Harlen Bertrand

Adolph Frederick “Ad” Reinhardt, a New York-based abstract artist who lived from 1913 to 1967. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and part of a movement that was eventually coined Abstract Expressionism. Due to his extensive work, he had a major influence on conceptual, monochromatic, and minimal art painting. Two of these types of painting, monochromatic and minimal, came about around the 1940s and 1950s respectively as his work started to gain more and more traction in the artistic community.

This painting is amongst his monochromatic paintings that secure their place in history. It’s part of a series of paintings called The Black Paintings. To the untrained eye, it may just look like a canvas caked in black paint, however, little did I personally know, that it is composed of many different shades of black. His reasoning is that it causes the viewer to ask if there is such thing as an absolute, even in black which most viewers don’t consider a colour.

For myself, I don’t really care for it. I’m sure there is a hidden meaning behind this and most of his work, but I just don’t see it.

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Paul Klee, who lived from 1879 to 1940, was not only a prominent Swiss-born painter but a musician as well. Klee was a professor at the Bauhaus Art School in Germany and was highly impressed by the Cubist works; going as far as taking a lot of inspiration from the movement and putting it into his own works. “To him these experiments showed not so much the way to new methods of representing reality as to new possibilities of playing with form” (Gombrich 578). He reasoned that nature herself creates through the artist.

This painting, of which he called A Tiny Tale of a tiny dwarf, is an example of his view on painting. The concept of playing with form rather than methods of reality is integrated very well into this painting. It tells the story of a fairy-tale transformation of a gnome that is cohesively told using the circular format of the painting.

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Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt had lived from 1862 to 1918 and had become one of the founding members of Wiener Sezession, otherwise known as Vienna Secession in 1897. Klimt had an air of controversy around him due to his favoritism of the female body as his main subjects. His main genre of painting is closer to eroticism, sexualization of the female body, while some believe that his paintings were borderline pornographic.

This painting commissioned by the University of Vienna, titled Medicine, was amongst the paintings facing controversy. As you can imagine, the depiction of the female nude fully displayed in what’s considered a public place would cause censors to question the ideals behind Klimt’s painting. In my own opinion, I don’t see any strong evidence of eroticism in this painting. While I don’t question that the eye is pulled the nude female subject but upon closer inspection, I see that there are other nude subjects that are not only female but male. It’s a very interesting piece and offers much to the potential viewer simply due to the complexity of it.

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Rousseau, who lived from 1844 to 1910, was not at all familiar with correct draughtsmanship or the tricks of Impressionism. He painted in simple colours and compositions and showed every outline of the painting. This, while some may call awkward, has a poetic sense to it due to the simplicity of it.

As exemplified by this piece done by Rousseau, Portrait of Joseph Brummer, we see the simplicity of it. Each detail within the painting is outlined and clearly visible; even in the distance, we can still see the distinguishing outlines of the leaves on the trees. I find it fascinating in this regard due to the fact that while everything is in focus, flattening it, it still retains the sense of depth and liveliness, However, I don’t quite agree with the monotonous green present in the background. It’s still a remarkable painting, nonetheless.

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John Constable, who lived between 1776 and 1837, was a painter who primarily painted environments. Much like Gainsborough, who came before him, Constable never bothered himself with the traditions that previous master’s helped establish. He preferred to paint what he saw and not to stay too close to what makes a painting “picturesque.”

This is not to say that he was out to shock people by painting controversial subjects, he just never followed the so-called Blueprints that many others followed. For example, this piece done by Constable doesn’t have anything in the foreground to contrast the otherwise flat landscape. While it was unusual to some, especially during the time he was active, personally I think it works quite well. While I do think the image is very simple, the sheer amount of detail within the sky does it justice. I find it easy to digest as opposed to other overly detailed pieces I’ve seen, which I find remarkable.

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Jean Antoine Watteau, alive from 1684 to 1721 was from a part of Flanders that had been conquered by France a few years before his birth. Like many artists of this time, he too designed interiors and decorations for the rich and powerful. However, later on he had turned to paintings where he can show life at it’s most elegant without the hardships and triviality.

For example, Fete in the Park, painted in 1719, shows men and women simply enjoying life in a park free of worries. It conveys a sense of serenity and calmness before a time of strife and war, the French Revolution. Something I rather enjoy in paintings, a sense of tranquility, of which I can escape to. It’s rather enjoyable.

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Anthony van Dyck, or otherwise better known as Van Dyck, was a pupil of Peter Paul Ruben who lived from 1599 to 1641. Under Ruben’s tutelage, he had acquired most of his skills in terms of rendering texture and surfaces. However, he differed from his master in terms of temperament and mood. This difference would lead him to much greater things.

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This portrait, titled Charles I of England, shows the significance of this difference. Due to much of paintings being more melancholic and languid, he had become the Court Painter of Charles I in 1632 and having his name anglicized. Becoming Sir Anthony Vandyck due to this significance, it is him we can attribute to much of the Aristocracy that happened during this time.

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Antonio Allegri, or simply called Correggio, was a Venetian painter born around 1489 and died in 1534 and was most active in the High Renaissance. He was more active in the Parma school of High Renaissance artistry which he established when he moved to Parma in 1516. He got most of his influence from the works of Leonardo da Vinci’s pupils on the ways of light and shade, which he used to work out entirely new effects that influenced many later schools of painters.

His most famous painting, titled ‘Holy Night’ is a great example of this new direction.

The clever use of lighting, in a way that I personally rarely see, comes from the Christ Child which lights up and almost obscures Mary, the happy mother. Using this effect, and by shadowing the figures in the background, the viewer’s gaze in brought to the main subject, the Christ Child, in a great way.

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Active between the years of 1478?-1510, this Italian painter was one of the more mysterious figures of the Italian Renaissance. Giorgione, or otherwise known as Giorgio Barberelli da Castelfranco, was from a small village called Castelfranco de Veneto and was a pupil of master artist Giovanni Bellini. It is believed that Giorgione died rather young at the age of either 32 or 33 due to the Bubonic Plague that swept across Europe during this time.

Like much of the work tied to Giorgione, this piece, known as “The Tempest”, is debated as to what exactly the painting is supposed to represent. This enigmatic direction and subject of his paintings is what makes Giorgione one of the more mysterious figures of the Italian Renaissance. But, it’s not the seemingly directionless painting that earned its prestigious status, but it was how Giorgione blended the subjects and background into one harmonious image through the use of colours and light.

“[…] the landscape before which the actors of the picture move is not just a background.” The Story of Art, pg. 329.

This innovative way of how Giorgione arranged the piece brought forth a new way of thinking of perspective in paintings.