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MotG: Greats in Art


Charis alAslan

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This week's focus will be "GREATS IN ART" and I will highlight a different artist each day for 5 days. 

 

Please engage with the artwork - discuss whether you like or appreciate the artists' works, how they contribute to what we define as art and which painting would you choose as your favorite. 

 

MONET

 

Oscar-Claude Monet (1840-1926) is a famous French painter and one of the founders of the Impressionism movement along with his friends Renoir, Sisley and Bazille. 

Monet rejected the traditional approach to landscape painting and instead of copying old masters he had been learning from his friends and the nature itself. Monet observed variations of color and light caused by the daily or seasonal changes. 

Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte,in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. He was the second son Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise-Justine Aubree. On the first of April 1851, Monet entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. He became known locally for this charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-Francois Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he meet fellow artist Eugéne Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting.

 

You can find his complete works here: http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/the-complete-works.html

 

Water-Lilies.jpg Water-Lily-Pond.jpg La-Promenade.jpg Irises-In-Monets-Garden.jpg Landscape-With-Thunderstorm.jpg Camille-Monet-In-Japanese-Costume.jpg

 

 

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While I can tell that he's obviously talented, for some reason I've always found it difficult to connect with Monet's paintings.  I LOVE nature and I love pictures of landscapes, so it's weird to me that I can't.  I wish I knew why. I mean, I'm one of those weirdos that takes pictures of the scenery when I'm on vacation *laughs*.

 

Perhaps it's the blending of the brush strokes?  Not sure.  Maybe it's that I need more separation between items?  Heh, just pondering aloud here.  

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i dont care tooo much who makes th art, so i genaraly take things by piece by piecce basis. i think thes ones are alll prety pleasant for som diferent reasons, though all of thm - excpet for the lady in the japanesse stuff - share in comon that things blurredd and indistinct, which i apreciate - i like when things aer portrayd in way that somhow look diferent than what they actually are becuse shows somthing about personss mind or human mindds in general. the water lilis are kind of disturbing becuse i can see some treees reflected in the water and the water can somwhat look like sky and so not espciallly sure what lookin at like sometimes in a dream, so sometwhat disorienting to me.

 

the bridge ovre the pond, i like how evrything, includin the bridge, looks fuzzy or mossyy, thats very comforting to look at. the one withh pink flowers dinnt do much for me, whil the one with the boat on the watter makes me kind of anggry and scared, becuse it looks like its goin to storm besids having that indistinctnesss thats kind of unsetling. 

 

my favourit though is th woman in white withh the boy, mostly becuse of her face. im not especialy sure whatts goin on there but lookks kind of lik her head is mergin into sky, and that alonng with somhow the light behinnd her and darknes in front, the lighting, made it somwhat hauntng and made me thinkk shes a goddess withh divine child. mothre and child is always somthing i see as sacred thouh in itself so its just eithr way somethinng that seems sublimly sacred to me. 

 

that japanes one is realy weird, dosnt seem to belonng with the others and itts weird by iteslf. i like th figure on her dress but just realy off and confusing.

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I agree with Taltos - the Japanese one is very different to the others: not what I typically think of when I think of Monet. That's not to say its a bad thing for an artist to do something different - far from it - but it's kinda interesting how some works get a lot more public exposure than others.

 

My favorite of those is definitely the bridge. I think it looks very peaceful: my mum used to have a print of this as well so it bring back good memories of 'home'

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I really like his style!  The undefined shapes are hinted at, but never really detailed (in most of his paintings that I've seen).  Of course, there are exceptions, like the Japanese painting.  I prefer the other pictures over the Japanese one's style.  Even the one of the woman with the umbrella is slightly smudged.  It seems like that's how we view life, never really seeing all the details.

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It's interesting because I've been to Monet's house in France and so many of his water lilys and bridge paintings are from his own home! 

 

The lady in the Japanese kimono is his wife, I believe -- and you may find this odd, but the inside of Monet's home is full of Japanese scrolls! 

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REMBRANDT

 

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 ? October 4, 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. 

 

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, his later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardship. Yet his drawings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high and for twenty years he taught nearly every important Dutch painter. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. The self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity. 

 

In both painting and printmaking he exhibited a complete knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of the Jewish population of Amsterdam. Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."

 

http://www.rembrandtonline.org/

 

A-Girl-at-a-Window.jpgChrist-In-The-Storm-On-The-Sea-Of-Galile  Diana-and-her-Nymphs-Bathing,-with-Actae Adoration-of-the-Shepherds-1.jpg 

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I love Rembrandt's Sea of Galilee!  One thing I like about his work (based on the samples provided in this thread) is that it's almost like looking at photographs -- so very detailed and lifelike.

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these dontt do too much fior me. they obviusly required lot of skill to maek but besids awing ovre the technique, isnt much for me to feeel or say. ive seen othre works of his and i likke how lot of them use quite lott of shadow, more thann you would expct to see in reality but i feell there is only so muchh that stattes psychologicaly. takkes somhing prety special about realisticc painting/art to make me feeel anything abuot it, gues because often it is a facsimille or near facsimile of reality and witth that i almost hav mentality of if its prety much showin reality, why dont i just go lookk at reality insted of this. and the ones displayed missed that speciall something i guess.

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VAN GOGH

 

Vincent van Gogh: Overview

Birth Year : 1853 
Death Year : 1890 
Country : Netherlands 

Vincent van Gogh would become one of the most well-known artists in the world. His paintings have become easily recognizable to cultures throughout the world, and he has become the archetypal “tortured artist.”

Van Gogh was born in 1853 and grew up in Holland. He was raised in a religious family with his father being a minister. When his school ended, Vincent followed his uncle’s profession and became an art dealer learning the trade in Holland and then working in England and France. Vincent was successful and initially happy with his work. However, he soon grew tired of the business of art, especially in Paris, and lost interest in the trade. After returning home, Vincent began to study theology. While very passionate and enthusiastic, he failed exams to enter a couple programs. Characteristic of his personality, he was intelligent, able to speak multiple languages, but he did not think that Latin was a language for preaching to the poor. During this period, he worked as a missionary in a coal mining community living with hard working poor common people. As his development as a preacher was stalling, his interest in those around him was increasing. His life as an artist was beginning.

In 1880, at 27 years old, Van Gogh entered the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium. The following winter, living in Amsterdam, Vincent fell in love, had his heart broken, and began painting. The next few years would result in little success both in love and art.

Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters, his first major work, was painted in 1885. By this time, he was still having difficulty finding love, but was beginning to receive interest in his paintings. He was now fully devoting himself to painting: living frugally, studying color theory, and admiring the works of artists like Peter Paul Rubens. Unfortunately, as would be his entire life, his paintings were still difficult to sell. His brother Theo, an art dealer and the recipient of many letters from Vincent, commented that there should be more color in his work. Van Gogh was painting peasants and rural landscapes using dark earth tones. Around this same time, Impressionism, with its bright vivid colors, was becoming popular.

The next year, Vincent moved to Paris where his art began to take on the style that would make him famous. In Paris, he was discussing art with some of the most avant-garde and influential artists of his time – painters like Gauguin, Bernard, and Toulouse-Lautrec. He was using more color, applying the paint with thick, bold brushstrokes, and painted all that surrounded him. Van Gogh arranged to show his work, to positive reviews, but was still unable to sell any pieces.

One of Van Gogh’s dreams as an artist was to start a colony for artists in Arles in the south of France. Vincent moved to Arles where he was joined by Gauguin. While there, Van Gogh entered the most productive and creative period of his life painting his famous Sunflowers. However, it also was a time of great turmoil for Vincent beginning a period of hospital stays for mental illness and physical decline.

After just ten years of painting and producing some 900 paintings, Vincent van Gogh took his own life in 1890. Never fully appreciated in his own time, it wouldn’t take long for the art world to recognize the genius they lost. Within twenty years of his death, there were memorial shows of his works all over the world – influencing generations of artists to come.

Starry-Night-Over-the-Rhone.jpg Starry-Night.jpg Mountainous-Landscape-Behind-Saint-Paul- 

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iv alwayys thught van gogh an intersting person; hes sortt of postre boy fior continuin problem of mentaly-illl but extremly inteligent peoplle not bein ablle suceed durin their life becase of chalenges and advrsity of neurotyppical society. i like all of thes alot - i dont know how to explain it well, but the swirlls and meanders annd broken circles that mak up lot of the paintinngs very entrancin and exciting to lookk at. the first one i like how he didd the illumination around the stars, they are lot more pronouncd of course than you woulld ever see starlight in reality and so makes themm seem so much closer - the same is similar for the starry night one below it, very close and brighht stars. i reallly love that becuse i have a star fetish lol, i alaways want to fly amongst them. i like how the two things come togethre in the center, its comforting but realy compeling all at once somehow. the last one feells extremly playful - the grass in the foregruond somehow to me looks like its being blown crazy by wind and it makes me want to rolll in it and chase the wind, thats ticklish lol. 

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It's interesting how my taste has developed over the years, and with exposure. From early childhood I've been a great fan of the more "realistic" type of art, such as produced by people like Rembrandt. I think most people start out there, since that type of work is less challenging, I suppose, than the less "realistic" work of people like Picasso, for instance. It's something one can recognise immediately, and admire for the great technique as well as obvious beauty. Rembrandt's ability to depict warmth and light in darkness is especially awe-inspiring.

 

When I first came accross the work of Monet, it seemed clumsy and unfinished to me. Once I learned that most of his works were done at great speed to capture the moment, I looked at it with fresh eyes. I even tried painting like that myself, and it was extremely liberating.

 

What I also find interesting about the works of Impressionists like Monet and post-Impressionists like Van Gogh is that looking at the work up close, and from a distance, does make a huge difference in how one experiences them.

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PABLO PICASSO

 

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmakerceramicist,stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during theSpanish Civil War.

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorised into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919).

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

http://www.picasso.com/

 

ADQBKAG8-P26692.jpg ADQBKAG8-P26589.jpg  ADQBKAG8-P26679.jpg

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i havent lookd much at picaso though what ihave seen i reallly like, because its prety emotionaly provaacative and interpretative. i realy like te blue guy withh the guitar; the way how skinny he is, the gloommy colour, and th sort of contorted pose of his bodyy is sort of grotesque and kind of hauting, i like that. the one next ot it is very funny though at the same time creeppy, because its vaguly human - leaves impresion of a band becaus of the instrumennts and the music notes - but of cuorse its not human. last one is pleasant both becaus its the wholle mothre-goddess and divine son imagge to me again but i like the sort of weiird fading colours and of courrse its not very ralisitic. i also realy want to know what shes givin that child, i cant tell, lookks like an egg to me but not really. maybe its bread

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I must confess to being one of those people who just doesn't "get" Picasso and his style in general.  I just don't see the point of twisting things around and putting them at weird angles.

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MICHAELANGELO

 

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.[1] Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.[1] A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.[1] His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.

Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At the age of 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[2] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries.

In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").[3] One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate[4] Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo)

http://www.michelangelo.com/buon/bio-index2.html

 

DAVID

david-full.jpg

 

BACCUS

baccus.jpg

 

BAPTISM OF CHRIST

O.jpg

 

SISTINE CHAPEL - CREATION OF ADAM

The_Creation_of_Adam_by_Michaelangelo_fr

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I like Michelangelo almost as much as Da Vinci. Classics fan most of the way ... lol

 

But his work is breathtaking, to be serious. The way he could make marble seem almost pliable is beyond belief.

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