Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Interesting art

Time for a post of art that interests me!

Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio, "The Burial of Jesus." Caravaggio uses light so dramatically that the source of light implicitly dominates the image, in a way that suits religious art well.

Diego Velazquez, "Coronation of the Virgin." I like how clear this whole image looks!

Nicolas Lancret, "A Lady in a Garden Taking Coffee With Some Children." Cute rococo from 18th-century France.

William Hogarth, "Gin Lane" and "Beer Street." While the first drawing chose the destructiveness of gin, the second shows the problem being solved by people drinking beer instead!  (There's something disturbing about the way Hogarth combines realism with caricature, a serious message with a tongue-in-cheek tone.)

Francisco Goya, "The Grape Harvest." Goya created some powerful wartime images, but I do like his early, sunnier paintings. (Robert Hughes said about Goya, "We expect a great artist to change over his lifetime.  But this much?")

J.M.W. Turner, "War:  Exile and the Rock Limpet." With his proto-impressionistic style, Turner depicts Napoleon in his last days on St. Helena. (Turner painted this in his sixties:  is there a subtext about his own old age?)

Utagawa Hiroshige, "Kambara." Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but I really like Hiroshige's Japanese snowscape prints!

Wassily Kandinsky, "Don't Miss:  Important Art." Kandinsky is one of my favorite twentieth century artists.  He's very, very original!

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "On the Terrace." A lot of artists have tried to imitate Renoir, but nobody gets it right.  What a cute little girl!

Here's another Fritz Eichenberg woodcut, illustrating Wuthering Heights.

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