I painted my father Wilhelm Kahlo, Hungarian-German born, professional photographer and artist, with a generous, intelligent and fine character, brave because he suffered of epilepsy for 60 years but he never stopped working, and he fought against Hitler. With Love, his daughter Frida Kahlo. ― Frida Kahlo, written beneath the portrait of her father

Herr Kahlo, as his daughters called him, had a very special relationship with Frida. You can read about it, with examples of their letters, here http://goo.gl/x7pvp

Happy Father’s Day !! :)

Portrait of My Father Wilhelm Kahlo, 1952 by Frida Kahlo

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones. ― Jean Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet Works in his Studio by Bill Brandt

At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants… ― Egon Schiele

I am back ! and on Egon’s birthday too :)

Happy Birthday, Schiele ! :)

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

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 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 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

I assert that the art of sculpture, among all the arts connected with design, is at least seven times greater than any other, for the following reason: why, sir, a statue of true sculpture ought to have seven points of view, which ought all to boast equal excellence.  — Benvenuto Cellini, Letter to Benedetto Varchi, January 28, 1546

Perseus, 1545-54, Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence
detail

How many attempts, now happy, now unhappy!… He who has not felt the difficulties of his art does nothing that counts. — Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

Chardin, Young Sketcher, 1733-35
Statens Kunstmuseer, Stockholm

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
 ― Pablo Picasso 

Pablo had birthday a few days ago :)

Though the artist must remain master of his craft, the surface, at times raised to the highest pitch of loveliness, should transmit to the beholder the sensation which possessed the artist. — Alfred Sisley 

Birthday to Alfred Sisley, who was British but spent most of his life in France. One of the most famous Impressionists, he never really abandoned it or deviated from it, so he is sometimes referred to as one of most steadfast of the group. Art historian Robert Rosenblum said his work was in fact a textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting. Mainly he painted landscapes, always in plein air.

The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.  — Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich established his reputation as an artist when he won a prize in 1805 at the Weimar competition organised by the writer, poet, and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. At the time, the Weimar competition tended to draw mediocre and now long-forgotten artists presenting derivative mixtures of neo-classical and pseudo-Greek styles. The poor quality of the entries began to prove damaging to Goethe’s reputation, so when Friedrich entered two sepia drawings—Procession at Dawn and Fisher-Folk by the Sea—the poet responded enthusiastically and wrote, “We must praise the artist’s resourcefulness in this picture fairly. The drawing is well done, the procession is ingenious and appropriate… his treatment combines a great deal of firmness, diligence and neatness… the ingenious watercolour… is also worthy of praise.”

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich]

Self-portrait as a young man, c. 1800

The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead. — Caspar David Friedrich

Birthday to the painter who, according to the French sculptor David d’Angers discovered the tragedy of landscape - generally very popular and also one of my personal favourites - Caspar David Friedrich. Extremely popular during his younger years Friedrich later fell out of fashion and was almost forgotten; new appreciation for his work came with the German Expressionists, but especially through Surrealists to whom he was a star. he is best known for contemplative, allegorical landscapes set in or around Gothic churches, graveyards, on mountains or in woods.

Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, Gerhard von Kügelgen c. 1810–20

To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this - and only this - is to be an artist.  — Jacques-Louis David

Interestingly just one day after Ingres’ birthday comes one of his teacherJacques-Louis David, the most influential French artist of his time. David’s name equals with Neoclassicism - he almost personally put an end to rather silly art of Rococo, going back to Classic arts of (then known) Greece and Rome and Vinckelmann’s writings. After visiting Pompeii in 1779, he decided to revolutionize painting. And that he did.

Here are two very famous paintings, both masterpieces - Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife  (1788) and The Death of Marat (1793), that have a connection between them other that the fact David painted them. Lavoisier was a chemist that is often regarded as “the father of modern chemistry” - he helped constructing metric system, named oxygen and hydrogen, and even put together the first extensive list of elements. His wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze was a pupil of David and the one who ordered this portrait; she was rather young when she married Antoine, but the marriage was extremely happy - taking interest in science of her husband Marie-Anne learned chemistry and participated in experiments, making drawings of lab work and translating scientific literature for her husband. The portrait shows all that - it is usually mentioned as the portrait of unusual intimacy and bonding, in which man and a woman are equal partners. His laboratory was the best in whole Europe and has, amazingly enough, survived to this day :)

Unfortunately this important man and scientist fell victim to the Revolution, which is where the connection to the other painting becomes clearer - Jean-Paul Marat was a French Revolutionary, a friend to the people that was the sole source of misfortune to many that lost their heads in those times, which we call, quite fittingly, Terror. Among them was unfortunate Lavoasier whom Marat personally charged and with more than silly charges too - he, among other things, accused him of not letting enough air flow with his very high walls. Lavoasier was, of course, found guilty and eventually guillotined  at the age of 50. The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed. said the judge; mathematician Lagrange however had another opinion : It took them only an instant to cut off his head, he said, but France may not produce another such head in a century.

The Death of Marat was an icon of the revolution, Marat becoming revolutionary martyr - and quite literary so - the painting was paraded through the streets of Paris in a manner not much different to a religious procession. He was killed by one Charlotte Corday sitting in a bathtub - in which he spent most of his time due to some skin disease. Charlotte Corday pretended that she came to denounce some people, was let in and, as she planned, stabbed him. Without even trying to run away she was taken to jail, tried and executed. In later times she was to become a hero called the Angel of Assassination. Soon however the times changed again, Robespierre was killed, David himself not in favour for participating in Terror and so the painting was given back to him, Marat the martyr no longer needed or even welcome. After David’s death his closest pupil  *Antoine Gros* hid it and it is now in  Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, where david lived his last years in exile, after Napoleon’s demise. 

It is interesting also to think why Marat wanted Lavoasier dead so much that he would fabricate such silly accusations; it all sounds almost personal, especially since it was a person more interested in science than politics. The answer is that before becoming a revolutionary Marat very desperately wanted to become - a scientist. He tried very hard to achieve this in many ways, but to no success. As far as I understood it he even came to Lavoasier with some of his ideas, but was almost laughed at. It is possible that Marat really had a personal grudge against the chemist.

David was first backed by the Academy and aristocracy, then by revolutionaries - Robespierre being his personal friend -and then by Napoleon too; his political involvement - spanning from signing capital punishment lists during the revolution but then painting Napoleon’s crowning - was such that at one point even his wife divorced him. Not particularly charming man. However, his importance as a painter cannot be overestimated and his genius is not possible to deny. So - Happy Birthday, Jacques-Louis David

For another depiction of Marat’s death, the one featuring Charlotte - now as hero, see http://goo.gl/w0aBk by Baudry

Drawing is not just reproducing contours, it is not just the line; drawing is also the expression, the inner form, the composition, the modelling. See what is left after that. Drawing is seven eighths of what makes up painting.
— Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Birthday to Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres born on this day in  1780 - who worshiped Raphael and his teacher David, and was in turn worshiped by none other than grumpy Degas, who collected his drawings. All he wanted was to be the painter of histories in grand manner of David and the keeper of Classicism against the Romantic current of Delacroix that he abhorred; instead he was constantly criticized by not only contemporary art critics but by David himself - his painting constantly being called “Gothic” and were, ironically, liked only by the Romantics. Thus he vowed never to return to France or exhibit at Salon again; of course, he eventually did both and spent the last 25 years of his life in France quite successful; but before that he did spend quite long time in Rome, especially during his younger years, depending almost entirely on drawing portraits of tourists that came to Italy. These are the ones I decided to share today :)

There are about 450 of these drawings that Degas admired so much in existence today; tourists - mainly the English on their Grand Tour through Italy - would come to his door asking Is this where the man who draws the little portraits lives? much to Ingres’ dismay; No, the man who lives here is a painter !he would answer, but then would still agree to take their commission because they were his only source of income. Most usually he would go to lunch with them, so they would relax and he could catch a glimpse of their true character. Even after becoming all that he yearned to be as a painter, in his time as well as now, his portraits were regarded as his true masterpieces, painted or drawn. The ones that he did in Rome are particularly interesting because of the chosen background - usually St. Peter’s basilica or some other famous scenery - not unlike the places people choose today when getting photographed. Very similar also to why I mentioned yesterday Goethe took artists with him through his Italian journey - it was the only way then to get some journey memorabilia.  

Ingres never stopped drawing portraits and these I share today are not just those from his years in Rome; my favourites are many but perhaps the two I love the most are the one of Niccolò Paganini, who was his friend and with whom he played Beethoven string quartets; and that of the young Franz Liszt who thought Ingres’ playing was charming and had intended to play Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas with him :) Ingres did learn to play the violin as a child and played passionately throughout his life; some say that he loved it even more than painting itself. That is why there is an expression violon d’Ingres meaning the second skill of a person. Other than these two I also love the portrait of his first wife Madeleine Chapelle whom he proposed to without ever meeting her :) On his friends’ recommendation Ingres started a correspondence with Madelaine which then soon turned to courtship; he then proposed and she accepted :) It was an unusually happy marriage that lasted until her death in 1840s. Before all this Ingres was in fact engaged to a woman he had seen and which was a painter and musician, but the engagement was broken after he decided never to return to Paris in 1806, just at the beginning of his career, when he was scorned for the first time at The Salon. This woman never married someone else - she said : When one has had the honor of being engaged to M. Ingres, one does not marry. ;)

Happy Birthday, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres !