This is another case of ‘small but mighty’. All in all, it is a series of haphazard brushstrokes that don’t even really make a complete picture, yet, the impressions of everything that they want to convey somehow come across. The colors aren’t quite correct, but they are close enough to approximate what your eye believes it wishes to see, and it fills in the blanks and the extreme contrast of the figure of the little girl seems to be stark, even harsh and alien to the rest of the scene.
Tag: European Art
Sunday
Beckmann uses a very distinct style of intense dark-lining and heavy shadowing that gives many of his works a foreboding feel to them, despite their kaledescopic color qualities. This is one such work; the shadows feel out of place, the lighting not quite right, everything is just slightly surrealistically off-putting, yet, there isn’t anything quite wrong about it.
Saturday
In a lot of ways, this is similar to elements of broader reaches of “African” art, but when you begin comparing it more closely, the comparisons become more caricatures than anything else. This is more expressionism than imitation; allowing for the expression of the artist’s worldview rather than imitating the viewpoints around him. It’s also bordering on cubism, but we’ll digress on the allusions to Picasso.
Friday
What I enjoy the most about this sculpture is the unstudied, unaffected aspects of it. The nudity is very natural, the curves very real. It’s only when you reach the facial features that you suddenly realize that the sculptor has gotten a little careless and his model’s face has become something more simplistic and expressionist than realistic.
Thursday
This painting is a bit like ‘choose your own adventure’ but with colors and shapes. You know it’s meant to be goats and you know it’s meant to be mountains, but everything else is subjective.
Wednesday
You can read about the painting all you want, but until you look at it, you don’t understand it. To me, the real focus of the picture is in the background, in the moonlight glow – the focal point for the rest of the action is there. The campfire and lighthouse become evident only after you see the moonlight, and the reflection of the moonlight off the water. Everything about this composition is about light, even in the darkness. It is everything.
Tuesday
This particular work reminds me of Mrs. Hughes from Downton Abbey for some reason. I don’t know why; it just does.
Monday
There is a lot of crossover between Rococo design and Victorian Impressionism; the repression of sexuality in public while glorifying it in private, all the while alluding to it in portraiture, sketches, etc., is very similar. Renoir’s palette of ‘girly’ pastel hues and feminine lines makes this painting flirty, fresh, and inviting in a borderline naughty way.
Sunday
There is something very powerful about the nature of this work; it screams strength in solitude, but also strength in nature’s embrace. Without one, you cannot have the other. There is beauty in the madness, and softness in the darkness.
Saturday
This particular painting is very small but very mighty in its mastery of spacial acuity, color, dimensional flow, and everything else that goes with holding the attention of an audience. By far, it is my favorite of the newest additions to the collection.