On the Porch by John Steuart Curry, 1926, Private Collection

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Regionalism

That is so difficult. I'm sorry you're grieving.

These works represents a family of acrobats, who work in a circus, struck by a tragedy: their son, mortally wounded in the head, lies in the arms of his mother after an accident during a tightrope walking performance. Doré painted two versions. The Denver Museum version is generally considered the first, focusing on the child's imminent death. It features a more complex, "earthly" scene with symbolic elements like scattered playing cards (including the ace of spades, or "death card") and more detailed surroundings. The child's injuries appear more acute, and the father's expression is heavily focused on guilt and sorrow. Often described as the "infernal" or more theatrical version, the 1874 painting is considered more intimate, focusing tightly on the emotional, raw grief of the family. Background elements and additional figures are reduced to intensify the focus on the parents, with a harsher, more emotional depiction of the scene.

1. The Injured Child by Gustave Doré, 1873, Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO)

2. The Acrobats (Les Saltimbanques) by Gustave Doré, 1874, Musée d'Art Roger-Quillot (Clermont-Ferrand, France)

#ArtHistory #Romanticism

Gris' work always retains identifiable elements, with tight geometry and bold patterns distinguishing his compositions. In "The Painter's Window," produced at the end of his life, the artist flattened and interlocked a guitar, fruit bow, sheet music, a palette, paintbrush, playing cards, and a tabletop like pieces in an upright jigsaw puzzle. These typical Cubist props, which allude to the roles of chance, play, and the abstraction of music, are arranged in clever punning ways. The sheet music mimics the strings of the guitar while the blobs of paint on the palette rhyme with the diamonds of the playing cards. Sharp, angular divisions cleave the forms, reducing them to geometric facets. This dissection of objects into constituent shapes and planes reorders visual perception. The arrangement of these fragmented elements articulates a modern perspective on reality, one shaped by multiple viewpoints and the breakdown of traditional representation. Here, the very process of seeing becomes a subject. Forms overlap and intersect, denying a single, fixed vantage point. A deep, dark shape anchors the left side, it's sharp edges defining an interior recess. Thin, parallel lines on the sheet music suggest a rhythm of observation. The blue rectangle of the window frames a dislocated sky. The wooden surface of the table grounds the chaotic assembly in a tactile reality. This careful construction of interlocking planes creates a complex visual field.

The Painter's Window by Juan Gris, 1924, Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #SyntheticCubism

The artwork features a dynamic interplay of swirling and sweeping lines and shapes rendered in a palette of earthy tones and vibrant hues. The composition is marked by curvilinear forms that appear to flow rhythmically across the canvas, creating a sense of movement and depth. The use of bold, contrasting colors adds to the visual intensity of the piece, while the overall design exudes a sense of organic fluidity. This abstract representation allows for a myriad of interpretations, contributing to its engaging and enigmatic quality.

Abstraction 30 by Lawren Harris, 1955, Owned by LSH Holdings, Ltd. (the artist's estate)

#ArtHistory #ContemporaryArt #AbstractArt

Annie Hall - "the horrible and the miserable" YouTube video by jshw

I know Woody is persona non grata but I will always consider this the best explanation of the human condition

youtu.be/udoh1DZ7JKw?...

I love Arlington, but we can make National Cementaries anywhere. I wanted bodies buried at Robert McNamara's house and never even knew where that was. I think if you start a stupid war, the bodies should be yours.

Bury anyone killed in his wars on the green at Mar-a-Lago

The Bather is one of Cézanne's most evocative paintings of the figure, although the unmuscled torso and arms have no heroic pretensions, and the drawing, in traditional, 19th-century terms, is awkward and imprecise. The bather's left forward leg is placed firmly on the ground, but his right leg trails and carries no weight. The right side of his body is pulled higher than the left, the chin curves lopsidedly, and the right arm is elongated and oblique. The landscape is as bare as desert, but green, violet, and rose coloration refuses that name. Its dreaming expanse matches the bather's pensiveness. Likewise, the shadows on the body, rather than shifting to black, share the colors of the air, land, and water; and the brushwork throughout is a network of hatch-marks and dapples, restless yet extraordinarily refined. The figure moves toward us but does not meet our gaze. These disturbances can be characterized as modern: they indicate that while Cézanne had an acute respect for much of traditional art, he did not represent the male nude the way the classical and Renaissance artists had done. He wanted to make an art that was "solid and durable like the art of the museums" but that also reflected a modern sensibility incorporating the new understanding of vision and light developed by the Impressionists. He wanted to make an art of his own time that rivaled the traditions of the past.

The Bather by Paul Cézanne, 1885, MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art (New York City, NY)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #PostImpressionism

The painting shows a beach scene with several people gathered on the shore. The people are gathered between four white tent-like structures in the center of the painting. All the people are elaborately dressed in colorful gowns or suits, with many wearing hats or holding parasols. Behind the group is the ocean, with a few people swimming on the left. The color scheme includes earthy tones for the sand and beach huts, and brighter colors like whites, blacks, blues, and reds for the people's clothing. The sky is predominantly painted in soft blues and grays with some wispy white clouds.

Beach Scene by Eugène Boudin,1862 National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism

The crisp delineation of the snow-laden stacks anchors the composition. Rows of tightly bound corn shocks emerge from a blanket of smooth, undulating snow. A meticulous layering of fine brushstrokes builds the granular texture of the straw sheaves. This precise rendering solidifies the forms, giving them a tactile presence that grounds the scene. The stoic uniformity of the stacks, marching into a deep, bruised sky, suggests a profound resilience. Footprints, tiny impressions in the vast white expanse, punctuate the frozen stillness. A muted palette of ochre, grey, and off-white dominates the landscape. The sharp angles of the snow-capped shocks cut against the soft curves of the drifts. This deliberate simplification of form communicates a quiet dignity to the agricultural subjects. The composition evokes a sense of enduring labor in the face of winter's stark embrace. January was created during the Regionalism movement in American art, which emerged the 1920s and 1930s as a reaction against European abstraction and a celebration of American rural life. It followed the Ashcan School and prefigured the social realism of the Depression era. Wood's work, along with that of Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, became synonymous with this distinctly American style. It stands in contrast to the international modernist movements of the time, focusing instead on uniquely American subjects and aesthetics.

January by Grant Wood, 1924, Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Regionalism

My dentist has a TV screen on the ceiling and I can pick anything on Disney+ to watch while the work on patients. I always watch docs on ancient civilizations.

Today, I'm at home watching a doc on the Incas and really feel someone needs to tilt my chair back and work on my teeth.

Café in Mytilene by Spyros Papaloucas, 1925, B & M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts and Music (Athens, Greece)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #GreekImpressionism

This work is widely recognized as one of the greatest German paintings of the twentieth century and a landmark of Expressionism. Kirchner was a founding member of the artists’ group Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden in 1905. In 1911, the group moved to Berlin. Kirchner was enthralled by what he called “the symphony of the great city,” and responded to the intensity of the street life he found in Berlin by recording the urban spectacle around him. Shortly after arriving in the capitol city, Kirchner met sisters Erna and Gerda Schilling. The features of the two monumental figures in Berlin Street Scene are recognizably modeled after the sisters. They are shown as thoroughly modern women, dressed in fitted gowns and feathered hats, striding with confidence. Yet there is a dark undercurrent to the work: the central figures are portrayed as prostitutes parading down a busy avenue, and the slashing lines of the composition convey a taut emotional power. With its charged and anxious atmosphere, Berlin Street Scene suggests an uneasy dialogue between primitivism and modernity.

Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchne, 1913-1914, Neue Galerie New York (New York City, NY)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Expressionism #DieBrüche

The surface texture of this painted field anchors the scene. Two figures inhabit the green expanse; one, a bent shape in a red vest, focuses his attention to the game, while another, a more upright form, grips a cue. Thick, dark lines sever forms, giving them a blocky solidity. These bold contours compress the figures into themselves, suggesting the weighty presence of manual labor. The crudity of the rendering, the rough-hewn duality of the strokes, confronts the viewer directly. Each shape asserts its presence with blunt force. This reduction of detail strips away sentimentality, focusing instead on the elemental gestures of occupation and effort.

Snooker Players by Josef Herman, 1982, National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh, UK)

#ArtHistory #ContemporaryArt #Expressionism

A group of students attentively observe and sketch a live young male model holding a staff, set in a historical art studio. Numerous paintings and art supplies surround the diverse group, creating a rich and engaging atmosphere.

In the Studio by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881, Dnipropetrovsk Museum of Fine Arts (Dnipro, Ukraine)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Realism

Sharp edges define the planes that construct the composition. A figure holding a newspaper dominates the foreground, his form fractured into geometric segments. The application of color, thin and unmodulated, creates flat surfaces that juxtapose with one another. These interlocking planes shatter the traditional illusion depth, presenting instead a unified field of observation. The fragmented rendering of the man and his immediate surroundings articulate a modern sensibility, one that acknowledges the complex, multi-faceted nature of perception in an industrialized age. Bold geometric forms and a limited palette of earth tones and grays contribute to an overall austerity. The presence of the newspaper, with its stark lettering, anchors the scene in the quotidian. This cubist reimagining dissects reality into its constituent geometric elements. Such a visual language speaks to an era grappling with new technologies and a radically altered urban experience. The compressed spatial relationships suggest a convergence of diverse elements into a single, potent image. This formal distillation captures the augmented yet interconnected experience of contemporary life. This artwork falls within the Synthetic Cubism phase of the Cubist movement, which emerged in the early 20th century. Following the more analytical and fragmented style of earlier Cubism (developed by Picasso and Braque), Synthetic Cubism, championed by Gris, focused on simpler shapes, brighter colors, and the incorporation of real-world elements like collage. It represented a shift towards a more decorative and accessible form of Cubism, moving away from the complete deconstruction of form. It bridges the gap between early abstract experimentation and a return to recognizable imagery.

Man from Touraine by Juan Gris, 1920, Musée National d'Art Moderne, located at the Georges Pompidou Center (Paris, France)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Cubism

Much admired for his small-scale genre scenes, landscapes, and still lifes, Watrous's most innovative body of work was his paintings of contemporary women. His use of his paintings as vehicles of commentary on society and social norms was considered radical among his peers. Watrous continued to be a stand-out member of the City's arts community for over four decades. He was a member of many of the arts organizations and clubs of his day, including The National Arts Club, where he served on the Board of Governors.

Some Little Talk of Me and Thee There Was by Harry Wilson Watrous, 1905/1909, The National Arts Club New York City, NY)

Also, Cover, The Ladies' Home Journal, Match 1, 1911

#ArtHistory #ModernArt

Cherries and Spoons by Janet Fish, 2004, Private Collection

#ArtHistory #ContemporaryArt #ContemporaryRealism

Dominant surface texture anchors the composition. Angular scaffolding structures ascend on the left, a skeletal form emerging against a hazy atmosphere. Silhouetted figures traverse the upper walkway, their forms reduced to mere suggestions of movement. The density of blue markings creates a vibrating field, disrupting any clear delineation between solid form and ambient air. This evocation of ephemeral light and atmospheric diffusion aligns with an increasing interest in capturing transient urban sensations. London's industrial progress, with its grand engineering feats and shifting social landscapes, finds its visual equivalent these dissolving forms. A pale moon, a smear of yellow, hovers in the upper right, its light barely illuminating the industrial haze. The suggestion of a distant city skyline, rendered in a broad sweep of blue, solidifies the nocturne's setting. This flattening of depth and emphasis on tonal relationships anticipates subsequent modernist explorations of form. The very act of applying color, with its resultant texture, becomes a primary subject. This is a key work in the development of Aestheticism, a late 19th-century art movement that emphasized "art for art's sake" and focused on beauty and sensory experience rather than moral or social commentary. It emerged as a reaction against the Victorian emphasis on realism and narrative painting. Whistler's Nocturnes were particularly influential, challenging traditional artistic conventions, and paving the way for abstract art. The work also relates to the broader trend of Impressionism, though Whistler distinguished his work from the French Impressionists, emphasizing tonal harmony over broken color.

Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler, 1872, Tate Britain (London, UK)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #AmericanImpressionism #Tonalism #Aestheticism

The Drop Sinister by Harry Willson Watrous, 1913, Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine)

Considered to be the first artwork of an interracial couple

#ArtHistory #ModernArt ##SocialRealism

For a deep dive into this painting, set aside about 18 minutes to watch this youtu.be/-9CKk6oZXL8?...

Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter by Pietro Perugino, 1481-1482, Sistine Chapel (Vatican City)

#ArtHistory #EarlyRenaissance

See m.museivaticani.va/content/muse...

My God! Who wouldn't? 😅

I really love this one.

The luminous glow of artificial light permeates the dusky scene. Forms of industrial buildings and the skeletal structure of a bridge fragment the expansive night. The rapid application of thick strokes of paint creates a palpable haze that swallows architectural detail. This dense atmospheric rendering captures the industrial effervescence a city at the dawn of a new century. The encroaching darkness softens hard edges and dissolves the specific into a generalized urban hum. Scattered window lights speckle the distant cityscape, suggesting unseen human activity within its sprawling infrastructure. A column of smoke ascends, a soft exhalation into the cool, deep blue. The bridge itself, a powerful emblem of progress, recedes into the atmospheric depths. This suffused illumination speaks of a world transformed by electric light and its burgeoning urbanity. The composition itself suggests a panorama unspooling, an impression of depth achieved through layered opacity. Here, as city breathes, a complex organism revealed in diffused light. Weir's "Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge" falls within the broader context of American Impressionism and Tonalism. While influenced by European Impressionism, American artists often adapted the style to reflect their own landscapes and experiences. Tonalism, a related movement, emphasized atmospheric effects and muted colors to evoke mood and feeling. Weir's nocturne demonstrates a shift away from the strict realism of earlier American painting towards a more subjective and expressive approach. It also reflects the growing fascination with urban landscapes in the early 20th century.

Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge by Julian Alden Weir, 1909, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Impressionism #AmericanImpressionism
#Tonalism

Please remember why Swalwell resigned. Write yourself a note about it. Two years from now, I don't want to hear "he resigned too fast" or "he didn't do anything" like people said about Franken. Franken should have resigned, and so should Swalwell.

Both the style and subject of this work had precedents in Impressionism, yet the painting moves away from them in some respects. It reflects the exterior appearance of the buildings more than the convivial pleasures enjoyed inside. The Impressionists, and above all Renoir, often depicted restaurants, but preferred to evoke the atmosphere inside them. In "The Restaurant de la Sirène" Van Gogh increased the white ) brushstrokes, while still using the full richness of his palette. The painter Emile Bernard was without doubt alluding to a depiction of the restaurant de la Sirène when he recounted to Vollard that some of the works Van Gogh produced in Paris featured "smart restaurants decorated with coloured awnings and oleanders." Although this painting is one of his closest in style to Impressionism, Van Gogh increased the parallel hatching thus suggesting a more personal style that would soon reach its peak.

Le Restaurant de la Sirène à Asnières by Vincent van Gogh, 1887, Musée d'Orsay (Paris, France)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #PostImpressionism

This subjectively painted landscape interpreted rather than recorded nature. The rich palettes, loose brushwork, and inventive use of light evoke palpable atmospheric effects and, above all, a strong sense of mood.

Early Moonrise, Florida by George Inness, 1893, Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, FL)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #Tonalism

You and Mother Nature outdid yourselves today

The Thunderstorm poignantly illustrates how Grandma Moses managed to combine intensely evocative renditions of natural phenomena with dramatic anecdotal detail. There are several levels of action: fierce storm clouds arc rapidly approaching over the mountains, and in the distance the trees have already begun to whip wildly in the wind. The artist's deployment of color to represent these events is extraordinarily acute. The parched yellows of a late summer meadow, the varied greens of the trees, and the shifting colors of the sky before the advancing torrent are all keenly observed. In the foreground, Moses presents the human reaction to the oncoming threat. There is a mad rush to get the hay into the barn and, at middle distance, a black horse bolts in terror. The girl in the yellow dress is frozen in mid-run, while strangely, behind her to the left, two other children seem oblivious to the commotion. The abstract forms used to render all the human and animal activity stand in sharp contrast to the impressionistic interplay of colors in the landscape elements of the composition. This juxtaposition of abstraction and realism was one of the principal cornerstones of the "Grandma Moses style."

The Thunderstorm by Grandma Moses, 1948, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC)

#ArtHistory #ModernArt #NaïveArt #Primativism