Wednesday 9 December 2015

Van Gogh self-portrait 1889

"When a reaction is primary, 'the idea' is no longer enough to motivate creation. Secondary response is perceived as a sustainable and orderly action of all experiences, which is equivalent to a large excessive broadening of the content of consciousness. "- reference Gerardus Heymans in edition of Denis Huisman 'Aesthetics' 1964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gogh_self-portrait_(1889)

“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square' - 1915


‘Cosa Mentale’, a case of mind. The picture is absolute. It no longer represents, it simply is.

On his deathbed Malevich had been exhibited with the ‘Balck Square’ above him, and mourners at his funeral rally were permitted to wave a banner bearing a black square.
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Russia/Ukraine 1878-1935) - Black Square, 1915, oil on linen, 79.5 x 79.5 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
“There will be always another spring, for in it lies the birth of a new universal step.”
– Kasimir Malevich on ‘Non-Objective Art and Suprematism’, 1919
Kasimir Malevich
Suprematist Composition: ‘White on White, 1918, Museum of Modern Art, NY – OOC, 79.5 cm x 79.5 cm

Wednesday 25 November 2015

'The Falling Rocket' by Whistler - 1875

 
James Whistler said that he ‘mixed his paint with his brain’.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket, 1875
Oil on panel, 60.2 x 46.7 cm, Collection Detroit Institute of Arts

Art transports us from the world of man’s activity to a world of aestetic exalation. For a moment we are shut off from human interest; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life. – Clive Bell (1881-1964) ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’ /1914

Friday 6 November 2015

'Nude desending a staircase, nr.2' by Marcel Duchamp - 1912

Gertrude Stein, the cubist writer as she called herself, describes the situation of painting at the time as follows: “After Cézanne, everyone who painted wanted to create the sensation of movement within the picture, not by painting something that moved but rather by depicting the existence of movement in the object itself”.

In Duchamp's picture you have both: the sensation of the movement in the time sequence and the very existence of the movement in the subject 'nude'.
Before it was common to freeze a nude, lying or standing, in the picture. To descend a nude was new! Duchamp confirmed it by writing the title in the lower left corner.
A painting, he said, 'is the diagram of an idea'.


‘Nu descendant un escalier, n°2’ - 147 cm × 89 cm (58” × 35”)
Collection Philadelphia Museum Of Art

Wednesday 14 October 2015

'Nudo Dolente' by Modigliani - 1908

“There was a cult of what has been called ‘negative beauty’ in the early twentieth century.” – Carol Mann about Modigliani, Thames and Hudson publication,1980.

Nudo Dolente
‘Sore Nude’ by Modigliani (81×54 cm) – Richard Nathanson, London



Thursday 8 October 2015

Auguste Rodin "The Burghers of Calais" - 1888


To Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, a friend and sculptor, Rodin writes:
"My liberation from academicism was created by Michelangelo."

academicism Michelangelo
Bronze sculpture which portrays a group of six people. It recalls a heroic action of a phase of the ‘Hundred Years War’ in Calais, 1347. Twelve casts were made.

Wednesday 30 September 2015

'Family' by Henry Moore - 1935


Henry Moore's work has become in the course of the years increasingly abstract, but that was, as he himself said, "just because I believe that in this way I can represent the human psychological content of my work as directly and as intensely as possible." - source Taschen publication 2007 with Jeremy Lewison

Henry Moore

This semi-abstract sculpture in Elmwood made by Henry Moore, depicts a mother with child on her back (H 101,6 cm). Location: The Hennry Moore Foundation, Perry Green.

Moore wrote: 'There are universal shapes to which everybody is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond if their conscious control does not shut them off." 

Thursday 24 September 2015

Robert Motherwell - 'Two Figures with Stripe' 1962

“In history of all art, there was never a movement hated as much as Abstract Expressionism.” - Robert Motherwell 

Robert Motherwell (American, 1915–1991) - Two Figures with Stripe, 1962
Acrylic on canvas - 54 × 72 in. (137.16 × 182.88 cm)
Gift of Friends of Art and the Dedalus Foundation, Inc. M1994.375
Photo credit: Zindman/Fremont - © Dedalus Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY


"Banal realism = vulgar imitation of reality" - JM. Atlan 'Abstraction and Adventure in Contemporary Art', Paris 1950.

"Realism reflects reflects the productive intercourse between man and nature which is the basis of life (palaeolithic cave paintings)." - F. Klingender from 'Marxism and Modern Art, London 1943





Thursday 10 September 2015

'The Three dancers' by Picasso - 1925

picasso the three dancers
 
“I love art as the only end of my life. Everything I do connected with it gives me
intense pleasure.”  – Picasso ‘conversation at Boisgeloup’, 1935

the three dancers picasso


Wednesday 9 September 2015

Alter- Meta- & Hypermodernism


Altermodern’ can essentially be read as an artist working in a hypermodern world or with supermodern ideas or themes. This portmanteau-word defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, is an attempt at contextualizing Art made in today's global context as a reaction against standardisation and commercialism. It is also the title of the Tate Britain's fourth Triennial exhibition curated by Bourriaud.

The ‘Metamodern’ sensibility can be conceived of as a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism, characteristic of cultural responses to recent global events such as climate change, the financial crisis, political instability, and the digital revolution.
Vermeulen & Van den Akker: "Notes on Metamodernism" Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, 2010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism

Hypermodernism is an artform that analyses and synthesises the hyper-modus/state/condition of todays and future society.
‘Hyper-mode’ in the gameworld is a state in which a creature is powered up by injection of extra energy or means to achieve or expand capacity for a better outcome, a higher goal. Sometimes it can change its physical shape drastically.
 
 


Wednesday 2 September 2015

Georges Braque's "Woman with easel" - 1936

"I know exactly where I'm going. The goal that I have to accomplish
is to paint art of the highest order.” – George Braque
georges braque
Georges Braque “Woman with easel”, 1936 Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 130.8 x 162.2 cm - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

The entire Braque genius was in this confession he made to Richardson: "I made a great discovery. I don't believe in anything anymore. Objects do not exist for me, except that there is a harmonious relationship among them, and and also between them and myself. When one reaches this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual void. This way, everything becomes possible, everything becomes legitimate, and life is a perpetuel revelation. This is true poetry."Art of our century by J.L. Ferrier, 1988 Longman, Essex UK 


Tuesday 1 September 2015

Fernand Léger's "The Woman in Blue" - 1912

“The modern conception of art is not simply a passing abstraction, valid only for a few initiates;
it is the total expression of a new generation whose needs it shares and whose aspirations it answers.”
– Fernand Léger ‘The Origins of Painting and its Representational Value’, Paris, 1913
the woman in blue
Fernand Léger (FR, 1881-1955), La Femme en Bleu (Woman in Blue) - 1912,
oil on canvas, 76 x 51 1/8 inches, 193 x 129.9 cm, Artmuseum, Basel.
Lot 16, "Etude Pour 'La Femme en Bleu," by Fernand Léger, oil on canvas, 51 by 38 inches, 1912-13

The Sotheby's catalogue of April 2008 describes "Etude Pour "La Femme en Bleu" as "heroic," adding that "this spectacular image is one of the movement’s most enduring achievements, and a milestone on the path to abstraction."
The first version of this work is the same size and was kept by the artist in his private collection until his death when it was given to the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot. The second version, which was the largest, was included in the annual Salon in Paris and in the Armory Show in New York in 1913 and eventually wound up in the Basel Kunstmuseum.
(Source: the city review)

Thursday 27 August 2015

"Mask of pain" by Adolfo Wildt - 1909

Maschera del dolore”  by Adolfo Wildt (IT, Milan 1868-1931) H 38.2cm – Private collection


At eleven Adolfo Wildt began his
apprenticeship in the workshop of
Giuseppe Grandi in Milan, who
introduced him to the working of marble.
His ability to finish and polish marble
made him famous at the age of eighteen!

 

Monday 24 August 2015

Picasso's "Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler" - 1910


Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler: “What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?”
 
Collection: Art instituut of Chicago
 
“… an artist works of necessity, …” – Picasso ‘conversation at Boisgeloup’, 1935
 
 
Art collector Leonard Lauder describes the events that brought together early cubist painters Braque and Picasso.

 

Saturday 22 August 2015

An art lover's blogspot > first birthday!


°22/08/2014 - “Anartlovers.blogspot.be” celebrates his first birthday!
In one year we had over 3.000 visitors! Many thanks! Go forward Art lovers!!!
Anartlovers.blogspot.be

Photo: Ivan Mestrovic (Yugoslavian, 1883-1962). Archangel Gabriel, 1918.

 

Friday 21 August 2015

Georges Braque - Big trees at Estaque - 1908


“His mind has purposely induced the twilight of reality, and suddenly a universal rebirth is taking place plastically within him and outside him. He expresses a beauty full of tenderness, and the mother-of-pearl of his paintings gives iridescence to our understanding.” – Guillaume Apollinaire on Georges Braque’s Art, November 1908

Guillaume Apollinaire on Georges Braque’s Art, 1908

Paul Cézanne - 'Still-life with plaster cupid' - 1894

Cézanne still-life with plaster cupid

Sunday 16 August 2015

Thursday 13 August 2015

"The City Rises" by Boccioni - 1910


 “The Futurist chief concern is the ‘subject’. They want to paint the ‘state of mind’. That is the most dangerous kind of painting imaginable.” - Guillaume Apollinaire 9 feb.1912
"The City Rises" by the Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni (IT 1882-1916)

Wednesday 12 August 2015


“The critic is not a gardener who cultivates only one kind of flower: all nature is his domain.”Guillaume  Apollinaire, 9 juli 1914

Friday 24 July 2015

Umberto Boccioni - "The charge of the lancers" - 1915

"What we want to do is to show the living object in its dynamic growth"
Umberto Boccioni (IT 1882-1916) depicts a fierce cavalry trampling soldiers with bayonets.
The tragic irony of this picture lies in the fact that just one year later Boccioni died after being
thrown from, and trampled by, his horse. (source: Art every day)
 

Wednesday 8 July 2015

'Reclining nude' by Maurice de Vlaminck - 1905

Source: Courtauld Gallery London

Monday 29 June 2015

Kandinsky's Swinging - 1925





Tate Modern - collection London (70cm x 50cm)

Thursday 11 June 2015

"Electric Prisms" by Sonia Delaunay - 1914

Delaunay's motto: “Nous irons jusqu’au soleil”  (We will go right up to the sun)
Gallery Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne de Paris  (France - Paris)
Size: 124 x 124cm (49 x 49”)

Friday 5 June 2015

Moholy-Nagy's photogram 1923


Light, the sovereign core of Moholy-Nagy's oeuvre.
Moholy-Nagy (Hungary 1885 - VS 1946) is best known as a radical innovator of photography. He almost single-handedly put her on the way towards modernity. In 1923 he was appointed as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar. He experimented in the 1920’s with the photographic process of exposing light sensitive paper with objects overlain on top of it, called photogram. His theory of art and teaching is summed up in the book The New Vision, from Material to Architecture.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Fotogramm, ca. 1923-25 Getöntes Druckpapier, 12,6 x 17,6 cm (P1007015) Courtesy Galerie Kicken Berlin © Hattula Moholy-Nagy / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Bildquelle: Städel Museum

Thursday 4 June 2015

Piet Mondriaan - Composition A - 1935


"The truly modern artist consciously recognizes aesthetic emotion as cosmic, universal" - quote Mondriaan


"The art of the 20th century was inspired by a different reality and she struggles with the task to give this -invisible- reality visible form. I have tried to describe this reality as a universalistic one, who takes the place of a traditional nominalistic worldview." - "About utopia and reality in art"- gathered drafting HLC Jaffe (1915-1984)


"Mondrian's paintings are a kind of paradigma, a kind of icon, in which the invisible essence of harmony is also visible to our eyes."- Gathered drafting HLC Jaffe (1915-1984)

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Kazimir Malevich - Suprematist Painting 1916

“I have transformed myself ‘in the zero of form’ and dragged myself out of the ‘rubbish-filled pool of Academic art’.” – Kasimir Malevich, Mosow  1916





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