Four Videos

1. I choose Dance at the Moulin do la Galette because I am fascinated by the cost the painting sold for and the passion there was for the artwork. Georges Seurat: Mysterious Man and Artist caught my imagination of extreme. The impact of Cubism was the era of art I felt reconnected with the art word. Studying and learning about the history of art was not very interesting to me. I enjoyed learning about art in the 20th century. The Mystical North: Spanish Art for the 19th Century to the Present : Goya was an indifferent artist.
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Dance at eh Moulin de al Galette stand for pleasure and takes the viewer back in time to Paris. This was a very controversial painting. In 1990 it sold for 78.1 million dollars, a record price. Renoir painted two copies, which became the major quality of Impressionism. Renoir used local people as models. The painting represented two worlds of bohemian and fashionable men and lower class women. Montmartre is a place where people socialize in classless harmony. Renoir was aware of the poverty and organized charity balls. This painting was conceived during a time of political oppression. Renoir turned to escapist and reactionary art. Zandomeneghi, Lautrec, Picasso and Vangoghfelt that the painting depicts sinister, somber and dark versions of Renoirs romantic vision of life. Renoirs technique included bright, separate colors and a variety of brushwork. There is still controversy on weather he actually painted at the dance hall or in his studio. Renoirs large version shows his mastery of painting a large number of people in a compact space. The gap in the lower left corner invites the viewer in and the cut off side figures give a sense of informality. The first showing had mixed responses. Renoir wanted to spread beauty and happiness. The marketing of his products included Rod Stewarts 1976 album cover.
Georges Seurat’s is described as unfathomable. His work with conte crayon on textured paper shoes contrasts of light and shadow. The island of la Grande Jatte was a place where prostitutes piled their trade. X rays of the painting reveal that the monkey was added later. Audiences wanted to know what the money symbolized. His paintings depict contrasting ideologies and social commentary and for the final painting he experimented with different characters, character placements and light. The artist believed that dots of pure pigment situated next to each other made the colors come alive and created luminosity. Seurat’s depiction of fashion emphasizes bustles and corsets and the figures resemble the rigid, cut out forms of Egyptian art in which figures are viewed only from the side. Influence of classical sculpture such as the Parthenon frieze. Impressionist artists did not want their artwork next to Seurat’s and his artwork was ignored. The art work is displayed in the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was saved for destruction in NY. Sunday in the Park with George is a musical take off of the painting. In Ohio there is a topiary tribute to the painting covering an acre of land and including 12 feet high figures. The display takes the painting out of the context of high art and puts it in a pedestrian atmosphere. The painting is common lore and remains enigmatic and paradoxical.
The Impact of Cubism: Juan Gris, The Breakfast Table reveals his independence using spiritual elements and imagination. He starts with abstraction and ends with the real object in exciting contrasts and interesting side by side positions. The Violin he uses techniques of musical composition to layer elements of sound and incorporates collage as a tribute to the austerity of the Spanish tradition. Sad Young Man on a Train, Marcel Duchamp uses and experimental approach to represent movement of a figure evolving in space and time. The elasticity of the figure is achieved through small dark oblique angles. Nude on a Staircase controlled motion is balanced in a fixed setting which is compared to stop photography. Delaunay’s Champ de Mars combines several points of view, nontraditional laws of perspective, elements of time and memory to reveal the Eiffel Tower as a confused, exciting statement about life. He explores the inner laws of light and color in an abstract approach. In circular forms he used color as the subject of the painting to guide the viewers perception of the picture as a whole. Spiral forms establish direction, focus attentions and symbolize Paris electric lights. Embedded text represents the harmonious collaboration of the verbal and visual, the poet and the artist.Sonis Delaunay’s makes art a part of life. Her concept is represented as a fashion designer and interior decorator. Malevish’s An Englishman in Moscow invites the viewer to look for meaning in the painting separate from the world and he overturns conventional logic to find inner meaning. Kazimir Malevich’s Mysticism searches for mystical experiences represented in religions icons to order to find the essence of abstraction. White Cross is the purest presentation of forces, emotions and imagination. Umberto Boccioni’s Farewells is inspired by the cinema screen to paint a fractured vision of modern city life synthesized in many moods and Boccioni’s Cubism movement as a visual phenomenon, line and color connected figures and create an environment of powerful moods and settings to reveal personal values and visual complexity.
Goya was often referred to as the father of modern art and revealed his dark political consciousness. He was completely deaf and focused his art work on death, wrath of God and mans inhumanity to man. At the start of the 20th century Spain became a powerhouse of modern art. Park Guell is representation of Barcelona’s spirit. Gaudi belief was that he was Gods architect. A block of flats designed by Gaudi represents his play full experimentation with architectural form and the organic nature of his designs. An interior tour reveals the details and comfort of the quarters. Gaudi’s Casa Mila earned the name La Pedrers because its series of curvy, cave like balconies looked like a stone quarry. This movement towards the primitive is similar to Henry Moore’s abstract monumental bronzes. Surrealism emerged out of exploration of the unconscious and irrational. Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory reveals all life is subject to death and decay. He claimed that the museum itself was the world’s largest surreal object and he paints in the language of dreams. Franco’s tyranny against art forced artist into exile. Franks Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbabo is a Picasso-inspired monument to Spain’s past and future. Santiago Calatrava is at eh forefront of the new wave of Spanish architects.
3 The videos all along help to personalize the artwork and the artist. The videos help to visualize a time and place. They help to understand the cultural differences and why and artist creates his artwork. I found these videos to be more political driven. More art works of political and social issues.
4. I liked the videos. I need the personal aspects of the videos to help me understand the era and the new forms of art.