Four men stand out as the penultimate figures of Post-Impressionism, namely, Georges Suerat (1859-1891), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1843-1903) and Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), all of whom at first accepted the Impressionist methods and then moved away from it toward a new type of painting.
In the case of Cezanne, the basis of his art had much to do with studying nature in a new way, for his aim was not to represent truth or reality but to seek some kind of lasting structure behind the formless and the fleeting shades of color that the human eye usually misses. His Still Life (1890, oil on canvas) represents this ambiguity by having the forms in this painting appear out-of-sync with their true appearances.
Unlike Cezanne who used an almost scientific approach for ordering color, Vincent Van Gogh did exactly the opposite, for he exploited new color to express his emotions as they occur in everyday life. His insistence on the expressive value of color led him to develop a personal expressiveness in the application of the paint itself. The thickness, shape and direction of his brushstrokes created an almost tactile feeling, a counterpart of his intense color schemes. In one of his letters to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote that "instead of trying to reproduce exactly what lies before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself emotionally... " (Needham 256). This quality is best seen in the Night Cafe (1888, oil on canvas) which conveys an oppressive atmosphere of evil through the deliberate distortion of color. In this cafe, the ceiling is a poisonous green, contrasted against the red walls; the floor is an acid yellow and is manipulated by the green surface of the billiard table. And the proprietor, a "pale demon that rules over the place, rise like a specter from the edge of the billiard table... A tilted perspective that suggests the spinning world of nausea" (Holt 268).
Even more illustrative of Van Gogh's Expressionist's method is Starry Night (1889, oil on canvas) in which Van Gogh envisions the universe filled with whirling and exploding...
In Braque's "Woman with a Guitar we can see the foreshadowing of the Synthetic Cubism period, when he introduces stenciling and lettering, a practice that Picasso was soon to imitate. Figure 7: Picasso, Le Guitariste"(1910 Figure 8: Braque "Woman with a Guitar" (1913 Synthetic Cubism/Collage 1912-1914: Braque was beginning to experiment further now by mixing materials such as sand and sawdust into his paint to create a more textured, built- up look and what
De La Croix, 865-66. Artists in the nineteenth century were confronted by three innovations that fatefully affected their craft: the camera, the mass produced print, and the printed reproduction. The collective techniques of an industrial age forced nineteenth century artists to analyze their function and to study closely the physical nature of their medium. Hyde, Minor, Art History's History. 32-35. Baroque Art emerged in Europe around 1600, as a reaction against
Courbet's the Sleepers is thus one of the first honest depictions of lesbian love in the history of Western art. There is no distortion of either of the two women's bodies, as we find in Ingres's painting. All of the details look nearly photographic in their authenticity. That is not to say that the image is crude, or inharmonious in its depiction of forms. The curvature of the women's
In Spirit of the Dead Watching, Gaugin also depicts a Tahitian woman with open sexuality. The woman in Spirit of the Dead Watching lays prostrate on a bed, exposing her naked buttocks while gazing directly at the viewer. Her position is submissive, in spite of the alluring look in the woman's eyes. The spirit of the dead represents traditional Tahitian religious beliefs, which would have been in direct conflict
Ancient Studies Laura Auricchio is an art historian teaching at the Parsons School for Design as part of The New School in New York City. In the piece to be critiqued, Auricchio focuses upon techniques, styles, and subject matter of eighteenth century paintings. Auricchio's focus in her article is upon the female painter, Adelaide Labille-Guiard. Though Auricchio examines several of Labille-Guiard's major works, her primary examination is of the painting Self-Portrait
This painting deals with a terrifying massacre and refers to an historical event when twenty thousand Greeks were killed by Turks on the Greek island of Chios. While there are references to nature in the representation of the landscape and the sky, the central focus of the work is the terrible and emotionally moving historical event and its human effect. The painting is intended to evoke a response in the viewer
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