The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Luncheon of the Boating Party, Renoir, 1881

"The big Renoir deal has gone through with Durand-Ruel and the Phillips Memorial Gallery is to be the possessor of one of the greatest paintings in the world...Its fame is tremendous and people will travel thousands of miles to our house to see it...Such a picture creates a sensation wherever it goes."

—Duncan Phillips, 1923

The Phillips Collection is the oldest museum of modern art in the United States, and one of the finest small museums in the world. Located near Dupont Circle in Northwest, DC, it was established by the Phillips family in 1918 and opened to the public in 1921.

Link The Phillips Collection

Link Wiki

Right and Left Brain, Word/Picture Experiments

Written words record and communicate our experiences after they occur. It is our attempt to make permanent and transmit our feelings and ideas to others. No matter how specific we want to be, or think we are, written language describes and explains our world out of sequence with real time. There are limitations.

The eyes are sensory organs. The visual side of our brain allows us to recognize and experience our world with specificity in real time. Vision has limitations too. It is very specific to an individual. We cannot see exactly the same things from the same place at the same time.

Vision is necessary to react and respond to situations as they occur in real time. Written words are necessary to communicate thoughts and ideas after they occur. Together, they give us the ability to experience time, and life, in very different ways. Perhaps, in concert with our other senses, they form the roots of our imagination.

George Seurat - The Drawings

George Seurat, Charcoal/Paper

MoMa offers us an online exhibit of Seurat drawings and sketchbooks with commentary. You can 'flip' through four sketchbooks and catch a glimpse of his pictorial thinking. Please take a look.

Link George Seurat - The Drawings, MoMa

Degas - Composition

 At the Milliner's, Degas, Pastel, c. 1882

In this daring nuanced composition about modern life—the subject is the fleeting encounter rather than the women themselves—Degas heeded the advice of the critic Edmond Duranty, who, in his 1876 pamphlet, The New Painting—about the art that came to be known as Impressionism—wrote: "Let us take leave of the stylized human body, which is treated like a vase. What we need is the characteristic modern person in his clothes, in the midst of his social surroundings, at home or out in the street." - excerpted from MoMA Highlights, 1999, p 42.

Link Full text and image with zoom, MoMa

Hendrik Kerstens - Tronies

Photograph by Hendrik Kerstens

This photographic portrait is personal, transformative, contains sharp social commentary, and rich cultural and art historical references. This kind of portrait is called as a tronie.

What thoughts occur as you look at a compelling portrait?

What characteristics in the portrait cause the response?

How have different artists addressed portraiture and to what visual affect?

How is culture, status, character, and thought revealed through portraiture? What are several obvious and more subtle examples?

Link Tronie defined, wiki

Link Utata, Commentary on Hendrik Kerstens

Link Hendrik Kerstens Website

Link National Portrait Gallery, London, England, UK

Making A Mark - The Composition and Design Project

"Do you know how to design a painting?"

"Why study composition and design? Well, although I studied art to advanced level at school, my studies seemed to neglect exploring this important topic area in depth. Similarly, I've tended to find that it's common for many painting workshops and courses to err much more towards teaching techniques relating to particular media and to touch upon composition and design only in passing. When was the last time you saw a workshop which was focused wholly on designing your artwork? Have you noticed how all the books on the art shelves in the bookshops are mostly about painting in a particular medium?"  - Katherine Tyrrell, Artist, London, UK

Ms. Tyrrell's Blog offers numerous resources, including the C and D Project, for those wishing to learn more about the "invisible" structures of visual expression - take a look.

Link Composition and Design - Resources for Artists

The Macchiaioli

Oil/Wood, Artist Unknown

Raffaello Sernesi, c.1861

"The Macchiaioli (Spot Makers) were a group of Italian painters from Tuscany, active in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, painted outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour. The Macchiaioli were forerunners of the Impressionists who, beginning in the 1860s, would pursue similar aims in France. The most notable artists of this movement were Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini." - Wikipedia

The Macchiaioli were highly trained painters. By working from nature and applying their knowledge and skills, they found more intimate and direct pictorial expressions.

Link Wiki

TinEye

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. Upload an image or paste a link and TinEye will search across the web for matches. It has proprietary features, which matches images at the pixel level, including image fragments.  The toggling feature allows you to compare your image with the search findings. 

This may become a very valuable tool for thorough visual searches. What do you think? 

Click on the link below for more information.

Link About TinEye

Design and the Play Instinct by Paul Rand

Bull, Picasso

Persimmons, Ink/Paper, Mu Ch'i, 1270 

"This monochrome, Persimmons, by Mu Ch’i, a thirteenth century Zen priest and painter, is a splendid example of a painting in which the artist plays with contrasts (the male and female principle in Chinese and Japanese painting): rough and smooth, empty and full, one and many, line and mass, black and white, tint and shade, up and down. It is a study in the metamorphosis of a fruit, as well as of a painting. (The artist, incidentally, never used any color but black.)

The reader may find a parallel, at least in spirit, between this painting and the preceding one by Picasso. Both employ a single color, and exploit this limitation to achieve as much variety as possible, and both undoubtedly were painted (done) very rapidly, a condition often conducive to utmost simplification and improvisation."

To see the entire article, Design and the Play Instinct by Paul Rand, click on the link below. To read a poem by Gary Snyder, published in the New Yorker in 2008, and inspired by Mu Ch'i's Masterpiece, click on the link below.

Link Design and the Play Instinct, Paul Rand

Link Mu Ch'i's Persimmons, Gary Synder, The New Yorker

Positive and Negative Space, Etc. - M.C. Escher

Swans, 1956, wood engraving, M.C. Escher

" I believe that producing pictures, as I do, is almost solely a question of wanting so very much to do it well" - M.C. Escher

Throughout his mature period, Dutch graphic artist, M.C. Escher, 'played and mined' multiple meanings using contrasts of shape and mass, sequence, transformation, light and dark, gradation of tones, and sometimes, with color. Our common shared visual knowledge and experiences of the physical world are set on edge in his pictorial world.

Link M.C. Escher Official Site

Positive and Negative Space - Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 70, 1961

Abstract Expressionist, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) explores the interplay of formal elements on a huge surface in a painterly manner to find content with universal meaning.

Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art link for more information. 

Link Robert Motherwell (MetMuseum)

Tangrams - a Chinese visual game

"The tangram is a dissection puzzle (of Chinese origin) consisting of seven flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form shapes. The objective of the puzzle is to form a specific shape (given only in outline or silhouette) using all seven pieces, which may not overlap."

"An estimate of ten million possible configurations has been offered..."   Source: Wikipedia

The practice can be very challenging. It develops visual thinking and problem solving - try it.

Link Wiki

Link Tangram Challenges Online

Link All Things Tangram - History, Sets, and Online Games

The Double Square and Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

The first pictorial decision painters make is to select the material, shape, size, and color of the surface. If it is a rectangle, the second pictorial decision is about format. Do I position it on the short or long side and why? The third pictorial decision is about where the first mark and subsequent marks go and how their interaction activates and divides the rectangle. The overarching issue is how these decisions detract or contribute to the expression of the painting.

Van Gogh used the double square extensively. Why did he use this shape, and what compositional challenges did face by using this particular shape and format?

Link Double Squares, Wiki

What did Helvetica tell you today?

Helvetica is the most widely used font in the world. How did that happen anyway? Watch the theatrical trailer from the documentary film by Gary Hustwit about typography, graphic design, and the global visual culture.

Positive and Negative Space - Franz Kline

Franz Kline (on stool) talking to unknown associate, Life Magazine 1958

The Abstract Expressionist painter, Franz Kline (1910-1962) composed with scale, the energy of the mark, and tensions found between positive and negative space to creating pictorial meaning. The shear size and physicality of select work engulfs the viewer in a titanic spacial struggle.

A good, brief online video about Positive and Negative space can be found at the link below.

Link Expert Village

Link Wiki, Franz Kline

Matisse Cutouts - The National Gallery, Washington DC

Matisse

The National Gallery of Art has several paper cutouts by Henri Matisse. Click on the title line above to view a short WETA, PBS video on the subject. 

In 1977, the art critic for Time magazine, Robert Hughes, wrote about a major traveling exhibition of  his late work. The exhibition opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The article can be viewed at the link below.

The Sultan of Scissors

Humble Subject Matter & Painting

Stuart Shils

Robert Kulicke

Stuart Shils and Robert Kulicke present us with good examples of simplicity, abstraction, and composition.

Stuart Shils painting has a strong spacial and tactile presence. We can feel and read his seemingly immediate and intimate response to the landscape. There are truthful and playful qualities embedded in the paint. The dance between abstraction and recognition allows us to visit a broad range of feelings and ideas. 

Robert Kulicke shows what is possible with humble subject matter and how a single object is elevated through intelligent painting. The Elementary Odes of Pablo Neruda are brought to mind. 

Stuart Shils

Robert Kulicke

Pablo Neruda Elementary Odes

Brandeis University decides to close Art Museum

Brandeis University's board of trustees recently voted unanimously to close and sell the collection of the Rose Art Museum sighting growing budget problems and the current economic crisis. 

What do you think about this decision, and how might it influence other donors, patrons, colleges, and universities? What do you think about any potential violations of past legal agreements involving art and monetary donations to their art museum? Should any tax penalties be levied for art sales?

Details and comments can be found on the Culture Girl Blog by Lee Rosenbaum.

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Empire of the Eye, The Magic of Illusion

This is an update of the popular National Gallery of Art's video, Masters of Illusion. Free and available for viewing online, Empire of the Eye, contains new computer graphics, expanded segments, and is hosted by Al Roker of the Today Show. 

Link Empire of the Eye, NGA website