Week 3

 

Here is an article from the NYT on Renoir and faded-colors due to the chemical breakdown of his paints.

RENOIR SHOWS HIS TRUE COLORS

One of things that I am quite fascinated by is the material and technological bases for art-making. As we talked about last week- industrially manufactured paint in tubes made "en plein air" painting a lot more convenient. It also seems to have contributed to the growth of rich impasto bush-strokes, thick daubs of paint right out of the tube were placed directly on to the canvas by people like Van Gogh who sought to communicate the energy of their feelings through the force of the placement of the paints (at least that's how we often understand these works).

This week the umbrella topics will be LIGHT/ COLOR/ PHOTOGRAPHY and their relationship to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters.

Here is the link to GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE where you can look up thousands of paintings or painters and ZOOM IN on the details of their work. It's a truly exciting resource.

Here is a short article and video on a recent exhibit in Michigan of a number of Impressionist painters and the photographs that either influenced or inspired them, or were simply a part of the popular visual world in which they were living.

Reexamining Link between Rise of Photography and Impressionism

The following are the videos we watched in class as well as a three part French made documentary on Pointilism and Seurat

Consider how the Impressionists and the artists after them working in Paris were fascinated by urban life and the modern elements of speed, crowds and luminosity! This energy is certainly captured by the use of time-lapse.

As we discussed in class- LOIE FULLER was an American expatriate dancer who took Paris by storm using new technologies of stage lighting, many of which she pioneered and patented. Here is Jody Sperling of Time Lapse Dance performing as Loie Fuller.

Claude Monet was constantly striving to understand how light changed the experience of material reality. His studies of Rouen Cathedral are a prime example of this life-long fascination with the play of light on the surfaces of the natural and human-made world.

This charming French film uses LIGHT as its major theme to explore the world of Seurat and the Pointilists. The intergenerational differences between Seurat and the older gents of the Impressionist movement are also shown.