Souren Melikian writes about Lucas Cranach and his earliest masterpieces + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/24/arts/melik26.php
Cranach: 8 Mar—8 Jun 2008 @ The Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Useful links:
www.royalacademy.org.uk
www.staedelmuseum.de
Monday, April 28, 2008
Indiana Jones Escapades
(via budgettravel) Expedia has created unique travel deals either based on or inspired by Indiana Jones escapades @ www.expedia.com/indianajones
Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.expedia.com
Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.expedia.com
Judgment Under Uncertainty
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman + Paul Slovic + Amos Tversky is a fascinating book + I found it useful in analyzing market behavior.
Useful links:
http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman
www.decisionresearch.org
Useful links:
http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman
www.decisionresearch.org
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, then, Gauguin appeared to Paris, not only as the inventor of a new style of picture, but also as the protagonist of a new mental attitude towards life and art. At that period there was a certain lassitude among the highly cultured, expressed by the term fin de siècle—and it was not difficult to make out a case for regarding modern civilization as a disease. There is much in city life that is repugnant to some temperaments, and the yearning for simplicity among artists had its parallel in the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement in politics. The argument put forward by a new generation of artists was this: ‘If modern life is diseased, modern art must be diseased also. We can only restore art to health by starting it afresh like children or savages.’ Thus began the reaction against the complexity of neo-Impressionist painting, and this movement, chiefly influenced by the example of Gauguin, gave birth to a group of painters known in Paris as the fauves (i.e wild beasts). This Fauviste movement was an extreme emotional reaction against the cold intellectual tendencies of hyperscientific painting. In so far as these ‘wild beasts’ painters sought to make painting simpler and less complicated, it may be argued that they were moving in a right direction. A similar reaction in England, fifty years earlier, had led Holman Hunt and Millais to go back to the painters before Raphael for qualities of line and color which they though desirable. But the French painters, in their rage against civilization, went much further back: one by one all the Old Masters were swept away by revolutionaries who sought inspiration from the rudimentary art of savages and barbarians. Forcible, childlike scrawls began to appear in Paris exhibitions, and these paintings were based not so much on my new view of Nature as on the savage art of Polynesia and Central Africa. The rough-hewn intensity of negro carvings excited jaded minds which were satiated with the plastic perfection of the sculpture of Michael Angelo.
The passion for simplicity and the desire to secure a maximum of expression with a minimum of means—which are the chief virtues of the Fauves—are found in the highest degree in the work of Henri Matisse, who is generally regarded as the leading exponent of this school. Born in the North of France in 1869, Matisse as a young man made a great reputation among connoisseurs by the extraordinary power of his drawing. Beginning as an almost academic draughtsman, influenced at first by Impressionism and then by Gauguin, painting landscapes, figures, and still-life, the art of Matisse has passed through a number of phases, each of which has had offshoots in a band of imitators. If Gauguin has been the most lasting influence, Matisse is in no sense an imitator of this master. Though he retained the high-keyed Impressionist palette of bright, clean colors, Matisse abandoned the mosaic method of painting, using a sweeping brush and large planes of color to fill in the masses of what are essentially linear designs. Many of his drawings are wonderful in their summary expression of form and movement, but while in his pictures we admire the masterly sureness and simplicity of his drawing, we are often bewildered by his wilful distortion of natural form.
One of his defenders has sought to explain that Matisse exaggerates deformity in a model by a temperamental necessity which pushes him to affirm a truth without discretion to the point of paradox. Most people will find it difficult to accept a passion for realism as a reasonable explanation why an artist should present the calf of a leg as having a greater circumference than a thigh! On the other hand, decorative intent is patent in all the pictures of Matisse, and we frequently find that distortions of form are used to help and emphasize the rhythm and equilibrium of the linear pattern; accordingly it seems more reasonable to conclude that these distortions are wilful, not accidental, and that the painter subordinates natural representation to formal design, and desires us to admire his pictures, not because they are ‘true,’ but because he has created a pattern of line and color which should appeal to pure aesthetic sensibilities. Matisse is historically important, therefore, as a pioneer of the doctrine that mere ‘actuality’ is unimportant to pictorial art. He may also be regarded as the introducer of ‘shock tactics’ into art. Even if we dislike his pictures, we find it difficult to forget them, because they make so forcible an impact on our vision. His ‘Head of a Woman’ is an example of the powerful effect he achieves with the utmost simplicity and economy of means.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, then, Gauguin appeared to Paris, not only as the inventor of a new style of picture, but also as the protagonist of a new mental attitude towards life and art. At that period there was a certain lassitude among the highly cultured, expressed by the term fin de siècle—and it was not difficult to make out a case for regarding modern civilization as a disease. There is much in city life that is repugnant to some temperaments, and the yearning for simplicity among artists had its parallel in the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement in politics. The argument put forward by a new generation of artists was this: ‘If modern life is diseased, modern art must be diseased also. We can only restore art to health by starting it afresh like children or savages.’ Thus began the reaction against the complexity of neo-Impressionist painting, and this movement, chiefly influenced by the example of Gauguin, gave birth to a group of painters known in Paris as the fauves (i.e wild beasts). This Fauviste movement was an extreme emotional reaction against the cold intellectual tendencies of hyperscientific painting. In so far as these ‘wild beasts’ painters sought to make painting simpler and less complicated, it may be argued that they were moving in a right direction. A similar reaction in England, fifty years earlier, had led Holman Hunt and Millais to go back to the painters before Raphael for qualities of line and color which they though desirable. But the French painters, in their rage against civilization, went much further back: one by one all the Old Masters were swept away by revolutionaries who sought inspiration from the rudimentary art of savages and barbarians. Forcible, childlike scrawls began to appear in Paris exhibitions, and these paintings were based not so much on my new view of Nature as on the savage art of Polynesia and Central Africa. The rough-hewn intensity of negro carvings excited jaded minds which were satiated with the plastic perfection of the sculpture of Michael Angelo.
The passion for simplicity and the desire to secure a maximum of expression with a minimum of means—which are the chief virtues of the Fauves—are found in the highest degree in the work of Henri Matisse, who is generally regarded as the leading exponent of this school. Born in the North of France in 1869, Matisse as a young man made a great reputation among connoisseurs by the extraordinary power of his drawing. Beginning as an almost academic draughtsman, influenced at first by Impressionism and then by Gauguin, painting landscapes, figures, and still-life, the art of Matisse has passed through a number of phases, each of which has had offshoots in a band of imitators. If Gauguin has been the most lasting influence, Matisse is in no sense an imitator of this master. Though he retained the high-keyed Impressionist palette of bright, clean colors, Matisse abandoned the mosaic method of painting, using a sweeping brush and large planes of color to fill in the masses of what are essentially linear designs. Many of his drawings are wonderful in their summary expression of form and movement, but while in his pictures we admire the masterly sureness and simplicity of his drawing, we are often bewildered by his wilful distortion of natural form.
One of his defenders has sought to explain that Matisse exaggerates deformity in a model by a temperamental necessity which pushes him to affirm a truth without discretion to the point of paradox. Most people will find it difficult to accept a passion for realism as a reasonable explanation why an artist should present the calf of a leg as having a greater circumference than a thigh! On the other hand, decorative intent is patent in all the pictures of Matisse, and we frequently find that distortions of form are used to help and emphasize the rhythm and equilibrium of the linear pattern; accordingly it seems more reasonable to conclude that these distortions are wilful, not accidental, and that the painter subordinates natural representation to formal design, and desires us to admire his pictures, not because they are ‘true,’ but because he has created a pattern of line and color which should appeal to pure aesthetic sensibilities. Matisse is historically important, therefore, as a pioneer of the doctrine that mere ‘actuality’ is unimportant to pictorial art. He may also be regarded as the introducer of ‘shock tactics’ into art. Even if we dislike his pictures, we find it difficult to forget them, because they make so forcible an impact on our vision. His ‘Head of a Woman’ is an example of the powerful effect he achieves with the utmost simplicity and economy of means.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Praying Mantis In Amber
Experts believe an 87-million-year-old praying mantis found encased in amber in Japan's northeastern Iwate Prefecture may be a missing link between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects.
Julian Ryall writes @ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080425-amber-mantis.html
Useful links:
www.kuji.co.jp
www.kmnh.jp
www.amnh.org
Julian Ryall writes @ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080425-amber-mantis.html
Useful links:
www.kuji.co.jp
www.kmnh.jp
www.amnh.org
Nano Art
I found the Nano photos via Materials Research Society @ http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_nano_art stunningly beautiful + the eye-catching images are truly a unique convergence of science and art.
Useful link:
www.mrs.org
Useful link:
www.mrs.org
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(via Wiki) Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books -- that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognisable likeness of the portrait subject.
I liked The Arcimboldo Effect because they have double meaning + that otherness.
Useful links:
www.nhm-wien.ac.at
www.kunsthistorischesmuseum.at
www.palazzograssi.it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2276324,00.html
I liked The Arcimboldo Effect because they have double meaning + that otherness.
Useful links:
www.nhm-wien.ac.at
www.kunsthistorischesmuseum.at
www.palazzograssi.it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2276324,00.html
Nina Paley
I found Nina Paley's computer-generated animated film, Sita Sings the Blues (the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana + the breakup of Paley's 21st-century marriage) + the imaginative format @ http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/04/sita brilliant.
Useful links:
www.ninapaley.com
www.tribecafilmfestival.org
Useful links:
www.ninapaley.com
www.tribecafilmfestival.org
The Journalist And The Whistle Blower
I found Chaim Even Zohar's reflections on investigative journalists dilemmas when dealing with materials provided by whistle blowers + the impact @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp interesting and insightful.
Arnold Lulls
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
In the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a most remarkable album depicting jewels that date from about 1550 to 1610. This is Arnold Lull’s record of the treasures of Queen Anne of Denmark. Some of the drawings were intended as a record of jewels acquired by Anne from 1603 to 1625 after her marriage to King James I of England. To some extent, the album is a pictorial inventory (similar to Mielich’s Kleinodienbuch) of the jewels delivered by Lulls and his collaborators. Some of the pieces are believed to be Lull’s own designs.
Arnold Lull himself was a Dutch jeweler and dealer who appears to have moved to London in 1585, but retained his Dutch nationality. His drawings illustrate a wide range of historic diamond cuts, mostly Table Cuts, square, rectangular and lozenge-shaped, but also a large number of fancy outlines. It is fascinating to find a number of diamond cuts that were obselete by about 1600 and, rather surprisingly, two different Stellar Cut Tables, predecessors of the Brilliants of a later period. The three Chequer Cut diamonds are equally interesting to a diamond historian. There are also two jewels containing Table Cut diamonds of gradually decreasing size set in a row, the earliest known example of this style, now popular with modern designers.
In the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a most remarkable album depicting jewels that date from about 1550 to 1610. This is Arnold Lull’s record of the treasures of Queen Anne of Denmark. Some of the drawings were intended as a record of jewels acquired by Anne from 1603 to 1625 after her marriage to King James I of England. To some extent, the album is a pictorial inventory (similar to Mielich’s Kleinodienbuch) of the jewels delivered by Lulls and his collaborators. Some of the pieces are believed to be Lull’s own designs.
Arnold Lull himself was a Dutch jeweler and dealer who appears to have moved to London in 1585, but retained his Dutch nationality. His drawings illustrate a wide range of historic diamond cuts, mostly Table Cuts, square, rectangular and lozenge-shaped, but also a large number of fancy outlines. It is fascinating to find a number of diamond cuts that were obselete by about 1600 and, rather surprisingly, two different Stellar Cut Tables, predecessors of the Brilliants of a later period. The three Chequer Cut diamonds are equally interesting to a diamond historian. There are also two jewels containing Table Cut diamonds of gradually decreasing size set in a row, the earliest known example of this style, now popular with modern designers.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) also learnt painting from Camille Pissarro, whose style he copied closely in his early work, but at least he was never a Realist. His father was a Breton, but his mother was a Peruvian Creole, and a passion for the Tropics was in his blood. As a boy he ran away and went to sea, but after several voyages in various parts of the world he returned to Paris and entered business life. One day in a shop window he saw some pictures which brought back memories of the light and color he had seen in the Tropics; he made inquiries as to the authors, and so became acquainted with Pissarro. Gauguin was thirty at this time, and though he began painting now as a amateur, it was not till two years later, in 1880, that he began to exhibit, and another year passed before he decided to give all his time to art. Gauguin soon broke away from the dogmas of the neo-Impressionists, though his debt to them is confessed in the splendor of his color—and for a time he was influenced by Cézanne, this influence showing itself in a tendency towards simplification. Gauguin made certain innovations of his own, he deliberately simplified forms and reintroduced the fashion of binding them with heavy dark outlines, and while his style grew more decorative his subjects became more imaginative.
In one of his letters Van Gogh records that while Gauguin was living with him at Arles he (Van Gogh) was for a while ‘led into working from imagination.’
The association of Gauguin and Van Gogh was unfortunate, for their aims and temperaments were too distinct to mingle with ease. Van Gogh was all humility, Gauguin was proud and haughty, and though the warm-hearted Dutchman venerated his friend, the latter’s cold cynicism often got on his nerves and contributed to his depression. Van Gogh wanted to devote his life to suffering humanity; Gauguin wanted to forget the suffering and dwell in an ‘enchanted land.’ After Van Gogh’s mental collapse at Arles, Gauguin went to Brittany and established himself at Pont Aven, where he found ‘big, simple mortals and an unspoilt Nature.’ But even rural France was too sophisticated for a man whose romantic temperament found its ideal among the unspoilt barbarians of the Pacific. In 1891 Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where he fulfilled his intention to paint a primitive folk in a primitive style. Admitting the technical interest and decorative merit of Gauguin’s Brittany pictures, it remains doubtful whether he would have been so great a figure in modern art had he not, like R I Stevenson, been fascinated by the life and manners of the Kanakas. His Tahitian pictures with their exotic subjects made a wide appeal to the popular imagination, though they did not become generally known till after the artist’s death in 1903. But if he complained bitterly at the lack of purchasers for his pictures, Gauguin delighted in his new home, and never regretted having left Europe. ‘I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into truth, into Nature.’ Nevertheless he idealized the Nature he found in the Pacific; he dwelt in a land of dreams and his pictures were charming conventions. When a literary friend in Paris quarrelled with his ideal, Gauguin replied: ‘Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration to health.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
2
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) also learnt painting from Camille Pissarro, whose style he copied closely in his early work, but at least he was never a Realist. His father was a Breton, but his mother was a Peruvian Creole, and a passion for the Tropics was in his blood. As a boy he ran away and went to sea, but after several voyages in various parts of the world he returned to Paris and entered business life. One day in a shop window he saw some pictures which brought back memories of the light and color he had seen in the Tropics; he made inquiries as to the authors, and so became acquainted with Pissarro. Gauguin was thirty at this time, and though he began painting now as a amateur, it was not till two years later, in 1880, that he began to exhibit, and another year passed before he decided to give all his time to art. Gauguin soon broke away from the dogmas of the neo-Impressionists, though his debt to them is confessed in the splendor of his color—and for a time he was influenced by Cézanne, this influence showing itself in a tendency towards simplification. Gauguin made certain innovations of his own, he deliberately simplified forms and reintroduced the fashion of binding them with heavy dark outlines, and while his style grew more decorative his subjects became more imaginative.
In one of his letters Van Gogh records that while Gauguin was living with him at Arles he (Van Gogh) was for a while ‘led into working from imagination.’
The association of Gauguin and Van Gogh was unfortunate, for their aims and temperaments were too distinct to mingle with ease. Van Gogh was all humility, Gauguin was proud and haughty, and though the warm-hearted Dutchman venerated his friend, the latter’s cold cynicism often got on his nerves and contributed to his depression. Van Gogh wanted to devote his life to suffering humanity; Gauguin wanted to forget the suffering and dwell in an ‘enchanted land.’ After Van Gogh’s mental collapse at Arles, Gauguin went to Brittany and established himself at Pont Aven, where he found ‘big, simple mortals and an unspoilt Nature.’ But even rural France was too sophisticated for a man whose romantic temperament found its ideal among the unspoilt barbarians of the Pacific. In 1891 Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where he fulfilled his intention to paint a primitive folk in a primitive style. Admitting the technical interest and decorative merit of Gauguin’s Brittany pictures, it remains doubtful whether he would have been so great a figure in modern art had he not, like R I Stevenson, been fascinated by the life and manners of the Kanakas. His Tahitian pictures with their exotic subjects made a wide appeal to the popular imagination, though they did not become generally known till after the artist’s death in 1903. But if he complained bitterly at the lack of purchasers for his pictures, Gauguin delighted in his new home, and never regretted having left Europe. ‘I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into truth, into Nature.’ Nevertheless he idealized the Nature he found in the Pacific; he dwelt in a land of dreams and his pictures were charming conventions. When a literary friend in Paris quarrelled with his ideal, Gauguin replied: ‘Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration to health.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
HyperShot
(via Wired) HyperShot is a unique application developed by computer graphics genius Henrik Wann Jensen + it uses a proprietary photon-mapping technique to simulate complex lighting situations ranging from reflected sunlight to spots beamed through colored gels to create ultrarealistic images, like the diamonds @ http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/multimedia/2008/04/st_render?slide=2&slideView=2
Amazing!
Useful link:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik
Amazing!
Useful link:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik
This Is Dubai
I found the article on Derek Khan @ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/fashion/17CROOK.html interesting because in the jewelry industry it's very difficult for a comeback if you have had a heavily included/blemished career, but here he is, as a stylist to the stars, in Dubai, on his feet. Good luck!
I thought I’d never see jewelry again.
- Derek Khan
I thought I’d never see jewelry again.
- Derek Khan
Contemporary Botanical Artists
Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection by Shirley Sherwood + Victoria Matthews is an inspiring book of dazzling beauty.
Useful link:
www.kew.org
Visitors will be able to see the world's first gallery dedicated entirely to botanical art at Kew Gardens in London.
Useful link:
www.kew.org
Visitors will be able to see the world's first gallery dedicated entirely to botanical art at Kew Gardens in London.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Panyu + DMCC
Panyu (China) + DMCC (Dubai) = Diamonds + Colored stones trade. Dubai + Panyu are the new emerging gem and jewelry capital (s) of the world.
Useful links:
www.panyu.gov.cn
www.dmcc.ae
Useful links:
www.panyu.gov.cn
www.dmcc.ae
Heard On The Street
You must practice your skills, study your opponents and work hard + same with the markets.
Cell Phone Movie
Filmmaker Spike Lee + Nokia = a cell phone movie from everyday people. According to Spike Lee with a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker. You can submit text, music, video or images at certain times between now and Aug. 21, 2008 to www.nokiaproductions.com
Useful links:
www.nokiaproductions.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490
Useful links:
www.nokiaproductions.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490
Hans Mielich
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
In 1937, Erna von Watzdorf, a research worker at the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, published a detailed article on Hans Mielich. She furnished proof that after he had finished his studies at the Regensburg Academy of Art, he went to Italy and Spain and there concentrated on the study of crafts such as armor and jewelry. He soon realized that reproducing objects required the same concentration on personality, light and shade as the portrayal of the human face.
He began painting large pièces de résistance at the Bavarian Court and was soon commissioned by Albrecht V Duke of Bavaria, to produce a color inventory of his wife’s jewelry collection. Mielich took over four years to complete the Kleinodienbuch, a vivid work of absolute precision and detail, in which even the interior light reflections in the Pyramidal Point Cut diamonds were depicted. It is possible that he may also have created some original pieces of jewelry , but no drawings of these appear to have been documented. Most of Mielich’s jewelry ‘portraits’ have been acquired by either the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek or the Bayerishces Nationalmuseum, both in Munich.
In 1937, Erna von Watzdorf, a research worker at the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, published a detailed article on Hans Mielich. She furnished proof that after he had finished his studies at the Regensburg Academy of Art, he went to Italy and Spain and there concentrated on the study of crafts such as armor and jewelry. He soon realized that reproducing objects required the same concentration on personality, light and shade as the portrayal of the human face.
He began painting large pièces de résistance at the Bavarian Court and was soon commissioned by Albrecht V Duke of Bavaria, to produce a color inventory of his wife’s jewelry collection. Mielich took over four years to complete the Kleinodienbuch, a vivid work of absolute precision and detail, in which even the interior light reflections in the Pyramidal Point Cut diamonds were depicted. It is possible that he may also have created some original pieces of jewelry , but no drawings of these appear to have been documented. Most of Mielich’s jewelry ‘portraits’ have been acquired by either the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek or the Bayerishces Nationalmuseum, both in Munich.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
From Paris Van Gogh went to Arles in the South of France, where he exposed himself to the risks of sunstroke by frequently painting in blazing sunshine without any headcovering. A curious incident made public the fact that he was becoming abnormal. Teasing him for a present, a girl in a café once playfully said to him, ‘Well, if you can’t give me anything else, give me one of your big ears.’ Shortly before Christmas this little waitress, whom the artist admired, was horrified to receive a parcel which was found to contain a freshly severed human ear. Van Gogh was found in bed with his head bleeding and with raging brain fever. Subsequently he was taken to an asylum, but his portrait of himself with a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, painted after this breakdown, proves that his hand had not lost its steadiness nor his eye its power to see essentials with brilliant intensity.
In the summer of 1889 he was well enough to leave Arles, and after a short stay in Paris, his brother arranged for him to live in the house of a doctor at Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh appeared to be in the best of health and spirits, and there is no doubt that he fough bravely against the clouds which threatened his keen intellect. But the day came when he felt himself to be a doomed man, with nothing but mental darkness ahead, and on July 28, 1890, in a fit of depression he shot himself fatally. The fact that his mind eventually became unhinged, so that some of the pictures of his last years betray an abnormal vision, does not invalidate the splendid sanity of the bulk of Van Gogh’s productions. Technically Van Gogh got his modelling by sweeping contours, instead of by a series of petty planes, and so gave weight to objects, while cleanly preserving their silhouettes as co-ordinated parts of a decorative design. We are impressed by his strength, as we are by that of Cézanne; but it is not physical strength alone, but also moral force. His color is of a high order and pitch, showing a fine sensibility for the splendor of pigment, but Van Gogh was too seriously absorbed in life and humanity for his paintings ever to degenerate into mere decorations. One of the pictures in which he most completely expressed himself was ‘The Prison Yard’, in which he conjures up wtih forcible economy the tragic aspect of these prisoners pacing their monotonous round, makes the high walls eloquent of the impossibility of escape, and without a touch of sentimentality contrives to express his compassionate pity for these dregs of humanity who are yet ‘men and brothers.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
From Paris Van Gogh went to Arles in the South of France, where he exposed himself to the risks of sunstroke by frequently painting in blazing sunshine without any headcovering. A curious incident made public the fact that he was becoming abnormal. Teasing him for a present, a girl in a café once playfully said to him, ‘Well, if you can’t give me anything else, give me one of your big ears.’ Shortly before Christmas this little waitress, whom the artist admired, was horrified to receive a parcel which was found to contain a freshly severed human ear. Van Gogh was found in bed with his head bleeding and with raging brain fever. Subsequently he was taken to an asylum, but his portrait of himself with a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, painted after this breakdown, proves that his hand had not lost its steadiness nor his eye its power to see essentials with brilliant intensity.
In the summer of 1889 he was well enough to leave Arles, and after a short stay in Paris, his brother arranged for him to live in the house of a doctor at Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh appeared to be in the best of health and spirits, and there is no doubt that he fough bravely against the clouds which threatened his keen intellect. But the day came when he felt himself to be a doomed man, with nothing but mental darkness ahead, and on July 28, 1890, in a fit of depression he shot himself fatally. The fact that his mind eventually became unhinged, so that some of the pictures of his last years betray an abnormal vision, does not invalidate the splendid sanity of the bulk of Van Gogh’s productions. Technically Van Gogh got his modelling by sweeping contours, instead of by a series of petty planes, and so gave weight to objects, while cleanly preserving their silhouettes as co-ordinated parts of a decorative design. We are impressed by his strength, as we are by that of Cézanne; but it is not physical strength alone, but also moral force. His color is of a high order and pitch, showing a fine sensibility for the splendor of pigment, but Van Gogh was too seriously absorbed in life and humanity for his paintings ever to degenerate into mere decorations. One of the pictures in which he most completely expressed himself was ‘The Prison Yard’, in which he conjures up wtih forcible economy the tragic aspect of these prisoners pacing their monotonous round, makes the high walls eloquent of the impossibility of escape, and without a touch of sentimentality contrives to express his compassionate pity for these dregs of humanity who are yet ‘men and brothers.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
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