NEW YORK METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

Paul Cezanne “The Card Players”

Cezanne was born on January 19, 1839 in France. He studied law from 1859 to 1861 in France and also attended drawing classes. In opposition to his fathers wishes he decided to pursue his art career. In Paris he met Camille Pissarro a novelist. Cezanne, however, remained an outsider to their circle; from 1864 to 1869 he submitted his work to the official Salon and saw it consistently rejected. His paintings of 1865-70 form what is usually called his early "romantic" period. Extremely personal in character, it deals with bizarre subjects of violence and fantasy in harsh, somber colors and extremely heavy paintwork.
“Paul Cézanne pursued his interests more and more in artistic isolation. He is a predecessor of modern painting; his drawing exhibits exactly what his eye saw “for the traits of graphic form that he achieved through a exclusive handling of space, mass, and color.” Cézanne was a modern of the impressionists, but he went past their interests in the individual brushstroke and the fall of light onto objects, to create, in his words, "something more solid and durable, like the art of the museums. Cézanne rejected that kind of approach and worked his way out of the obsessions underlying it, his art is conveniently divided into three phases. In the early 1870s, through a mutually helpful association with Pissarro, with whom he painted outside Paris at Auvers, he assimilated the principles of color and lighting of impressionism and loosened up his brushwork; yet he retained his own sense of mass and the interaction of planes, as in House of the Hanged Man (1873; Musee d'Orsay, Paris).”
In the late 1870s Cézanne entered the phase known as "constructive," characterized by the grouping of parallel, hatched brushstrokes in formations that build up a sense of mass in themselves. He continued in this style until the early 1890s, when, in his series of paintings titled Card Players (1890-92), the upward curvature of the players' backs creates a sense of architectural solidity and thrust, and the intervals between figures and objects have the appearance of live cells of space and atmosphere.
Living in solitary in Aix he concentrated on a few basic subjects: still lives of studio objects built around elements, model and drawing upon a combination of memory, earlier studies, and sources in the art of the past; and painting views in close proximity landmarks, while in his studio looking across the valley. He practice using watercolor in his final years, which had transparent and an unfinished look. His last paintings are solemn and spiritual. He continued in this style until the early 1890s, when, in his series of paintings titled Card Players (1890-92), the upward curvature of the players' backs creates a sense of architectural solidity and thrust, and the intervals between figures and objects have the appearance of live cells of space and atmosphere.”
Paul Cezanne used curves and shapes conveys. Through color and composition the artist established a serious card game being played in the late 1800’s. The function it serves is to display a form of entertainment among middle class men or perhaps cowboys.
The symbolism the work contained were men how appeared to be heavy cigar smokers and who play their card game regularly.
The message I interrupted was that the on looker in the far back of the painting with the dark overcoat and cigar was either making sure no one cheated or he was waiting for someone to lose, so he can get into the next game. The men are very serious. The message communicated in this painting is play hard. The cultural, political, economic, social or religious influence on the life of the artist and the community in which he/she worked was to exhibit the "romantic" period. The style of the work reflects the time or culture in which it is made was modern painting. The Card Players exhibits exactly what his eye saw “for the traits of graphic form that he achieved through a exclusive handling of space, mass, and color.” The composition appears to show gambling. What stands out the most when I first approaching the work was that the men wasn’t giving each other eye contact.




www.ibibilo.org/wm/paine/auth/cezanne/bio.html
Source: The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

BRUCE MUSEUM

Han van Meegeren’s: The Supper at Emmaus, 1937,
Han van Meegeren was born on October 10, 1889. He was a Dutch painter and art restorer and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of his time.
When art critics decried his work as tired and derivative, Van Meegeren felt that the critics had attacked him and had destroyed his career. He prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists. Van Meegeren spent six years researching techniques, finally producing perfect forgeries of paintings attributed to Johannes Vermeer. He had so well replicated the styles and colours of the artists he copied, even the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine, and sometimes exquisite, and the techniques he used could not be detected using authentucation a methods of the time.
The Disciples at Emmaus is the most famous of all the van Meegeren forgeries said he kept the strip of canvas and the two pieces of stretcher so removed, but only one piece of stretcher was actually found at his villa by the police. However, the annual rings and a wormhole on this piece of wood matched exactly those on the edge of the stretcher. X-rays revealed the traces of an underlying painted head at approximately the position that van Meegeren had said one would be found. Van Meegeren sold this painting through other people. The cover story was that van Meegeren had been asked to sell this and other pictures, part of a group of Old Masters, by an Old Dutch family now living in Italy. Emmaus works for two days and was examined and then qualified it as an authentic Vermeer, announcing the results in a local magazine.
Dutchmen wanting to prevent a purchaseof Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party During World War II. Following the war, the forgery was discovered in Goering's possession, and was arrested as a German Collaborator, as the officials believed that he had sold Dutch cutural property to the Nazis. Since Han van Meegeren did not want the death penalty he confessed to the forgeryh. The Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus painting as a Johannes Vermeer work. The commission traced the forgery to Meegeren. His charges were falsification and fraud charges, and was sentenced for one year in prison. He did not go to prision because he died of a heart attack in 1947. Critics said Van Meegeren received over $25–30 million dollars for his forgeries.
Han van Meegeren used curves and shapes convey. Through color and composition the artist established a religious dinner. The function it serves was to copy an original painting on to make a profit form it. Secular reasons was not his intentions they were to only make a profit. The symbolism the work contained were the three individuals sitting around Jesus in the far chair in blue giving them wisdom.
The message I interrupted was a dinner that was prepared for Jesus and the people showing him praise. The people exhibited strong religious belief. The message communicated in this painting is honor. The cultural, political, economic, social or religious influence on the life of the artist and the community in which he/she worked was to show a forgery of an original painting. I see a heavy conversation going on that attracted its listens and they focused on what is being said to them .The composition appears to a day long ago when people had to rely on religion. What stands out the most when I first approaching the work was the attention that was showed to the man in blue. The artist used oil on a canvas, the colors are very soft a give the appearance that it was in a small room of the church.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren

essentialvermeer.20m.com/misc/van_meegeren

www.tnunn.ndo.co.uk/emmaus.

The New York Sun, May 10, 2007.

THE NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Lilly Martin Spencer This Little Pig Went to Market, 1857

George Tooker
Bird Watchers, 1948
George Clair Tooker, Jr. was born August 5, 1920. He father was Anglo/French-American and his mother was English/Spanish-Cuban, they lived in Brooklyn then later moved to Long Island. He had a proper upper class background, he became a figure painter whose work reflects both his advantaged status and understanding of those less comfortable. The people he drew with sexual and racial appearance are regularly covered by weighty clothing and appear drooping and loose fitting, trapped within their own boring worlds. He attended art school first then went on to Harvard University majoring in English Literature. Majority of his time went to his art work. He graduated from college in 1942, joined the the Marine Corps , and was discharged because he was extremely ill.
In 1943 at the Art Students League Of New York is when he began his studing. Kenneth Hayes Miller were two of his teachers at the ASL. He was compared with other painters such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper other famous artist. Although he was raised in a religious (Episcopalian) family he later converted to Catholicism. He is a member of The American Academy of Art and Letters and he lives in Vermont.
Although he was raised in a religious family, Tooker stopped attending church when he began art school. Nevertheless, the religious art of the past affected him deeply and has remained a major influence throughout his career. Speaking of Bird Watchers, he explained: "I wanted to paint a positive picture, a religious picture without religious subject matter. I thought watching birds was a good subject which could get close to a religious picture, but I was not yet ready to make a painting with a religious subject."
Based on Quattro cento Italian prototypes, Bird Watchers suggests the Crucifixion, with the figures of Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the apostles and soldiers at the foot of the cross, which is represented by the tree to the right. The panel itself, with its arched top, refers to Renaissance altarpieces. The painting was thought in Manhattan's Central Park. Although the figures are clearly from the late 1940s, Tooker detached all excessive detail from their clothing in order to suggest a more everlasting simplicity. “Critics noticed the topcoat of the main figure has no buttons or buttonholes and becomes a loose robe of indeterminate style. The figures are monumental and stiffly posed, the composition stable and static, the faces, modeled for the most part on Tooker himself, his friends, and his family, standardized and repetitious. The use of primary colors enhances the painting's calmness and stability while also evoking Italian paintings”.
Some critics have described his style as "magic realism," but he was not interested in the false effects that many of the painters of that style espouse. He has regarded himself as more of a reporter or observer of society than an interpreter. It was also said, “He is considered to be of Magic Realism’s most prominent visual artists. "Magic Realism" is a rather vaguely defined movement. German critic Franz Roh to describe the dreamlike symbolic art of De Chirico and his Italian cohorts coined the name in 1923. (1) The term was made popular in this country by the Museum of Modern Art's 1943 exhibition "American Realists and Magic Realists," which distinguished the fantastic imagery of painters such as Paul Cadmus and Ivan Albright from the more conventional realism of Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler. Despite the suggestion of the Chazen exhibition's title, these Midwest artists never defined themselves as being part of any movement. Salvador Dali's New York debut in the early 1930s seemed to have opened the doors for American artists across the country to develop their own styles of fantasy-tinged surrealism. (2)
Working within the then-revitalized tradition of egg tempera, His work addressed affecting issues of modern-day alienation with subtly eerie and often visually literal depictions of social withdrawal and isolation. Subway and Government Bureau are two of his best-known paintings. The word "tempera" derives from the medieval Latin temperate; meaning blending or mixing. Today, the word indicates a medium bound with emulsions, combined with dry pigments and water. The exhibition considers techniques using both egg yolk (egg tempera) and milk proteins as principal emulsions. Mesmerized by geometric design and symmetry, he works slowly, completely about two paintings a year because he spends much time searching for the underlying idea.

This work of art captured my eye because I was interested in knowing what the people were looking at. The day appeared to be a Sunday afternoon after church. The people are fascinated about the site they witness in the tree. Their clothing was very plain but colorful. The man in front in the light color trench coat had a “wow” look on his face with his hands tilt in the upward position. The individual standing on the bridge was also focused on what was going on in the tree.
George Tooker used egg tempera. The artist established and old dreary time period through color and composition. The function it serves is to display “Magic Realism” a time period when the symbolism the work contained were ordinary people and their expressions.
The message I interrupted was people trying to figure out what type of bird was in the tree. The worker exhibited facial expression. The message communicated in these painting suggests the Crucifixion. The cultural, political, economic, social or religious influence on the life of the artist and the community in which he/she worked was to show magic in his artwork. The style of the work reflects the time or culture in which it is made was Renaissance altarpieces. The composition appears to show Europeans rear the river.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tooker -
www.rogallery.com/tooker_george/tooker-biography.htm -
Thomas H. Garver, George Tooker (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1985)

Greta Berman and Jeffrey Wechsler, Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1982)

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Wadsworh Athenum Museum of Art

Frederick Lord Leighton was born on December 3, 1830 in Scarborough. English painter and sculptor, He was the son of a physician. Sir James Leighton was his grandfather, also a physician, was long resident at the court of St. Petersburg. Frederick Leighton was taken abroad at a very early age. In 1840 he learned drawing at Rome under Signor Meli. The family moved to Dresden and Berlin, where he attended classes at the Academy. In 1843 he was sent to school at Frankfurt. In 1844 he went with his family to Florence, where he decisded to be an artist. There he studied under Bezzuoli and Segnolini at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, and attended anatomy classes under Zanetti; but he soon returned to complete his general education at Frankfurt, receiving no further direct instruction in art for five years.

Much of Leighton's art reflects his fundamental reserve. He was said to be not a man who felt the need to communicate his inner feelings or his experience of life through the medium of art; nor was he an artist capable of moving an audience emotionally. None the less, it is the case that Leighton cared passionately about the purpose which he served; which was that it should strengthen and inspire by the function of an abstract beauty essential in the harmonious arrangement of color and line.
The formal qualities of his art were essentially more important and powerful than its capacity to inform an audience. His strength lay in his extraordinary visual sense and in his capacity to compose in a way which was both decorative and symbolically informative; he knew how to arrange cooler and texture with sumptuous effect; and he represented the external world with a degree of naturalism which pleases the eye without falling into the trap of mere duplication of reality. Leighton's art, which might at first seem dry and dependent upon erudite interpretation, is in fact sensuous and even passionate.

Frederic Leighton had an unusual talent; as a painter this is familiar in his works, from his large-scale Academy pictures to his highly personal oil studies and landscapes. This may have something to do with his upbringing and academic art education in various parts of Europe. Leighton had a more sophisticated understanding of aesthetics than almost any of his British contemporaries. His career he was closely involved with the Royal Academy; his most important pictures were exhibited there, and were generally met with an passionate response. He succeeded Sir Francis Grant as President of the Royal Academy in 1878, and despite the break that had been caused in the area of painting by the beginning of the Grosvernor Gallery in 1877, he himself was thoroughly impressive a figure to rise above the divisions and rivalries of the period.
Leighton's greatest paintings are mythological subjects or scenes from ancient or Biblical history. Unlike many of his contemporaries he understood the true spirit of classicism in painting and therefore did not rely on mere archaeological reconstruction, but rather created timeless settings of simplicity and great visual strength. Nothing conflicts with, or distracts from, the physical or emotional drama which is the subject of the picture. Leighton is arguably the greatest of High Victorian painters. Leighton's life was throughout marked by distinction, artistic and social.



Frederic lord Leighton painted Hercules Wresting with death for body of Alcestis in 1871. This painting is oil on canvas. Leighton was an English painted and sculptor. His work illustrated historical, biblical and classical subject matter.
According to Greek mythology, Alecestis wife of Admetus was will to sacrifice herself so that her husband, who had angered Artemis, could live. Hercules was a guest at Admetu’s place at the time of his wife’s death, he goes after death and wrestles with him for the body of Alcestis and wins her back.
This painting was made for secular reasons. This painting exhibits several meanings. People who are in the left corner are confused and grieving the death. They are comforting each other. The sit thing that drew me to the painting was the struggle that Hercules uncounted in the far right corner. After doing my research I was compassionate for Hercules how he shoed graduate in getting his wife’s’ life back. His face was not shown but I could almost feel his pain.

Important links: http://music.musictnt.com/biography/sdmc_Frederic_Leighton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredericleighton

Yale Center for British Art

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the excellent scholarly strength among English artists of his age, he created a new type of portraiture by understanding the humanity of his subjects in terms of the heroic tradition of Old Master history painting.Joshua Reynolds was born on July 16, 1723, in Plympton, Devon, the third son of the Reverend Samuel Reynolds, His father was the head of the Plympton Grammar School. Reynolds at seventeen was apprenticed to Richardson's son-in-law, Thomas Hudson, in London, where he was in a program for restoring portraiture to the dignity of high art.Reynolds's main types of portraiture memorialize naval and military heroes, civil and religious dignitaries, the English landowning oligarchy in both its public and private aspects, actors and actresses, and children in fanciful roles, related in their vein of sentiment to "fancy pictures" like the Age of Innocence (1788). His most ambitious translation of a subject picture into a portrait is the group of the daughters of Sir William Montgomery, the Grace Adoring a Term of Hymen (1774), a Miltonian bridal masque in which the rite of worship to the God of Wedlock is performed by three famous beauties, one recently married, another preparing for marriage, and the third still to be betrothed. Among the finest of his military portraits in a battle setting are Colonel Banastre Tarleton (1782) and George Augustus Eliott, Lord Heathfield (1788).Renyolds was the most important and influential of eighteenth century English painters, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy.Showing an early interest in Art, Reynolds apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudosnwith whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered severe cold which left him partially deafened, and as a result he began to carry a small ear device with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the rest of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival.Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a vacation. Despite this he was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of the Club.With his rival Thomas Gainsborough , Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement, and on February 23, 1972, and died in his house in Leicester Fields, London.Professionally, Reynolds' career never peaked. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts, and with Gainsborough established the Royal Acedemy of Arts as a second organisation. In 1768 he was made the Royal Acedemy 's first President, a position he held until his death. Reynolds and the Royal Academy have historically received a mixed reception.Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue in Congreve’s “Love for Love” in 1771. The painting is oil on canvas. He painted women who moved amongst the social elite who sex lives disobey polite codes of behavior which are demi-monde. The paintings of these women gave him publicity in fashionable male circles. The actress Mrs. Abington was popular among people in London. The painting is said to straddles the line between a straightforward portrait and a “historical” picture whose associations extends beyond the subject’s physical likeness. He associates his art with women.Miss Prue is a naïve country girl who is seduced by a predatory, half-witted dandy. Mrs. Abington had worked in a brothel before making her name on the stage and was, when Reynolds painted her, the mistress of a wealthy MP. She leans coquettishly over a fashionable chair-back, her thumb poised suggestively before her slightly parted lips: a vulgar, sexually charged gesture. The work contains symbolism of an upscale woman. The message communicated in this painting was royalty in London. I seen a women how held her head up and that is what drew my attention to this painting. What stands out the most when first approaching the work was the way she was straddle over the chair. The artist use color as an oil on canvas.Resources for writing:Important links:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Reynolds

YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

Thomas Hart Benton was an American regionalist painter of the 1930s. He placed the subjects of his work, people of the small towns of the Midwest and South. Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, the son and grandnephew of a United States congressman. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907. He traveled to Paris for five years examining new trends and understanding cubism. He returned to the United States in 1912, advocated by his friend Stanton M. Wright. In 1916 Benton sent his work to the Forum Exhibition of American Painting. However he had a hard time to determine the clash he felt between no objectivity and realism in his painting.
Between 1919 and 1924 Benton made studies for his projected series of mural decorations based on American history. From 1924 to about 1931 he traveled through the Midwest and the South, taking close note of the people he met and incorporating these observations in his paintings.
Benton's murals generally show his distress for the collection of figures and design, as in his paintings done in 1931 for New York City's New School for Social Research. In the New York murals a rhythmic movement sweeps through scenes of ordinary American folk shown purposefully at various activities--eating, dancing, or working. Benton's energetic, turbulent style is intended to suggest the vigor of the American people. (Online biography) Benton produced a scene of America's productive capacities in his scenes of mining, farming, and lumbering. Benton wished to democratize art, to make it both intelligible and available to the general public (hence the large mural series). He planned a pictorial history of the United States in 64 panels, a project never completed. He was one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the major trend in American art during the 1930s--an art of a specifically American subject matter, done in a variety of naturalistic modes rather than in the European modernist styles of the previous decade. (1 online biography)
When the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and America engaged in World War II, Thomas Hart Benton painted “Weighing Cotton” in 1939 to show images of that time period. This painting was made for the impression of hard work. It serves as a mural on images based on American subject matter and to show realistic representation of the early 1900’s. Weighing Cotton is an oil and tempera on canvas mounted on wood panel. The historical work captured everyday people doing a hard day of work. The mural was said, “to have found expression in art that focused on native subject met the landscape of life in the Midwest and the South and Benton articulated a personal vision of the American Heartland.”
Regionalism refers to the work of a number of rural artists, mostly from the Midwest, who came to prominence in the 1930s.Not being part of a coordinated movement, Regionalist artists often had an idiosyncratic style or point of view. What they shared, among themselves and among other American scene painters were a humble, anti-modernist style and a desire to depict everyday life
Thomas Hart Benton used curves and shapes conveys. Through color and composition the artist established a time of slavery. The function it serves is to display a time period when America was in the Great Depression. It was made secular reasons. The symbolism the work contained were workers in the 1930’s who were mostly poor and were common to find working in the field at that time.
The message I interrupted was southern workers making a living. The worker exhibited doing hard work. The message communicated in this painting is the occupation of the public. The cultural, political, economic, social or religious influence on the life of the artist and the community in which he/she worked was to show real impressions in his art work. The style of the work reflect the time or culture in which it is made was murals of rural America In the 1930.Weighing Cotton was vision of the artist to reflect a time period when America was struggling. I see a large cotton plantation in a rural southern town with old and young worker contributing to the cotton picking. The composition appears to show blacks doing daily task. What stands out the most when I first approaching the work was the worker and their effort in teamwork? The artist use color oil on a canvas, the colors are very soft a give the appearance that it was a hot hazy afternoon.

Resources for writing: encyclopedia of world
Important links: http://www. biography/thomas-hart-benton/.com; artcyclopedia.com/artist/thomasbenton

Week 2

I pulled two co-worker to the Yale Center For British Art, they like the experience and will bring their families to enjoy the experience as well.