based this painting on the contrast of complementary colors. The overall blue-green tone of the background serves as a foil to the orange-red of the artist's hair and beard. While the intensity of the colors is enhanced by the brushwork, the painting's energy and turbulence hint at the inner life of the artist.

The Poet's Garden..
1888 / Oil on canvas..
A very interesting read on Van Gogh's The Poet's Garden, click here..

Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy [Arnieres], 1887.

The Bedroom
1889 / Oil on canvas..

Vincent van Gogh's three versions of this composition are the only record he made of the interior of the Yellow House, where he lived while he was in Arles, in the south of France. The house embodied his dream of a "Studio of the South," a community of like-minded artists working in harmony to create art for the future. The first version was one of the paintings Van Gogh made to decorate the house for his first guest, Paul Gauguin. "It's just simply my bedroom," he wrote, "only here color is to do everything...to be suggestive here of rest or sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination." Gauguin's stay at the Yellow House would be frought with tension: after two months, Van Gogh's self-mutilation and Gauguin's flight back to Paris ended the Studio of the South. Van Gogh made this second version of "The Bedroom" about a year after the first, while he was living at an asylum in Saint-Remy.

The Drinkers [after Domier]
1890/ Oil on canvas..
This picture dates from the last year of Vincent van Gogh's life - he was to die of a self-inflicted gun shot wound on July 29, 1890.
A very interesting read on van Gogh's "The Drinkers", click here..
click on the PDF file..

Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La Berceuse)..
1889 / Oil on canvas..
In December of 1888, van Gogh began a portrait of Madame Roulin (born Augustine-Alix Pellicot), the wife of the artist's close friend, postman Joseph Roulin. By March 1889 he had completed four additional versions. This version is probably the second in the series and was probably intended for Gauguin..

An interesting read on
Van Gogh's "Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle", click here..
An excerpt..
Conceiving the painting as part of a triptych to send to Gauguin after they separated, van Gogh intended La Berceuse to be flanked by two paintings of sunflowers. In a May 1889 letter to Theo, Vincent sketched this arrangement, explaining "the yellow and orange tones of the head will gain in brilliance by the proximity of the yellow wings. And then you will understand what I wrote you, that my idea had been to make a sort of decoration"

Van Gogh's ongoing interest in complementary color schemes is evident in the juxtaposition of Madame Roulin's bright, emerald-green skirt and dark, olive bodice in contrast to her orange hair, rust-colored chair, and vermilion floor. His pairing of red and green is enhanced by the lively floral wallpaper, derived from a self-portrait by Gauguin, which echoes the further variations on this complementary color scheme and adds blue and orange accents.

AIC: European Galleries [Paul Cezanne - Various paintings ]

2011-12-31T11:10:00.001-08:00

Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair
1888 - 1890 / Oil on canvas
By Paul Cezanne [French, 1839-1906]

Paul Cezanne generally refused portrait commissions, preferring to paint his friends and family members, especially his wife, Emelie-Hortense Fiquet. Cezanne and Fiquet met in 1869 in Paris, where she worked as an artist's model. They had a son together in 1872 and married in 1886. By the time Cezanne painted this portrait, along with two others showing Fiquet wearing the same carmine dress, the family was living largely off the inheritance left to them by Cezanne's wealthy father, who had died in 1886. The setting is their apartment at 15, quai d'Anjou on the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. As in many of the other 30 or so portraits that Cezanne painted of his wife, here her features are strangely inexpressive, as though the artist saw her more as an inanimate form than as a person.

The Bay of Marseilles, seen from L'Estaque, 1885..

The Vase of Tulips, c. 1890..

The Basket of Apples
1893 / Oil on canvas..

In "The Basket of Apples," Paul Cezanne's use of pronounced countours and sketchy, broken ones elsewhere, along with such elements as the strange misalignment of the tabletop to the right and left, shows that he was trying to capture an experience and construct a composition outside the bounds of conventional modeling and perspective. For him, the painting of still lifes was a meditation on sense impressions, picture making, and the relation between the two. He probably signed this work before sending it to Paris for his first, revelatory one-man exhibition in November 1895, held in the gallery of Ambroise Vollard, who would become the artist's exclusive dealer.

AIC: European Galleries [Berthe Morisot - Various paintings]

2011-12-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

Woman at Her Toilette..
1875/80 / Oil on canvas..
By Berthe Morisot [French, 1841-1895]

Berthe Morisot showed "Woman at Her Toilette" in the fifth Impressionist exhibition, in 1880. It is one of numerous canvases in which she painted well-to-do women dressing and readying themselves to appear in public. The presence of her signature on the lower edge of the mirror suggests a parallel between painter and subject - the former creating beauty with colors on a canvas, and the latter doing the same in a mirror with makeup and clothes.

From wikipedia..Berthe Morisot..
Berthe Morisot (January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895)..
was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.

AIC: European Galleries [Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Various paintings ]

2011-12-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando
(Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg)
1879 / Oil on canvas..
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir [French, 1841-1919]

Two Sisters (On the Terrace)
1881 / Oil on canvas..
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this delightful homage to springtime, youth, and beauty on the terrace of the Fournaise family's restaurant on the Seine River at Chatou - where, six years before, he had made "Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise". The painting was already under way by April 19, 1881, when, at lunch in Chatou with the American painter James McNeill Whistler, Renoir spoke of postponing a planned trip to London: "The weather is fine and I have my models; that's my only excuse." The young woman in this painting wears the blue flannel dress favored by lady boaters at the time. She and the girl at her side were not actually related. The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel invented the title "Two Sisters" when he bought the painting from Renoir in July 1881.

Near the Lake
1879/80 / Oil on canvas..
The setting of Near the Lake has not been identified, although it could perhaps be the popular tourist destination of lac Enghien, about 50 minutes by train from paris via Argenteuil. Renoir used his friends as models to celebrate the leisure and companionship away from the city center. Along with his earlier scenes of waterside conviviality, such as Lunch at Resturant Fournaise, this painting, looks forward to renoir most celebrated masterpiece, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party" 1880-81, Phillipns collection, Washington DC.

Alfred Sisley
1876/ Oil on canvas..

Woman at piano
1975/76

The laundress
1877/79

Lucie Berard [Child in White] 1883..
Here Renoir portrayed the three-year old daughter of his patron Paul Antoine Berard as a picture of innocence. Dressed in white, with her small soft hands positioned rather helplessly at her side, she looks past her viewer as through towards her future. this is one of a number of portraits of Berard family that Renoir made..

Seascape, 1879..
This subject , unusual for Renoir, was painted during his stay at he home of Paul Berard in Wargemonte, on the Normandy coast..

Crysanthemum 1881/82..

Jean Renoir Sewing..
1899 / Oil on canvas..

Very interesting read..
Renoir's Muses [Modern Art History] ..
Interpretive Resource ..

AIC: European Galleries [Alfred Sisley - Various paintings]

2011-12-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Seine at Port-Marly, Piles of Sand..
1875 / Oil on canvas..
By Alfred Sisley [French, 1839-1899]

From wikipedia Alfred Sisley..
Alfred Sisley (30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899)
was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs.

Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton, executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing.

AIC: American Galleries [Mary Cassatt - Various paintings]

2011-12-30T08:25:00.000-08:00

On A Balcony
1878/79..
By Mary Cassatt [American, 1844-1926]

The Child's Bath..
1893/ Oil on canvas..

Responding to the work of Edgar Degas and Japanese prints, Mary Cassatt created unorthodox compositions such as The Child's Bath by using then-unconventional devices like an elevated vantage point, cropping of forms, and bold outlines. In her portrayals of women and children, Cassatt was able to avoid sentimentality because of her natural reserve and her observation of the treatment of the same subject in Japanese prints. In The Child's Bath, the crisp, clear forms and lively patterns are as appealing as the private, domestic moment we are permitted to witness.

AIC: European Galleries [Camille Pissarro - Various paintings ]

2011-12-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

Young Peasant Woman drinking her Cafe au Late
1881/ Oil on canvas..
By Camille Pissarro [French, 1830-1903]

In the 1880s, at a time when many of the original Impressionist painters had begun to pursue independent styles, Camille Pissaro actively worked to keep the group together. He persuaded Gustave Caillebotte and Claude Monet to take part in the seventh Impressionist exhibition, in 1882, and also displayed a number of his own paintings of peasant girls. Here the small brushstrokes, applied one next to the other and sometimes overlaid with dabs of thicker paint, result in an irregularly built-up surface, serving to integrate figure and setting and evoke the textures of the young woman's wool clothing.

Woman Bathing Her feet in a Brook
1894/95 Oil on canvas..

Camille Pissaro referred to this painting in a letter of November 1894, when he wrote to his son Lucien that he wanted to send him a picture of "a little peasant girl dipping her feet in the water." At the time, he considered the work almost finished but still lacking "that little something," exclaiming optimistically, "I think I will get it, I feel it!" His continued ruminations on the composition may explain its heavily encrusted surface. After finishing it, he painted a variation featuring a nude (a rarity for the artist) in the same pose and setting (1895; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

AIC: European Galleries [Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day]

2011-12-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

Paris Street, Rainy Day
1877 / Oil on canvas
By Gustave Caillebotte [French 1848-1894]

In his masterpiece, "Paris Street; Rainy Day"; Gustave Caillebotte brought an unusual monumentality and compositional control to a typical Impressionist subject, the new boulevards that were changing Paris cityscape. The result is at once real and contrived, casual and choreographed. With its curiously detached figures the canvas depicts the anonymity that the boulevards seemed to create. By the time it appeared in the third Impressionist exhibition, held in April 1877, the artist was 29 years old, a man of considerable wealth and not only the youngest, but also the most active member of the Impressionist group. He contributed six of his oen canvases to the exhibition; played a leading part in its funding, organization, promotion and installation and lent a number of paintings by his colleagues that he owned..

AIC: European Galleries [Edouard Manet - Various paintings ]

2011-12-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

Woman Reading
1879/80
By Edouard Manet, [French, 1832-1883]

Wikipedia informs..
Edouard Manet [1832-1883] was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.
Here's links to some of his most famous paintings..
The Luncheon on the Grass/ 1862-63..
Olympia /1963 ..

Now back to paintings at AIC..

Portrait of a Woman with a Black Fidu
1878

Steamboat Leaving Boulogne..
1864

The Races of Longchamp
1866

Jesus Mocked by Soldiers
1866..

AIC: European Galleries [Edouard Manet - The Races of Langchamp]

2011-12-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Races of Longchamp / 1866
By Edouard Manet [French, 1832-1883]

With the characteristic focus on the pleasures of modern life, Edouard Manet depicted the scene of the race track in the bois de Boulogne, on the western outskirts of Paris. The popularity of Longchamp, where races were run for the first time in 1857, signaled a general revival in French horse racing. This painting record the last moment of a race, as a horses rush past the finish line, indicated by pole with a circular top. Unlike traditional sporting artists, who always showed races from the side, Manet dared to compose the scene so that the throng of horses and jockeys thunders straight towards the viewer...

AIC: European Galleries [Edouard Manet - Woman Reading ]

2011-12-28T05:31:00.000-08:00

Woman Reading
1879/80 /Oil on canvas..

As though the brief impression of Edouard Manet here painted a young Parisienne sitting in a cafe or brasseries, a glass of beer at her side. Even her face consists of just a few quick strokes applied to the white-primed canvas like makeup. She is probably reading the recently launched La Vie moderne, a magazine with short articles on literature, art and society that appealed to men and women alike. Manet contributed illustrations to the publication and exhibited some of his work - including this one - at his office..

AIC: The Ballerinas of AIC

2011-12-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

Ballet Dancers
by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec [French, 1864-1901]
1885-86 / Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas..

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
By Edgar Degas
NOTE: Temporary exhibit
Photography not allowed. I took this image in the 2006 exhibit!
For more, click here ..

Ballet Dancer on Stage, 1890-95
Pastel on paper..
- by Edgar Degas..

The Star
by Edgar Degas
1879/81 / Pastel on cream wove paper, edge mounted on board..
From AIC website..
This dazzling, powdery pastel comes as close to being a portrait as any of Degas's images of dancers. It depicts the young Rosita Mauri, a dancer who enjoyed great popular success from 1878 to 1898, imagining she is the star.

Danseuses rose, 1878,
Oil on canvas..

On the Stage
- by Edgar Degas..
1876-77
Pastel and essence over monotype on cream laid paper, laid down on board..

Yellow Dancers (In the Wings)
- by Edgar Degas..
1874/76 / Oil on canvas..

AIC: Music and Dance at AIC

2011-12-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Nightlife
by Archibald J. Motley, Jr. [1891-1981]
1943/ Oil on canvas
Location: Galleries of American Art/ Rice Bldg.

Abstraction [Guitar and Glass]
By Juan Gris [Spanish 1887-1927]
Location: Galleries of Modern & Contemporary Art / Modern Wing..
For more, click here..

The Old Guitarist
By Pablo Picasso
For more, click here..

Dancing Girl
By Paul Klee..
1940 / Oil on canvas..
For more, click here..

The Star
by Edgar Degas
1879/81 / Pastel on cream wove paper, edge mounted on board..
For more, click here..

Spanish Dancer
By Edgar Degas
Modeled 1883, cast 1919/21..

Dancer and Gazelles
By Paul Manship..
1916/ Bronze
Location: Galleries of American Art
Rice Bldg.

Pan of Rohaillon
by Frederick MacMonnies..
Modeled 1890/ cast after 1894.
Location: Sculpture Court / Galleries of American Art..
Rice bldg.

Nataraja / Shiva, as Lord of the Dance..
Location: Alsdorf Galleries
For more, click here ..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Paul Klee - Various paintings]

2011-12-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

In the Magic Mirror..
By Paul Klee [German, born Switzerland, 1879–1940]
1934 / Oil on canvas, on board..
From the AIC website..
In the Magic Mirror reflects the disillusionment that colored much of Paul Klee's work following the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 and the artist's subsequent move to his native Switzerland.

Illustrating what Klee called his method of "taking a line for a walk," a meandering red line twists and turns down the center of the canvas, delineating the features of a face. The tight curves on the brow suggest the figure is concentrating, while the tension between the nose and mouth, which pull in opposite directions, conveys anxiety. In contrast to the cheerful pink cheeks, the figure's tear-shaped eyes communicate distress. The thinly painted, ghostly outline of the head and shoulders is in contrast to the crisp rendering of the face. Klee paints the heart, the true creative center, black, thereby suggesting the pall that settled over this figure, and by extension, the artist at this time..

Fleeting Ghost
1929/ Oil on canvas..
The marker reads..
Paul Klee's artistic skills were diverse: he was a painter, printmaker, critic, and theoretician. He taught at the Bauhaus for most of the famed school's existence; initially head of bookbinding department, he also supervised the glass printing workshop. His greatest influence, however, was as a lecturer for the basic design course on the theory of form in art. In lectures, Klee developed his idea about "polyphony" of printing, which was based on his interest in simultaneous sensational effect, that could be created by various layered formal elements. He believed that this type of creative experimentation could issue forth, "a transformed beholder of art" and thus pave the way for total abstraction..

Sunset
1930/ Oil on canvas..
The marker reads..
A trained musician, Paul Klee shared with many artists that music was the key to producing a new form of abstraction. He was interested in the temporal character of music and it's possbile translation into art. His works in th 1930s also incorporated the influence of the French Post- Impressionist painters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, as well as complementary color theory and pointillist techniques. "Sunset" demostrates Klee's principles of rhythm: linear structures, form and tonal values are orchestrated into a measured vibrant image. the resulting composition - balancing stillness and movement, shallowness and depth - relates to Klee's larger project of looking to music to produce an art that "does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible" ..

Dancing Girl
1940 / Oil on canvas..
from the AIC website..
Although this painting looks simple at first glance, the artist has given us a great deal of information to read with our eyes. This whimsical painting portrays a girl dancing in the rain and can be used to show that many exciting things are made out of lines, shapes, and colors. Includes classroom suggestions.

School House
1920 / Oil on paper, on board..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Le Corbusier - Various paintings]

2011-12-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

Untitled
1932/ Oil on canvas..
by Le Corbusier [French, born Switzerland, 1887-1965]..

AIC: Modern Wing / Contemporary Art [Arshile Gorky - Various paintings]

2011-12-27T01:27:00.000-08:00

The Plough and the Song II
by Arshile Gorky
American, born Armenia [1904-1948]..

By the early 1940s the largely self-taught Armenian born Arshile Gorky had formed close friendship with several members of the Surrealist Group in New York, including Matta, who encouraged him to develop his own personal abstract language through experimentation with auromatism and biomorphic forms. Gorky turned to the subject matter of fertility and nature, at the same time he frequently visited Connecticut and Virginia countrysides. Combining these ideas around 1944, the artist began to work on them of "The Plough and the Song". Though the organic forms and sinuous curving lines here seem spontaneous, Gorky planned the composition very carefully, systematically developing the imagery of this canvas in at least three drawings and three oil paintings

New York City: MOMA - Few Favourites

2011-12-26T17:53:00.000-08:00

I love MOMA
Here are some favourites at MOMA...

# Vincent Van Gogh - "The Starry Night" [1889]
# Pablo Picasso - "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon [1907]
# Claude Monet - "The Waterlilies" [triptych] [1914-26]
# Henri Matisse - "La Danse I" [1909]
# Paul Cézanne - "The Bather" [1885]
# Jackson Pollock - "One: Number 31" [1950]
# Roy Lichtenstein - "Drowning Girl" [1963]

The Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh [Dutch, 1853-1890]
1889 / Oil on canvas / 29 x 36 1/4"

This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise," the artist wrote to his brother Theo, "with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." Rooted in imagination and memory, The Starry Night embodies an inner, subjective expression of van Gogh's response to nature. In thick sweeping brushstrokes, a flamelike cypress unites the churning sky and the quiet village below. The village was partly invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso [Spanish, 1881-1973]
Paris/ June-July 1907/ Oil on canvas..

The result of months of preparation and revision, this painting revolutionized the art world when first seen in Picasso's studio. Its monumental size underscored the shocking incoherence resulting from the outright sabotage of conventional representation. Picasso drew on sources as diverse as Iberian sculpture, African tribal masks, and El Greco's painting to make this startling composition. In his preparatory studies, the figure at left was a medical student entering a brothel. Picasso, wanting no anecdotal detail to interfere with the sheer impact of the work, decided to eliminate it in the final painting. The only remaining allusion to the brothel lies in the title: Avignon was a street in Barcelona famed for its brothel.

The Waterlilies [triptych]
Claude Monet [French, 1840-1926]
1914-26 / Oil on canvas
Three panels, Each 6' 6 3/4" x 13' 11 1/4"
Overall 6' 6 3/4" x 41' 10 3/8"

In this triptych Monet depicted his Japanese-style pond covered with water lilies, at center, shimmering with reflections of clouds overhead. The water's surface fills the expansive composition so that conventional clues to the artist's—and the viewer's—vantage point are eliminated. Monet wished for the paintings to encompass the viewer: in his designs for the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, he specified that the Water Lily canvases be displayed on curved walls..

La Danse [I] / The Dance [I]
Henri Matisse [French, 1869-1954]
Paris / early 1909 Oil on canvas / 8' 6 1/2" x 12' 9 1/2..

In March 1909, Matisse received a commission from the Russian merchant Sergei Shchukin for two large decorative panels, Dance and Music (now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). This painting was made quickly as a compositional study for Dance, which was intended to hang on a staircase landing at Shchukin's Trubetskoy Palace, in Moscow. The figure at left appears to move purposefully, while the other dancers seem to float weightlessly. The momentum of their movement breaks the circle as the arm of the foreground dancer reaches out. Dance, Matisse once said, evoked "life and rhythm."

The Bather
Paul Cézanne [French, 1839-1906]
1885/ Oil on canvas/ 50 x 38 1/8"

The Bather is one of Cézanne's most evocative paintings of the figure, although the unmuscled torso and arms have no heroic pretensions, and the drawing, in traditional, nineteenth-century terms, is awkward and imprecise. The bather's left, forward leg is placed firmly on the ground, but his right leg trails and carries no weight. The right side of his body is pulled higher than the left, the chin curves lopsidedly, and the right arm is elongated and oblique. The landscape is as bare as a desert, but its green, violet, and rose coloration refuses that name. Its dreaming expanse matches the bather's pensiveness. Likewise, the shadows on the body, rather than shifting to black, share the colors of the air, land, and water; and the brushwork throughout is a network of hatch-marks and dapples, restless yet extraordinarily refined. The figure moves toward us but does not meet our gaze. These disturbances can be characterized as modern: they indicate that while Cézanne had an acute respect for much of traditional art, he did not represent the male nude the way the classical and Renaissance artists had done. He wanted to make an art that was "solid and durable like the art of the museums" but that also reflected a modern sensibility incorporating the new understanding of vision and light developed by the Impressionists. He wanted to make an art of his own time that rivaled the traditions of the past.

One: Number 31
Jackson Pollock [American, 1912-1956]
1950/ Oil and enamel paint on canvas/ 8' 10" x 17' 5 5/8"

As he did for all his “drip” paintings, Pollock painted this work from above, with the canvas lying flat on the floor. “On the floor I am more at ease,” he said. “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.” Begun approximately three years after his first work in this style, One: Number 31, 1950 is evidence of the artist’s technical prowess. Calligraphic, looping cords of color animate and energize every inch of the composition, which seems to expand visually despite its enormous size.

Drowning Girl
Roy Lichtenstein [American, 1923-1997]
1963/ Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas..

Lichtenstein based many of his early paintings on imagery he found in comic books. The source for this work is Run for Love! published by DC Comics in 1962, the cover of which the artist significantly altered to arrive at the finished composition. In the original illustration, the drowning girl’s boyfriend appears in the background, clinging to a capsized boat. Lichtenstein cropped the image dramatically, showing the girl alone and encircled by a threatening wave. He changed the caption from “I don’t care if I have a cramp!” to “I don’t care!” and the boyfriend’s name from Mal to Brad. In addition to appropriating comic books’ melodramatic content, Lichtenstein manually simulated the Benday dots used in the mechanical reproduction of images.