ARTES :: Amabook

Klaus Carl, Klaus Carl, Klaus H. Carl, Victoria Charles

Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), …

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Homosexuality in Art

James Smalls

This book is not a panegyric of homosexuality. It is a scientific study led by Professor James Smalls who teaches art history in the prestigious University of Maryland, Baltimore. Abandoning all classical clichés and sociological approaches, the author highlights the sensibility particular to homosexuals. This book examines the process of creation and allows one to comprehend the contribution of homosexuality to the evolution of emotional perception. In a time when all barriers have been overcome, this analysis offers a new understanding of our civilisation’s masterpieces.

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Paul Cézanne y obras de arte

Natalia Brodskaya, Natalia Brodskaya, Nathalia Brodskaya

Desde su muerte, hace 100 años, Cézanne se ha convertido en el pintor más famoso del siglo XIX. Nació en Aix-en-Provence en 1839 y el periodo más feliz de su vida fue su primera juventud en Provenza, en compañía de Emile Zolá. Siguiendo el ejemplo de Zolá, al cumplir los veintiún años, Cézanne se marchó a París. Durante la guerra franco-prusiana desertó de la milicia, y dividió su tiempo entre pintar al aire libre y estudiar. Al comerciante de arte Vollard le dijo: “Sólo soy un pintor. El ingenio parisino me fastidia. Lo único que quiero es pintar desnudos en …

Desde su muerte, hace 100 años, Cézanne se ha convertido en el pintor más famoso del siglo XIX. Nació en Aix-en-Provence en 1839 y el periodo más feliz de su vida fue su primera juventud en Provenza, en compañía de Emile Zolá. Siguiendo el ejemplo de Zolá, al cumplir los veintiún años, Cézanne se marchó a París. Durante la guerra franco-prusiana desertó de la milicia, y dividió su tiempo entre pintar al aire libre y estudiar. Al comerciante de arte Vollard le dijo: “Sólo soy un pintor. El ingenio parisino me fastidia. Lo único que quiero es pintar desnudos en las orillas del Arc [un río cercano a Aix]”. Animado por Renoir, uno de los primeros en apreciarlo, exhibió con los impresionistas en 1874 y en 1877. Su obra fue recibida con desdén, lo que lo hirió profundamente. La ambición de Cézanne en sus propias palabras, era “hacer del impresionismo algo tan sólido y durable como las pinturas de los museos”. Su objetivo era lograr algo monumental en un lenguaje moderno de tonos brillantes y vibrantes. Cézanne quería retener el color natural de un objeto y armonizarlo con las diversas influencias de luz y sombra que intentaban destruirlo; buscaba una escala de tonos que expresara la masa y el carácter de la forma. A Cézanne le gustaba pintar frutas porque se trataba de modelos pacientes y él trabajaba lentamente. No pretendía sólo copiar una manzana. Mantenía el color dominante y el carácter de la fruta, pero subrayaba el atractivo emocional de la forma con un conjunto de tonos ricos y concordantes. En sus pinturas de naturalezas muertas era un maestro. Sus composiciones de vegetales y frutas son verdaderamente dramáticas; tienen peso, nobleza, el estilo de las formas inmortales. Ningún otro pintor logró darle a una manzana roja una convicción tan cálida, una simpatía tan genuinamente espiritual o una observación tan prolongada. Ningún otro pintor de habilidad comparable reservó sus más fuertes impulsos para las naturalezas muertas. Cézanne devolvió a la pintura la preeminencia del conocimiento, la calidad más esencial de todo esfuerzo creativo. La muerte de su padre, en 1886, lo convirtió en un hombre rico, pero no por eso cambió su estilo de vida austero. Poco después, Cézanne se retiró de forma permanente a su propiedad en Provenza. Probablemente se trató del más solitario de los pintores de su época. Por momentos le atacaba una peculiar melancolía, una oscura desesperanza. Se volvió irascible y exigente, destruía los lienzos y los arrojaba fuera de su estudio, hacia los árboles, los abandonaba en los campos, se los daba a su hijo para que los cortara e hiciera con ellos rompecabezas o se los regalaba a la gente de Aix. A principios de siglo, cuando Vollard llegó a Provenza con intenciones de adquirir todo lo que pudiera del material de Cézanne, los campesinos, que se enteraron de que un loco de París estaba pagando por aquellos viejos lienzos, sacaron de los graneros una considerable cantidad de naturalezas muertas y paisajes. El viejo maestro de Aix se sintió abrumado por la alegría, pero el reconocimiento le llegó demasiado tarde. Murió en 1906 de una fiebre que contrajo mientras pintaba en la lluvia.

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Utamaro

Edmond de Goncourt

If sensuality had a name, it would be without doubt Utamaro. Delicately underlining the Garden of Pleasures that once constituted Edo, Utamaro, by the richness of his fabrics, the swan-like necks of the women, the mysterious looks, evokes in a few lines the sensual pleasure of the Orient. If some scenes discreetly betray lovers’ games, a great number of his shungas recall that love in Japan is first and foremost erotic.

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Claude Monet and artworks

Natalia Brodskaya, Natalia Brodskaya

For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the end of his very long life. He was so by deep conviction, and for his Impressionism he may have sacrificed many other opportunities that his enormous talent held out to him. Monet did not paint classical compositions with figures, and he did not become a portraitist, although his professional training included those skills. He chose a single genre for himself, landscape painting, and in that he achieved …

For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the end of his very long life. He was so by deep conviction, and for his Impressionism he may have sacrificed many other opportunities that his enormous talent held out to him. Monet did not paint classical compositions with figures, and he did not become a portraitist, although his professional training included those skills. He chose a single genre for himself, landscape painting, and in that he achieved a degree of perfection none of his contemporaries managed to attain. Yet the little boy began by drawing caricatures. Boudin advised Monet to stop doing caricatures and to take up landscapes instead. The sea, the sky, animals, people, and trees are beautiful in the exact state in which nature created them – surrounded by air and light. Indeed, it was Boudin who passed on to Monet his conviction of the importance of working in the open air, which Monet would in turn transmit to his impressionist friends. Monet did not want to enrol at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He chose to attend a private school, L’Académie Suisse, established by an ex-model on the Quai d’Orfèvres near the Pont Saint-Michel. One could draw and paint from a live model there for a modest fee. This was where Monet met the future impressionist Camille Pissarro. Later in Gleyre’s studio, Monet met Auguste Renoir Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He also told his friends of another painter he had found in Normandy. This was the remarkable Dutchman Jongkind. His landscapes were saturated with colour, and their sincerity, at times even their naïveté, was combined with subtle observation of the Normandy shore’s variable nature. At this time Monet’s landscapes were not yet characterized by great richness of colour. Rather, they recalled the tonalities of paintings by the Barbizon artists, and Boudin’s seascapes. He composed a range of colour based on yellow-brown or blue-grey. At the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 Monet presented a series of paintings for the first time: seven views of the Saint-Lazare train station. He selected them from among twelve he had painted at the station. This motif in Monet’s work is in line not only with Manet’s Chemin de fer (The Railway) and with his own landscapes featuring trains and stations at Argenteuil, but also with a trend that surfaced after the railways first began to appear. In 1883, Monet had bought a house in the village of Giverny, near the little town of Vernon. At Giverny, series painting became one of his chief working procedures. Meadows became his permanent workplace. When a journalist, who had come from Vétheuil to interview Monet, asked him where his studio was, the painter answered, “My studio! I’ve never had a studio, and I can’t see why one would lock oneself up in a room. To draw, yes – to paint, no”. Then, broadly gesturing towards the Seine, the hills, and the silhouette of the little town, he declared, “There’s my real studio.”Monet began to go to London in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He began all his London paintings working directly from nature, but completed many of them afterwards, at Giverny. The series formed an indivisible whole, and the painter had to work on all his canvases at one time. A friend of Monet’s, the writer Octave Mirbeau, wrote that he had accomplished a miracle. With the help of colours he had succeeded in recreating on the canvas something almost impossible to capture: he was reproducing sunlight, enriching it with an infinite number of reflections. Alone among the impressionists, Claude Monet took an almost scientific study of the possibilities of colour to its limits; it is unlikely that one could have gone any further in that direction.

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Fra Angelico

Stephan Beissel

Secluded within cloister walls, a painter and a monk, and brother of the order of the Dominicans, Angelico devoted his life to religious paintings. Little is known of his early life except that he was born at Vicchio, in the broad fertile valley of the Mugello, not far from Florence, that his name was Guido de Pietro, and that he passed his youth in Florence, probably in some bottegha, for at twenty he was recognised as a painter. In 1418 he entered in a Dominican convent in Fiesole with his brother. They were welcomed by the monks and, after a …

Secluded within cloister walls, a painter and a monk, and brother of the order of the Dominicans, Angelico devoted his life to religious paintings. Little is known of his early life except that he was born at Vicchio, in the broad fertile valley of the Mugello, not far from Florence, that his name was Guido de Pietro, and that he passed his youth in Florence, probably in some bottegha, for at twenty he was recognised as a painter. In 1418 he entered in a Dominican convent in Fiesole with his brother. They were welcomed by the monks and, after a year’s novitiate, admitted to the brotherhood, Guido taking the name by which he was known for the rest of his life, Fra Giovanni da Fiesole; for the title of Angelico, the “Angel,” or Il Beato, “The Blessed,” was conferred on him after his death. Henceforth he became an example of two personalities in one man: he was all in all a painter, but also a devout monk; his subjects were always religious ones and represented in a deeply religious spirit, yet his devotion as a monk was no greater than his absorption as an artist. Consequently, though his life was secluded within the walls of the monastery, he kept in touch with the art movements of his time and continually developed as a painter. His early work shows that he had learned of the illuminators who inherited the Byzantine traditions, and had been affected by the simple religious feeling of Giotto’s work. Also influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and the Sienese School, he painted under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici. Then he began to learn of that brilliant band of sculptors and architects who were enriching Florence by their genius. Ghiberti was executing his pictures in bronze upon the doors of the Baptistery; Donatello, his famous statue of St. George and the dancing children around the organ-gallery in the Cathedral; and Luca della Robbia was at work upon his frieze of children, singing, dancing and playing upon instruments. Moreover, Masaccio had revealed the dignity of form in painting. Through these artists the beauty of the human form and of its life and movement was being manifested to the Florentines and to the other cities. Angelico caught the enthusiasm and gave increasing reality of life and movement to his figures.

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1000 Monuments of Genius

Christopher E.M. Pearson

Since the mythical Tower of Babel, humans have continuously tried to erect monuments to match their oversized egos. With ancient ziggurats, the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building, man has for centuries demonstrated his force by raising structures for purposes both religious and profane. As international cultural statements without words, symbols of a peoples values devotion, patriotism, power symbols of a civilisationÊs grandeur, these monuments still fascinate and attract an ever-growing public who is captivated by the createvity and ingenuity of these architects and stonemasons. Their historical message goes far beyond mere art history, for they tell us of …

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Apokalypse

Camille Flammarion

Das letzte Buch der Bibel, die Offenbarung des Johannes (im Englischen auch "Apocalypse"), prophezeit das Ende aller Zeiten und schildert die Ereignisse, die das Weltende markieren werden. Während des Mittelalters wurde das Motiv des Weltuntergangs zu einem zentralen Thema in der Kunst und gleichzeitig ein Schreckgespenst des Volkes, das unter dem Einfluss religiöser Autorität in tiefer Angst vor einem zornigen Gott lebte. Glücklicherweise hielt dies die Künstler der Apokalypse nicht davon ab, ihrer Fantasie freien Lauf zu lassen und den stark symbolischen Charakter des Offenbarungstexts auf vielfältigste Art und Weise zu deuten und in den verschiedensten Werkstoffen umzusetzen. Dieses Buch …

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Paul Klee und Kunstwerke

Donald Wigal

Paul Klee gehört zu den Künstlern, die sich nur schwerlich einer bestimmten kunstgeschichtlichen Bewegung zuordnen lassen. In engem Kontakt mit Wassily Kandinsky und Franz Marc gehörte er wie diese der expressionistischen Künstlergruppe Der Blaue Reiter an. Später knüpfte er Verbindungen zum Bauhaus und unterrichtete sogar Malerei an der Dessauer Schule. Seiner Ansicht nach ging es bei der Kunst keineswegs um die Produktion, sondern vielmehr darum, die Dinge äußerst sichtbar werden zu lassen. In seinen Gemälden vereinte Klee geschickt die zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts vorherrschenden Tendenzen. Er führte kubistische und orphistische Elemente in den deutschen Expressionismus ein und verlieh seinen …

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Apocalypse

Camille Flammarion

The final book of the Bible, known both as The Book of Revelation and The Apocalypse of John, is a prophesy of the events that will occur at the end of time. During the Middle Ages, in a society which held a deep belief in God and was mainly ruled by religious authorities, this apocalyptic theme recurs in art, through various media, including tapestries, illuminations, sculpture, and painting. This book pools the most famous pieces of art inspired by this theme, such as the Apocalypse drapery from Angers Cathedral, the carved tympanum of the Autun Cathedral, and the fresco in …

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Les Fauves

Nathalia Brodskaya

Apparu à l’aube du XXe siècle, le Fauvisme explosa sur la scène artistique lors du Salon d’automne de 1905 en un scandale retentissant. En jetant des couleurs pures sur la toile, les fauves défièrent les conventions artistiques. Matisse, Derain, Van Dongen ou encore Vlaminck expérimentèrent ainsi un nouveau langage chromatique en détournant la couleur de son signifié. Libérée de tout sens, la couleur saturée et appliquée en larges aplats devint leur principal matériau. Dans cet ouvrage, l’auteur entraîne le lecteur dans un tourbillon de couleurs vives et franches, et montre combien la violence des fauves laissa son empreinte sur le …

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Botticelli

Emile Gebhart, Victoria Charles, Émile Gebhart

Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) (Florence, 1445 – 1510) Botticelli était le fils d'un citoyen jouissant d'une situation confortable, et avait été «instruit dans toutes les choses que les enfants doivent habituellement savoir avant de choisir une vocation ». Mais il refusa de consacrer son attention à la lecture, l'écriture et le calcul, poursuit Vasari, de sorte que son père, désespérant de le voir un jour à l'école, le plaça en apprentissage auprès de l'orfèvre Botticello, d'où le nom qui est passé à la postérité. Mais Sandro, jeune garçon à l'air entêté, doté de grands yeux calmes et scrutateurs …

Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) (Florence, 1445 – 1510) Botticelli était le fils d'un citoyen jouissant d'une situation confortable, et avait été «instruit dans toutes les choses que les enfants doivent habituellement savoir avant de choisir une vocation ». Mais il refusa de consacrer son attention à la lecture, l'écriture et le calcul, poursuit Vasari, de sorte que son père, désespérant de le voir un jour à l'école, le plaça en apprentissage auprès de l'orfèvre Botticello, d'où le nom qui est passé à la postérité. Mais Sandro, jeune garçon à l'air entêté, doté de grands yeux calmes et scrutateurs et d'une tignasse blonde – il s'est représenté lui-même sur le côté gauche de L'Adoration des Mages – voulait bien devenir peintre, et il fut donc placé auprès du moine carmélite Fra Filippo Lippi. Comme de nombreux artistes de son temps, satisfait de la joie que lui procurait la peinture, il se tourna vers l'étude de la beauté et du caractère de l'homme, plutôt que vers les thèmes religieux. Ainsi, Sandro fit des progrès rapides, aimant son professeur et, plus tard, le fils de celui-ci, Filippino Lippi, auquel il apprit à peindre. Mais le réalisme du maître le toucha à peine, car Sandro était un rêveur et un poète. Botticelli n'est pas un peintre de faits, mais d'idées ; ses tableaux ne sont pas tant des représentations d'objets que des agencements de motifs et de formes. Ses couleurs ne sont pas riches et proches de la vie, mais subordonnées à la forme, et elles sont souvent des nuances plus que de vraies couleurs. En réalité, il s'intéresse aux possibilités abstraites de son art, et ses personnages n'occupent pas de place bien définie dans l'espace : ils n'attirent pas notre oeil par leur volume, mais suggèrent plutôt un motif ornemental plat. De même, les lignes qui entourent les personnages sont choisies pour leur fonction première, décorative. On a dit que Botticelli, «bien qu'étant un piètre anatomiste, était l'un des plus grands dessinateurs de la Renaissance ». Comme exemple d'anatomie erronée, nous pouvons citer la manière improbable dont la tête de la Madone est reliée à son cou, ou encore toutes les articulations approximatives et les membres difformes que l'on trouve dans les tableaux de Botticelli. Pourtant, son talent de dessinateur fut reconnu, car il donna à la «ligne » non seulement une beauté intrinsèque, mais également un sens. Autrement dit, en langage mathématique, il réduisit le mouvement de la figure à la somme de ses facteurs élémentaires, à ses plus simples formes d'expression. Il combina ensuite ces diverses formes en une figure qui, à travers ses lignes rythmiques et harmoniques, projette sur notre imagination les sentiments poétiques qui animaient l'artiste lui-même. Ce pouvoir de faire compter chaque ligne, à la fois par son sens et par sa beauté, distingue les grands maîtres du dessin de la grande majorité des artistes, utilisant la ligne avant tout comme un outil nécessaire à la représentation des objets concrets.

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