Art Revived - Dummies Art Blog

Rembrandt, or Not?

2010-03-05T21:31:21-05:00

The Dutch painter Rembrandt is one of the most famous painters of all time, and also one of the biggest names in the field of art authentication. In fact, the Smithsonian founded the Rembrandt Research Project in 1968 to try to identify mislabeled paintings. Many fake ‘Rembrandt’ works exist, for a variety of reasons.

For one, Rembrandt had a large workshop, with many apprentices. Some artwork was incorrectly identified as Rembrandt’s, and later found to be painted by his students. Also, Rembrandt produced many paintings throughout his life, which makes it more difficult to create a definitive catalog of his artwork. The most important reason, of course, is Rembrandt’s reputation. Artists and dealers alike have imitated his work in hopes of capturing value.

The Rembrandt Research Project began with aims of solving this problem. The team of art historians and researchers working on the project have been using various authentication techniques on questionable paintings, comparing them with works that are definitely Rembrandt’s, like The Night Watch and Descent from the Cross. The project continues to raise controversy in the art world, as no owners want to believe a ‘Rembrandt’ in their collection is a fake.

A Brief History of the Art Market

2010-03-03T13:20:09-05:00

Historically, artists used to work almost solely by commission. A patron, often a wealthy individual or a religious group, would contact an artist or craftsman, and specify the type of artwork desired. The price of the work was typically agreed upon ahead of time, and the art created was not intended for resale. In fact, commissioned artwork was often site-specific and incorporated into an existing building.

Before an art market could emerge in its modern-day form, three main things had to develop: portable artwork, ways to sell this art, and collectors. The earliest forms of portable art that became popular were tapestries and linen paintings. Most of these were produced in workshops in the Netherlands. By 1460, an exchange building was opened in the port city of Antwerp and the top floor was dedicated to the sale of paintings and prints. As advances in sea travel continued, art was transported from the Netherlands to other European cities, and eventually to the Americas.

Engraving of the Antwerp Stock Exchange (1650).

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, paintings were mostly seen as a way to adorn the walls of one’s home. Most people at this time saw paintings as more or less substitutable – the value of a painting was based largely on its size. In the seventeenth century, however, art collecting became more fashionable. By the early eighteenth century, a whole culture had evolved around the idea of a Salon where the learned and social elite could gather and discuss paintings.

Cezanne's 7 Most Famous Paintings

2010-03-02T19:08:05-05:00

Paul Cezanne influenced countless artists through many of his groundbreaking ideas and techniques, including simplification of the form into more basic geometric shapes, novel subject matter, and an innovative use of color. Many famous artists claim to be inspired and highly influenced by Cezanne, including Matisse and Picasso. He even managed to change the course of two whole art movements!

1. Mont St. Victoire

Cezanne’s Mont St. Victoire is a traditional landscape, yet completely revolutionary in technique. He takes impressionism to the extreme, with patches of color conveying the atmosphere of the mountainscape. In fact, in this painting Cezanne does amazing work portraying a thick atmosphere with the use of the blue-ish tint in the painting. Through Cezanne’s “impression” of Mont St Victoire, he moves towards a more architectural image, along with a flatter plane. This paves the way for the abstraction movement towards cubism.

2. Bathers

Cezanne’s Bathers is often considered his most important work, and is sometimes better known for the work it inspired. Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon takes direct cues from this work through the grouping of nude women and their stances. Cezanne's influence can also be seen in Matisse's La Danse. This painting also reflects Cezanne’s struggle with his sexuality, and his difficulty in achieving intimacy with women. The Philadelphia Museum of Art bought the painting in 1937 for $110,000, where it now resides.

3. Compotier, Pitcher, and Fruit

Cezanne painted many still lifes in his studio, and they often involved fruit and glassware. In this painting, we see how he uses color to create his objects, rather than line. The folded cloth on the table and in the background allowed Cezanne to play with texture and shadows. Cezanne was one of the first artists to abandon the use of realistic perspective, as seen in the way the fruit looks as though it might fall off the table.

Compotier, Pitcher, and Fruit (1892-94)

4. Apples and Oranges

Cezanne revolutionized the art industry through his use of still lifes as subject matter, which at the time was considered to be banal and trivial. Through paintings such as Apples and Oranges Cezanne carved out a niche in the art world. This painting also shows his movement toward geometrization of his subject matter, which works toward abstraction of the form. He also uses slight distortion of the plane. Together, this heavily influences artists such as Picasso and Braque to invent cubism.

5. Harlequin

The harlequin subject matter appearing in one of Cezanne’s great paintings, Harlequin, reappears quite famously in Picasso’s rose period. A great comparison can be seen here in Picasso's Harlequin Leaning on His Elbow. Cezanne’s painting foreshadows Picasso’s gloomy, “blue” mood.

6. Les grandes baigneuses

Bathing scenes were another of Cezanne’s main themes. His bathers are usually arranged in a wide variety of different positions, allowing him to paint the human body from all angles. In his paintings with multiple people, like this one, each bather somehow seems isolated and alone. He paints the figures with varying levels of detail, and some figures seem to blend into the background.

Les grandes baigneuses  (1900-05)

7. The Lake at Annecy

Cezanne painted this work on holiday in the foothills of the French Alps. He initially resisted the temptation to paint the scene, as he thought it too trite and obvious. In the end, Cezanne painted this view from his hotel room and it has become one of his most famous works. His simplification of objects into geometric forms is evident here, as seen in the boxy buildings and the cylindrical tree.

The Lake at Annecy (1896)

Major Movements in Modern Art

2010-02-08T15:33:25-05:00

“Modern Art” can be a confusing term, as it refers to the artwork of many different movements, countries, and time periods. One characteristic that most modern art shares, however, is freedom from tradition, in favor of experimentation and invention. Art Revived has put together a list of some of the key movements in modern art.

Impressionism

Impressionist artists like Claude Monet painted with thick, visible brushstrokes and created paintings that had a rather “unfinished” look. These artists focused upon capturing the effects of light and the passing of time, rather than painting in a realistic and detailed manner.

Cubism

Artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques worked together in Paris to invent Cubism. The movement is characterized by intersecting angles, loss of realistic perspective, and simplification of forms. Cubist artists often tried to show many different views of an object at the same time.

Dada and Surrealism

The Dada movement began during World War I, in part as a reaction against the destruction of the war. Its artists, such as Marchel Duchamp, created work that they considered “anti-art.” Dada eventually led to the creation of Surrealism, a movement that focused on dreams, chance, and the unconscious.

Abstract Expressionism

The Abstract Expressionist movement shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York City. The movement itself is hard to define, as it’s main artists –including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko – all worked in very different styles. Often, these artists produced work that was very large and conveyed a sense of energy.

Minimalism

The Minimalist movement can be seen as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. Minimalist artists tried to strip art down to its essential forms. They often worked with industrial materials, neutral colors, and repetition.

Pop Art
Pop artists like Andy Warhol incorporated elements of popular culture, and often advertisements, into their work. They were interested in mass production and consumer culture.

5 Most Famous Landscape Paintings

2010-02-02T13:39:03-05:00

Landscape painting has been a major genre in art since the sixteen hundreds. The landscape tradition in art didn’t take-off overnight, however – it slowly developed as artists began to focus more on the background of their paintings. Dutch artists were the first to paint works in which the setting – the landscape – actually became the subject of the painting. We have compiled a list of some of the most famous landscape artists of all time.

1. Thomas Cole, The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

American artist Thomas Cole painted four works inspired by James Feinmore Cooper’s famous novel The Last of the Mohicans, published in the same year. Although the paintings all depict specific scenes of interactions with the Native Americans from the novel, the real focus of the painting is the American wilderness.

2. Claude Monet, Water Lillies (1914-1926)

In his later years, impressionist artist Claude Monet painted a series of paintings of his water lily pond. Monet’s water lily paintings all share a pastel palette, and are done in his signature loose brushstrokes. Over the years, this series of works has become one of the most reproduced images of landscape art in history.

3. Paul Cézanne, Mount Sainte-Victoire (1894-1900)

Mount Sainte-Victoire lied to the east of Cézanne’s home in Aix-en-Provence, France. Over the years, he painted the mountain many times, in various painting styles. This painting in particular has become so famous because it has been labeled by some as one of the earliest works of cubism.

4. JMW Turner, The Slave Ship (1840)

Turner painted many famous landscape paintings over the course of his career, but none so evocative or politically-charged as his Slave Ship. The painting depicts a slave ship sinking in a storm, and the passengers drowning in the choppy waters. He painted the work with the abolitionist campaign in mind.

5. Claude Lorrain, The Return of Odysseus (1644)

Claude Lorrain was the most sought after landscape painter in seventeenth and eighteenth century France. He is famous for the soft haze he gives to the background of his idyllic landscapes. This painting, like most of his works, references Greek mythology and incorporates classical Greek architecture.

Vincent Van Gogh’s 7 Most Famous Paintings

2010-01-29T01:16:57-05:00

Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) produced around 900 paintings in his lifetime, yet only sold one. In the years since 1890, however, Van Gogh’s fame has skyrocketed – securing him a position as one of the most reproduced artists of all time. The team at Art Revived has assembled a list of Van Gogh’s most famous works.

1. The Starry Night (at Saint Remy), 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Easily Van Gogh’s most famous work, the iconic Starry Night has become one of the most well known paintings in history, as well as one of the most sought after prints.

Van Gogh’s wild, swirling brushstrokes and the unidentified dark object in the foreground together shroud the work in an irresistible sense of mystery. The bright stars in the sky reach out to the viewer, while the night sky and the sleeping town recede into the distance, pulling the viewer in.

Van Gogh painted the work while in an asylum in Saint-Rémy – a small village in the Southern France. The painting depicts the view from his sanatorium window.

2. The Bedroom, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Bedroom, also known as Bedroom in Arles, depicts the artist’s bedroom in his “Yellow House,” such named after a description of the house that Van Gogh wrote to his brother.

Painted in bright, contrasting colors, we see the artist’s pine furniture and his own paintings adorning the walls. The back wall of the room was skewed, making the room a trapezoid rather than rectangular in shape. Van Gogh has abandoned any attempt at realistic perspective, and succeeds in “flattening” many of the elements. He outlines the objects in bold, black lines.

3. Sunflowers, 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh painted countless depictions of sunflowers in his lifetime, though no two are identical. Many artists have attempted to replicate these famous works, and they continue to grow in popularity with the help of prints. Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings all share a very similar composition – a vase, resting on a table, with a solid background.

Van Gogh uses bright, vivid colors that bring the flowers to life. He provides a contrast to these bright tones by including dying sunflowers in the paintings. In this way, Van Gogh references the entire life cycle of the flowers.

4. The Night Café, 1888, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven:

Van Gogh’s Night Café depicts the late-night crowd at a café in Arles. He contrasts the vivid red of the walls with a bright green ceiling and a yellow floor. The ceiling lights emit an eerie yellow glow, and cause the pool table to cast a dark shadow on the floor. The overall feeling of isolation is amplified by the standing waiter, who appears to stare directly out at the viewer. During this time period, the all-night café served as a refuge for derelicts and prostitutes and, as such, Van Gogh wanted to express the underbelly of society in a visceral manner with his use of extreme color contrast and rough brush strokes.

5. Café Terrace at Night (Café Terrace, Place du Forum), 1888 Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo:

Like in Starry Night, Van Gogh succeeds in making the stars in the dark sky pop out at the viewer in his Café Terrace at Night. He again contrasts bright yellows and oranges with darker colors to create depth. Van Gogh achieves the effect of glowing light by interspersing the cobble stone road with flecks of yellow, blue, and orange tones. The painting depicts the terrace of the Place du Forum, a popular coffee house.

6. The Dance Hall in Arles, 1888, Musee d’Orsay, Paris:

Van Gogh created The Dance Hall in Arles during his time of close collaboration with the artist Paul Gauguin. The influence of Japanese art can be seen in Van Gogh’s depiction of hair, as well as the floating circles of light.

Van Gogh again uses bold, black lines to outline his figures and creates flatness by using solid colors. The way in which the figures overlap, and their features become unidentifiable in the distance, gives the work a feeling of crowdedness and movement.

7. Irises, 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh’s Irises is perhaps most famous for its stint as the most expensive painting ever sold, when it went for $53.9 million in 1987. The painting exudes a cheerful mood with its palette of blues and greens, and interspersed yellows.

He painted this work while in the asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole, but before he experienced his first attack. He once again uses the bold lines and angles typical of Japanese artwork.

The Origins of Oil Painting

2010-01-26T09:04:05-05:00

When discussing painting, the standard that comes to mind is usually oil paint on canvas. Oil painting, however, is a relatively new medium when considering the history of art.

Oil painting was not used in the traditional sense until the fifteenth century. Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck popularized oil painting with famous works such as The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait (1434). Oil paint allowed Van Eyck and other Flemish artists to paint with much more detail than ever before, and achieve a much higher level of realism than previously possible. Oil paint is transparent and slow-drying, so it can be layered and blended to create depth and realistic color.

Leonardo da Vinci brought the new technique to Italy later on in the fifteenth century, and made some improvements to Van Eyck’s method. He added beeswax to the paint to keep it from darkening in color.

Oil painting soon replaced the techniques most often associated with Italian art – tempera painting and fresco. Tempera paint is a fast-drying paint that usually consists of pigment and egg yolk. Unlike oil paint, tempera paint cannot be layered or blended, so the colors usually appear very vivid.

Raphael’s Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints provides an example of the distinct, bold colors typical of a tempera painting – notably the red and blue. Frescoes, on the other hand, are created by painting into wet plaster, and must be completed before the plaster dries. This results in a more spontaneous, less detailed work of art. Evidence of this can be seen in works like Giotto’s Crucifixion.

Art Theft Report: January 2010

2010-01-22T13:15:08-05:00

The Bad News:

- Over the holiday season, Edgar Degas’ painting Le Choristes was stolen from the Musée Cantini in Marseille, France. The painting’s value is placed between 1.15 and 42.2 million- quite a wide discrepancy! The 13 × 10 inch painting seemed to be easily unscrewed from the wall, leading police to suspect an inside job- and are currently interviewing a night watchman.

- One day after the Degas painting was stolen, an entire collection was taken from a villa in La Cadiere d’Azur in the south of France, and estimated to be worth over $2 million dollars. The caretaker of the estate discovered the missing pieces, including works by Picasso and Henri Rousseau.

- Art Loss Register has found the UK has the most art thefts in the world- with the US coming in second! Although, Norway takes the prize for the most expensive work of art stolen, with Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

The Good News:

- Claude Monet’s “Beach in Pourville” was found by Polish police, and is now at the National Museum in Poland with experts confirming its authenticity. Ten years ago, “Beach in Pourville” had been sliced from its frame and replaced with a fake done on cardboard! Of course, this didn’t fool anyone for very long.

- A Miami thief, who was inspired by “Antiques Roadshow”, has been caught for the theft of a Chagall lithograph and a Picasso etching. The works were stolen from a gallery in Washington DC in 2007, and the thief attempted to resell the works to a gallery in Palm Beach, Florida. The man was caught through a federal sting, with an agent posing as a gallery employee after the Palm Beach gallery notified police.

Cubist Painters to Know

2010-01-06T04:06:37-05:00

The Cubist movement was highly influential in modern art, forever changing the way we think about art in terms of its purpose and what art should look like. Cubism paved the way for abstract art and allowed artists to move away from extreme naturalism; without it, we would never see art such as Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup or the work of Jackson Pollock.

For such a significant art movement, one might be surprised to learn that the artists that developed Cubism all lived in Paris and were colleagues, and continued on to be some of the most important artists of the Cubist movement. This includes of course Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the two most significant artists of the Cubism period, but also Juan Gris, Ferdinand Leger, and Robert Delaunay.

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque are known for the invention of cubism, and therefore are the two most significant Cubism artists. They first started working in the style of Analytic Cubism, which broke down forms into simpler geometric shapes and then distorted images to the point it created a broken glass panel effect on paintings.

These paintings were often monochromatic as well, as seen in Braque’s Violin and Candlestick. The two then started working in a style called Synthetic Cubism, which was a form of collage. A great example of this style is seen in Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning

While Picasso and Braque are known for inventing cubism, Juan Gris is known as the third most important Cubist painter. Picasso and Braque worked in neutral colors, often dark grays, yet Gris introduced the use of much brighter colors in his paintings. He is quite famous for his portrait of Picasso, although it is rumored that Picasso was not quite fond of Gris! Yet Juan Gris’ record sale price was for his Livre, pipe et verres, which sold for 20.8 million in November 2008 at Christie’s, and was the first time Gris’ paintings sold for prices on par with Picasso.

Also quite important in the Cubism movement was Ferdinand Leger, who actually was first trained as an architect. He began working in a very interesting style of Cubism in which he formed most figures with cylindrical shapes, which became known as “Tubism”, a play on the word Cubism. Leger only worked in the “Tubist” style, and did not experiment with collage as Picasso and Braque did. His prior experience as an architectural draftsman influenced his art, which took on mechanical characteristics.

A great example of one of his Tubism paintings is Nudes in the Forest. Just last year, it was announced that one of Leger’s paintings titled Mother and Child went missing from the Wellesley College Davis Museum, and is a current scandal in the art world. It is thought that the painting was accidentally thrown out!

Robert Delaunay also worked in Paris alongside these influential Cubist artists. He mainly worked in other styles such as Neo-Impressionism and Orphism, but was influenced heavily by Cubism and used Cubism at the peak of its invention just prior to 1910. He made significant contributions to the movement, as Delaunay introduced architecture as subject matter into cubism, as seen in his Eiffel Tower paintings. His paintings usually sell in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at top auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Picasso's 5 Most Famous Paintings

2009-12-29T02:44:04-05:00

1. Guernica, 1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

Guernica is a blue, black, and white anti-war mural showing the emotional ravages of war. The painting refers to the German and Italian bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War; most of the men were fighting in the war and not in the town, and therefore most of the victims were women and children.

It is a chaotic scene showing the pain and suffering of people and animals, and was commissioned by the Spanish government for the 1937 World Fair in Paris to show the rest of the world the effects of the war. Later on, while living in Paris during World War II, Picasso suffered much harassment from the Nazis for his creation of this painting.

Even as recently as 2003, this painting has been the subject of controversy when the Bush Administration had a tapestry copy of the painting covered up during press conferences covering the Iraq War, as the anti-war ideals of the painting clashed with the subject being discussed.

2. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was a highly controversial painting that effectively replaced Matisse with Picasso as the leader of the Modern Art movement; afterwards, they continued to be bitter rivals.

This painting shows five masculine prostitutes in a brothel with highly distorted and fragmented figures, broken down into simple geometric shapes. This distortion of perspective and form paves the way for cubism, which continues to further abstract images into an unrecognizable image. Two of the women’s’ faces are influenced by African masks, while the other three are influenced by native Iberian art.

Picasso was also influence by El Greco, Paul Gaugin, and Paul Cezanne in this painting. In 1937, the MOMA purchased Les Demoiselles for $24,000- it is unimaginable how many millions of dollars the painting would sell for today!

3. Gertrude Stein, 1906, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gertrude Stein was an important and influential supporter of Picasso, along with many other artists and writers of the time. The monumental quality of her figure in the painting shows the extent of her influence on Picasso.

Her early support of Picasso was instrumental in his development as an artist. Gertrude Stein posed for this portrait 90 times, and Picasso grew so frustrated with trying to portray her face that he completely departed from realism and ultimately painted the face separately.

In fact, the face does not represent a likeness of Gertrude Stein, but is instead influenced by the style of African masks, which was an enormous influence on Picasso in this period, most especially seen in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

4. The Two Saltimbanques (Harlequin and his Companion), 1901, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

The Two Saltimbanques painting is representative of Picasso’s Blue Period. Many people are unaware of Picasso’s pre-cubist work, in which he created paintings that were not yet abstract, even if not naturalistic.

In this painting of two harlequins, the forlorn looks on their faces and the overall color tones portray an overall sense of gloom. The Blue Period was a four year range of paintings early in Picasso’s career that was influenced by the suicide of his close friend and was characterized by hazy blue tones and an overall sense of despair.

Many of Picasso’s paintings at this time featured harlequins or musicians, such as The Old Guitarist, another influential Blue Period painting.

5. Weeping Woman, 1937, Tate Modern, London

Weeping Woman was part of an important series late in Picasso’s career; this painting in particular was the last and most complex of the series. The subject of the painting, a woman crying, is intended to continue the emotional response of Guernica.

Although the woman’s face is highly abstracted and fragmented, the pain of the woman comes through clearly. The model, Dora Maar, is also Picasso’s mistress at the time. It is well known that Picasso thought her to be highly emotional, thus explaining his choice of model.