Biography: Vincent Van Gogh – Part 17

Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 and he died in 1890. And he had brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and a mother and a father. But that’s all well documented and well known. Those 37 years that Vincent lived was the life of a true artist.

Vincent always dabbled in the art world when he was a boy but he was embarrassed by any recognition and he would put his pencil and paper away to follow his other endeavors. He worked in the family art gallery but he wasn’t much good at it. He would talk the customers out of the more expensive paintings in favor of the cheaper ones that were truer to nature. And he was always reading the Bible and writing down long passages. He was transferred to the art gallery in London and it was there that he fell in ln love for the first time, and had his first rejection.

Vincent then began a quest to follow in his father’s footsteps as a preacher. He got a late start being in his early to mid twenties, but he studied hard and threw his passion into his work. But he couldn’t finish his classes, or so he told his uncle who was teaching him. Later in life Vincent confided in his brother Theo that he didn’t finish his classes because he became tired of the hypocrisy of it all. Vincent was given an assignment in the Borinage, a mining community in Belgium where he could preach to some of the poorest human beings on the planet. Vincent always had a special place in his heart for the unfortunate.

But Preaching in the Borinage soon became another lost cause. Vincent had given away all the things he was allotted to him. He gave away his bed to a family that needed it more than he. He got out of the habit of bathing. He wanted to be one with the miners. His superiors didn’t think it was fitting for a man in his position to live in such a manner. It was at this time that Vincent reached his lowest. He stayed in the Borinage living in total poverty. And he severed all ties with his family. He took to drawing pictures of the miners to pass his time and to take his mind off of all his failures.

Theo finally traveled to the Borinage to find his brother. And he found him there living as the animals lived. It was hard for him to see his brother living such a life. But Theo never lost faith in his brother, and it was at this time that Theo started giving Vincent a monthly allowance to live on. At first he said that it came from their father but Vincent soon learned that it was Theo who provide

Biography: Claude Monet – Part 4

Born in 1840, Claude Monet is known as the founder of Impressionism. It is generally accepted as the most influential movement in the history of the art world, and he was its champion. He is legendary not only for his immense talent but his prolific output as well, and is considered one of the Great Masters of all time. His art movement centered around the mixture of emotion with landscaping. The term Impressionism was ironically enough taken from a satirical review of his piece, “Impression, Sunrise.”

As a youth of twelve he started becoming known for his charcoal artwork. He then learned oil paints, and then progressed beyond that to “en plein air” techniques for painting. “En plein air” means open air, and the idea was to remove any obstruction between the artist and the world represented. Before portraits and even landscapes were painted from indoors. By actually going outside to do his work, Monet felt that it was as if the world itself opened up. The perception is that painting indoors was by necessity always going to be more distorted and thus less pure than a composition done right in the midst of the subject.

He would visit the Louvre and see all the painters merely emulating the old masters, and this filled him with the rebellious need to create his own work, to go his own way. He would through the course of these visits meet many artists who he would befirend and bring in to the Impressionist movement, most notably Eduoard Manet. He soon after decided to serve in the army, joining First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for a seven year commitment. But when he contracted typhoid two years into his enlistment, his powerful aunt Madame Lecadre intervened on his behalf and agreed to help get him out of the army, but on one condition: he had to go to art school.

He tried a few universities and found them too traditional and stultifying. He then stumbled upon Charles Gyre in Paris, and found a school he could relate to. There were numerous budding impressionists at this school, and together they studied the effects of light on objects when viewed from the open air, the concept of painting with broken brushstrokes, and other numerous new approaches to art that would later constitute Impressionism.

He married Camille Doncieux., the subject of many of his most famous works, and soon his wife bore a child. He was not ready for this. In 1988 Monet attempted suicide due to financial reasons.Soon the Franco-Prussian war would cause him to escape to the safety of Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris. It was here that he painted some of his best known works. Upon returning to France he created the painting that the movement took its name from, “Impression, Sunrise.”

Some of his most famous works include: “London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog ,” “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt,” “Waterlillies,” and of course, “Impression, Sunrise.”

Monet died in 1926 at age eighty five. He had a simple ceremony. The master is revered to this day and through his work and the unparalleled movement that it inspired will surely live on forever. Claude Monet was truly one of a kind.

Understanding abstract art

What is Abstract Art?

The flip answer is that abstract art is anything the viewer wants it to be. Sometimes you won’t even get a clue from the title of a painting or other piece of art. Abstract art does not aim to accurately represent anything. Rather, you will have to look closely at the colors and shapes and interpret what you see. Abstract art is rather egalitarian or democratic in that the viewer is free to put their own interpretation upon a piece of art without the artist trying to tell them what to think. There will be as many views on what an abstract painting means as there will be people who view the painting. Abstract art opened up art to the masses and perhaps because of that, has attracted praise and scorn in equal measure. Just about anyone can see something within an abstract piece of art.

There are definite styles of abstract art – and now we will look at a few important movements in the field of abstract art, made famous by certain abstract artists. These movements are Cubism, Neo-plasticism and Abstract Expressionism and we will look at their distinctive natures in turn now.

Cubism is the latest development in abstract art, historically, and it is perhaps the one that people are most familiar with at least outside the art world. It involves presenting basic geometrical shapes like cubes but also spheres and other solids on canvases or in sculpture often in quite simple arrangements. Cubism allows you to see these objects from different angles and often several of these objects are made to intersect each other interestingly. The popularity of Cubism peaked in the early twentieth century and was made famous by such artists as Francis Picabia. The movement had begun to wane by the 1920s as most artists began to follow softer lines by then.

Neo-plasticism another important movement within Abstract Art – is most distinctive for its belief that art should not merely try to reproduce real objects in art but that it should, however, try to represent the absolutes of primary colors, and very simple horizontal and vertical lines, paring the art down even further from Cubism. Theo van Doesburg is a famous Neo-plasticist artist. Within this type of art, you will often see canvases that are solid blocks of a single color.

More character and spontaneity of the abstract artist him- or herself is displayed through the third movement we will look at: Abstract Expressionism. Often, this is described as a study of brush strokes and colors since they are the most important components of this type of art. Jackson Pollack exemplifies this type of abstract art. He is known as an Action Painter because the way he pours, drips and throws paint across his canvases make it clear to the viewer the movements he has made. These types of paintings are full of energy and often effectively portray an emotion.

All of these Abstract Art movements have remained in common circulation since their inception, perhaps because of their simplicity. There is no hierarchy of art knowledge which needs to be understood to appreciate abstract art. It speaks to everyone in one way or another. Also, because of their simplicity, abstract art was the art movement which first made possible cheap reproductions (basically prints) of its paintings, which could then be purchased inexpensively – because they did not take much money to produce. This brought art to many people who could not previously afford it and brought many of the images into popular culture.

On The Three Musicians By Pablo Picasso

In 1921 the “Three Musicians” was created by Pablo Picasso as a farewell piece to Synthetic cubism.

Cubism itself consists of different points of view, typically created through geometric figures, which are then compiled into one complete painting. Cubism lasted for fifteen years and evolved into three phases of Cubism which Picasso explored; Analytical, Synthetic, and Curvilinear.

Analytical Cubism focused mainly on geometric figures without much depth or substance. The images were continually broken down into rectangular or circular shapes. These paintings, however, lacked any real emotion or expression.

In 1912, there was a shift from Analytical Cubism to Synthetic Cubism. What marked this change was the color and passion which Picasso began including in his artwork. Synthetic Cubism really identified Picasso as a sentimental intellect in the art world. Conceptual views and the alteration of a figure’s illustration caused the period to be identified as abstract. Different textures, materials and colors helped to accentuate and define the geometric forms that were featured in Picasso’s works of art. “Three Musicians” was an essential piece to this period.

Although Picasso was embedding emotion and power in his paintings, the cafe setting and instruments were quite simple and lacking of detail. The three musicians pictured are a Harlequin, a Monk and a Pierrot. The Harlequin and the Pierrot are stock characters typically used in old Italian comic theater, a central theme in many of Picasso’s paintings. The Harlequin, the central figure, is taller than the other two faithful musicians playing by his side, and appears to be holding a guitar. The Harlequin became Picasso’s alter ego early on in his work actually starting in the Blue Period and it is generally thought that Picasso was in fact portraying himself as the lead musician in “Three Musicians.”

The other two performers are believed to be a Pierrot and Monk. One theory is that the Monk and the Pierrot were poet friends of Picasso’s. The Pierrot is to the left side of the painting and is holding a saxophone. Along with this, there is a dog beneath his feet appearing to be lost within the shadows for his only identifying traits are his ears, tail and feet. The Monk is standing to the right of the Harlequin and is holding sheet music. However, there is much the small amount of detail in the notes featured on the score is quite peculiar.

It appears that this painting is created by large pieces of either paper or fabric that are then cut and pasted into large geometric shapes, but the painting in fact was entirely done with oil on canvas. The ridged patches of colors and shapes are what cause people to believe that the music being played has an unstable and crooked rhythm.