Vincent van Gogh, Roses, 1890

For this (kind of late) art of the week I figured I would do a more recognizable artist. Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter - which means that he took the ideas of impressionist artists such as Monet and extended them. Post - impressionist artist used the same vivid colors, distinctive brushstrokes and real life subjects but were more inclined to use geometric shapes and to distort form - in essence paving the way for expressionism. You can see in this painting that he uses a real life subject matter but there is something off about it, it is not a perfect still life - the roses are a bit distorted and the background leans towards abstraction.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to do a piece by van Gogh is so that I could talk about his very interesting life. Unlike many artists he did not spend his whole life working on his art, but instead was a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as a painter until 1880 - ten years before his death. He produced over 2,000 works in this short ten year period - including 900 paintings. Even more amazing is that most of his best known works were created during the last two years of his life. However, this was also a time where he was experiencing recurrent bouts of mental illness - which led to him cutting off part of his ear and his eventual suicide.

As you probably know, some of van Gogh’s paintings are now among the world’s best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

Andy Warhol, Turquoise Marilyn, 1962

Andy Warhol began his career studying commercial art and later became successful creating illustrations and advertisements for a magazine. These achievements along with the bed ridden days of his youth, in which he surrounded himself with pictures of movie stars helped develop his personality and art style in later years. During the 60’s Warhol began to make paintings of iconic American products (such as the soup can or coca cola bottle) as well as paintings of celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Consequently, becoming a large figure in the art movement known as Pop Art.

He became famous for creating “The Factory”: he switched to silkscreen prints which he produced serially, thus making art of mass produced items and mass producing the art itself! By having a smaller hand in the production of his work, he questioned whether the idea or the creation of the piece was most important in art.

Warhol’s subjects were instantly recognizable and had mass appeal to the American public. This however led to much controversy; critics were shocked that he so openly embraced mass media and consumerism.

This print was created when he first began experimenting with silkscreen, he wanted something that gave more of an assembly line effect, but with silkscreening every print still comes out slightly different. Warhol decided to do this Marilyn print on the occasion of her death in 1962. Her death began a whole series of different silkscreens he did; he would paint the canvas a random color then silkscreen her face on top, sometimes double it, sometimes multiply it in a grid. These prints call attention to the glamour, yet transient and vulnerable qualities of her life.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Costanza Bonarelli Bust, 1638

Bernini was one of the most famous sculptors and architects of the Baroque period in Rome. Much of the Baroque grandeur of the Eternal City—its churches, fountains, piazzas and monuments—can be credited to Bernini and his followers.

He began his career as a young man doing busts and worked his way up to architecture and full figure sculpture. He spent much of his mid 20’s creating four colossal marble statues such as The Rape of Proserpine and David. When he reached his 30’s he returned to busts, however, his work began to gain some subtly: a big change from the fireworks of his youth.

This bust was made during that time period of his life. Instead of trying to re-capture every detail, he was more concerned with giving the impression of life and character. Costanza Bonarelli was the wife of one of Bernini’s assistants and also his lover. It appears that this bust was not commissioned but made by the sculpture for himself. It is also unlike most busts of the time; since only the rich were able to afford it, busts were only made of rich, formally clad people. Since Costanza is an average woman, she doesn’t have an elaborate hairdo or any jewelry. Instead she is depicted without all of the ornamentation of 17th century women; the only aspect to focus on is the person.

I love this bust because I think it’s so sexy. You can see a little bit of her breast and her mouth is slightly open - you can almost imagine her breathing and moving. Unfortunately for Bernini, Costanza was also having an affair with his younger brother. When he found this out he went mad and tried to kill his brother. In the end, he ended up marrying another woman and having 9 children with her.

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (Ophelia), 2001

Photographer Gregory Crewdson elaborately stages all of his photos. To create a single photo he pretty much uses a film crew, including everything from the lighting equipment to the set designers. Thus, his work is very highly polished and perfect in the technical sense. He favors photos over films because they convey one decisive moment of a narrative. A photograph gives the viewer the opportunity to imagine what happened before and what happens after. There is a first impression beauty to his photos, but as you keep looking the underlying anxiety, fear and isolation become overwhelming.

I really like Crewdson’s work because he stages everything; he defies the norms of photography. He forces us to ask the question of whether or not his work is photography. Furthermore, I like that his photos look absolutely normal at first glance then you take another look and think “What the heck?” You have to try to figure out what happened, why is this woman floating on a sea of water in her house? The photos below convey his eery aesthetic a little better.

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After a brief hiatus, our art of the week section returns, with contributor maggie:

Ryan Mcginley, Dakota (Hair), 2004

I’m currently taking a contemporary photography seminar and that’s how I found out about this photographer; one of my classmates is doing their term paper on him. He’s a fashion photographer, bohemian counter culture photographer and photographer of his naked friends. He is pretty much following in the footsteps of Nan Goldin. She documented her friends during the 70’s in New York City – she was part of a drugs, AIDS, and sex subculture. Ryan is doing the same but with really pretty people, that are always naked, but not always his friends. She has a more ‘crappy camera, anyone could take these, family album’ aesthetic, while his are more high quality and partly staged.

In an interview he says that while they were shooting this picture, a truck of marines was behind them yelling “show us your tits!”

Check out his website: http://www.ryanmcginley.com/

Gustav Klimt was one of the prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau movement taking place in the early 20th century (this was painted in 1907). During this time period, also known as the fin de siecle, which literally means “end of the century” a whole new mentality and culture was being born in Europe. The prosperous and wealthy middle class dominated - they aspired to live the “good life” thus creating a culture of decadence and indulgence. They also had an intense preoccupation with sexual drives, powers and perversions. The country most closely linked with the fin de siecle was Austria, which is where Klimt was from.

Here, Klimt depicts a couple in an embrace; all that is visible of each is a segment of their heads. The rest of the image is shimmering, extravagant patterning; many believe that Klimt was inspired to create these gold patterns by his many trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their mosaics. The patterning also has clear ties to the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements. Furthermore, since this image is very sensuous it captures the decadence and all of the fin de siecle spirit.

Not only did Klimt shock the world with his extremely erotic paintings and sketches, he also broke records with the amount his paintings sold for. In November 2003, Klimt’s ‘Landhaus am Attersee’ sold for $29 million. However, a purchase made in June 2006 by Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie blew that price out of the water. He purchased Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I portrait for $135 million, which made it the highest reported price ever paid for a piece of art sold at a public auction.

This week I decided to jump four centuries, to abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Abstract Expressionism began in New York in the 1940s; it was the first major avant-garde movement in the States. These artists painted abstract paintings (obviously) but they were also expressing their emotions through their paintings; furthermore, they wanted to strike emotion in the viewer.

Rothko’s early work was figurative but he eventually decided that reference to anything specific in the physical world conflicted with the sublime idea of the supernatural or the universal - which he saw as the the core of the meaning of art.¹ This painting is an example of the signature style that he developed: aligning two to four boxes of color with hazy edges vertically on a colored background. They are compositionally simple and mainly focus on color, yet they convey an incredible amount of meaning and emotion. Rothko was convinced that color could express “basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom. ¹”

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(EDIT: [corey]) This is a new section on the site: Once a week my genius girlfriend will share her breadth of art knowledge with us, the Art of the Week. I swear it’s really my girlfriend and not me parading under another username. Without further ado..

Botticelli created this piece based on a poem written by Angelo Poliziano. Zephyrus is on the left, he is the west wind blowing Venus to her sacred island of Cyprus. She was born from the sea foam and stands on a cockle shell. As she approaches Cyprus, we can see a nymph waiting to wrap her in floral blanket. One of Botticelli’s greatest talents is making all the bodies seem so light, as if the wind moves them without effort. All the drapery undulates in the gentle gusts, while rose petals fall from the left side of the canvas.

Sandro created this work between the years of 1444 and 1510, he used tempera on canvas. He clearly rejected the goal that most other artists of the time had, which was painting the natural world and having a rational and empirical order. Botticelli’s elegant style has ignored all the scientific knowledge that artists had gained during this time period in the areas of perspective and anatomy. Nonetheless, his paintings possess a beauty and lyricism that cannot be found anywhere else.