Arts & Culture

I post about art.

[artsandculture]

hi guys, i am taking a quick break from posting but i'll be back within the week

[artsandculture]

The Death of Socrates (1787) 🎨 Jacques Louis David 🏛️ The Metropolitan Museum of Art 📍 New York City, United States

In this landmark of neoclassical painting from just before the French Revolution, David took up a classical story of resisting unjust authority in a sparse, frieze-like composition. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469–399 BCE) was convicted of impiety by the Athenian courts; rather than renounce his beliefs, he died willingly, expounding on the immortality of the soul before drinking poisonous hemlock. Through a network of gestures and expressions, David’s figures act out the last moments of Socrates’s life. He is about to grasp the cup of hemlock, offered by a disciple who cannot bear to witness the event. David consulted antiquarian scholars to create an archeologically exacting image, including details of furniture and clothing. His inclusion of Plato at the foot of the bed, however, deliberately references not someone present at Socrates’s death but rather the author whose text, Phaedo, preserved this ancient story.

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The Bedroom (1888) 🎨 Vincent van Gogh 🏛️ The Art Institute of Chicago 📍 Chicago, United States

Vincent van Gogh so highly esteemed his bedroom painting that he made three distinct versions: the first, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the second, belonging to the Art Institute of Chicago, painted a year later on the same scale and almost identical; and a third, smaller canvas in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, which he made as a gift for his mother and sister. Van Gogh conceived the first Bedroom in October 1888, a month after he moved into his “Yellow House” in Arles, France. This moment marked the first time the artist had a home of his own, and he had immediately and enthusiastically set about decorating, painting a suite of canvases to fill the walls. Completely exhausted from the effort, he spent two-and-a-half days in bed and was then inspired to create a painting of his bedroom. As he wrote to his brother Theo, “It amused me enormously doing this bare interior. With a simplicity à la Seurat. In flat tints, but coarsely brushed in full impasto, the walls pale lilac, the floor in a broken and faded red, the chairs and the bed chrome yellow, the pillows and the sheet very pale lemon green, the bedspread blood-red, the dressing-table orange, the washbasin blue, the window green. I had wished to express utter repose with all these very different tones.” Although the picture symbolized relaxation and peace to the artist, to our eyes the canvas seems to teem with nervous energy, instability, and turmoil, an effect heightened by the sharply receding perspective.

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A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884) 🎨 Georges Seurat 🏛️ The Art Institute of Chicago 📍 Chicago, United States

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. Seurat sought to evoke permanence by recalling the art of the past, especially Egyptian and Greek sculpture and even 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 re-stretched 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 his specially designed white frame.

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The Blue Rigi, Sunrise (1842) 🎨 Joseph Mallord William Turner 🏛️ Tate Britain 📍 London, United Kingdom

The Blue Rigi depicts the Rigi mountain in central Switzerland, viewed from the southwest across Lake Lucerne. The "Queen of Mountains" is blue in the early morning light, wreathed by veils of morning mist. The tonality is built up with layers of color wash, with fine detail added through cross-hatching with a fine brush. Two “stars”, of which the brighter one often erroneously identified as Venus, glint in the yellow morning sky above, where paint has been scratched out with a fingernail to reveal the bright white ground. In the left foreground, drawn in with pen and brown ink, ducks can be seen rising from the lake, alarmed by a gunshot and chased by two dogs, to the right foreground.

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The Thinker (1902) 🎨 Auguste Rodin 🏛️ Musée Rodin 📍 Paris, France

When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70 cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell, seated on the tympanum, The Thinker was entitled The Poet. He represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy which had inspired The Gates, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell, while meditating on his work. The Thinker was therefore initially both a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. The pose of this figure owes much to Carpeaux’s Ugolino (1861) and to the seated portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici carved by Michelangelo (1526-31).

While remaining in place on the monumental Gates of Hell, The Thinker was exhibited individually in 1888 and thus became an independent work. Enlarged in 1904, its colossal version proved even more popular: this image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has become one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known. Numerous casts exist worldwide, including the one now in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a gift to the City of Paris installed outside the Panthéon in 1906, and another in the gardens of Rodin’s house in Meudon, on the tomb of the sculptor and his wife.

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The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) 🎨 Jan van Eyck 🏛️ The National Gallery 📍 London, United Kingdom

This must be one of the most famous and intriguing paintings in the world. A richly dressed man and woman stand in a private room. They are probably Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges, and his wife.

Although the room is totally plausible – as if Jan van Eyck had simply removed a wall – close examination reveals inconsistencies: there’s not enough space for the chandelier, and no sign of a fireplace. Moreover, every object has been carefully chosen to proclaim the couple’s wealth and social status without risking criticism for aping the aristocracy.

The man’s hand is raised, apparently in greeting. On the back wall, a large convex mirror reflects two men coming into the room, one of whom also raises his arm. Immediately above it is Van Eyck’s signature. Could the man in mirror be van Eyck himself, with his servant, coming on a visit?

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On the Stile (1878) 🎨 Winslow Homer 🏛️ National Gallery of Art 📍 Washington, DC, United States

Homer spent several months during the summer and late fall of 1878 at Houghton Farm, the country residence of a patron in Mountainville, New York. There he created dozens of watercolors of farm girls and boys playing and pursuing various tasks, including On the Stile. Painted quickly and often outdoors, these watercolors present idyllic scenes of rural life that follow in the European tradition of pastoral painting. This graceful depiction of boys and girls frolicking in the outdoors is fluidly painted and transparently colored, conveying a sense of lightness and spontaneity.

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Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle (1872) 🎨 Arnold Böcklin 🏛️ Alte Nationalgalerie 📍 Berlin, Germany

We will never know for certain whether or not the personification of death was an afterthought, as one account would have it. Artists’ self-portraits with a memento mori have been known since time immemorial. The inspiration for this figure of Death playing the fiddle probably came from the Portrait of Sir Bryan Tuke in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, where Böcklin had lived since 1871. At the time it was wrongly attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, whose woodcuts of dances of death with images of Death playing the fiddle would also have been known to Böcklin. In this self-portrait, Death is playing on the lowest string, tuned to G, which is here also the only string of the fiddle. The painter, alert, has paused in his work. According to the story, Böcklin only painted in the figure of Death in response to his friends’ asking what he seemed to be listening to. This clearly relates to the search for the ultimate that characterizes this self-portrait, and the inspiration the artist draws from the constant proximity of death. The impressive quality of this self-portrait inspired other painters including Hans Thoma and Lovis Corinth to paint similar portraits of themselves.

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Anxiety (1894) 🎨 Edvard Munch 🏛️ The Munch Museum 📍 Oslo, Norway

This painting draws on two earlier departures: the anxious humanity moving forward as if driven by ominous elemental forces, as first conceived in Evening on Karl Johan Street; and a certain view of Oslo Fjord, already seen in The Scream. Both were destined to recur with considerable fidelity in Anxiety and in other works of the same period.

Norwegian angst, like its German counterpart, had become the key term not only for Munch's central pictorial content but for the entire tradition that is traced to Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's philosophies, Strindberg's and Ibsen's plays, and the North European modern aesthetic contribution in general.

In Anxiety Munch repeats closely many elements of The Scream. The same jetty that accommodated a single alienated personage appears again, as do the lake in the distance, the two boats, the church, and other structures that line the shore just a little less dimly than before. The are all quoted from the earlier work, as are the gloomy hues and the intense swirls of concentrically enlarging lines that define and ultimately embrace land, sea, and sky.

If, however, The Scream deals with the horror experienced in total isolation by a single being, Anxiety plays upon collective despair. the sentiment of angst in this work is even more sustained, if less piercing, than in The Scream, since its desperation is here borne by a group rather than by an isolated individual.

Munch returned to Anxiety two years later to restate the same motif through the print mediums. This time he added the woodcut to the lithograph and allowed the white features rendered visible in the subtractive method to stand against the expressive ground of a red-colored paper. As has been observed in the The Scream, the limitations inherent in the graphic technique - its reduction of the linear property and the elimination of the descriptive color in the woodcut - emphasize the abstract conception and heighten the emotive forcefulness of the pictorial content. The few but significant modifications and character substitutions that the artist felt compelled to undertake in the transformations from painting to prints, as well as the subtle differences between woodcuts and lithographs, provide valuable insights into Munch's creative reaction.

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Woman at a Window (1822) 🎨 Caspar David Friedrich 🏛️ Alte Nationalgalerie 📍 Berlin, Germany

At the window of a barren room you can see the back view of a young woman looking outside. It is Caroline, the wife of Caspar David Friedrich, who looks from the artist's studio to the opposite bank of the Elbe. In 1822, four years after his marriage, Frederick created this small-format, private image. Even in the year of origin, the painting was shown at the Dresden Academy Exhibition: "A small picture depicting the artist's studio in his peculiar simplicity, in the middle of the background the window with the view of the Elbe and the opposite poplars, would be very true and pretty if Friedrich had not followed again here, which it loves to depict people straight from behind." (Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, 1822, . Börsch-Supan and K. W. Jähnig, Caspar David Friedrich, Catalogue of Works, Munich 1973, pp. 96). While the Viennese Magazine for Art reacted to Friedrich's painting with incomprehension, the mystery of the turning-off women inspired the poet Friedrich de la Motte Foqué to become a sonnet. Friedrich consistently constructed the simple, empty interior of horizontal and vertical. Nothing reveals comfort, only a short piece of floor made of wide wooden floorboards, a dark wall and a high window are visible. The female figure alone and the prospect of delicately green poplars on the other side, opening up by a wide spring sky, enliven the presentation. Resembling the filigree peak of a church tower, a ship mast appears in the upper window area, structured by a narrow cross. A subtle color sound of blue, green and ocher draws attention to the light steps in the finest nuances. With this 'window picture', Friedrich picked up a romantic motif of longing that links inside and outside, closeness and distance. The view outwards simultaneously goes inwards, in the center of the soul. Two further interior representations have been handed down by Friedrich: "Woman ascending to light" (1825, Pomeranian State Museum, Greifswald) and "Climbing woman with a candle" (around 1825, loaned from private property in pe.). Like "Frau am Fenster", these images remained in the possession of the artist's family for a long time. It was not until 1906, on the occasion of the exhibition of the century in the Nationalgalerie Berlin, where Friedrich was comprehensively represented with 36 paintings and 57 drawings, including "Frau am Fenster", and the painterly work of the artist, which had been forgotten, was rediscovered.

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Portrait of Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina (1797) 🎨 Vladimir Borovikovskiy 🏛️ Tretyakov Gallery 📍 Moscow, Russia

The portrait of M. I. Lopukhina is one of the intimate portraits painted by Borovikovsky at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. Similarly styled works by the artist are his portraits of E. G. Temkina (1798, Tretyakov Gallery), E. A. Naryshkina (1799, Tretyakov Gallery) and others.

Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina (1779–1803) was the Count I. A. Tolstoy’s daughter and F. I. Tolstoy’s sister. In the year the portrait was made, she turned eighteen and got married to S. A. Lopukhin, a Jägermeister and chamberlain at the court of Paul I. The portrait appeared because of this event. It could have been commissioned by the prospective husband or the woman’s parents. The painting was intended for the family gallery and had to correspond to the latest trends in painting of that time, the trends of Sentimentalism.

The art of Sentimentalism praised the harmonious relationship between man and nature. In portraits the women images were incorporated into landscape themes (corners of parks with clear blue skies). Nature both beautifully framed a woman’s beauty and reminded of the world of the artist’s heroines who went on solitary walks, read sentimental novels, and had girlish dreams.

Borovikovsky created the image of a young woman whose perfection resembled an ancient statue. Everything in the image (the soft shape, the white marble skin, the grace of the pose, and the embossed folds of the tunic) seems to be borrowed from classical sculpture. But the earthly beauty of youth emerges through the charm of the statue that has the evanescent, soft complexion, and she looks lively with a blush and sparkling eyes.

The expression on Lopukhina’s face, like the famous “smile of the Mona Lisa” portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci, cannot be definitely described. The model’s look changes with each viewpoint and the light: it becomes either proud and indifferent, or soft and thoughtful, and then mocking and rather flirtatious. It was characteristic of Sentimentalist artists to wish to convey a rich range of feelings.

The landscape surrounding the woman’s figure was invented by the artist. It acquires the properties of a mirror: the woman’s shawl is similar to the color of roses; her tunic is akin to the color of lilies and trunks of birches; her belt is of the color of the sky and cornflowers, and the gold threads in the belt and the bracelet are similar to wheat seeds. The interchange of color emphasize Lopukhina’s inextricable relationship with surrounding nature.

The portrait of Lopukhina is the pinnacle of Borovikovsky’s art. Later, Ya. P. Polonsky dedicated his poem “To the Portrait” (1885) to this canvas.

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Undine Rising from the Fountain (1880–1882) 🎨 Chauncey Bradley Ives 🏛️ Yale University Art Gallery 📍 New Haven, United States

According to medieval lore, undines were Mediterranean sea spirits who lived as soulless mortals. In the nineteenth century, this story gained prominence through Baron Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué’s popular novel Undine, in which a water spirit gains a human form and soul by marrying the mortal knight she loves. When her husband proves unfaithful, the laws of the water spirits force her to kill him. Chauncey Bradley Ives depicts the moment when the mournful Undine, cloaked in a white veil, rises like a fountain to claim her husband’s life. Exquisitely rendered, the diaphanous wet drapery is a masterful example of illusionistic carving.

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The Old Guitarist (1903–1904) 🎨 Pablo Picasso 🏛️ The Art Institute of Chicago 📍 Chicago, United States

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The Boating Party (1893–1894) 🎨 Mary Cassatt 🏛️ National Gallery of Art, Washington DC 📍 Washington, DC, United States

This bold composition reveals the influence of the flat, patterned surfaces, simplified color, and unusual angles of Japanese prints, which enjoyed a huge vogue in Paris in the late 1800s. The dark figure of the man compresses the picture onto the flat plane of the canvas, and the horizon is pushed to the top, collapsing a sense of distance. Our higher vantage point gives us an oblique view into the boat. Its form is divided into decorative shapes by the intersection of its horizontal supports.

After 1893, Cassatt began to spend many summers on the Mediterranean coast at Antibes. Under its intense sun, she began to experiment with harder, more decorative color. Here, citron and blue carve strong arcs that divide the picture into assertive, almost abstract, shapes. This picture, with its bold geometry and decorative patterning of the surface, positions Cassatt with such post–impressionist painters as Gauguin and Van Gogh.

This painting, one of her most ambitious, was the centerpiece of Cassatt's first solo exhibition in the United States in 1895. Her contacts with wealthy friends in the United States did much to bring avant–garde French painting into this country.

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American Gothic (1930) 🎨 Grant Wood 🏛️ The Art Institute of Chicago 📍 Chicago, United States

This familiar image was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago, winning a three-hundred-dollar prize and instant fame for Grant Wood. The impetus for the painting came while Wood was visiting the small town of Eldon in his native Iowa. There he spotted a little wood farmhouse, with a single oversized window, made in a style called Carpenter Gothic. “I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house,” he said. He used his sister and his dentist as models for a farmer and his daughter, dressing them as if they were “tintypes from my old family album.”

The highly detailed, polished style and the rigid frontality of the two figures were inspired by Flemish Renaissance art, which Wood studied during his travels to Europe between 1920 and 1926. After returning to settle in Iowa, he became increasingly appreciative of midwestern traditions and culture, which he celebrated in works such as this. American Gothic, often understood as a satirical comment on the midwestern character, quickly became one of America’s most famous paintings and is now firmly entrenched in the nation’s popular culture. Yet Wood intended it to be a positive statement about rural American values, an image of reassurance at a time of great dislocation and disillusionment. The man and woman, in their solid and well-crafted world, with all their strengths and weaknesses, represent survivors.

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Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914) 🎨 Giorgio de Chirico 🏛️ Private Collection 📍 Somewhere