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In honor of Monet, my profile picture now is Camille Monet in...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:18:16 -0500

In honor of Monet, my profile picture now is Camille Monet in garden, 1873. Camille was Monet’s first wife, mother of his children and until her death in 1879 one of his most often painted models.

For Monet’s birthday a special treat : the entire...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:15:48 -0500

For Monet’s birthday a special treat : the entire mini series The Impressionists made in 2006 :-) Do take a look, it’s excellent ;)

Three hour mini-series tells the intimate history of a most illustrious brotherhood of Impressionist artists - Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Manet. Entirely based on documentary evidence, special effects transport the viewer inside some of the world’s best-loved paintings, The Impressionists will recreate the illuminated landscapes, and haunting portraits of late 19th-century France.

Impressionists_1
Impressionists_2
Impressionists_3 (Final)

#ArtTVSeries

Three days ago Remembrance Day was observed in memory of fallen...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:12:14 -0500

Three days ago Remembrance Day was observed in memory of fallen soldiers during the World War I; since I haven’t shared anything on that day I thought that today, on Claude Monet’s birthday, I might share his Weeping Willows series, rather than some more famous ones - Monet started these during World War I, in which his younger son Michel participated. These weeping willows were a way Monet expressed personal homage to the fallen soldiers. Monet’s son returned safely. He was the one who upon Claude’s death in 1926 inherited Giverny, and then bequeathed it to the French Academy of Fine Arts.

I see less and less….I need to avoid lateral light, which...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:08:57 -0500

I see less and less….I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up….I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf. ― Claude Monet in 1921

It is too beautiful to be painted! It is untranslatable! ―...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:04:24 -0500

It is too beautiful to be painted! It is untranslatable! ― Claude Monet

This year in May we went to Venice for the first time, some 104 years after Monet and his wife Alice made the same trip. By then he was 68 years old and although he traveled to Italy before, this was his first time visiting La Serenísima, which left him spell bounded - I’m afraid I will only bring back beginnings that will be nothing else but souvenirs for me , he said, only trials and beginnings.

On his birthday I have to share some of these, not only because we too fell under the spell of this truly incomparable city, but also because these days Venice is in grave peril, being 70 % under water, with tourists practically swimming on Piazza San Marco. How that looks you can see here http://goo.gl/5OsJx ; as for Monets - the whole trip was documented by Alice Monet who wrote extensive letters to her daughter about it, which were later published. As for these trials and beginningsas he called them, they were exhibited four years later - 100 years ago exactly - in Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, after he retouched them. Paul Signac praised these works, calling them the highest expression of his art. As it is common with Monet and indeed with the Impressionists - these were done in series, with many motives repeating many times over. Enjoy :)

Happy birthday Claude Monet :)See last year’s...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:00:57 -0500

Happy birthday Claude Monet :)

See last year’s posts :

Monet family in Argentuil - by Manet, Renoir and Monet himself http://goo.gl/lG2tb
The Improvised Field Hospital , 1865 http://goo.gl/7zSEQ
Giverny http://goo.gl/eYK6T
Claude Monet par lui-même http://goo.gl/MYRpc
Claude Monet : two portraits by Renoir http://goo.gl/IBrSF

alabaster1: Peacock and Japanese Lantern by Rose Driver, 1931.

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:54:42 -0500

alabaster1:

Peacock and Japanese Lantern by Rose Driver, 1931.

…They have even found a new movement, of which I was unaware:...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:56:02 -0500

…They have even found a new movement, of which I was unaware: the jolts their body gives as it moves downward. And then their great strength lies in the fact that they keep their legs permanently bent, like a spring box, from which they can bounce or rise upwards as they wish, make themselves taller, at any given moment. It is a movement all of their own, unknown in the Antique and to us: when the arms are stretched out in the shape of a cross, they make a movement that snakes from one hand to the other, via the shoulder blades.This unknown,hitherto-unseen movement belongs to the Far East, i.e. when the movement of the left arm forms a concave curve, the other forms a convex curve, and they bring these arms into play, in a movement that darts past the shoulder blades. ― Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin, Cambodian dancer, 1906

from http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/drawings/cambodian-dancer-0

Auguste Rodin, Cambodian dancer, 1906, Graphite pencil,...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:54:54 -0500

Auguste Rodin, Cambodian dancer, 1906,
Graphite pencil, gouache

On 10 July 1906, Rodin, aged 66, attended a performance given in the Pré-Catelan, Paris, by a troupe of Cambodian dancers, who had accompanied King Sisowath of Cambodia on his official visit to France. Enthralled by the beauty of these dancers and the novelty of their movements, Rodin followed them to Marseilles to be able to make as many drawings of them as possible before they left the country on 20 July.

They made a deep impression on the artist, as he confided to Georges Bourdon, in an article for the newspaper Le Figaro on 1 August 1906: “There is an extraordinary beauty, a perfect beauty, about these slow, monotonous dances, which follow the pulsating rhythm of the music… [The Cambodians] have taught me movements I had never come across anywhere before…”

Rodin used gouache (ochre for the graceful arms and head, deep blue for the tunic draping the body), applied in broad brush strokes over and beyond the contour lines, to amend and rectify the initial pencil drawing of this crouching dancer’s hieratic pose. All the details are eliminated (garments, face, hairstyle…).All that remains is the concentrated energy of the graceful, eloquent, age-old gestures.

“In short,” concluded Rodin, “if they are beautiful, it is because they have a natural way of producing the right movements…”.

from http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/drawings/cambodian-dancer

Still more marvelous is that other kiss “L’Éternelle Idole”. The...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:52:39 -0500

Still more marvelous is that other kiss “L’Éternelle Idole”. The material texture of this creation encloses a living impulse as a wall encloses a garden. One of the copies of this marble is in the possession of Eugène Carrière, and in the silent twilight of his house this stone pulsates like a spring in which there is an eternal motion, a rising and falling, a mysterious stir of an elemental force. A girl kneels, her beautiful body is softly bent backward, her right arm is stretched behind her. Her hand has gropingly found her foot. In these three lines which shut her in from the outer world her life lies enclosed with its secret. The stone beneath her lifts her up as she kneels there. And suddenly, in the attitude into which the young girl has fallen from idleness, or reverie, or solitude, one recognizes an ancient, sacred symbol, a posture like that into which the goddess of distant cruel cults had sunk. The head of this woman bends somewhat forward; with an expression of indulgence, majesty and forbearance, she looks down as from the height of a still night upon the man who sinks his face into her bosom as though into many blossoms. He, too, kneels, but deeper, deep in the stone. His hands lie behind him like worthless and empty things. The right hand is open; one sees into it. From this group radiates a mysterious greatness. One does not dare to give it one meaning, it has thousands. Thoughts glide over it like shadows, new meanings arise like riddles and unfold into clear significance. Something of the mood of a Purgatorio lives within this work. A heaven is near that has not yet been reached, a hell is near that has not yet been forgotten. Here, too, all splendor flashes from the contact of the two bodies and from the contact of the woman with herself. ― Rainer maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin, L’Éternelle Idole, 1890-1893

There are among the works of Rodin hands, single, small hands...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:51:05 -0500

There are among the works of Rodin hands, single, small hands which, without belonging to a body, are alive. Hands that rise, irritated and in wrath; hands whose five bristling fingers seem to bark like the five jaws of a dog of Hell. Hands that walk, sleeping hands, and hands that are awakening; criminal hands, tainted with hereditary disease; and hands that are tired and will do no more, and have lain down in some corner like sick animals that know no one can help them. But hands are a complicated organism, a delta into which many divergent streams of life rush together in order to pour themselves into the great storm of action. There is a history of hands; they have their own culture, their particular beauty; one concedes to them the right of their own development, their own needs, feelings, caprices and tendernesses. Rodin, knowing through the education which he has given himself that the entire body consists of scenes of life, of a life that may become in every detail individual and great, has the power to give to any part of his vibrating surface the independence of a whole. As the human body is to Rodin an entirety only as long as a common action stirs all of its parts and forces, so on the other hand portions of different bodies that cling to one another from an inner necessity merge into one organism. A hand laid on another’s shoulder or thigh does not any more belong to the body from which it came — from this body and from the object which it touches or seizes something new originates, a new thing that has no name and belongs to no one. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin

Hamelin plays Ravel - Concerto for the left hand

Auguste Rodin, Large Left Hand of a Pianist

… Yesterday, Monday afternoon at three o’clock, I...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:49:27 -0500

… Yesterday, Monday afternoon at three o’clock, I was at Rodin’s for the first time. Atelier 182 rue de l’Universite. I went down the Seine. He had a model, a girl. Had a little plaster object in his hand on which he was scraping about. He simply quit work, offered me a chair, and we talked. He was kind and gentle. And it seemed to me that I had always known him. That I was only seeing him again; I found him smaller, and yet more powerful, more kindly, and more noble. That forehead, the relationship it bears to his nose which rides out of it like a ship out of harbor … that is very remarkable. Character of stone is in that forehead and that nose. And his mouth has a speech whose ring is good, intimate, and full of youth. So also is his laugh, that embarrassed and at the same time joyful laugh of a child that has been given lovely presents. He is very dear to me. That I knew at once. We spoke of many things (as far as my queer language and his time permitted). Then he went on working and begged me to inspect everything that is in the studio. That is not a little. The “hand” is there. C’est une main comme-ça (he said and made with his own so powerful a gesture of holding and shaping that one seemed to see things growing out of it). ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to his wife Clara, on September 2, 1902

Rodin and statue of The Hand of God - Edward Steichen, 1907

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:47:28 -0500

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him. ― Auguste Rodin

Joyeux anniversaire, Auguste :)

Rodin walking with his dogs in Meudon, Val-Fleuri

Versailles and Antiquity, prologue of the exhibition. Opening on...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:40:35 -0500

Versailles and Antiquity, prologue of the exhibition. Opening on Tuesday 13 November 2012!

In honor of Paul Signac, my profile photo is now changed...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:38:21 -0500

In honor of Paul Signac, my profile photo is now changed to Woman at her toilette wearing a purple corset, painted in 1893.

Apart from being a painter, Signac was also an art theorist that...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:34:16 -0500

Apart from being a painter, Signac was also an art theorist that left several quite important works behind, among them D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme (From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism), published in 1899. Hard to come by now, do grab it if you get the chance :)

Signac loved to sail and went on a number of cruises, which took...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:30:59 -0500

Bateau pavoisé dans la lagune de Venise

Avignon

Vue de la Seine en crue au Pont des Arts

La mosquée de Soliman à Constantinople

Signac loved to sail and went on a number of cruises, which took him as far as Constantinople. After he had moved to St Tropez in 1892, he started sailing in a small boat to many ports of France, Italy and Netherlands, and then through the Mediterranean to Constantinople. During his sales he did many watercolors of landscapes, which he sketched in haste, as they went along; these were later turned into paintings. Last year I shared an album of his landscape paintings, some that were the ones depicting his travels; this year I am sharing I few of his works on paper of similar subject, all from The Louvre. Enjoy.

The Louvre, Fonds des dessins et miniatures
© Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques
http://arts-graphiques.louvre.fr

Happy Birthday to Paul Signac, born on this day in 1863, with...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 12:25:00 -0500

Happy Birthday to Paul Signac, born on this day in 1863, with the appropriate Sunday, painted in 1888-1890 :)

Signac was trained as an architect but having seen Claude Monet’s works at the offices of La Vie moderne in 1880, he decided to become an artist :) First under the influence of the Impressionists, after meeting Georges Seurat at Salon des Indépendants of 1884, he slowly turned to Divisionism. He met Vincent van Gogh in 1886 and the two became friends; he even visited him in 1889, in Arles. Among his best friends was Camille Pissaro, who also succumbed to Divisionist color theory under his influence.

From 1908 on Signac president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants; he used this position to help and encourage younger artists : it is known that it was him who was the first to buy a painting by young Henri Matisse :)

See also last year’s posts on Signac, with 3 albums of his paintings :

http://goo.gl/x8UvJ
http://goo.gl/oaHGP
http://goo.gl/NCFEp
http://goo.gl/wE5Yw

In honor of Zurbarán, my profile photo is now changed to...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:16:20 -0500

In honor of Zurbarán, my profile photo is now changed to his Saint Margaret painted in 1631, from National Gallery, London.

Saint Margaret of Antioch was martyred in the Diocletian persecution of Christians by decapitation. Zurbarán however does not show her dramatic end - he decided to paint her in costume of the Spanish shepherdess. Behind her there is also a dragon that, according to the legend, she defeated by her faith and the cross.

Among Zurbarán’s paintings of saints the most prominent...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 07:09:00 -0500

Among Zurbarán’s paintings of saints the most prominent one are surely those of Saint Francis of Assisi - I know of six paintings depicting him, but there are probably a few more. These are from year 1632 to the last one, from Alte Pinakothek in Munich, that was painted in 1660s. Most usually St. Francis is shown contemplating mortality, shown through a symbol of the skull.

Born in 1181 or 1182 in Assisi as the son of a wealthy draper, he died in poverty in the same town on 3 October 1226. Francis’ life of poverty, humility, selflessness and serene neighbourly love made the order of Friars Minor which he founded one of the most widespread religious orders in the entire western world. Following the council of Trent in the mid 16th century, St Francis was invariably portrayed as an ascetic, penitent and ecstatic monk, frequently dressed in the habit of the Capuchin monks and with a skull as attribute.

Zurbarán’s saint bears the entire complexity of this figure. This is Francis the ascetic, dressed in a brown habit, without signs of office or adornment. This is the humble Francis dressed in the colours of the earth. This is Francis the ecstatic monk, who has received the stigmata of the five wounds. His young face is raised heavenwards in contemplation, one hand placed upon his heart, the other on the skull, the sign of meditation. He is shown as a holy man of spiritual profundity and scholarly intellect, as reflected in his facial traits. Yet he is not a monk who is alienated from daily life and caught up entirely in his mystical passion, but a man close to life, as Zurbarán shows. His “portrait” is an allegory of faith and simplicity.
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