History of Painting

Ancient Chaldean arts

2011-10-25T21:18:00.001-07:00

The Chaldeans came originally from northeast Mesopotamia and took control of Babylon in 625 BC.

Geographically, Chaldea occupied a central position among the oldest seats of civilization.

Early Chaldean art lasted from a date reaching back 4000 years BC to 1250 BC, when the Assyrian power attained the ascendancy.

The Assyrian empire was overthrown 606 BC by the second Chaldean or Babylonian empire, and this in turn succumbed to the Persians 525 BC.

The first appearance of the Chaldeans is in paintings that lead to a desire to have relationships with them.

The Chaldean worshipped objects of some dignity e.g., the planet and then abstracting these objects by painting images, thus worshipping the thing, but in a partially ideally, or mediated form.

The painting of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Egyptians, dates for the remotest antiquity. The experts know nothing about Chaldean or Babylonian painting; but from the interesting discoveries of Chaldean sculpture, made in the vicinity of the site of Nineveh, it may be concluded that their painting must have attained considerable imminence and far surpassed that of Egypt and other neighboring nations.

The painting in Nineveh has preserved scenes of siege warfare and royal and divine figures. The appearance and clothing of the soldiers and military techniques and weapons come from these reliefs.

Working from the drawings, Chaldean men must have been clothed in embroidered and ornamented belts. Ancient Chaldean arts

History of Ink

2011-09-10T07:28:00.001-07:00

The origin of ink belongs to an era following the invention of writing. When the development of that art had advanced beyond the age of stone inscription or clay tablet, some material for marking with the reed and the brush was necessary.

The ink used by the ancient appears to have been what is termed in art a ‘body color’ or more solid medium than is at present used.

According to Pliny, the black taken from burnt ivory, and soot from furnaces and baths formed the basis of the ink used by old writers.

The Arabian methods of making ink were complex. Lampblack was first made by the burning of oil, tar or rosin, which was then commingled with gum and honey and pressed into small wafers or cakes, to which water could be added when wanted for use.

The story of printing ink began with the invention of the printing process. The earliest evidence of printing came from the Far East, centuries after the development of writing.

For ink-wash painting, it was first introduced in the Tang Dynasty, when Zhang Zao and some other painters began to paint in watered ink instead of other bright pigment color.

Brush and ink have long been regarded as the cardinal element on Chinese painting and in combination the two terms are used to mean the basic techniques in traditional Chinese painting.
History of Ink

Seaport with Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba in History

2011-07-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Embarkation of the Queen Sheba, going to visit Solomon is a masterpiece of Lorrain Claude (1600-1682) for his protector the Duke de Bouillon.

Embarkation of the Queen Sheba is a painting of a biblical episode set in a 17th century Europe harbor with a Roman ruin in the left foreground.

It was signed ‘Claude GE I. V. faict pour son Altesse le Due de Bouillon, anno 1648.’ It was formerly in the collection of the Duke de Bouillon and was purchased in the early part of the French revolution.

Claude, born of humble origins in the independence duchy of Lorraine, rose to become the greatest of all ideal landscape painters. Around 1617 he moved to Italy, where he apprenticed with the landscape painter Goffredo Wals in Naples.

By end of the 1630s he was one of the most sought after landscape painters in Europe. His patrons included Pope Urban VIII and King Phillip IV of Spain.
Seaport with Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba in History

The Raft of Medusa: The History

2011-06-21T02:27:00.001-07:00

‘The Raft of Medusa’ portrays victims of a shipwreck adrift on the sea without food and water at the moment they signal to a distant ship.

The painter chose to represent a dramatic moment o the instant when survivors regain hope of rescue.

In September 1816, the French were shocked at the news of the disaster that had befallen the government ship Medusa as it headed for Senegal in West Africa the previous July.

Medusa was one of four ships in a fleet sent by government of France to officially receive the British handover of the port of St Louis in Senegal. Medusa was to carry passengers, including the French governor of Senegal.

The French painter Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) befriend the ship’s surgeon , Henry Savigni, one of the tem who survived. Savigni provided Gericault with a direct eyewitness account of the event.
The Raft of Medusa: The History

History of Mycenaean paintings

2011-04-25T20:50:00.000-07:00

Ancient literature is filled with references to famous painters and paintings, but very few paintings survives.

Antecedents of Greeks painting occurred during the Bronze age cultures of the Minoans and Mycenaeans.

Mycenaean painting is related to Minoan art, with military themes and abstraction becoming evident.

The first known wall paintings were created between 1550 and 1450 BC in the palace at Mycenae.

Many pictures of Mycenaean warriors have been found. Mycenaean warriors comes form Mycenae itself.
History of Mycenaean paintings

Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter

2011-01-24T19:12:00.000-08:00

Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter
Burra left school early due to chronic ill health but later study art the Riyal College in Art of London.

His early work falls into the category of social realism and shows a fascination with the squalid and seedy. Harlem (1934), now in the Tate Gallery, London is an example.

Burra rarely left his home in Rye Sussex, using post cards and and photographs on which to base many of his paintings.

In the mid 1930s social context became less important in his work than grotesque and bizarre subject matter, as in Dancing Skeletons (1934). Skeletons and birdmen became favorite images.

Some of his painting leant towards surrealism while others, such as Christ Mocked, were of a religious nature.

In 1950s and 1960s he also produced landscape of a mysterious and menacing nature.
Burra, Edward John (1905 – 76) British painter

The Mona Lisa

2010-08-24T03:38:00.001-07:00

The Mona Lisa
The face in Leonardo’s painting Mona Lisa is probably the most well known in the world. She was painted in the early 1500s by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.

The subject of the portrait was a young woman from city of Florence, Italy. At age 16, Mona Lisa married Francesco del Gioconda – a wealthy merchant 19 years old her senior.

When Gioconda asked da Vinci to paint his young wife, the artist was struck by the woman’s beauty, so he agreed.

The most intriguing part of the Mona Lisa is her smile. This has been explained as resulting from everything from bad teeth to pregnancy to a lingering illness to a polite reaction to Leonardo’s lame jokes. Some said she was listening to music.

Another fascination for Leonardo scholars is the landscape behind Mona Lisa. A glance will show that the two side area not the same.

The Mona Lisa has a hard life. After Leonardo died, she eventually became the property of the kings of France.

After the Revolution, she hung in Napoleon’s bedroom. In 1804 she was placed in the Louvre.

Somewhere along the way she was cut down and the two columns flanking the woman were removed. In 1911, she was stolen and taken to Florence, where she was recovered ion 1913.

In 1956 she was attacked and slashed.

Toady Mon Lisa is in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre in an alcove on the right side, hiding behind bullet proof glass.

The Mona Lisa has been an inspiration to musicians, Composer Max von Schillings wrote an opera about the paining.

In 1958, American songwriters Livingston and Evans wrote a hit song about the portrait. Its lyrics ask if Mona Lisa smiles to “hide a broken heart.”
The Mona Lisa

Claude Monet

2010-07-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Claude Monet
Born in 1840, Claude Monet lived all his life along the River Seine. He always preferred to paint outdoors and is often described as the father of Impressionism.

Second only to his passion for painting was his love of nature and gardening; he once paid a woodcutter to spare a row of trees he was painting.

In 1883, while still very poor Monet rented the green and pink house at Giverny which became a beautiful home for his extended family.

Over the years his fame increased and he became very rich indeed eventually buying his house and employing gardeners to help create the water gardens, the subject of much of his later work.

Monet was immensely disciplined, usually rising at 4 a.m and always insisting that the house ran like clockwork.

He set equally high standard for his work: on one occasion a gardener was ordered to burn several paintings which Monet considered unsuccessful; on another, Monet threw his canvas, easel and brushes into the water.

During the First World War, fighting went on so near Monet’s house that he could hear the guns, but although his son was skilled in action, Monet refused to leaved his garden.

Monet died in Giverny on December 5, 1926.
Claude Monet

Catal Hoyuk Painting

2010-06-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

Catal Hoyuk Painting
Remarkable discoveries have been made in Anatolia. Excavations at Hacilar, Catal Hoyuk and elsewhere have shown that the central Anatolian plateau was the site of a flourishing culture between 7000 and 5000 BC.

Animal husbandry was well established, hunting continued play an important part in the early Neolithic economy of Catal Hoyuk.

The important of hunting as a food source (until about 5700 BC) is reflected also in wall paintings, where in the older decorated rooms, hunting scenes predominate.

In style and concept, however the deer hunt mural ay Catal Hoyuk is worlds apart from the wall painting the hunters of the Paleolithic period produced.

Perhaps what is most strikingly new about the Catal Hoyuk painting and others like it is the regular appearance of the human figure – not only singly but also in large, coherent groups with wide variety of poses, subjects and settings.

Human were unusual in Paleolithic cave paintings, and pictorial narratives have almost never been found.

In Neolithic paintings, human themes and concerns and action scenes with human dominating animals are central.

More remarkable is a water color painting in one of the older rooms at Catal Hoyuk that art historians generally have acclaimed as the world’s first landscape.

As such it remained unique to thousands years. According to radiocarbon dating, the painting was executed around 6150 BC.

The foreground has been interpreted as a town with rectangular house neatly laid out side by side, probably representing Catal Hoyuk itself.

Behind the town appears a mountain with two peaks. Many archeologists think that the dots and lines issuing from the higher of the two cones represent a volcanic eruption and have a suggested that the mountain is the 10,600 foot high Hasan Dag. It is located within view of Catal Hoyuk and is the only twin-peak volcano in central Anatolia.
Catal Hoyuk Painting

History of Oil Painting

2010-05-20T20:40:00.001-07:00

History of Oil Painting
Oil painting was a development of the late Middle Ages and flourished over later centuries. The first known oil painting has been dated to the 11th century, but oil paintings were relatively rare until the 15th century.

In that period, pure eggs yolks were used to provide the medium to carry color pigments, in a method known as tempera painting.

With the livelier art of the Renaissance improvements in the quality of linseed oil and the availability of solvents such as turpentine allowed for the use of oil, first as a varnish.

Tempera paintings were fixed with an oil varnish glaze, with Flemish painter Jan van Eyck using his technique in the mid 15th century.

By the mid 16th century, painters in Venice had adopted oil as the main medium, using layers of oil glazes on linen canvas rather than on wood panels.

Oil on canvas became the preferred method in the late Renaissance and Baroque periods. In the 17th century the “great masters,” including the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Spaniard Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) and the Dutch Harmens van Rijn Rembrandt (1606-1669) all worked in oil on canvas.

Rembrandt developed methods of showing light and dark shadows through layering and glazing that gave extraordinary, excitement and depth to his work .

In the 18th and 19th centuries, painters would often coat the canvas with a dark gray or black undercoat of oil paint before starting the image.

Another development on the 19th century was the production of pre-pigmented oil marketed in small tin tubes. With a supply colors, a portable easel, and a prepared canvas, the artist could move out of the studio and paint in the outdoors.

This technical development contributed to the bright external landscapes of the impressionist school of the late 1870s and early 1880s, with varied techniques of brushwork and vivid colors reflecting the outdoor setting.

The school of Impressionists was so called after the 1872 work by Claude Monet (1840-1926) called Impressions, Sunrise.
History of Oil Painting

Early History of Art

2010-05-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

Early History of Art
The book of Genesis names one of the great grandsons of Cain, as the first who wrought and graved on metal and another as the inventor of musical instrument, - a proof that the arts were cultivated in very early stages of civilization.

Again, within four centuries after the flood, the men had made images of wood, and stone, and metal to worship.

They had not only built them cities but they had tasted of the barbarous civilities of war; they had erected trophies; poets had extolled the exploits of heroes; and sculptors had already fashioned their images to adore.

Constant tradition names Terah, the father of Abraham as a maker of images; and that the worship of them continued in his family for nearly two hundred years notwithstanding the call and conversion of Abraham, is proved by Rachel’s theft of the images of Laban, when she left her father’s house to accompany her husband to the land of Canaan.

But more than a century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader, Aegialeus, who brought with him the knwlldge of sculpture and painting and founded the earliest and purest school of Greek art.

Another civilized colony, from Egypt, soon settled in Greece. Inachus founded the city of Argos, while Abraham was still an idolater in Ur.
Early History of Art

The Art Motives of Greek

2010-04-10T07:30:00.001-07:00

The Art Motives of Greek
Neither the monarchy nor the priesthood commanded the service of the artist in Greece, as in Assyria and Egypt.

There was no monarch in an oriental sense, and the chosen leaders of the Greeks never, until the late days, arrogated art to themselves.

It was something for all the people.

In religion there was a pantheon of gods established and worshipped from the earliest ages, but these gods were more like epitomes of Greek ideals than spiritual beings.

They were the personified virtues of the Greeks exemplars and perfect living; and in worshipping them the Greek was really worshipping order, conduct, repose, dignity, perfect life.

The gods and heroes as types of moral and physical qualities, were continually represented in an allegorical or legendary manner.

Athene represented noble warfare, Zeus was majestic dignity and power, Aphrodite love, Phoebus song, Nike triumph and all the lesser gods, nymphs and fauns stood for beauties or virtues of nature of of life.

The great bulk of Greek architecture, sculpture and painting was put forth to honor these gods or heroes, and by so doing the artist illustrated the national ideals and honored himself.

In a sense it was a religious motive, but had little of that spiritual significant and belief about it which ruled in Egypt and later on in Italy.

A second and ever present motive in Greek painting was decorations. This appears in the tomb pottery of the earliest ages, and was carried on down to the latest times.

Vase painting, wall painting, tablet and sculpture painting were all done with a decorative motive in view.

Even the easel or panel pictures had some decorative effect about them,. Though perhaps they were primarily intended to convey ideas other than those of form and color.
The Art Motives of Greek

Ain Ghazal Painting

2010-03-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

Ain Ghazal Painting
Ain Ghazal, near Amman Jordan, the construction of a highway in 1974 revealed another important settlement in ancient Palestine at the site of Ain Ghazal, occupied from 7200 to 5000 BC.

The inhabitants built houses of irregularity shaped stones, but carefully plastered and then painted their floors and walls red.

The most striking finds at Ain Ghazal, however are two caches containing three dozens plaster statuettes and busts, some with two heads, datable to 6500 BC.

The sculpture appear to have been ritually buried. The figures were fashioned of white plaster which was built up over a core of reeds and twine.

The sculptors used black bitumen, a tarlike substance to delineate the pupils of the eyes.

On some of the later figures painters added clothing.

Only rarely did the artists indicate the gender of the figures. Whatever their purpose by their size (as much as three feet tall) and sophisticated technique, the Ain Ghazal statuettes and busts are distinguished from Paleolithic figurines such as Venus of Willendorf and even the foot tall Hohlenstein-Stadel ivory statue.

They mark the beginning of monumental sculpture in the Ancient Near East.
Ain Ghazal Painting

Cretan Art

2010-03-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

Cretan Art
The discoveries at Cnossos and Phaestus give much importance to Crete as a center of ancient civilization and art.

During the second millennium it was at its height and probably influenced by its art all the surrounding nations, especially the Mycenaean dwellers in Greece.

Mycenaean art itself can be traced almost directly to the Middle and Late Minoan art of Crete.

Painting is chiefly represented by the frescos on palace walls and by ceramic decoration upon vases, tablets and the like.

The style of work and type of figure are reminiscent of both Egypt and Greece but without a Cretan originality about them.

Future excavations in Crete and Cyrene may change former theories about Mediterranean civilization and throw new light on the beginnings of Greek art.

It is not impossible that all the so-called Mycenaean art, found at Mycenae, Tiryns and elsewhere, is not Greek at all but commercial art sent out form Crete.
Cretan Art

Portrait of Joseph Roulin

2010-02-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

Portrait of Joseph Roulin
It was painted by Vincent Van Gough in 1889. Oil painted on canvas, 81.2 x 65.3 cm.

The postman was his friend that he is a “good soul and so wise and so full of feeling and so trustful” . Van Gough did several versions of Roulin the postman, including a number of paintings and drawings.

Joseph Roulin worked as entreposeur des postes at the railway sattaion in Arles, met and became a close friend of van Gough in 1888.

The Roulins and their children became regularly models for van Gough, July 1888 to April 1889.

Joseph Roulin moved to Marseilles, promoted to a post as courier-convoyeur, January 1889.

Stay in touch with van Gough after the move to Marseilles, Joseph Roulin died in Marseilles, in September 1903.
Portrait of Joseph Roulin

Art in the Old Stone Age

2010-02-11T10:28:00.001-08:00

Art in the Old Stone Age
From the moment in 1879 that cave paintings were discovered at Altamira , scholars wondered why the hunters of the Old Stone Age decided to cover the walls of dark caverns with animal images like those found at Altamira, Pech-Merle, Lascaux and Vallon Pont D’Arc.

Scholars have proposed various theories including that the painted and engraved animals were mere decoration, but this explanations cannot account for the narrow range of subjects or the inaccessibility of many of the representations.

In fact, the remoteness and difficulty of access of many of the images and indications that the caves were used for centuries, are precisely why many researchers have suggested that the prehistoric hunters attributes magical properties the images they painted and sculpted.

According to this argument by confining animals to the surfaces of their cave walls, the Paleolithic hunters believed they were bringing the beats under their control. Some prehistorians have even hypothesized that rituals or dances were performed in front of the images and that these rites served to improve the hunters luck.

Still others have stated that the animals representations may have served as teaching tools to instruct new hunters about the character of the various species they would encounter or even serve as target for spears.

In contrast, some scholars have argued that the magical purpose of the painting and relief was not to facilitate the destruction of bison and other species.

Instead, they believe prehistoric painters and sculptors created animals images to assure the approval of the herds on which Paleolithic peoples depend for their food supply and for their clothing.

A central problem, that seem to have been diet staples of Old Stone Age peoples are not those most frequently portrayed.

Other scholars have sought to reconstruct an elaborate mythology based on the cave paintings and sculptures suggesting that Paleolithic humans belived they had animal ancestors.
Art in the Old Stone Age

Willem de Kooning

2010-01-21T01:33:00.001-08:00

Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was born in Holland. At the age of 21, he stowed away on a ship to United States.

And in the mid 1930s, like Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he painted for WPA in the easel and mural divisions.

He was ‘fired’ in 1937 because he wasn’t an American citizen. He later said that his year working for the WPA gave him his first opportunity to paint full time.

De Kooning was highly influenced by Gorky, the Mexican muralists, Paris art movement like surrealism, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro.

He was heavily influenced by his rival, Pollock.

De Kooning’s action paintings may be his best works. His Gotham News is perfectly coordinated chaos, a brash jazzy display of slashing colors that look as though they were spread in the canvas by competing windshield wipers.

In the late 1940s, de Kooning’s Expressionism became figurative (representational). His angst ridden canvas Woman I (like his follow up paintings Woman II through Woman VI) seem like a portrait not of woman but of a neurotic world leering at itself in a mirror.

He depicts the “woman” with massive almost militant breasts and a greedy, toothy, bug eyed face. She eludes the vilest aspects of human nature.

The slashed-up landscape around her is as gruesome as she is, suggesting that her powerful personality has flowed into the environment and corrupted it.
Willem de Kooning

Annigoni, Pietro (1910-1988)

2010-01-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

Annigoni, Pietro (1910-1988)
Born in Milan, Annigoni studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he had his first exhibition in 1932.

He helped to found a group of modern realist painters, who exhibited in Milan in 1947 and then in Rome and Florence.

In 1950s he worked in England and exhibited in London, Paris and New York.

His technique was unusual for a twentieth century artist in that he practiced the methods of the old masters, painting mainly in tempera.

Annigoni’s best known portraits include members of European royal families – Queen Elizabeth II (1955 and 1970) and Prince Philip (1957) as well as other prominent figures, such as President Kennedy (1961) and Dame Margot Fonteyn.

His religious paintings include altarpiece and from 1960s, numerous frescos, notably the cycle of the life of Christ in the Church of S Michele Arcangelo near Florence.

In 1977, he published his autobiography, An Artist’s Life.
Annigoni, Pietro (1910-1988)

Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting

2009-11-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting
Building, craving and painting were practiced among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive scale as in either Egypt or Assyria.

The mere fact that they were people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or concentrated development.

Politically Phoenicia was distributed in a similar manner.

Such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative motives and in its spiritless materialistic make-up the commercial motive.

It was at the best a hybrid mongrel art, borrowed from many sources and distributed to many points of the compass.

At one time it had a strong Assyrian cast, at another an Egyptian cast and after Greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there.

Future research may disclose that it was also susceptible to influences from Cretan and Hittite art.

Conclusions as to any of this early Mediterranean art cannot as yet be accepted with certainty.
It is impossible to characterize the Phoenician type and even the Cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different influences that it has no very striking individuality.

Technically both the Phoenician and Cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early Greeks besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted under the names of Aphrodite, Adonis and Heracles and familiarizing them with the art forms of Egypt and Assyria.

As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like Phoenician, Judea, Cyprus, and the Kingdom of Asia minor, put together to patch up a disjointed history.

The first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished.

All that there is of painting comes to us is broken potteries and color traces on statuary and sarcophagi.

The remains of the sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved.

None of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth.

It is its influence upon the West – the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the the Greeks – that gives it value in art history.
Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting

Korean Religious Painting

2009-10-27T02:34:00.000-07:00

Korean Religious Painting
One of the most significant Buddhist traditions which developed in Korea was that of religious painting, the so-called t’aenghwa (hanging painting), comprising both painted icons in the form of hanging scrolls of framed pictures as well as actual wall paintings.

It is not known when Buddha votive paintings and the methods for making them were first known on the Peninsula, however it seems likely that they were introduced more or less simultaneously with Buddhist teachings and practices during the late 4th to early century.

Unfortunately no Korean Buddhist paintings from such an early period are extant today and consequently our knowledge about their possible origin and incipient developments remains purely hypothetical.

There is, however, some indication that the early Korean t’aenghwa tradition followed Central Asian and Chinese norms relatively closely with regard to iconographic models and the use of stencils.

Comparison with metal engravings of guardian spirits as well as Buddhist rock carvings from 7th century Silla and figure in the T’ang wall paintings from Tun-huang would seem to lend some degree of credibility to this.

Despite the possibility that the Korean t’aenghwa tradition may date back as early as the 4th - 5th centuries, the oldest surviving paintings are not older than the first half of the 13th century, i.e., late middle Koryo dynasty.

Today the great majority of the extant Koryo t’aenghwa is preserved in Japanese collection, most notably the treasure house of Chion-in, the famous Pure Land Temple in Kyoto, which holds a significant number of very fine paintings.

Other Koryo and early Yi t’aenghwa are scattered all over Japan with at least one important private collection in Kyusu.

A smaller quality of paintings can be found throughout the world, with museums in Berlin, Cologne Boston and Cleveland owning some of the best.
Korean Religious Painting

Paleolithic Cave Painting

2009-09-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

Paleolithic Cave Painting
The caves id Altamira, Pech-Merle, Lascaux and other sites in prehistoric Europe are a few hundred to several thousand feet long.

They are often choked, sometimes almost impassably by deposits such as stalactites and stalagmites.

Far inside these caverns, well removed from the cave mouths early humans often choice for inhabitation, painters sometimes made pictures on the walls.

Examples of Paleolithic painting now have been found at more than 200 sites, but pre-historians still regard painted caves as rare occurrences, because images in them, even if they number in the hundreds were created over a period of some 10,000 to 20,000 years.

To illuminate the surfaces while working, the Paleolithic painters used stones lamps filled with marrow or fat, with a wick, perhaps, of moss.

For drawing, they used chunks of red and yellow ocher.

For painting, they ground these same ochers onto powders they mixed with water before applying.

The analyses of the pigments used show that Paleolithic painters employed many different minerals, attesting to a technical sophistication surprising at so early a date.

Large flat stones served as palletes. The painters made brushes from reeds, bristles, or twigs and may have used a blowpipe of reeds or hollow bones to spray pigments on out-of-reach surfaces.

Some caves have natural ledges on the rock walls upon which the painters could have stood in order to reach the upper surfaces of the naturally formed chambers and corridors.

On e Lascaux gallery has a holes in one of the walls that once probably anchored a scaffold made of saplings lashed together.

Despite the difficulty of making the tools and pigments, modern attempts at replicating the techniques of Paleolithic painting have demonstrated that skilled workers could cover large surfaces with images in less than a day.
Paleolithic Cave Painting

The Egyptian Art

2009-09-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

The Egyptian Art
The center of the Egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. They arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify or deity.

Almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustrations, picture written history – written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read.

There were no books; the papyrus sheet, used extensively, was frail, and the Egyptians evidently wished their buildings, carvings and paintings to last into eternity.

So they wrought in and upon stone. The same hieroglyphic character of their papyrus writings appeared cut and colored on the palace walls, and above then and beside them the pictures ran as vignettes explanatory of the text.

In one form or another it was all record of Egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting, The temples and places, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated.

Carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior.

The battles, the judgment scenes the Pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of greens, yellow and blue.

Color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling.

Even the explanatory hieroglyphics texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone.

All this shows a decorative motive in Egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seem at times in the arrangement of the different scenes the large ones being places in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado.

There were then, two leading motives for Egyptian painting

History, monarchial, religious or domestic

Decoration

The Egyptian Art

The World’s Oldest Paintings

2009-08-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

The World’s Oldest Paintings
One of the most spectacular archeological finds of the past century came to light in December 1994 at Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France and was announced at a press conference in Paris on January 18, 1995.

Unlike some other recent “finds” of prehistoric art that proved to be forgeries, the paintings in the Chauvet Cave (named after the leader of the exploration team, Jean-Marie Chauvet) seemed to be authentic.

But no one, including Chauvet and his colleagues, guesses at the time of their discovery that radiocarbon dating (a measure of the rate degeneration of carbon 14 in organic materials) of the paintings might establish that the murals in cave were more than 15,000 years older than those at Altamira.

When the scientific tests were completed, the French archeologists announced that the Chauvet Cave painting were the oldest yet found anywhere, datable around 30,000-28,000 BCE.

The Chauvet Cave or is located in the Ardèche département, southern France.

It became famous in 1994 after a trio of speleologists found that its walls were richly decorated with Paleolithic artwork, that it contained the fossilized remains of many animals, including those that are now extinct, and that the floor preserved the footprints of animals and humans.
The World’s Oldest Paintings

The Origin of Painting

2009-07-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

The Origin of Painting
The origin of painting is unknown. The first important records of this art are met in Egypt; but before the Egyptian civilization the men of the early ages probably used color in ornamentation and decoration, and they certainly scratched the outlines of men and animals upon bone and slate.

Traces of this rude primitive work still remain to us on the pottery, weapons and stone implements of the cave dwellers.

But whole indicating the awakening of intelligence in early man, they can be reckoned with as art only in a slight archeological way.

They show inclination rather than accomplishment – a wish to ornament or to represent, with only a crude knowledge of how to go about it.

The first aim of this primitive painting was undoubtedly decoration – the using of colored forms for color and form only, as shown in the pottery designs or cross hatchings on stone knives or spear heads.

The second, and perhaps later aim, was by imitating the shapes and colors or men animals and the like to convey an idea of the proportions and characters of such things.

An outline of a cave bear or a mammoth was perhaps the cave-dweller’s way of telling his fellows what monsters he had slain.

Researchers assume that is was pictorial record, primitive picture written history.

This early method of conveying an idea is, in intent substantially the same as the later hieroglyphic writing and historical painting of the Egyptians.

The difference between them is merely one of development. Thus there is an indication in the art of Primitive Man of the two great departments of painting existent to day.

Decorative Printing
Expressive Painting

Pure Decorative Painting is not usually expressive of ideas other than those of rhythmical line and harmonious color.
The Origin of Painting

Codex Hammer

2009-06-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

Codex Hammer
The codex was part of the estate Leonardo left to his pupil and companion Fracesco Melzi. It passed to the sculptor Guglielmo della Porta and then in 1690, to the painter Guiseppe Ghezzi.

The Codex Leicester (previously known as Codex Hammer) is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. The codex is named after Thomas Coke, later created Earl of Leicester, who purchased it in 1717. Of Leonardo's 30 scientific journals, the Codex may be the most famous of all.

It is also known as the Codex Leicester from the name of the former owner who purchased it in Italy in the early 18th century. It was kept at the Leicester residence in England until 1980, when it was sold at auction to the American oil magnate Armand Hammer.

Then in 1994 it was sold at auction again, and was purchased by Bill Gates for 30 millions dollars.

Codex Hammer

History of Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889

2009-05-05T03:15:00.001-07:00

History of Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889
This was painted in September 1889, when Van Gogh was in the St-Rémy mental asylum, near Arles, where he was a patient from May 1889 until May 1890. It is one of three almost identical versions of the composition.

Vincent William Van Gogh was a great Dutch post impressionist artist who created many paintings and drawings including some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive artworks.

One such most expensive artwork is A Wheatfield with Cypresses. When Van Gogh began his art career in 1880, he started at the elementary level by copying the "Cours de dessin," edited by Charles Bargue.

Like most of his paintings Van Gogh created 'A Wheatfield with Cypresses' in a series. The entire series depicted the artist's feelings and observations from his bedroom window, when he was spending life in a mental asylum at St. Remy in May 1889.
History of Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889

History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi

2009-04-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi
Leornado da Vinci spent some five years living and working in and around Arezzo and the city is proud to host his painting ‘La Madonna dei Fusi’ for five months.

The painting was commissioned in 1501 by Florimond Robertet, secretary of state to Louis XII.

The version of this painting (Buccleuch version) often regarded as the most likely to be by Leonardo is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and hung in his home in Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland until stolen; he has said it will be returned to public display there.
History of Leonardo’s Madonna dei Fusi

Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948

2009-02-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948
Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in the small town of Cody, Wyoming. He was youngest of five sons, and the domestic circumstances of the Pollock family were anything but simple.

The boy’s personality was decisively shaped by a series of moves, his father’s increasingly long absences and his mother’s dominant character.

In 1928, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Jackson attended Manual Arts High School.

The same period saw Pollock’s incipient interest in the world of the Mexican muralist. Joe Clemente Orozco (1883 -1949), Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 - 1974), all of whom emphasized the importance of the political function of art.

At Manual Arts the following years, Pollock took instruction in drawing and sculpture from Schwankovsky and the sculpture Harold Lehmann – but apparently without the lightest success.

Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts.

The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

His painting no.5 1948 was sold with the price 140 million dollar in 2006.

That price would be the highest sum ever known to have been paid for a painting, exceeding the $135 million for Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I.”
Jackson Pollock: No.5, 1948

Willem de Kooning – Woman III

2009-02-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

Willem de Kooning – Woman III
“Woman III” comes with a rich history. David Mr. Geffen acquired it in 1994 from a Tehran museum in a quiet trade with the help of Doris Ammann, a Zurich dealer, on the tarmac of the Vienna airport. In return, Iran obtained the remnants of a precious 16th-century painted manuscript detailing the ascension of Shah Tahmasp of Persia to the throne.

In November 2006, the painting was sold by David Geffen to billionaire Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million, making it the second most expensive painting ever sold.

Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam in Holland. When he was 5 years old, his parents divorced. From then on, De Kooning was raised by his mother and stepfather.

From a young age De Kooning showed a keen interest in painting, and when he was a teenager his parents arranged for him to attend the Rotterdam Fine Arts Academy, where he studied for over 7 years.

At the age of 22, De Kooning stowed away on a ship bound to the US, settling first in New Jersey. After 3 years of working as a house painter and decorator, he had earned enough to establish a small studio in Manhattan.

Woman III is one of a series of six paintings by de Kooning done between 1951 and 1953 in which the central theme was a woman.
Willem de Kooning – Woman III

Who is Adele Bloch-Bauer in Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1?

2009-01-15T00:07:00.000-08:00

Who is Adele Bloch-Bauer in Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1?
Adele Bloch-Bauer was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1881, into a wealthy Jewish banking family. Entered arranged marriage at a young age with Jewish sugar magnate an industrialist Ferdinand Bloch Bauer. Lived with Bloch Bauer near Prague and in Vienna, where Ferdinand became a prominent banker.

They remained childless; she worked as a dressmaker. She met the artist Gustav Klimt, of whom Ferdinand was a major patron, and began a relationship with him after he was commissioned to paint her portrait in 1899. She first appears in a sketchy by him in 1900.

She died of meningitis in 1925 at the age of forty-three. In her will, executed two years earlier, she named five of the Klimt painting in dispute (and one other) and asked that Ferdinand donate them to the Austrian Gallery upon his death.
Who is Adele Bloch-Bauer in Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1?

Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe

2008-12-26T06:07:00.000-08:00

Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe
Price $104, 168,000 USD in 2004, it was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1905 at the age of 24 during Rose period, a period in which Picasso preferred cheerful orange and pink colors. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand, crowned with garland of roses.

It was painting soon after settling in Montmarte, France.

The record price auction at Sotheby's New York on May 4, 2004 was a bit of a surprise to art buyers, since it was painted in the style not usually associated with the pioneering Cubist artist.

Bought for $30,000 by John Hay Whitney and his wife, Betsy Cushing Whitney in 1950, the painting was seen at distant intervals in major exhibitions dealing with the artist, from the 1967 Grand Palais retrospective in Paris to the 1996 portrait show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The portrait was thus both famous in art history and forgotten. This maximized its impact.
Pablo Picasso – Garçon à la pipe

Dora Maar au Chat

2008-12-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

Dora Maar au Chat
It was painted in 1941 by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar, the painter’s Croatian mistress, seated on a chair with small cat perched on her shoulder. Dora Maar au Chat fetched $95.2 million in 2006.

The canvas was one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade long relationship. Picasso fell in love with Dora Maar at the age of 55 and soon began living with her. Picasso painted Maar many times during their relationship began 1936, when she was making a name for herself as a surrealist photographer.

Maar — herself an exhibited artist, a poet and well-known photographer — is loved, admired, but also shamed and disgraced by Picasso. She is portrayed sometimes as a beautiful lady, and often in a hostile manner — as melancholic, and even as an insane woman with a contorted face, unnatural eyes, and wild postures.

This painting was done during the year 1941, when the Nazis were occupying France. In the 1940s, the painting was obtained by Chicago collectors Leigh and Mary Block. They sold the painting in 1963. Before that, the first recorded owner of "Dora Maar au Chat" was the Surrealist dealer Pierre Colle, who was related professionally with Picasso in the years prior to the war.

During 2005 and 2006, the Dora Maar au Chat, then owned by Gidwitz family of Chicago, was shown worldwide as part of Sotheby's exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and New York. It came up for sale in an auction of impressionist works held at Sotheby's on May 3, 2006 in New York. An anonymous bidder present at the New York auction won the work with a final bid of 95,216,000 $ well exceeding the pre-auction 50,000,000 $ estimates.
Dora Maar au Chat

Rembrandt van Rhyn

2008-12-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

Rembrandt van Rhyn
Rembrandt van Rhyn, one of the most eminent painters and engravers of the Dutch school, was the son of a miller, and was born in 1606, at a small village on the banks of the Rhine, between Leyderdorp and Leyden, whence he was called Rembrandt van Rhyn, though his family name was Gerretz.

It is said that his father, being in easy circumstances, intended him for one of the learned professions, but was induced by Rembrandt’s passion for the art to allow him to follow his inclination.

Rembrandt had already brought both the arts of painting and engraving to very great perfection, when a slight incident led him to fame and fortune. He was induced by a friend to take one of his choicest pictures to a picture-dealer at The Hague, who, being charmed with the performance instantly gave him a hundred florins for it, and treated him with great respect. This occurrence served to convince the public of his merit and contributed to make the artist sensible of his own abilities.

Though Rembrandt excelled as a painter of history and portrait, and especially in the latter, he is much better known as an engraver. Some of his prints are deservedly famous for the excellent of the clare obscure, as it seen in a supposed, or accidental light; others are remarkable for the extravagance of that principle. He copied nature with all its defects, as he saw it in his own country; and even this he sometimes debased, but seldom rose above it. There is a vein of good sense running through his works. His print of Christ healing sick, esteemed the most capital of his etchings, sold for thirty guineas: his portrait of the Burgomaster Six, has sold for more.
Rembrandt van Rhyn

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II

2008-11-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II
The portrait was painted in year of 1912 by Gustav Klimt. Klimt regularly worked on several cases at once, often painting his models in the nude before clothing them.

He was an Austrian painter at the end of nineteenth century. Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten near Vienna on 14th July 1862 and second of the seven children of the engraver Ernest Klimt and his wife Anna. In 1876 Klimt enters, the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where he studies under Ferdinand Laufberger and Julius Victor Berger until 1883.

Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer was one of several that he painted of wealthy members of the Viennese Jewish community.

Who is the girl? Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Jewish sugar industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who was a wealthy industrialist who sponsored the arts and supported Gustav Klimt. Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only model to be painted twice by Klimt; she also appeared in the much more famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. She was the only model to be painted twice by Gustav Klimt.

Adele Bloch-Bauer was died at the young age of 43 and she requested that the painting to be given to the Austrian government. It then was looted by German’s Nazi during the war before considered as Austrian national treasures for many years.
The painting was old for almost $88 million in November 2006 at Christie’s.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II

Vincent van Gogh – Portrait of Dr. Gachet

2008-10-30T01:02:00.000-07:00

Vincent van Gogh – Portrait of Dr. Gachet
Dr. Gachet was a physician who treated him in his last illness. He had painted the doctor and said, with the “heartbroken expression of out times.” Van Gogh viewed Doctor Gachet as a melancholy, thoughtful man.

Van Gogh told his sister: “I have found a true friend in Gachet. He is something like a brother, we resemble each other physically and spiritually as well, he is also nervous and odd… like you and me. He is older and has been a widower for a few years, but he is a doctor through and through, and his faith and vocation give him the strength to carry on.”

Portrait of Dr. Gachet was painted six weeks before Van Gogh committed suicide in 1890. Dr. Paul Ferdinand Gachet was Homeopathic doctor and tended Van Gogh before his death.

Dr. Paul Ferdinand Gachet had small practice in Paris that brought him a little pleasure and in his free time he painted and etched, and was not without talent. Gachet was a patron and friend to many artists, including Pissarro and Cézanne and was one of the first to purchase their paintings.

Dr. Gachet had agreed to look after van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise after his discharge from asylum at Saint Remy. Van Gogh lived there in an attic room above a café and spent much of his time at the doctor’s house.

Soon after arrival, Vincent expressed a wish to paint the doctor’s portrait. Pensive, almost careworn, with a slight hint of scepticism, his pale face, framed by blonde hair and topped by a white cap, stands out against the blue of the jacket and background. The artist felt a distinct affinity between the doctor and himself, of whom he said that he was “at least nervous as I am”.

In the Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh was making a deliberate reference to the doctor’s profession by placing a stem of foxglove in Gachet’s hand. The plant was used to treat various heart ailments.

The painting was sold at record $82.5 million to a Japanese buyer in May 15, 1990.
Vincent van Gogh – Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

2008-10-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir believed, “A picture must be an amicable thing, joyous and pretty. There are enough troublesome things in life without inventing others.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, the child of a working class family. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to him being chosen to paint designs on fine china. He also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans before he enrolled in art school. During those early years, he often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.

In 1862 he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, and Claude Monet. At times during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first exhibited paintings in 1864, recognition did not come for another ten years

One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette), is displayed above. The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre close to where he lived.

The windmill in Montmartre, Paris, converted into an open-air dance hall and known as ‘la Galette’ after a kind of cake served there, was a popular weekend venue for working-class people, students and artists.

Renoir was fascinated by the play of light on dancing couples moving in different lights, he accorded special attention to the eyes of the dancing women. In Le Moulin de la Gallete the three women dancing in the centre have the only clear frontal faces among the entire dancing throng, they stand out against their partners. One of those men turns away, another is in profile, and a third, shown frontally, is a sketchy blur.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One of the Most Expensive Paintings: False Start

2008-09-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

One of the Most Expensive Paintings: False Start
The False Start is one of the popular oil paintings of Jasper Johns and was made on canvas 170.8 centimeters long and 137.2 centimeters wide. The colorful painting has always impressed the people since the time it was released. The magnificent use of varied kinds of colors in painting is most impressive. Jasper Johns completed the painting in 1959.

Who is Jasper Johns? Born in Augusta, Georgia in 1930, Jasper Johns grew up in Allendale, South Carolina. He studied at the University of South Carolina for three semesters before moved Parson School of Design.

Together with Robert Rauschenberg, Johns is widely acknowledged as one of the most important American painters in the postwar era.

In 1960 John’s dealer, Leo Castelli, had sold False Start for $3,150 to collector Robert Scull, who had made his money in the taxicab business. He then sold False Start in the six figure range to François de Menil, the son of John and Dominique de Menil, heirs to the Schlumberger oil fortune. Castelli figured giving the booming market that the painting might sell for as much as $10 million, although had been estimated to fetch only $8 million tom $9 million.

SI Newhouse bought Jasper John’s painting False Start for $17 million in 1988, at the top of an overhead art market.

In early 1990s, at the bottom of the market, SI Newhouse started to sell what Castelli calls “some very good paintings.”

In Oct 12, 2006, the painting was sold to the Kenneth C. Griffin, for $80 million, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist.

False Start manages to be both clotted and expansive, a field of interlocking patches and passages of red, yellow, and blue with orange and gray, each of which is named throughout the compositions. Such as it is, this composition is an allover affair with no hierarchy of parts, in good, second generation abstract expressionist.
One of the Most Expensive Paintings: False Start

Egyptian Painting

2008-08-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

Egyptian Painting
The centre of the Egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. They arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life, and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify monarchy or deity. The massive buildings, still standing to-day in ruins, were built as the dwelling-places of kings or the sanctuaries of gods. The towers symbolized deity, the sculptures and paintings recited the functional duties of presiding spirits, or the Pharaoh's looks and acts. Almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustration, picture-written history—written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read.

In one form or another it was all record of Egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting. The temples and palaces, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated. Carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior. The battles, the judgment scenes, the Pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of green, yellow, and blue. Color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling. Even the explanatory hieroglyphic texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone. The lotus capitals, the frieze and architrave, all glowed with bright hues, and often the roof ceiling was painted in blue and studded with golden stars.

All this shows a decorative motive in Egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seen at times in the arrangement of the different scenes, the large ones being placed in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado. There were, then, two leading motives for Egyptian painting; (1) History, monarchical, religious, or domestic; and (2) Decoration.
Egyptian Painting

History of the First Paints

2008-08-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

History of the First Paints
These were made from clays and plants ground into powder, then mixed with water. Some were exceptionally good: they’re still around today. Pottery and cave-wall paintings exist which date back to prehistoric times some 50,000 years ago.

The Egyptians probably invented the paint brush. They were also the first to manufacture what to be called paint, some 8,000 years ago. Around 1500 B.C both Crete and Greece produced paints. Somewhere between 400 B.C and 400 A.D the first metallic pigment was develop; The Romans used white lead. But when the Roman Emperor decline, so did the paint technology.

In the Middle Ages, English priest and monks began to use paints on their churches. In the late middle Ages, around 1500 A.D, the artists of Italy developed excellent paints. Some formulations were closely guarded secret – and remain mysteries to this day.

American Indians used paints for both decorative and religious purposes centuries before Europeans began to settle the New World. The Indians, too, found that rocks could be ground into pigment and that the leaves and bark of some trees produced stains. Many paints made in the United States in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s were based on formulas that came from American Indian. As late as the 1860’s many painters carried bags of powder which they mixed into paint as needed. The first liquid, premixed paints were manufactured and sold in this country in 1867.
History of the First Paints

Biography of Beckman, Max – German painter and graphic artist

2008-07-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Biography of Beckman, Max – German painter and graphic artist
Born in Leipzig, Beckman studied at the Weimar Academy (1900-1903) and then worked in Berlin. His early paintings were influenced by impressionism, and he also produced works with biblical and mythological themes, reflecting his admiration of medieval art. At the start of World War 1 (1914) he served as a medical orderly but was discharged following a nervous breakdown. These experiences of war profoundly influenced his later work.

Settling in Frankfurt in 1915, he began to paint figurative composition conveying a harsh vision of an evil and malicious contemporary world. Brutality and oppressive apathy permeate these picture as in The Night (1919), a scene torture that like may of his work, reflects a social reality of the time as well as being a powerful symbolic composition. This combination of realism with allegorical and symbolic significance has been described as transcendental realism. Certain symbolic objects, such as candles and musical instruments recur in his pictures. His characteristics style was one of simplified forms in a crowded almost two dimensional space. He also painted a number of self portraits.

Beckman was dismissed from his teaching post in Frankfurt by the Nazis in 1933, the same year he painted Robbery of Europe and the triptych Departure. He went first to Berlin, then to Paris and Amsterdam, and finally (in 1947) to the United States, where he taught a produced work that was lighter and less harsh. In the last two years of his life Beckman received academic honors and prizes in the United States and at the Venice Biennale.
Biography of Beckman, Max – German painter and graphic artist

Adoration of the Magi (Mantegna)

2008-07-08T23:01:00.001-07:00

Adoration of the Magi (Mantegna)
The Adoration of magi is a painting by the Italian painter Andrea Mantegna in 1462. Currently in the Getty collection, this Mantegna’s magnificent painting is based of Christianity’s most beloved stories. Andrea Mantegna a painter, draftsman, and printmaker was born near Padua, Italy in 1431. He was the son of a carpenter called Bagio.

At the age of eleven, he entered the workshop of Francesco Squarcione an artist from Padua, who legally adopted him after the death of his father. Mantegna was only eighteen, when he was commissioned to decorate the Ovetari Chapel of the Eremitani Church in Padua.

Eleven years later he was appointed as court painter to the Gonzaga family, the rulers of Mantua. In this painting Adoration of the Magi, the three kings or wise man, some people said, the first one called Melchior. He was an old man, with white hair and long beard. He offered gold to the Lord. The second one was Gaspar. He was beardless; young offered Jesus his gift of incense. The third one Baltasar; he held his hand prefigured the death of the Son of man.

Magi actually were the important man of their own country and may be from royal family.
Adoration of the Magi (Mantegna)

The Earliest Painting

2008-06-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

The Earliest Painting
The earliest known paintings, representing animals hunted for food, were made by Stone Age artists on the walls if caves of Lascaux, in France, around 25,000 BC. The cave contains nearly 2,000 figures. Over 900 can be identified as animals.

The first colors were such naturally occurring pigments as red made from iron oxide, yellow and brown from clay ochre, and black from soot. It was not until 3000 BC that blue and green were obtained by grinding up lapis lazuli and malachite.

The first synthetic pigments were developed after a British chemist, William Perkin, discovered a dye called mauveine. The first truly synthetic medium, based ion coal tar, was develop in Germany towards the end of the 19th century.
The Earliest Painting

Albers, Joseph (1888 – 1976)

2008-05-25T00:25:00.000-07:00

Albers, Joseph (1888 – 1976)
German born US painter, designer, and influential teacher of art.

Before 1920 Albers divided his time between teaching and art studies. He then entered the newly created Bauhaus school, which aimed at the union of all the arts with modern architecture and with industry. When Albers began to teach there three years later, it had become the most important school of design in Germany. At the Bauhaus, Albers rejected the emotional self-expression and representational style of his early work in favor of constructivist art built up by intellectual calculation and the use of simple geometric forms. The glass pictures and windows that he created represented careful investigation into relationships of line, colors and shape. He also designed utility object and furniture, including the first laminated chair for mass production.

When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933, Albers moved to the USA, where he spread Bauhaus ideas through his teaching at Black Mountain College. From 1950 to 1958 he was chairman of the department of architecture and design at Yale University. Here he began the long series of painting and lithographs for which he is best known: Homage to the Square. Of all geometric forms Albers preferred the square for its non-natural man-made quality. The works in this series consists of superimposed squares of color and reflect his preoccupation with the interaction of colors. This work and his creation of visual ambiguities and illusions by the juxtaposition of colors anticipated of art.
Albers, Joseph (1888 – 1976)

History of painting

2008-04-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

History of painting
The origin of painting is unknown. The first important records of this art are met with in Egypt; but before the Egyptian civilization the men of the early ages probably used color in ornamentation and decoration, and they certainly scratched the outlines of men and animals upon bone and slate. Traces of this rude primitive work still remain to us on the pottery, weapons, and stone implements of the cave-dwellers. But while indicating the awakening of intelligence in early man, they can be reckoned with as art only in a slight archeological way. They show inclination rather than accomplishment—a wish to ornament or to represent, with only a crude knowledge of how to go about it.

The first aim of this primitive painting was undoubtedly decoration--the using of colored forms for color and form only, as shown in the pottery designs or cross-hatchings on stone knives or spear-heads. The second, and perhaps later aim, was by imitating the shapes and colors of men, animals, and the like, to convey an idea of the proportions and characters of such things. An outline of a cave-bear or a mammoth was perhaps the cave-dweller's way of telling his fellows what monsters he had slain. We may assume that it was pictorial record, primitive picture-written history. This early method of conveying an idea is, in intent, substantially the same as the later hieroglyphic writing and historical painting of the Egyptians. The difference between them is merely one of development. Thus there is an indication in the art of Primitive Man of the two great departments of painting existent to-day.
History of painting

Yo Picasso

2008-02-17T01:46:00.000-08:00

Yo Picasso is a self-portrait of Pablo Ruiz Picasso. It was painted in 1901by Picasso. It was oil painting on oil canvas. Original painting size was 23.6" x 28.7" (60.0cm x 73.0cm). Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born at City of Malaga in Andalucía in October 1881.

His painting more focus to himself and to show his self centered he becomes. In 1981 it was bought for USD5.8 million but now It cost USD48 million in 1997. In 1981 it was bought by Wendell Cherry, the president and chief executive officer of Humana Inc. However the last buyer wasn’t identified.

Juliet and her nurse

2007-11-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

May 30, 1980 Turner's painting "Juliet and Her Nurse" sells for $6.4 million. This painting was put up for auction, after passing through 8 previous owners, including Turner himself.

There was an intriguing controversy concerning whether the flaming gold colors were realistically placed within this composition. John Ruskin's response to the controversy, and the controversy itself, demonstrates the extent to which Turner's Romantic concepts of painting were not universally appreciated in the 1830's.

Exhibited at the Royal Academy early in 1836, 'Juliet and her Nurse' became the subject of a vicious attack by the Reverend John Eagles in an article published in 'Blackwood's Magazine' later in the year. Eagles wrote that the picture was 'a strange jumble', but one of his chief complaints was that Turner should have chosen to set this scene from 'Romeo and Juliet' in Venice rather than Verona.

No doubt Turner's decision to place Shakespeare's famous heroine in Venice was influenced by the romantic atmosphere of the city; in the foreground she is seen musing on her new-found love.

The Bather by Paul Cézanne

2007-06-28T21:07:00.000-07:00

History of Painting
Paul Cézanne is born in Aix-en-Provence Jan 19, 1839.

He is a French painter and always called as a father of modern arts. Cézanne prepared to be a lawyer, worked as a banker, and then studied painting in Paris.

His canvases from 1861 to 1871, mostly portraits, are characterized by dark tones, thick paint, and strong lighting.

Camille Pissarro convinced Cézanne to adopt the broken brushwork and light palette of the impressionists.

He exhibited at the first and third impressionist group shows, but soon lost faith in the goals of the movement.

He claimed that his ambition was to "make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of museums."

By 1883 the artist was conveying mass and volume through a series of hatched strokes.

One of the painting is The Bather. It shows central male bather with his hands placed upon his waist and his head angled downwards towards the ground.

Even though this figure merges better with the surrounding landscape than the previously discussed bather due to Cézanne’s adept use of color, this male bather appears disconnected and oblivious to the world that surrounds him.

This pensive bather lost in inner thought displays a dichotomous body posture that may reflect his underlying internal conflict: his upper body appears frail and vulnerable while his lower body seems sturdy and powerful.
History of Painting

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci

2007-04-29T03:38:00.000-07:00

History of Painting
Leonardo da Vinci was born near Florence. Its tone set that time by the Medici, Florence was lush with wealth and splendor. Leonardo completed few painting, for his scientific activities and numerous odd jobs for his patrons consumed much of his energy. Some of his paintings have perished as a result of a bad luck.

For instance, his famous fresco, , the Last Supper, began to deteriorate during his lifetime because the mold on the damp monastery wall in Milan destroyed the clarity of the oil pigments. Fortunately, Leonardo’s talent and his extraordinary range of interests may also be studied in drawings and notebooks.
History of Paintings

Irises by Vincent van Gogh

2007-03-04T00:28:00.000-08:00

History of Painting

Irises is a painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, painted while he was at the asylum at Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France in the last year before his death in 1890.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 in Zundert – July 29, 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist.

His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces. He suffered from recurrent bouts of mental illness — about which there are many competing theories — and during one such episode, famously cut off a part of his left ear.

The Irises was painted before his first attack at the asylum. There is a lack of the high tension which is seen in his later works. He called the painting "the lightning conductor for my illness", because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint.

The painting was influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, like many of his works and those by other artists of the time. The similarities occur with strong outlines, unusual angles, including close-up views and also flattish local color (not modeled according to the fall of light).

In 1987, it became the most expensive painting ever sold when it was sold for AUS $54,000,000 to Alan Bond, but he did not have enough money to pay for it and it had to be re-sold.

It is now owned by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

History of Painting