 As a person makes his way through the blond wood floor gallery of the Museum of Modern Art, a common mantra is heard: Those making their way through the gallary are wondering when did "he" turn, when did "his" paintings get strange. The "he" at issue is Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter. The Museum of Modern Art is hosting the first American retrospective of Munch's work in thirty years. His work is being described as devastating and yet beautiful. The pieces chronicle his own relentless sadness, rejection and mental instability and feature ghostly and alien faces that populate the paintings.
Paintings in History, Edgar Degas and his painting style:
Edgar Degas had little interest in landscapes, which occupies a central place in the work of the Impressionists, and he did not try to capture on canvas the elusive play of light and shadow, which so stunned Monet. Degas had grown from a traditional painting, which is less important for other impressionists. Degas can be attributed to Impressionism only through the vibrant, glowing game of colors. The common feature to Degas, and for other Impressionists, was perhaps the only avid interest in the picturesque subjects of modern life and the desire to capture it on canvas with some new, unusual way. Degas himself said: "We must have a high idea of art, not about what we are doing at the moment, and about what would be one day to achieve. Without it, you should not work. "Auguste Renoir said of his friend: "Degas was perspicacious. Was he not the most revolutionary artist in the modern painting hiding behind a black frock-coat, starched collar and a solid top hat"?
The irony of the fate, and particularly in 1890, after the collapse of the group of Impressionists, works by Degas were most similar in style particularly to Impressionism. However, the blurred shapes and bright colors, which he began using these years were most probably the outcome of his progressive loss of vision, than the desire of the artist to the characteristic impressionist colors and shapes. Spontaneity was not characteristic of the artist, and he himself said: "Everything that I do, I learnt from the old masters. I myself do not know anything about inspiration, nor of spontaneity or of temperament. "Special dramatic images are often born from a sudden movement of the bold lines, unusual composition, reminiscent of an instant photograph in which the figure behind the scenes with the individual parts of the body shifted diagonally into the corner, the central part of the picture represents the free space ("Orchestra of the Opera", 1868 - 1869, Musée d'Orsay, Paris; "Two Dancers on Stage", 1874, Warburg Institute Gallery and the Courtauld, London, "Absinthe", 1876, Musee d'Orsay, Paris). To create dramatic tension he used directional light also, depicting, for example, the face, divided into two parts by the projector: illuminated and shadowed ("Cafe chantan to" Ambassader ", 1876-1877, Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon, "Singer with a Glove", 1878 Museum Vogt, Cambridge). This technique is later used by A. de Toulouse-Lautrec in the posters for the Moulin Rouge.
His gift of observation, accuracy and vigilance of vision were incomparable. And with the power of visual memory, he could match not just with Daumier. The observation by Degas and a phenomenal visual memory allowed him to catch up with unusual gestures, postures, grasping on the characteristic movements and transmitting them with extraordinary honesty. Degas always carefully thought about the composition of his paintings, often making many sketches and studies, and in his later years, when fading eyesight no longer gave him the opportunity to explore new themes, again and again he turned to his favorite images, sometimes shifting the contours of the figures from the old paintings using carbon paper. |
