MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Paul Cezanne The Bather 1885 Oil on canvas 50” x 38” Key Facts French painter. He was one of the most important painters of the second half of the 19th century. In many of his early works, up to about 1870, he depicted dark, imaginary subjects in a violent, expressive manner. In the 1870s he came under the influence of Impressionism, particularly as practiced by Camille Pissarro, and he participated in the First (1874) and Third (1877) Impressionist Exhibitions. Believing color and form to be inseparable, he tried to emphasize structure and solidity in his work, features he thought neglected by Impressionism. “I wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and enduring, like the art in museums.” “..treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone…”
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art “To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.” Auguste Rodin Monument to Balzac 1898 cast in 1954 Bronze About this Work Commissioned to honor one of France's greatest novelists, Rodin spent seven years preparing for Monument to Balzac , studying the writer’s life and work, posing models who resembled him, and ordering clothes to his measurements. Ultimately, though, Rodin’s aim was less to create a physical likeness of Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) than to communicate an idea or spirit of the man and a sense of his creative vitality: "I think of his intense labor, of the difficulty of his life, of his incessant battles, and of his great courage. I would express all that," he said. Several studies for the work are nudes, but Rodin finally clothed the figure in a robe inspired by the dressing gown that Balzac often wore when writing. About The Artist French sculptor and draughtsman. He is the only sculptor of the modern age regarded in his lifetime and afterwards to be on a par with Michelangelo. Both made images with widespread popular appeal, and both stressed the materiality of sculpture. Rodin’s most famous works—the Age of Bronze , The Thinker , The Kiss , the Burghers of Calais and Honoré de Balzac —are frequently reproduced outside a fine-art context to represent modern attitudes that require poses and encounters freed from allegory, idealization and propriety.
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” Vincent van Gogh Portrait of Joseph Roulin 1889 Oil on canvas About The Artist Dutch painter. His life and work are legendary in the history of 19th- and 20th-century art. In the popular view, van Gogh has become the prototype of the misunderstood, tormented artist, who sold only one work in his lifetime—but whose Irises (sold New York, Sotheby’s, 11 Nov 1987) achieved a record auction sale price of £49 million. Romantic clichés suggest that van Gogh paid with insanity for his genius, which was understood only by his supportive brother Theo (1857–91). Van Gogh was active as an artist for only ten years, during which time he produced some 1000 watercolours, drawings and sketches and about 1250 paintings ranging from a dark, Realist style to an intense, expressionistic one. Almost more than on his oeuvre, his fame has been based on the extensive, diary-like correspondence he maintained, in particular with his brother. Key Facts Post Impressionism [ emotionalist ] Japanese Influence japonisme This is a portrait of Vincent’s postman, Joseph Roulin, one of Vincent’s few close friends Vincent was incredibly argumentative and had few friends This was painted in the year that Vincent entered an asylum. Became friends with Paul Gaugin, but drove him away.
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Paul Cezanne Turning Road at Montgeroult 1898 Oil on canvas 32” x 25” About This Image Cézanne’s lyrical works from this late period are characterized by more violent colors and a greater articulation of volumes into facets. In his landscapes Cézanne emphasized the rough appearance of sites, mixing wild vegetation with rocks in unusual, asymmetric framings. His composition became less serene and his color more violent. The most extraordinary landscapes of the late period are the series of paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire that Cézanne produced from 1900 until his death. Composed of discrete patches of color, the image becomes almost illegible beneath the intricate surface pattern of brushstrokes, showing a tendency towards abstraction. Nature was almost always Cezanne’s subject, but he was never bound by it. He selected and discarded elements from nature as they “pleased his canvas”. His aim was, first and foremost, to arrange elements in a manner that brought solidity and order to the picture plane. "Art is a harmony which runs parallel with nature -- what is one to think of those imbeciles who say that the artist is always inferior to nature?"
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Gustav Klimt Hope II 1907 Oil, Gold, and Platinum on Canvas 43” x 43” Key Facts Associated with the Art Nouveau Movement Friends with Egon Schiele. Influenced visually by the flattened spaces of Byzantine art Many images address the beginning and end of life Allusions to prayerful activities The flattened space of Japanese prints was also influential Klimt remains Austria’s most prized painter He was equally inspired by modernism and the history of art. His images push and pull the viewer through space. He simultaneously confirms and denies the illusion of form “Sometimes I miss out the morning’s painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.” “Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want.”
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Marc Chagall I and the Village 1911 Oil on canvas Key Facts Painted the year after Chagall came to Paris, I and the Village evokes his memories of his native Hasidic community outside Vitebsk. In the village, peasants and animals lived side by side, in a mutual dependence here signified by the line from peasant to cow, connecting their eyes. The peasant's flowering sprig, symbolically a tree of life, is the reward of their partnership. For Hasids, animals were also humanity's link to the universe, and the painting's large circular forms suggest the orbiting sun, moon (in eclipse at the lower left), and earth. Chagall hovers between art historical categories. Some think Chagall a Surrealist, but many more refer to him as a Cubist. Though his picture plane resembles the fractured spaces of artist such as Braque and Picasso, his subject matter is much more rooted in the ideas presented by the Surrealist group. “For the Cubists, painting was a surface covered with forms in a certain order. For me, a painting is a surface covered with representations of things...in which logic and illustration have no importance”
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Street, Berlin 1913 Oil on canvas Key Facts German painter. He was a prominent member of the German Expressionism movement. Rejecting academic painting, his work is composed of vibrant sections of color and angular forms, reflecting the energy of Berlin before World War I. Co- founding the Expressionist group Brücke , he began his Berlin period in 1911, which produced this painting of prostitutes in the red-light district of Berlin. After volunteering for the army and suffering a nervous breakdown, his work began to reflect the horror and pain associated with Germany’s struggle through World War I. His work was banned by the Nazis during their attack on modern art, causing him to destroy much of his own work and eventually commit suicide. “A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things.”
MoMA The Museum of Modern Art Giorgio de Chirico Gare Montparnasse 1914 Oil on canvas 55 1/8” x 6’ 5/8” Key Facts Influenced by his Greek culture, his mother, the death of his father, and Symbolist painter Arnold Bocklin He tried to evoke a sense of enigma (mystery) Used strong horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines with flat colors and numerous vanishing points (this painting has 6) Places that de Chirico lives influenced his paintings. He was part of a metaphysical art movement and founded the School of Metaphysics Metaphysics The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. He was a large influence on Surrealism Repeated symbols in his paintings include: bananas, smokestacks, and white statues (the latter two representing the death of his father) details “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.”
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