For Henri Rousseau, naïveté was a powerful artistic technique. By Jonathon Keats According to a popular story, Henri Rousseau became an artist on account of a prank played by the absurdist writer Alfred Jarry. Rousseau was on duty as a gabelou at the Pont des Arts in Paris, collecting tolls for the municipal government, when [...]
Continue reading...19th Century Art
Essay: Cut and Paste
February 2010It would be hard to argue against the Internet being the fastest-spreading technological revolution of all time, but the rise of photography in the 19th century was surprisingly swift. Within two decades of its invention in 1839, it had deeply penetrated the middle classes of Europe and the United States.
Continue reading...Elevating the Everyday
January 2010Storytelling helps us think about who we are, where we come from, what we value and why. The art is as ancient as the impulse to gather around a fire at night. While today it is more likely to be an HDTV screen than a glowing hearth, the experience remains crucial to 21st-century humans, who lavish multimillion-dollar paychecks on Hollywood’s leading lights.
Continue reading...Talking Pictures: Christmas Present and Christmas Past
December 2009By: Jonathan Lopez In the spring of 1894, when James Tissot exhibited 270 paintings from his series The Life of Christ at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars in Paris, one critic declared that the artist could have been “the reporter for an illustrated paper in Rome under Tiberius,” so vivid were these seemingly eyewitness accounts of [...]
Continue reading...Victorian Vanguard
December 2009By: Sallie Brady Not unless you’ve sought them out in Britain’s museums or have been a dinner guest at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London home are you likely to have been face-to-face with many Pre-Raphaelite pictures. The Victorian school of painting began when the Young British Artists of their day rebelled against the Renaissance methods of [...]
Continue reading...Beyond the Sea
July 2009By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley When King George IV approached J.M.W. Turner in 1823 and commissioned him to paint Trafalgar, the most important naval engagement in British history, the artist rose to the task. He invested The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 with all the drama and tragedy the subject demanded, showing that the glory [...]
Continue reading...Shining On
June 2009The light seems to come from nowhere and everywhere. As the sun suffuses the haze and shimmers on the surface of still waters, the atmosphere holds a glow that might be silvery, bluish or fiery red. The view recedes gradually into the distance, passing through several distinct planes. The overall impression is one of silence and deep peace.
Continue reading...Figments of Pigment
May 2009Most artists would be livid if six of the seven works that they had loaned to an exhibition returned damaged, but not Eric Conklin. He was flattered. Conklin, 58, practices a type of still life painting known as trompe l’oeil—French for “deceives the eye.” Conklin strives to do just that with his paintings, to persuade people that they are looking at genuine coins, chalkboards, photographs and other carefully chosen objects.
Continue reading...
