The Maas at Dordrecht. This is the type of painting that prompted me to start this blog. I like this painting, yet I am realy not sure why. It has a certain serenity to it. The horizon is perfectly horizontal. The sea is calm. The sails are not filled. The sky is a calming shade of blue and only depicts a hint that the weather will not remain pleasant. There are a large number fo ships reaching off into the distance. People are mulling about not doing anything obviously controversial, energetic or out of the ordinary. It simply depicts a quiet day at a sea port. I believe that the mood of the subject matter in this piece is what makes it attractive. One can rest and look at it with being rushed along. There is no sense of urgency and one can wander through it at a leisurely pace, setting the rest of the world aside and taking in the calm of a day near the shore.
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Edgar Degas
Impressionism. Love it or hate it, it made it’s mark on art history. With Degas, ballerinas dominated a number of his works and even though the subject matter is not my cup of tea, this painting engages me on some level. If you were to remove the figure’s upper bodies, this would appear as a mere landscape based on color and shapes in the design. However, adding the figures affects our psyches and start us wondering how they relate to their environment. This painting seems to integrate the two subjects seemlessly. One thing that makes this piece pop for me is the dark contour lines of the figures. Making them seem almost graphic in nature, these back lines accentuate the contours and shadows and set the figures apart from their surrounding environment. Without them, they would most likely blend into the background and be lost in the barrage of colors and brush strokes. Where to use this technique? I for one will keep it in the back of my mind.
Louis Anquetin
For today’s image, I have decided to trace back my own art training history to see where it leads. My main painting instructor has been a man named Michael Molnar. Molnar was a student of Joseph Sheppard. Joseph Sheppard was a student of Jacques Maroger. This takes me back to the end of the 19th century. One more step back and I land at Louis Anquetin. Anquetin was a contempory and friend of Toulouse-Lautrec. This may not mean anything to anyone but I have a certain affection for the impressionists and this time period in art history and to be able to trace my teaching directly to that period is exciting for me. The piece I am looking at is called Clichy Avenue. When I look at this piece, I can definitely see similar characteristics to Toulouse-Lautrec and a resemblance to Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone. As I quickly researched, it seems this painting may have actually been an inspiration for Van Gogh’s work. The large areas of flat color was common at the time in history and brings to mind Lautrec as well as Gaugin and Cezanne. As I continue to come across, Anquetin uses a complimentary color scheme of blue and oranges balancing the weight of the orange hues with a smaller patch of red-orange in the lower right corner. Most of the figures in this work are abstracted with very few details. The focal point of the piece is the brightest yellow point located in and as the flame of the front lantern. The lantern is shaped as an arrow which leads the eye down to the ground level and into the crown of people. I have always been a fan of Van Gogh’s “Rhone” and considering the great similarity of it to this piece, I can appreciate this one as well, especially with the added historical link to my own studies. One word of note is that apparently, Anquetin gave up on this style of painting and instead persued a more academic style which was passed on to his students which is unfortunate as the style shown above as truly intriguing in its own right.
Caravaggio
Caravaggio was one sick dude, bottom line. If I am correct in my art history he was a cheat, a murder and most appauling, most likely a pedophile. One of my fellow art students said to me once musingly, “How could you not like a guy who paintings young boys and dead fruit?” For me, it is pretty easy to not like this guy. But his art, that is a different story. Caravaggio’s mastery of lighting effects, especially the use of tenebrism and chiaroscurro are probably unmatched in all of art history. This piece, the Conversion of St. Paul is one of my favorites as I was always found of this narrative and Caravaggio seems to have treated this stoy faithfully (unline many other religious based paintings of his). As the story goes, as Paul rode through the desert to Damascaus, God knocked him off his horse and blinded him in order to show His power and convert him to become a follower of Christ. Before this event, Paul was a soldier in the Roman army and his attire relects that. I also notice that Paul was painted with his eyes closed to indicate the blindness that was forced on him. A limited palette was used in this work as well as the signature chiaroscurro which has the forms roll away from the light into almost complete darkness. Caravaggio has a circular compostional design in this piece made up of the arms of Paul, the horse’s head back and back leg which allows your eye to move around this entire image picking up details as his sword and the bit in the horse’s mouth. The interesting thing about lighting schemes such as this one is that it is not clear where the light source is actually coming from and lends itself to a certain amount of artistic license. Caravaggio may not have been my kind of person, but you have to admit that he could paint.
Paul Kidby
I became familiar with illustrator Paul Kidby’s work after picking up his book, “The Art of Discworld” at a company book sale (HarperCollins). Kidby is the illustrator of choice for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Kidby has a really fun style with modern and comedic takes on medieval imagery and subject matters. In this image, four members of his Rembrandt based Night Watchesque security team stagger home from a night of merriment (probably afterwork happy hour) and entirely miss the fact that they are about to toasted like marshmellows by the pursuant dragon. This is a fun image that still employees a number of the compositional techniques I have discussed in previous posts. The most obvious to me is the color temperature being used. Warm red, yellows, ochres, and browns are used to illuminate the warmth given off by this little village with its torch light and natural structural elements including wood and warmly lit stone. The sky contrasts these warm tones with cooler blues which are also reflected in the dragon back scales, wings and claws. I believe that it is this fine example of warm versus cool tone usage that in addition to the jocular take on the subject matter comes together to make a powerful and entertaining image.