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Back of the lining canvas, copied in from the inscription on the back of the original canvas: Before a mesmerized crowd, man and beast dramatically confront one another. The fiercely determined picador leans forward and gathers all his strength, readying himself to stab the impassive bull with his sharp lance.
Dying or wounded animals lie on the ground, and the bloody undersides of the picador's horse convey the abusive and violent aspects of the sport of bullfighting. The bull coolly eyes his opponent as a group of fearful men try to distract the savage animal. Showing remarkable freedom, Goya used a heavily loaded brush, a palette knife, a rag, and even his fingers to apply paint to the canvas. Thick black strokes of paint suggest tension and movement, while dark shadows and a faceless crowd in the background lend an ominous air to this emotional confrontation.
Los Rios, Ricardo de. Catalogo de las obras de Goya [ His Time and Portraits. John Lane, , p. L'Oeuvre peint de Goya: Goya, , exh. Delmas, , p. Ediciones Poligrafa, , vol. Gassier, Pierre, and Juliet Wilson. L'Opera pittorica completa di Goya Milan: Rizzoli, , p. Studio Vista, , pp. Knitter, Hans-Joachim, and Jesusa Vega, eds.
El Siglo de oro de las tauromaquias: Estampas taurinas , exh. Centro de Asuntos Taurinos, , p. Gassier, Pierre, et al. Toros y toreros , exh. Espace Van Gogh, , pp. It has a feeling of rightness and even truthfulness that make it one of the greatest of modern pictures. In the s an exhibition in Paris of Japanese prints greatly interested the impressionists. They were seeking new subject matter and new color schemes, a fresh point of view, the unexpected and the original.
All these they found in the work of Asia. Edgar Degas was one of the impressionists who found inspiration in Japanese art. He was particularly interested in showing rhythmic movement from unusual angles, as for example in The Ballet Class. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was another of the important French artists who helped develop impressionism, though he later preferred a more formal style. His use of warm colors and rounded figures is evident in his Two Little Circus Girls.
Europe has always held a fascination for American painters, and most of them have spent some time there in travel and study. Some, such as Whistler, chose to remain there, where they tended to relate themselves to European schools of painting. Like Degas, he was deeply influenced by Japanese prints and by the French impressionists. He was not a true impressionist, however, for his chief interest was not in effects of light and color but rather in the composition of delicate patterns.
Like the impressionists, he rebelled against painting sentimental stories. He sought instead to evoke emotion with patterns of tone and color as a musician would with patterns of harmony and melody. Indeed his paintings have musical titles and subtitles—Harmonies, Nocturnes, and Arrangements. Symphony in White, No. The White Girl is typical, with its careful composition and its subdued colors. The painting is notable for its deft use of one predominant color, white. Other painters, returning to their country after study in Europe, developed styles which were more typically American both in subject and in treatment.
Winslow Homer loved the sea and painted it in many moods. Thomas Eakins , too, painted those scenes with which he was familiar. Between Rounds , depicting a boxer in the ring, is typical of his work. Albert Pinkham Ryder was completely different in temperament. Eakins was a realist. Ryder was a poet and a romantic. In The Toilers of the Sea the forms are flat and simple, the colors few and dark, the effect poetic and mysterious. In Europe, meanwhile, other postimpressionists were making use of the discoveries of the impressionists but were carrying the movement further in various directions.
One of these was the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh , who in his short and troubled life left a large number of exciting paintings. For a time he was in the service of the church, working among the poor, and the sense of compassion which he felt toward people is seen in his paintings. Whereas Seurat was interested in solidity and form, Van Gogh was interested in expression and emotion. To him, all the world was an expression of vitality and meaning. In Bedroom at Arles he has painted a picture of the small room in which he stayed while he was painting in southern France.
By applying the pigment so that each stroke is visible, he gives the forms a feeling of life and energy, and the room is transformed into a thing of vibrant wonder. He made these changes not because he could not draw accurately but because they were necessary for the effects he wanted to achieve. He believed that a picture should not be bound by the realities of the subjects. Alterations of this sort are called distortion. The appearance of reality is sometimes neglected in favor of other developments or relationships in a painting.
It is used when it suits the purpose of the artist. In his Girl in Pink use has been made of distortion not only in the figure but in the background as well. Yet it is an individual style, sensitive and graceful.
In Pablo Picasso , a Spaniard who lived most of his life in France, we find the most important painter of the 20th century. Hardly a painter lives today who has not been influenced by him. Extremely experimental and inventive, he developed a series of styles, each quite different from the others and each concerned with some particular problem of painting or life. He also produced large quantities of painted pottery. Picasso was one of the artists who developed the kind of painting called abstract. In this style of painting, only selected qualities or characteristics of the subjects are used in the finished picture.
Other artists, including Picasso, carried this idea much further. One kind of abstract painting was cubism. In cubism the forms of objects were reduced to their simplest fundamental shapes. Picasso not only simplifies shapes but also rearranges them. All the shapes are flat, and form is shown not by shading or by shadows but by the placement of the flat forms in relation to and on one another.
The various forms are enlivened with rich texture. Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall were influenced by cubism. It is difficult to explain why this picture has such a fascination for so many people, for at a glance it seems completely absurd. It is a type of painting called surrealist. This is no real world but one of dreams or even nightmares, where watches can hang over branches and be eaten by ants. Psychologists have shown us the importance of our subconscious mind and the way in which it asserts itself in dreams. No matter how fantastic they may be, dreams can be explained in terms of our experiences or desires.
It is a universal kind of painting in that all of us recognize the world of our dreams. The fabulous harlequin is demonstrating his tricks for us. Even the cat and dog in the foreground are joining in the fun. In the upper left-hand corner there is a large ear; the better to hear the music. Neither fantasy nor reality plays a part in the nonobjective works of the Hungarian-born painter Victor Vasarely , for example, in his experimentation with optical, or op, art, a style that concerns itself with optical illusion.
Most painters since the Renaissance have used illusions to create depth. Generally, however, the viewer is unaware of these illusions. Op artists, through an understanding of the nature of vision, create perceptual illusions that are obvious and insistent. Colors may seem to vibrate, or the surface of the canvas may appear to undulate. These sensations are not accidental; rather, they are the result of systematic application of scientific principles. Although its roots go back to earlier experiments with color, the op art movement actually began during the s.
Ever since colonial times there has been a strong tradition of realism in the United States. George Bellows delighted in painting savagely realistic pictures of prizefights and boxing matches. Grant Wood , who lived and worked chiefly in the Midwest, was an important figure in the establishment of a group during the s who called themselves American Scene painters.
Hoping to break away from the influence of European art, these men used only subjects that were typical of their country. By posing her against an orderly farm landscape, he gives the figure a symbolic dignity. The American Scene movement performed a service in calling attention to the fact that the people and landscapes of the United States offered acceptable content for art. However, it was narrow in that it rejected work done by artists of other countries simply because it was foreign. On a flat, warm gray background recalling the depth and softness of the night, a small bird sings its song.
In the picture we see the bird is literally, by means of a mass of fine, delicate lines, wrapped up in its own melody. A realistic painter cannot paint a picture of a song, but a poetic and romantic one can. The work of Adolf Dehn and John Marin strike us at once by their brilliance and freshness. This is due in part to the fact that they are painted in transparent watercolors, a medium that lends itself to such effects.
Both men are masters at handling watercolors. The gentle slope of the meadow, the irregular patterns of the branches and trunks of the trees, and the softness of the foliage all contrast with the geometric and regular forms of the New York skyline beyond. Nature, in a city of stone and glass, becomes an even more wonderful thing. Each sets off and adds to the special qualities of the other. Marin, like Marsden Hartley, was fascinated with the scenery of Maine.
Maine Islands was done with utmost simplicity. The water and islands, as well as the plants in the foreground, are only indicated. Yet each stroke makes a wealth of impressions and suggestions. During his lifetime Marin was often referred to as the greatest of United States painters. Although he was influenced by European work the planes in Maine Islands are clearly cubist-inspired , his paintings have a distinctly personal and national flavor.
Ben Shahn was a social realist. He did not paint aristocrats, as did the 18th-century painters, but rather members of the working class and their problems and pleasures. In Mine Disaster Shahn has depicted a tragic scene—a gathering of relatives waiting for news of a mining accident. Although he was basically a realist, Shahn used abstraction where it suited his artistic purposes.
The background of Mine Disaster , for example, is composed of several rectangular forms in red and black, representing a building. Tense, angular black lines that define the faces express both grief and anxiety. Andrew Wyeth is a realist of another sort. His picture of a Pennsylvania boy riding his new bicycle, titled Young America , is painted with a high degree of precision and attention to detail. Its first impression is one of freedom, for the boy cycles with ease over the flat landscape.
However, the land and the sky are both without event, and while this means that there is nothing to detract from the rider, it also suggests that he is passing through an empty world. He is placed close to the right edge of the picture, and while this heightens the sense of movement it introduces an imbalance. The boy is looking out of the picture and away from the viewer; whatever he is gazing at can be guessed but not seen. This gives emphasis to the rider by thrusting him into sharp contrast against the light sky. The colors of the picture are muted, and the largest area is a neutral gray.
The chief impression is one of melancholy. After the war, a group of these artists initiated a movement that became famous throughout the world and served as a model for artists everywhere. Called abstract expressionists or, sometimes, action painters , they produced works that were generally large in scale, energetic in effect, and highly individualistic in character. The movement flourished in the decade immediately following the war, when the United States was going into a period of great economic and political development.
The works of the abstract expressionists convey the strength and confidence of a powerful country, but they are also private statements proclaiming the importance of the individual in the face of pressures for conformity and depersonalization. With the advent of abstract expressionism, the United States became, for the first time in its history, the center of the Western art world. Jackson Pollock was one of the first of the abstract expressionists to achieve prominence. Pollock applied pigment in an unusual manner: The lines of the pigment, therefore, reflect the movements of his arm and body as he applied the paint; thus the activity of painting became part of the painting itself.
The impression is one of spontaneity and tremendous energy. But he had supporters as well, and his influence has been enormous. Willem de Kooning is one of the few abstract expressionists who did not entirely abandon subject matter. Woman II is from a series of paintings in which he used the female form.
Many of the abstract expressionists, although not the first artists to do so, retain the evidence of each brush stroke and count that as one of the basic values of their paintings. In Woman II , the contours of the figure are not clear; it is not possible to say where the figure ends and the background begins.
There is a struggle of the figure to break free from the background that binds it. One of the most important developments in 20th-century painting was the evolution of new pictorial forms combining a wide range of materials.
For example, a collage is a work made up of pieces of materials fastened to a background. Collages frequently make use of many kinds of materials: In some paintings, pieces of the actual object depicted on the canvas are included. Collage breaks down the barriers between reality and representation.
In The Blackboard , Conrad Marca-Relli used only one material, painted canvas, which he cut into various sizes and shapes and assembled on another canvas. On some of the pieces he painted fine white lines, which add further richness to the supple and evocative shapes. The subtle change of hue from one part of the work to another and the interplay of the contrasting and harmonious shapes make this a work of haunting attractiveness.
Although Marca-Relli is classed with the post—World War II abstract expressionist movement, he was much less strident than most of them in his technique. He is sometimes referred to as a lyrical abstractionist because of the harmony and subdued colors of his work. Summertime , by the artist Romare Bearden, is also a collage, but one made chiefly of paper. It is a scene of a city street on a hot summer day. The treatment of the figures, made up as they are of fragments, has been influenced by cubism.
By using details drawn from many sources, Bearden created a work that is both powerful and poetic, universal rather than specific. Pop art , a trend that arose in the late s, developed as a reaction against abstract expressionism. Rather than avoiding references to mass culture, pop artists accepted and used them: This acceptance was not without question, for in using popular images in their art, pop artists both celebrated technological culture and revealed its cheapness and vulgarity.
In some of his multiple portraits Warhol has even used identical images. Unlike most portraits, which show one view of an individual, this one provides a multiplicity of views and moods of the subject.
Marisol, a painter-sculptor of Venezuelan heritage, is known for her satirical portrait groups of public figures. In The Family , the portraits of members of a humble family are both painted and sculpted. The distinction between the illusion of depth and actual depth is blurred. The rectangular forms on which most of the figures are painted tell us something of the simple but solid nature of the subjects. The family is depicted with compassion but without sentiment. Although Robert Rauschenberg had some of the characteristics of an abstract expressionist—especially in his handling of paint—he used the images of a pop artist.
In Tracer he combined many things, among them two helicopters, an American eagle, and a female figure from a painting by Rubens. Much of the area around these disparate forms is covered with vigorous brushwork. No common theme appears to combine these elements with their differences in scale, source, and technique. The viewer is reminded of the sudden and discontinuous changes of image that occur on the television screen.
The work of Roy Lichtenstein is another example of pop art. The artist enlarged comic-strip images to heroic size. Thus they became icons of the modern age, an ironic tribute to the power of the mass media. Pop art represents a return to an objective, impersonal, and universal form of art. As pop art was a reaction against abstract expressionism, so pop art generated its own reaction.
It was followed by a movement called minimalism, in which all images were rejected as well as all suggestions of atmosphere. The emphasis was on extreme simplicity of forms, large areas of color, and the interaction among them.
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Ellsworth Kelly is one of a number of artists who have worked in this manner. Enormous diversity characterizes present-day painting in the United States, and there are artists working in dozens of different styles. This diversity is characteristic of modern life, and each style reflects, questions, or analyzes some aspect of contemporary society. Up until the 20th century, painting in Canada was almost entirely derivative of French and English styles.
In the years between and some painters in Toronto, Ont. They chose landscape as their common though not exclusive subject matter. The painters in the group, although united in a common enterprise, developed a variety of personal styles. MacDonald , was a poet as well as a painter, and his canvases are both powerful and lyrical. The Solemn Land captures the vastness, splendor, and loneliness of the Canadian landscape. The impact of the Group of Seven was tremendous.
It made Canadians aware of the magnificence of their own country and fostered a pride in its particular beauty. A later painter, influenced by the Group of Seven, was Emily Carr. Her paintings were more expressionistic than those of her predecessors. In many of her canvases she included the totem poles of the Indians of western Canada. In Abstract Composition , by the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle, there is no clearly stated subject matter, but the viewer can find several different suggestions: Riopelle was clearly influenced by cubism, but he allied himself with the abstract expressionists in his vigorous brushwork.
Although Riopelle was an internationalist in painting style, the suggestion of landscape is marked in many of his works, betraying his Canadian heritage. One of the greatest of Mexican painters was Diego Rivera. When he was commissioned to paint some frescoes in the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts, he logically chose the automobile industry as his subject. In Men and Machinery , one of the scenes in the mural, Rivera weaves into an understandable design such forms and patterns as men, furnaces, conveyor belts, and assembly lines. Emiliano Zapata was a leader in the Mexican revolution that made possible popular government.
This is a purely national theme. The distinctive Mexican clothing, especially the forms of the hats, gives the picture a special flavor. But its artistic worth is based on the composition—the repetition of the figures of the men with their bayoneted rifles that set up an energetic pattern of diagonals; the contrast of straight and curved forms; the contrast of warm and cool colors.
A very different theme was used by Candido Portinari, the Brazilian painter, in his Festival. The variety of forms, sudden contrasts between light and dark, and use of colors were planned to create the idea of festivity. The composition is basically circular. This is also important in conveying the idea of festivity.
The work of Fernando Botero of Colombia is clearly influenced by Spanish colonial painting. But Botero inflates the size of his subjects and overemphasizes details, thus calling attention to the decadence of outworn forms and behavior in the modern age. The smugness and complacence, the self-satisfied innocence he portrays, all add up to a high degree of satire and parody. They are, however, very evocative. In a painting from entitled Listen to Living , the forms exude an enormous vitality.
Unidentifiable life forces are seen to be at work moving across an imaginary landscape on the canvas with energy and speed. The works of Argentinian painter Eduardo MacEntyre involve geometric patterns. The basis of his Generative Painting: Black, Red and Orange , for instance, is simple: Where they overlap, however, a new and distinct form magically appears—handsome, lively, and independent. This is a painting in which, through the simplest of means, a rich and seemingly complex result is achieved.
The Tribute Horse , a painting on silk, was done during the Song Dynasty, which extended from to It shows a majestic landscape through which moves a glittering procession. We are impressed by the great delicacy and skill of the painting. Every stroke is applied with deep feeling for the form and texture it represents. Chinese artists have always preferred nature for a subject, and they have never been surpassed in their pictures of plants and landforms.
Krishna Holding Mount Govardhan , a painting of the Mughal school — of India, illustrates a story from a great Hindu epic. Krishna had persuaded the people to worship Mount Govardhan and to worship him as the mountain god. Indra, the ancient rain-god, became angry and jealous and sent down torrents of rain.
Krishna thereupon showed his supremacy over Indra by lifting the mountain with one hand, sheltering under it the people who had come to worship him. This dramatic moment is represented with great richness of detail and color. Japan, too, has a long and eventful history of painting. This watercolor, ink, and gilt on silk painting was created by an unknown artist.
In a typically Japanese treatment, the young priest is enclosed within a circle, isolated from the world of everyday reality. His body and the lotus flower on which he kneels form a triangular shape. His black hair creates the sharpest accent in the picture.
The other colors, generally muted, contrast with the dull background.
The lines are crisp, delineating flat decorative areas. There is no attempt to convey an illusion of depth. The young child is impressive in his serenity and devotion. It is not only the famous artists who make contributions to society. Any creator, even a minor one, who discovers some truth about life and gives it expression in an art medium is helping not only himself but his audience also.
Countless people paint in their leisure time. In painting they find a creative activity that gives expression to their own ideas and emotions. Painting has also become important in education. It has been discovered that children are capable of producing wonderful paintings. The two examples are both straightforward and direct expressions of things the young painters knew well.
It is important when anyone is painting, regardless of his age, that he be honest with himself and that the ideas he expresses be his own. This does not mean that he cannot or will not learn from other people. But parents and teachers make a mistake when they impose their ideas on young people or set up certain requirements as to how things should look.
Young people, in the development of their abilities in drawing and painting, pass through a series of stages that are related to their psychological and physiological development. Attempts to bypass these necessary stages of development result only in making the child unhappy with his work. The freshness of approach that is natural to children may be lost.
Children want help when they need it—help in giving their ideas better expression. This guidance is a very different matter from imposing adult ideas on them. The kinds of materials with which an artist works are relatively few. Most important are paints, which contain coloring matter called pigment. Some pigments are earth colors or minerals, while others are chemically produced. Each kind of paint has unique qualities and can produce some effects but not others. Thus the artist must work within the possibilities and limits of the materials. In medieval times most artists worked with tempera, as did Cimabue in The Madonna of the Angels.
Tempera is made with earth or mineral pigments moistened with water and then mixed with an albuminous substance such as egg white. The color is flat in surface and only slightly glossy. Tempera is usually painted on wood covered with plaster and worked to a smooth, hard surface. Fresco is a process of painting on wet plaster.
It is especially well suited to large wall surfaces. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos sitting man. Charles IV of Spain — clothing man. Manuel de Godoy, Prince of the Peace man military personnel sitting military uniform sabre cane bicorne boot spur flag flag of Portugal horse brown hair sky night War of the Oranges.
National Gallery of Art Samuel H. National Gallery of Art Andrew W. Josefa de Castilla Portugal y van Asbrock de Garcini —about Ignacio Garcini y Queralt — , Brigadier of Engineers. Chronos broom woman mirror sitting. Goya Museum private collection. Neue Pinakothek, gallery 1 Alte Pinakothek. Fabrication de balles dans la Sierra de Tardienta.