WEEK 9: The exceptional light of Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Le Moulin de la galette 1876 by Pierre-Auguste Lenoir 4'3 1/2" * 5'9"  Musee d'Orsay, Paris

This painting is the representation of a party going on in the 19th century. People are in France, entertainning in the neigbourhood of Monmartre in Paris, on a Sunday afternoon. Closest to us are women conversing, men drinking and smoking. In the background, there are dancers, a couple particularly on the left attract our attention because it is a little apart from the other dancers. There is a crowd dancing, visiting, going to a cafe in the back. There are trees all around them that create an atmosphere of happiness and calmness by playing with the sunlight.

This painting was one of Renoir's happiest work of art. It also is the first painting in which with see this kind of light. Indeed, Renoir tried reflecting a dancing light, as we found it aroudn us, in nature. Before him, light was always represented as still, which was not the case out of the painting. Also, depending on the intensity of the light, objects were not always clear as they are in most painting. Especially with shadow, forms become more blurry, as if in a dream. Indeed, Renoir had to invent a new technique of paintign to express all these sensations provided by the light around us. And that is how impressionism was born. For the first time, a painting could capture and transmitt the sensations of perception. As in here, Renoir used his full Impressionist technique to create a work as in a picture: it captured a moment in time, with its emotions: there is color, movement and light surrounding us as viewers as if we were part of this scene, looking at it outside of the window or just contemplating the joy of this scene, drinking a wine of good glass and enjoying the sun and the company of others. This personally is one of my favortie painting. It express so much in an instant, transport us among these people that are happy, enjoying life and not worrying about a thing. The work of the artist is fully accomplished because it brings happiness and hope of happiness in a world that has became more and more complicated with less and less simple pleasures. This painting, throughout time, reminds us that there is happiness in this world, right by our door, everywhere and anywhere.

The new relationship of the figures, the tonal co- ordination, and especially the projection of the dancers to an impressive scale marks a decided ad- vance over the earlier compositions. Yet a spiritualaffinity binds the three celebrated painting,[...].

Title: A Great Renoir
Author(s): James S. Plaut
Source: Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Vol. 35, No. 209 (Jun., 1937), pp. 30-33

WEEK 8: Ceiling images by Michelangelo

Creation of Adam 1511 by Michelangelo, detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling

In this painting, there are two main characters, God and Adam. Adam, on the left, is laying on an hill. He looks absent because his body is entirely formed, as its naked representation shows us, but still lifeless. On the right, God seems to fly toward him. He is accompanied by many other characters that are gathered around him. They are angels from Heaven. Howeverm one of them appears particularly strange to our eyes cause it is a woman. The story says that Michelangelo wanted to represent Eve by God's side, under his arm as his protected child. Indeed, Eve had not been created at the moment, she was still an idea in God's mind. Another personnage attract our attention inside this group: God points at a child in particular who is, in Michelangelo's work, the Christ who has not come on earth yet. But the main point in this work of art is the two hands reaching for eachother, almost touching at the point, the one of God which is aiming for Adam's and Adam's which is just standing there. The difference is significant too between God's look which is concentrated on his chore, bringing the spark of life inside this body, Adam, to live and the empty look of an inanimate Adam.
The symmetry is so perfect that the end of each finger is pointing at the center of this piece of art. Indeed, Michelangelo wanted to reaffirm that God created humans at his image, as if there was a mirror in this picture reflecting God's personnage in Adam's. Also, the painting is concentrated on a few colors: red stands out as envelopping all the characters from Heaven and God is dressed in a pink robe as to be differentiated from the other bodies. The pale pink color of Adam's body stands out by itself on the green grass around him. 

Michelangelo was a talented painter whose work will never be able to be reproduced by anyone again. All his life, he worked for popes and other nobilities as kings but he concentrated his paintings and sculptures to religious theme as in the Sixtine Chapel. He always tried according his ideas and beliefs to what his masters asked. As in this piece, he gave his own interpretation of the Biblical story from the Book of Genesis in which God the father breathes life into his first creation, Adam, the first man. And his interpretation is believed to be realistic and the best physical representation of this Biblical story. Indeed, Sistine Chapel is one of the most visited place on earth nowdays, and all thanks to the work of Michelangelo that depicts an impressive illustration of the Bible, found nowhere else around the world.

Michelangelo had full or nearly full freedom to select the episodes to be included, it may be supposed that it was his own idea to use a passage from the Book of Proverbs in The Creation of Adam. Perhaps it fascinated the artist-himself a poet-with its rare beauty, and in his ravishing portrayal of Divine Wisdom on the Sistine ceil- ing, he created a worthy equivalent.

Title:  The Divine Wisdom of Michelangelo in "The Creation of Adam"
Author(s):  Maria Rzepińska
Source:  Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 15, No. 29  (1994), pp. 181-187

Religion views by Duccio

Christ Entering Jerusalem, detail of Maesta Altar 1308-11 by Duccio 40*21" Museo dell'Opera, Siena.

In this colorful painting, we see the Christ with his disciples coming into a city. A crowd seems to be awaiting the procession with offerings, branches of a saint plants. There are kids which look excited, and elder men that look more solemn, two of them holding their hands whether in sign of respect and disagreement. But i would rather think respect since this is a work of art to the Christ and to show his magnificence. Two men even climb in trees to reach the branches of the sacred trees to bless the Christ and his group with them. In the background, at the top of the painting, there is a church standing there, which is probably the Christl goal.

The athmosphere of the paintings give a sense of space, a certain athmosphere which is particular to religious painting. Indeed, to celebrate the Christ, the artist decided to realize a painting with a sense of space and movement. Indeed, the way Duccio has designed them, the people seem actually to be moving and expressing the admiration adn their impatience in the crowd for instance. And the fact that he was able to put so many crucial details that lead the way from the Christ to the church create a picture so real. Indeed, the work of art is an impressive proof of the importance of church. The Christ attract our eyes by his posture over the dunkee and by the gold circle around his head. And that it exactly what the artist tried with lines and diagonales. He wanted the viewer's look to focus on the Christ, to express how central he is in the artist's religion and life and how he should be in ours. This painting is an unique contribution to the recognition of God in religion. It effectively transmitt the message that Christianity wants to convey.

This was Duccoi's novel, almost unprecedented, contribution to the art of the period, the use of architecture to demarcate space rather than to act as a simple backdrop.

Title: Toward The Renaissance
Source : Living With Art p. 391 (Eigth Edition) by Mark Getlein

The mystery of Lascaux

Horse and Geometric Symbol 13,000 B.C.E, Cave painting, Lascaux, France. 

This work of art is a paint of what looks like a horse with some other signs around it. The designs are pretty simple, primitve, which seems logical since this was made 13,000 years ago.

As we saw in the video, the artist painted a horse that he probably saw when being in a transe or jsut being in a cave. The confused geometric signs probably appeared to him too, as it is a reaction to the brain that appears to the human eye while unconscious or staying for too long in a dark place. Indeed, horses were assimilated to gods in the people's mind at this time because they were sacred to them and that is why they were the main animal painted, because they materialized to them in the first place. 

Infinity room by Yakoi Kusama

Fireflies on the Water by Yayoi Kusama, 2002 9'7" * 12' * 12', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This work of art consists of a small room with mirrors on all sides, a pool in the center and 150 small lights hanging from the ceiling. In fact, once you entered the room by yourself (it is the wish of the artist) you're surrounded by all these lights and it looks like there are hundreds and hundreds of them between the reflection of the water and the different mirrors. The entire work brings into being an impression of thousands and thosuands of ligthing bugs flying above the water at night. There are so many of them that it actually looks like they are in movement.
http://www.mediavr.com/infinityroom2.htm

The artist created this room as an escape for the mind, as a way for humans to be transported out of our world, to live an unforgettable experience in a place out of space. Indeed, Yakoi Kusama wants the viewer to enter the room alone and to enjoy this experience by himself/herself and then share the emotions that it awoke in him/her with other people, once out of ther room. Her purpose has alwasy been to represent infinity and to share the feelings that living infinity brings in us, what uncredible senses it reveals in us and how it brings our imagination to live. Yakoi Kusama created with her work a whole new world, and revealed to us the power that exists inside of us, the one of our minds.

In Fireflies I knew above and underneath. I was them. Yet... upon entering, one was walking on a platform. It was shorter and wider than a diving board, but I feared that if the platform weren't strong enough or if I lost my balance, I'd be plummeting into infinity. I felt risk and longing, even though I also felt at one with the space, embraced by the gorgeousness that literally reflected me in a mirror facing the door. Here was bliss, the union of Energy and Consciousness. I didn't want to leave. And the piece haunts me.

Title: Vaginal Aesthetics
Author(s): Joanna Frueh
Source: Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 4, Women, Art, and Aesthetics (Autumn - Winter, 2003), pp. 137-158