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The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse Man Ray 1920

This early, assisted readymade (a found object slightly altered) was created a year before Man Ray left for France. Marcel Duchamp's influence and assistance are evident in this Dada object, in which asewing machine is wrapped in an army blanket, and tied with a string. The title comes from French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-70) and the imagery comes from a quote in his book Les Chants de Maldoror (1869): 'Beautiful as the chance meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella'. Chance effects were important to the Dada artists, and the piece is very much in that spirit, but it also prefigures the Surrealists' interest in revealing the creative power of the unconscious. The original object was created and then dismantled after the photograph was taken. Ray did not reveal the 'enigma' under the felt and intended the photograph as a riddle for the viewers to solve with the title providing a hint

#art #art of the day #photography

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Violin and Pipe, 'Le Quotidien' Georges Braque 1913

Collage helped Braque to realize that, "color acts simultaneously with form but has nothing to do with it,". He made collages to inspire painting compositions, but also as works themselves. In Violin and Pipe, he chooses a stringed instrument as his subject matter. Since there is no concrete evidence that this is a violin, one can understand better how Braque is studying the shapes within the object and pulling them apart to move them around, as if shuffling a deck of cards. 

#art #art of the day #collage

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The Judgement of Paris Peter Paul Rubens c.1636

Rubens completed a number of works of the same title, the most notable of which are the ones he completed in 1636 and 1638. They illustrate his ideal form of a full-figured female body. The 1938 version is considered to be the last work created by Rubens, as at this time he was ill with gout, which led to his death in 1640. As a model for the women figures, he used his young bride, who in 1630 married the then-16 year old girl, and who often served as his idealized version of the female body. The painting was commissioned by the brother of the Spanish King, Philip IV. After his brother’s death, the king declared the painting immodest, and ordered it to be burned. Fortunately, he died before the painting could be ignited, and it now hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. 

#art #art of the day #painting

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Poplars at Giverny Claude Monet 1887

Another of Monet’s series of paintings, the Poplar paintings were painted in the summer and fall of 1891. The poplars trees were located on the banks of a river a few miles up the river from Monet’s home in Giverny, France, in a marsh. Monet had to reach his painting studio, which was floating outside along the bank of the trees, by going upriver in a small boat. The trees that were the subject of the paintings were actually put up for sale by the city of Limetz, who owned them, and Monet actually bought the trees so he could continue his paintings of them. After his series was finished, he sold the trees to a lumber company who wanted them for harvest.

#art #art of the day #painting

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Drag- Johnson and Mao Jim Dine 1967

This double image of the American president LB Johnson and the Chinese leader Chairman Mao humorously subverts the official portrait. Although opposed to the apolitical nature of Abstract Expressionism, Dine remained in sympathy with its emphasis on subjective response. In 1966, he dissociated himself from the Pop movement, claiming 'Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors'. Compared to Warhol who used screenprinting to detach himself from his subject, here Dine engages directly with his. Touches of colour picks out the features of the face, the rouged cheeks and heavily painted eyes and lips suggest a more personalised satire.

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The Black Flight Asger Jorn 1955

This work has a sketch-like quality. The fluid composition, made up of spontaneous, expansive strokes, may reflect the freedom of flight. Although verging on abstraction, the evocative title brings to mind forms from the natural world. Black circles hint at the pupils of eyes, while a triangular form at the right reaches out like a wing. The overall impression is menacing, and the work may relate to Jorn’s interest in the mythology of his native Denmark.

#art #art of the day #abstract art

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ARTIST PROFILE-Richard Lindner

Born: 11 November 1901; Hamburg, Germany

Died: 16 April 1978; New York , United States

Field: painting, illustration

Nationality: American, German

Art Movement: Cubism

Completion Date: 1966

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: portrait

Completion Date: 1966

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: portrait

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: figurative painting

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: genre painting

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: portrait

Style: Mechanistic Cubism

Genre: figurative painting

"The artistic universe of Richard Lindner is unique: he is highly genuine, he is full of urban energy, and he is driven by weird eroticism...Richard Lindner started his career as an artist eventually at the age of 40 in New York. In this metropolitain jungle Lindner created his OEvre: exciting and powerful images of robot like figures, amazones and heroines, harlequinades of self-styled heroes- his artistic panorama of the unruly 60s and 70s of the 20th century" (sic) (Claus Clement quoted in: Richard Lindner - Paintings, Works on Paper, Graphic - Nuremberg 2001).

One of Lindner's Paintings, "Boy With Machine," 1954, appears on the cover-leaf of Deleuze's Anti-Oedipus, and thus the image has formed part of many readers' introduction to Deleuze's later and more accessible philosophy.

#art #Artist Profile #Cubism #Abstract Art

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In the Tepidarium Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 1881

The Tepidarium depicts a warm Roman bath, of the same name. The woman on the sofa holds a large strategically placed ostrich feather and a strigil, which was used for scraping the skin after soaping and oiling it. The A and F Pears Soap Company originally bought the painting, intending to use it in a soap advertisement, but never did, for the fear that its erotic nude might shock customers. It was later sold to a private collector in 1916. This painting exemplifies Alma-Tadema’s ability to render exact architectural details with soft and luxurious textures, providing a glimpse of romantic reality. 

#art #art of the day #painting

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Ad Parnassum Paul Klee 1932

This painting, considered Klee’s masterpiece, is an example of Klee’s masterful skill with color. Small blocks of shifting colors float through the background, set in place with a thick black outline, evincing the idea of a building or a house. It is also the finest example of Klee’s ability in pointillism and technical ability as an artist. As an artist with great skill with color, he was also a great teacher at color mixing and theory. He wrote his great treatise, a collection of lectures, entitled Writings on Form and Design Theory, which is considered one of the most influential writings in modern art.

#art #art of the day #Expressionism

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Square Motif, Blue and Gold: The Eclipse Victor Pasmore 1950

Most of Pasmore's 'square motif' works date from 1948-50. They are constructions of found elements such as spirals, rectangles, triangles and circles which, although they suggest nature, are not obviously descriptive. The way the elements are combined suggested particular associations or emotions to the artist as he worked. Although he sought to organize and unite the compositions, he has stressed that he wished to express human feelings, not abstract ideas.

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The Creation of the World Fernand Leger 1923

In addition to his paintings, Leger was a prolific artist in many mediums, including stained glass, ceramic sculpture, and set designs. This is a set design is for the ballet The Creation of the World, which premiered in Paris in 1923. The ballet is based on an African creation legend, and Leger’s artistic rendition illustrates the three gods of the ballet, Nzame, Medere and N’kava. According to the legend, the gods oversee the development of the flora and fauna into a coordinated dance. According to the composer of the ballet, Leger was never quite happy with his designs, as he wanted them to be more frightening and less bright. 

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Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil Claude Monet 1875

Camille, Monet's first wife, is shown with a child in the garden of their house in Argenteuil, near Paris, where they lived between 1872 and 1877. Today, Claude Monet is primarily known as a landscape painter, but in the beginning of his artistic career, he used to concentrate on portraits. No one else appeares in Monet's paintings as often as Camille. In those year, portraits of women were mostly ordered by bourgeois clients, but among progressive painters, the artistic structure became more important than the identity of the portrayed person. The masterly style, the lack of details, and the plainness of the colours led to a completely new directness of expression, independent of the facial gestures of the depicted person. In this picture, the shimmering reds, blues, greens, and white that capture the brilliance of a sun-drenched day are applied with many small brushstrokes, whose varied shapes create the different textures of flowers, grass, and clothing. Meanwhile, the features of the woman are completely indistinct.

#art #art of the day #painting

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Addendum Eva Hesse 1967

The hemispheres along the bar of Eva Hesse’s Addendum are positioned at increasing intervals determined by a fixed mathematical series. Many artists used serial systems at this time because they provided a way of composing sculptures without recourse to personal expression. Hesse hung rope cords from each hemisphere which fall to the ground in unpredictable curls. The regulated structure of the bar contrasts with the disordered appearance of the cords. But Hesse recognised that such systems were hardly rational, commenting that ‘Serial art is another way of repeating absurdity’

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Haywain Hieronymus Bosch 1500

Although similar to the Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, the Haywain Triptych is a less fantastical and nightmarish depiction of the same tale. From the left to the right, the panels depict God creating Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, earthly humans engaging in all types of sins, and a portrayal of the journey into hell. This journey through good and evil is a much less terrifying tale, as it details the many sins of humans, yet does not detail the frightfully lurid and shocking horrors under the watchful eye of the prince of hell. The outer panels of the triptych, when closed, detail a character called the wayfarer, who makes his way through the panels and through the journey from good to evil, allowing the viewer to place himself inside the world of the triptych, and take the journey along with him. 

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Space that Sees James Turrell 1992

Space That Sees belongs to Turrell’s “Skyspace” series, begun in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which can be seen as performance pieces responding to and interacting with environmental conditions and atmospheric fluctuations over time. Observing the shifting hues of the sky from inside a pristine, rectilinear space, viewers experience a connection to their surroundings. But more than that, the artist, by confronting us with the empty space, turns our mind to our own mode of seeing. For his Jerusalem Skyspace, Turrell chose a semicircular terrace along the western slope of the Art Garden. The site was cut in two and dug out, so that the terrace now enfolds a shrine-like inner space evoking places of worship such as pyramids, mausoleums, or temples. A square opening cut into its ceiling makes a frame for an ever-changing abstract "picture” of the sky, recalling by contrast Baroque illusionist ceilings crowded with painted clouds, saints, and angels. Space That Sees invites a kind of meditative experience. Twilight conditions yield a particularly startling effect, with the flat surface of the sky turning almost imperceptibly from deep blue to velvet black while the room itself seems to grow increasingly brighter, so that the physical conjunction at the roof opening of interior and exterior becomes a catalyst in the light’s passage from day to night. Turrell saw the installation as an “allegory of light that we generate from inside and light that comes from outside: the emergence into space where light comes forth as in a dream.”

#art #art of the day #abstract art

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Mountains and Sea Helen Frankenthaler 1952

Initially associated with abstract expressionism, her career was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of Mountains and Sea. This painting (inspired by inspired by a trip to Nova Scotia) is large - measuring seven feet by ten feet - and has the effect of a watercolor, though it is painted in oils. In it, she introduced the technique of painting directly onto an unprepared canvas so that the material absorbs the colors. She heavily diluted the oil paint with turpentine so that the color would soak into the canvas. This technique, known as "soak stain" was used by Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), and others; and was adopted by other artists notably Morris Louis (1912–1962), and Kenneth Noland (1924–2010), and launched the second generation of the Color Field school of painting. This method would sometimes leave the canvas with a halo effect around each area to which the paint was applied but has a disadvantage in that the oil in the paints will eventually cause the canvas to discolor and rot away.

#art #art of the day #charcoal

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RM 669 Doug Wheeler 1969

Doug Wheeler’s RM 669 comprises curved white walls encased by a floor and ceiling that seem to recede with every step one takes toward the square of neon light positioned on the far wall. Inside RM 699, there are no hard edges; the sides of the room waver, while the bodies of other viewers sharpen to silhouettes. To achieve these illusory effects, Wheeler employed several manipulations, including minimizing the number of visible elements within the space and using white paint on the interior surfaces to enhance the way light “paints” the room. He also defused the light so that it casts no shadow. The result is a phenomenon that overtakes the artwork’s individual components; lacking form, the materials dwindle in significance compared to the viewer’s experience.

#art #art of the day #abstract art