We are to start!
Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Baroque - 1590-1725
The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance and music. The style began around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.
The Baroque era is sometimes divided into roughly three phases for convenience:
Early Baroque, c.1590–c.1625
High Baroque, c.1625–c.1660
Late Baroque, c.1660–c.1725. Late Baroque is also sometimes used synonymously with the succeeding Rococo movement.
The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. The oval replaced the circle as the center of composition, that centralization replaced balance, and that coloristic and "painterly" effects began to become more prominent.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. GianLorenzo Bernini (also spelled Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo) (Naples, 7 December 1598 – Rome, 28 November 1680) was an Italian artist and a prominent architect who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Rembrandt was born in Leiden on July 15, 1606 - his
full name Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He was the son of a miller.
Despite the fact that he came from a family of relatively modest
means, his parents took great care with his education. Rembrandt began
his studies at the Latin School, and at the age of 14 he was enrolled
at the University of Leiden. The program did not interest him, and he
soon left to study art - first with a local master, Jacob van
Swanenburch, and then, in Amsterdam, with Pieter Lastman, known for
his historical paintings. After six months, having mastered everything
he had been taught, Rembrandt returned to Leiden, where he was soon
so highly regarded that although barely 22 years old, he took his
first pupils. One of his students was the famous artist Gerrit Dou.
Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631; his marriage in
1634 to Saskia van Uylenburgh, the cousin of a successful art dealer,
enhanced his career, bringing him in contact with wealthy patrons who
eagerly commissioned portraits. An exceptionally fine example from
this period is the Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts (1631, Frick
Collection, New York City). In addition, Rembrandt's mythological and
religious works were much in demand, and he painted numerous dramatic
masterpieces such as The Blinding of Samson (1636,
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). Because of his renown as a
teacher, his studio was filled with pupils, some of whom (such as Carel
Fabritius) were already trained artists. In the 20th century, scholars
have reattributed a number of his paintings to his associates;
attributing and identifying Rembrandt's works is an active area of art
scholarship.
Rembrandt produced many of his works in this
fashionable town house in Amsterdam (above left). Purchased by the
artist in 1639, when he was 33, it proved to be the scene of personal
tragedy: his wife and three of his children died here. The house
became a financial burden, and in 1660 Rembrandt was forced to move. A
new owner added the upper story and roof, giving it the appearance it
still bears. In 1911 the Dutch movement made it a Rembrandt museum
-preserving it both as a shrine of a revered national artist and as an
imposing example of 17th Century Dutch architecture.
In contrast to his successful public career, however,
Rembrandt's family life was marked by misfortune. Between 1635 and 1641
Saskia gave birth to four children, but only the last, Titus,
survived; her own death came in 1642- at the age of 30. Hendrickje
Stoffels, engaged as his housekeeper about 1649, eventually became his
common-law wife and was the model for many of his pictures. Despite
Rembrandt's financial success as an artist, teacher, and art dealer,
his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy
in 1656. An inventory of his collection of art and antiquities, taken
before an auction to pay his debts, showed the breadth of Rembrandt's
interests: ancient sculpture, Flemish and Italian Renaissance
paintings, Far Eastern art, contemporary Dutch works, weapons, and
armor. Unfortunately, the results of the auction - including the sale
of his house - were disappointing.
These problems in no way affected Rembrandt's work; if
anything, his artistry increased. Some of the great paintings from
this period are The Jewish Bride (1665), The Syndics of the Cloth Guild (1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Bathsheba (1654, Louvre, Paris), Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph
(1656, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel, Germany), and a
self-portrait (1658, Frick Collection). His personal life, however,
continued to be marred by sorrow. His beloved Hendrickje died in 1663,
and his son, Titus, in 1668- only 27 years of age. Eleven months
later, on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt died in Amsterdam.
Presentation 2
Remrandt. Film
Presentation 2
Remrandt. Film
Wednesday, 4 December 2013
Mannerism - 16c.
Mannerism,
the artistic style which gained popularity in the period following the High Renaissance, takes as its ideals the work of Raphael and Michelangelo Buonarroti. It is considered to be a period of technical accomplishment but also of
formulaic, theatrical and overly stylized work.
Mannerist Art is characterized by a complex composition, with muscular and
elongated figures in complex poses. Discussing Michelangelo in his journal, Eugène Delacroix gives as good a description as any of the limitations of Mannerism:
"All that he has painted is muscles and
poses, in which even science, contrary to general opinion, is by no means the
dominant factor... He did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one
of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were
thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration
to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much
less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit;
he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated
limb."
In addition to Michelangelo, leading Mannerist artists included Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, and Parmigianino. By the late 16th century, there were several anti-Mannerist attempts to
reinvigorate art with greater naturalism and emotionalism. These developed into
the Baroque style, which dominated the 17th century.
Tuesday, 3 December 2013
Classicism - 16c.
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard
for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists
seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and
restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clarkobserved, "if we object to
his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of
classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement
would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which
it retained until the present century its position of authority in the
restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as Clark noted,
implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon
that he was examining inThe Nude (1956), or the Chinese classics.
As the name for an
epoch, classicism can be placed in the time period between 1750 and 1840. From
a socio-political perspective, this equates to the transition between
absolutism and the Enlightenment. Instead of an all-encompassing humanism, now
special knowledge is required; also in art, logic and clarity were to reign,
mirroring morals and ethos.
The School of Athens or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one
of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was
painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate
with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic
Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to
be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished
there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen
as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical
spirit of the High Renaissance.
Monday, 2 December 2013
The Renaissance-13-16c.
The Renaissance was a great cultural movement that started
in Italy in the 1300's and spread through Europe. By 1600, the Renaissance had
affected nearly all of Europe. Florence, Italy and the European region of
Flanders were the centres of the Renaissance art movement.
In the 1200's,
Florentine painter Giotto was the first artist to depict people and nature
realistically. He was also the first artist to create frescoes, or paintings on
damp plaster. Giotto's work portrayed great emotion, and his paintings were set
in realistic settings. Although Giotto lived before the Renaissance, his work
influenced many Renaissance painters, architects, and sculptors.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo , was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.
Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.
In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries.
In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one"). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
Presentation 2
Film
Leonardo da Vinci (1)
LEONARDO DA VINCI - Born 1452, Died 1519. Leonardo da Vinci
was one of the greatest inventor-scientist of recorded history. His genius was
unbounded by time and technology, and was driven by his insatiable curiosity,
and his intuitive sense of the laws of nature.
Da Vinci was
dedicated to discovery of truth and the mysteries of nature, and his insightful
contributions to science and technology were legendary. As the archetypical
Renaissance man, Leonardo helped set an ignorant and superstitous world on a
course of reason, science, learning, and tolerance. He was an internationally
renowned inventor, scientists, engineer, architect, painter, sculptor,
musician, mathematician, anatomist, astronomer, geologists, biologist, and
philosopher in his time.
Born in 1452 as an
illegitimate son of Ser piero da Vinci, da Vinci was sent to Florence in his
teens to apprentice as a painter under Andrea del Verrocchio. He quickly
developed his own artistic style which was unique and contrary to tradition,
even going so far as to devised his own special formula of paint. His style was
characterized by diffuse shadows and subtle hues and marked the beginning of
the High Renaissance period. Like many great original efforts, da Vinci's
artistic style was largely unpopular for the next quarter century.
Later Da Vinci
became the court artist for the duke of Milan. Throughout his life he also
served various other roles, including civil engineer and architect, and
military planner and weapons designer (designing rudimentary tanks, catapults,
machine guns, and even navel weapons). Da Vinci's creative, analytic, and
visionary inventiveness has yet to be matched.
Leonardo da Vinci (2)
LEONARDO DA VINCI - Born 1452, died 1519. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest inventor-scientist of recorded history. His genius was unbounded by time and technology, and was driven by his insatiable curiosity, and his intuitive sense of the laws of nature.
Da Vinci was dedicated to discovery of truth and the mysteries of nature, and his insightful contributions to science and technology were legendary. As the archetypical Renaissance man, Leonardo helped set an ignorant and superstitous world on a course of reason, science, learning, and tolerance. He was an internationally renowned inventor, scientists, engineer, architect, painter, sculptor, musician, mathematician, anatomist, astronomer, geologists, biologist, and philosopher in his time.
Born in 1452 as an illegitimate son of Ser piero da Vinci, da Vinci was sent to Florence in his teens to apprentice as a painter under Andrea del Verrocchio. He quickly developed his own artistic style which was unique and contrary to tradition, even going so far as to devised his own special formula of paint. His style was characterized by diffuse shadows and subtle hues and marked the beginning of the High Renaissance period. Like many great original efforts, da Vinci's artistic style was largely unpopular for the next quarter century.
Later Da Vinci became the court artist for the duke of Milan. Throughout his life he also served various other roles, including civil engineer and architect, and military planner and weapons designer (designing rudimentary tanks, catapults, machine guns, and even navel weapons). Da Vinci's creative, analytic, and visionary inventiveness has yet to be matched.
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Gothic - 13-15c.
Painting in a style that can be called Gothic did not appear until about
1200, or nearly 50 years after the origins of Gothic architecture and
sculpture. The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is very imprecise
and not at all a clear break, and Gothic ornamental detailing is often
introduced before much change is seen in the style of figures or
compositions themselves. Then figures become more animated in pose and
facial expression, tend to be smaller in relation to the background of
scenes, and are arranged more freely in the pictorial space, where there
is room. This transition occurs first in England and France around
1200, in Germany around 1220 and Italy around 1300. Painting during the
Gothic period was practiced in four primary media: frescos, panel paintings, manuscript illumination and stained glass. There are four phases: Lineal gothic or French gothic 13th, Italo-Gothic or Three-hundreds' 14th, International Style 14th, Flemish Style 15 th.
Representatives: Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Simone Martini
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
Naturalism - 19c.
Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries. An important part of the naturalist movement was its Darwinian perspective of life and its view of the futility of man up against the forces of nature. Naturalism is a type of art that pays attention to very accurate and precise details, and portrays things as they are.
Albert Charpin "Woman with Lambs"
Naturalism
can be considered a reaction to the Rococo style
and embodied characteristics like unaffected, honest, simple and
people in natural settings/jobs. Unlike
the Rococo time period there was no ornamentation in these paintings
and they were very direct and simple. These paintings also had moral
undertones and portrayed non-aristocratic people.
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
Neo-romanticism - 19c.
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism. It has been applied to contemporary composers who rejected or abandoned the use of the devices of avant-garde modernism.
Characteristics of neo-romanticism include the expression of strong emotions such as terror, awe, horror and love. The movement sought to revive romanticism and medievalism by promoting the power of imagination, the exotic and the unfamiliar. Other characteristics include the promotion of supernatural experiences, the use and interest in Jungian archetypes and the semi-mystical conjuring of home and nation.
Human emotions were as important as the supernatural. Neo-romanticism sought to promote ideas such as perfect love, the beauty of youth, heroes and romantic deaths. These included the romantic traditions of Lord Byron.
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Representatives: Antoni Lange, Andrew Logan, Alan Reynolds, Ian Finlay, Laurie Lee
Monday, 4 November 2013
Neo-classicism - 1750-1880
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in thedecorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, latterly competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st. The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as "the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as being revived varying considerably. Ancient models were certainly very much involved, but the style could also be regarded as a revival of the Renaissance, and especially in France as a return to the more austere and noble Baroque of the age of Louis XIV, for which a considerable nostalgia had developed as France's dominant military and political position started a serious decline. Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, to the disapproval of critics.
Neoclassicism is a revival of the styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period,which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style. While the movement is often described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism, this is a great over-simplification that tends not to be sustainable when specific artists or works are considered, the case of the supposed main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrating this especially well.
Neoclassicism was strongest in architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts, where classical models in the same medium were relatively numerous and accessible; examples from ancient painting that demonstrated the qualities that Winckelmann's writing found in sculpture were and are lacking. Winckelmann was involved in the dissemination of knowledge of the first large Roman paintings to be discovered, at Pompeii and Herculaneum and, like most contemporaries except for Gavin Hamilton, was unimpressed by them, citing Pliny the Younger's comments on the decline of painting in his period.
Representatives: Giuseppe Appiani, Franz Caucig, Jonas Damelis, Camillo Guerra, Antonín Machek, Giuseppe Levati, Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov
Saturday, 2 November 2013
Romanticism - 18-19c.
Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement
originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a
heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of
emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism,
and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.
J. M. W. Turner "The Fighting Téméraire"
Although
the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drangmovement, which
prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and
events of the French Revolution laid the background from
which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The
concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original
work through this process of "creation from nothingness", is key to
Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin. This idea is often
called "romantic originality." Not essential to Romanticism, but so
widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature.
However
this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is
surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the usually very social art
of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and
tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally
healthy. Romantic art addressed its audiences directly and personally
with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. Romanticism first showed itself in landscape
painting, where from as early as the 1760s British artists began to turn to
wilder landscapes and storms, and Gothic architecture, even if they had to
make do with Wales as a setting.
FranciscoGoya is today generally regarded as the greatest painter of the Romantic period;
there were also Eugène Delacroix, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Cole, and LouisJanmot who worked in this manner.
Ivan Aivazovsky (1)
One of the most fascinating and richly talented artists of the past two centuries was undoubtedly the Armenian-Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky. Ethnically an Armenian, he was born the city of Feodosiya which was then a part of the Russian Empire. Today Feodosiya is a port city in the Crimean Ukraine.
Although Aivazovsky was born in 1817 into a poor family, his father did an amazing job of providing him with a high quality education, teaching him to speak several languages fluently. The young Aivazovsky also showed extraordinary artistic potential from an early age, which proved to be his ticket to a future life of wealth and fame as one of Europe’s most brilliant artists.
Aivazovsky earned a seat in the Simferopol gymnasium No. 1. His most important training came in Russia’s St. Petersburg Academy of Arts – his raw talent was his payment for a first-class education.
This talent earned him a huge amount of work from the Russian Navy. For them he painted numerous images of the sea and ships – a commission which would keep his income flowing and earn him many important connections with powerful people.
Aivazovsky was able to travel widely in his long life of 82 years. One of the most significant locations for him would be Istanbul in modern-day Turkey. There he received a number of commissions from the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Many of his paintings are still on display today in the magnificent palaces of the former Ottoman rules.
"Stormy Sea at Night", 1849
"The Ninth Wave", 1850
Brig "Mercury" Attacked by Two Turkish Ships, 1890
In his later years, Aivazovsky established as art school in the city of his birth, Feodosiya. When he died in 1900 at age 82, he left behind an astounding 6,000 paintings. Many of these can be found throughout Europe today. Also, Aivazovsky’s works have stood the test of time. Some of his paintings have been recently sold at art auctions, commanding enormous values of $5 million to $10 million.
In 1977, an asteroid was named after him by a Soviet astronomer. Aivazovsky has been referenced in a poem by Anton Chekhov and has even had postage stamps issued in his honor in Russia, Armenia and the Ukraine. Thus, Ivan Aivazovsky is an artist who can now be considered among the “immortals.”
Ivan Aivazovsky presentation 1
Ivan Aivazovsky presentation 2
Ivan Aivazovsky youtube
Ivan Aivazovsky youtube_the_2nd_variant
Ivan Aivazovsky presentation 1
Ivan Aivazovsky presentation 2
Ivan Aivazovsky youtube
Ivan Aivazovsky youtube_the_2nd_variant
Ivan Aivazovsky (2)
Aivan Aivazovsky
Aivazovsky was born in the town of Feodosiya (Theodosia), Crimea
(Russian Empire) to a poor Armenian family. His brother was the Armenian
Archbishop Gabriel Aivazovsky. His family moved to the Crimea from
Galicia (then in southern Poland, now in Ukraine) in 1812. His talent as
an artist earned him sponsorship and entry to the Simferopol gymnasium
№1 and later the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, which he graduated with a
gold medal. Earning awards for his early landscapes and seascapes, he
went on to paint a series of portraits of Crimean coastal towns before
travelling throughout Europe. In later life, his paintings of naval
scenes earned him a long-standing commission from the Russian Navy
stationed in the Black Sea.
In 1845, Aivazovsky went to İstanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845–1890. His works are found in dozens of museums throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Aivazovsky Art Gallery in Feodosiya, Ukraine. The office of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has Aivasovsky's paintings on the wall.
In 1845, Aivazovsky went to İstanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845–1890. His works are found in dozens of museums throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Aivazovsky Art Gallery in Feodosiya, Ukraine. The office of Turkey's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has Aivasovsky's paintings on the wall.
Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in Asia Minor in 1895, painting a number of works on the subject such as "The Expulsion of the Turkish Ship," and "The Armenian Massacres at Trevizond." and renouncing a medal which had been awarded to him in İstanbul. He spent his last years in Feodosia where he supplied the town with water from his own estate, opened an art school, began the first archaeological excavations in the region and built a historical museum. Aivasovsky died in Feodosiya in 1900.
Ivan Aivazovsky: The Black Sea
I decided to describe this landscape, searching my albums with pictures. Actually I have many of them. My mother has shown them to me when I was a child. I still remember that moments.
Size: If we are going to speak about the size of the picture, we are to say that, from my point of view, it’s very big (149×208 sm). But, on the other hand we should point out that the prominent Russian painter, I. Aivazovsky used such a size to show us how the Black Sea is big. It’s the illustration of the sea with the help of the size of the canvas.
Shape: To mu mind the shape of the canvas suit the subject matter. It’s not only presents the sea itself, but also, as it’s very long and thin one add to the drama of the landscape. The drama is also shown because it’s the storm in the sea on the picture.
Artist’s Statement: It’s very difficult to answer this question whether Aivazovsky has achieved his aim or not to make a drawing of this landscape, but it’s clear to us that a painting is hide inside of itself the soul of an artist. Kramskoy supposed “The Black Sea” to be the best work of Aivazovsky.
Title of the Painting: The title of the painting is “The Black Sea”. It tells me, that on the picture I’ll sea the Black sea, but actually it’s not only the Black, but black by its color: there is a storm. That’s why we may say that the artist used such a title not only to paint the Black sea, or it can not be the Black sea at all, but to show us the darkness of the heavy sea.
Subject Matter: The painting is of the sea landscape in a bad weather. It’s intriguing, because there is a small fishing boat in the background which tries to come home through the environment and the question appears: Does it complete its mission? I clearly understand the symbolism in the painting as I have already mentioned above.
Emotional Response: The painting generates an emotional reaction in me: I’ve searched a picture to make an analyze and this landscape impressed me greatly by its deep and intrigue with the boat into the distance. The overall mood of the painting is mysteriousness, it seems like something will appear from the water: also there is such a sense like the storm will come to an end because the sky is started to lift in the background of canvas. Personally I think that it’s suitable for the subject.
Composition: Truly speaking there is only one element of the painting – the sea. It becomes darker and darker from the foreground up to background. The fishing boat is hardly seen on the general background. My eye flows across the whole painting. The main focus of the painting slap-bang in the center of the painting, both vertically and horizontally. There is something that draws my eye into the painting: it’s the boat, we can’t notice it at first sight. I don’t think that it’s been slavishly copied from reality or from a photograph it is the imagination of the painter, the condition of his soul, his mood and life.
Skill: The artist display the so-called “level-to-stare at”, because without this action it’s impossible to understand the idea, having seen the boat. General feelings say that Aivazovsky is the master and a very renowned and imaginative painter.
Medium: The canvas 149×208 sm, oil paints, pencils and imagination of the creator was used to create the painting. The artists has done all his best with the possibilities presented by his choice of medium.
Color: Color has been used realistically (green, black and emerald sea, white foam of water-waves and grey sky) and used to convey emotion at the same time: black sea is symbolized trouble and coming misfortune, emerald sea frightens the viewer and grey sky doesn’t give us a chance to escape from the will of the God. The colors are cool and they suit the subject.
Texture: I’d like to see the painting in “real life.”
J. M. W. Turner (1)
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London on April 23, 1775, and became one of the greatest English artists. In spite of his prolific work, Joseph Mallord William Turner produced exceptional and great works. The source of his insatiable inspiration were ships and water, but throughout his life he was also fascinated by dramatic scenes of nature. Turner's parents, his father was a barber and his mother a butcher's daughter, lived in a flat in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. Little is known about his mother. When Joseph Mallord William Turner turned 25 years old, she was hospitalized in a mental hospital, where she died four years later. Joseph Mallord William Turner had a very close relationship to his father, who recognized his son's talent and supported him by exhibiting his works in the family's barber shop.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was self-taught, he never trained as an artist but learned quickly and was very talented. At the age of 14, Turner received a scholarship to the Royal Academy and a year later, in 1790, showed his first watercolor in the academy's annual exhibition. The critics and his supporters alike were enthusiastic about the skills of the talented young artist.
Joseph Mallord William Turner received great recognition, but remained withdrawn, taciturn and sometimes even grumpy. He kept his technique a secret in an almost jealous way and kept silent about his private life. At the age of 26 Turner was admitted to the Royal Academy.
Afterwards Turner undertook travels across Great Britain. He captured his experiences in sketches that formed the basis for his watercolors. In 1796 he produced his first oil painting ("Fishermen at Sea") and three years later became an extraordinary member of the Royal Academy. During that time Joseph Mallord William Turner already enjoyed financial independence. He moved out of his parents' house and rented a place in Harley Street. In 1799, Turner visited William Beckford, one of his benefactors, and was so impressed by two paintings by Claude Lorrain, that he was determined to paint large, historical paintings himself.
That year he also undertook his first trip to mainland Europe. His first destination was France, where he wanted to see the pictures exhibited in the Louvre, that had been stolen by Napoléon. In 1804 Joseph Mallord William Turner was financially able to build a gallery onto his house, in which he exhibited his own works. This was a unique constellation in the English art scene of the time. Three years later he became a professor of perspective at the Royal Academy. Meanwhile Turner had become one of the leading English landscape painters alongside John Constable. Many of his works were shown in a second large exhibition in 1819.
That same year Turner's trip to Italy became the trigger for a radical change in his career, he was amazed by the southern light. Within four months he produced over 2000 pencil sketches of Rome and its surroundings. Having returned to England, he began to paint his idea of the power of light. Even though he did not change his style abruptly, he drew a clear line between his commissioned work and his experiments, in which his ideas unfolded fully.
Many of his most famous pictures were created in the last few years of his life, during which Turner retreated ever more from social life, because of his ill health.
Joseph Mallord William Turner died aged 76 on December 19, 1851 in London. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. In his will he left 300 oil paintings and almost 20,000 drawings and watercolors to the English state. He asked for his works to be exhibited in a separate gallery. Most of them can now be seen in the Tate Gallery.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was a pioneer and exponent of Impressionism.
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