Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who was known for his raw gestural style of painting with graffiti-like images and scrawled text.

Life

• Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960. His mother, Matilde Basquiat, attached great importance to his artistic passion and enrolled him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
• In 1967, Basquiat started attending Saint Ann’s School, an arts-oriented exclusive private school.
• In September 1968, at the age of seven, Basquiat underwent surgery to remove the spleen after being hit by a car, which led him to read the famous medical and art treatise “Gray’s Anatomy”. The sinewy bio-mechanical images of this text and those equally linear personages were believed having great influence in his mature, graffiti-inscribed canvases.
• The misfortune happened, constantly, Basquiat’s parents separated, and he and his sisters lived in Puerto Rico with their father from 1974 to 1976. His mother was diagnosed with mental illness and was eventually admitted to a shelter.
• Beauce of the broken family, Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School and left home at the age of 17.

• Basquiat lived on the street, with friends or in abandoned buildings, and has graffiti activities with graffiti artists Al Diaz and Shannon Dawson. They worked under the pseudonym SAMO, an acronym for “Same Old Shit”. 
• On December 11, 1978, Basquiat and Diaz ended their friendship, The SAMO was ended with the epitaph “SAMO IS DEAD”, inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings in 1979.
• In June 1980, Basquiat’s achievement raised into a new level because of his participation in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab) and Fashion Moda. which made him noticed by various critics and curators.

• In particular, the Italian gallerist Emilio Mazzoli saw the exhibition and invited Basquiat to Modena (Italy) to have his first world solo show, that opened on May 23, 1981.
• Furthermore, Basquait had a revolutionary advancement in 1982, not only his six solo shows in cities worldwide as the youngest artist ever to be included in Documenta but the creation of about 200 artworks and his signature black oracle figure.

• Unfortunately, the era background and social environment still made him a serious pressure, especially, as being a young black man artist. Basquiat later addicted to heroin and cocaine which were considered as a solution for those unsolvable problems.
• Although he attempted to get rid of the drug dependence, on August 12, 1988, he died of a heroin overdose at his art studio on Great Jones Street.

Style

Basquiat’s art career had at least twice breakthroughs. At the most beginning, his drawings were still like the seeds which contained a powerful spirit but did not really display his appearance. Those initial sketches were more like miniatures as a part of his future creation.

Furthermore, in 1982, Basquiat’s creation began to have a more obvious main theme, the black figure. Although the time period was not long, it is hard to say this element which appeared in hundreds of his works was not a constant development of Basquiat’s art cognition. Basquiat used this figure reflected a lot of social problems with the context in his paintings, and some of his self-portraits also used it as the basis. His arts are really hard to tell an exactly simple meaning, but really has the power of expressing the idea: “I am telling you”.

In his later works, the features of Neo-expressionism were further highlighted, which can obviously see his reaction against conceptual art and minimal art of the 1970s. He attempted to crazily increase the content in some of his work, and the using of colours became more contrastive and bright.

Personal Opinions

I really like the freedom in his arts. Because of the social background, Basquiat’s arts had talked about the topics of the races, politic and social class, and today’s critics still always connect his arts to those aspects, however, the innermost concept I see is what a passionate spirit who really in love with arts and freedom. Start in general, only the really enthusiasm can motive a person to crazily create the uncountable works in a short time. All his works even make me feel like created by an impulse which shortly motived his hands to do something without calm. However, his works are not something without thinking, they always have a direct topic and Basquiat just put his ideas on the audiences’ faces to let them see it by themselves. Indeed, I think this impulse is more important than the calmness because anyone will lose their impulses while the growing of age and the increasing of life experience. Basquiat was really lucky and brave in arts that he can express those innermost love so early

This passion was the energy of Basquiat’s art creation, but maybe also the source of his pressure in his later life. In his later creation, I can see his various attempts to the different types of arts, including further reflection on cubism, abstractionism, and expressionism.

They are all really excellent works that obviously expressed Basquiat ‘s ideas and emotions. However, I think the sudden success and change of his life made him an extreme perfectionist who fears the failures and “not good enough”. This kind of mental pressure further developed by social attention and ultimately caused his tragedy of life.

References

https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/untitled-6 https://www.theartstory.org/artist/basquiat-jean-michel/life-and-legacy/ https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/king-pleasure https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/exu https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/self-portrait-as-a-heel-part-two https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/cabeza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Michel_Basquiat https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Michel-Basquiat https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/rose-head

Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was a famous American Pop artist and was noted for his bright and catchy colours graphic works

Life

• On October 27, 1923, Lichtenstein was born in New York.
• He became interested in art and design through school and often painted portraits of musicians playing musical instruments.
• In 1937, Lichtenstein decided to take up watercolour classes at the Parsons School of Design. Aside from this course, he studied in the Art Students League, was taught by Reginald Marsh, a famous realist painter.
• In 1943, Lichtenstein’s school life at Ohio State University was interrupted by WW2. He was drafted for the war and sent to Europe until 1946.
• After the war, Lichtenstein came back to Ohio State and finished his college education in fine arts. Hoyt L. Sherman had an important influence on him in this period, he encouraged Lichtenstein to keep questioning of accepted canons of taste. By the way, Lichtenstein gave his first son the middle name of “Hoyt,” and in 1994 he donated funds to endow the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center at OSU.
• Then, Lichtenstein got a master’s degree, and then took a job at Ohio State University, experienced as a commercial art instructor, industrial engineer and window display designer.

• In 1951, Lichtenstein held his first solo exhibition at the Carlebach Gallery in New York. He moved to Cleveland the same year and lived there for six years, although he often returned to New York.
• In 1957, Lichtenstein moved back to upstate New York. Then, he began teaching in upstate New York at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958.
• In 1960, Lichtenstein started teaching at Rutgers University and was heavily influenced by Allan Kaprow who a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art.
• In 1961, Lichtenstein first time created the works with large-scale use of hard-edged figures and Ben-Day dots. This unprecedented attempt of combining comic and abstraction brought him unexpected commercial achievement later.

• From February 10 to March 3, 1962, Lichtenstein’s first exhibition of the comic-book paintings was held at Leo Castelli Gallery. The show sold out all of the exhibited works and made Lichtenstein famous.
• In 1963, Lichtenstein moved from New Jersey to Manhattan and resigned from Douglass in 1964 to concentrate on his work.
• In 1970, Lichtenstein purchased a former carriage house in Southampton, Long Island, built a studio on the property, and spent the rest of the 1970s in relative seclusion.
• Since August 1997, Lichtenstein suffered from pneumonia and numerous complications from this ailment. On September 29, 1997, Lichtenstein passed away.

Style

Not like some of the tortuous artists who constantly break their cognitions and rebuilt their style such as Winslow homer, Lichtenstein’s arts are more like a vertical development that digging into a deeper understanding of itself.

From the very beginning, his work was strongly connected with solid lines and shapes. This is the basis even the innermost nature of his all works. Those could be considered as the impact of abstractionism and cubism. As well as other artists who experienced the war, Lichtenstein created some of the war-related works but they are not depressive topics and more like the encouraging posters. Maybe because the US was easy on the front line.

Although not obvious to see the change, Lichtenstein’s art was very well combined with the raising of Abstract Expressionism in that period. He made his work more emotional by the shapes itself, instead of expressing the practical story. Comics were really had a close connection to his development. The comic creation made him famous and further pushed his creation in the early 1960s. Conversely, he also changed the forms and creation of comics. His largely using of Ben-Day dots totally changed the way of the comic, and this influence can still be still seen until today.

After the period of commercial comic advertisements, the thoughts of Cubism, abstractionism and expressionism had a further fusion in Lichtenstein’s arts. This mixed-style became the main theme of his 1970s arts. Until the later 1980s, the characteristic expressionism shortly became the main thoughts in his works.

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However, through the recreation of old arts in the 1990s, Lichtenstein gets back to his own mixed style. The regular lines and shapes and solid filling colours appeared as the protagonists again in Lichtenstein’s creation. I personally believe this was caused by the spread of the computer.

Personal Opinions

Roy Lichtenstein found his style and road very early and became successful when he was 30. This can be considered as a really lucky artist who still had a lot of time and resource to further develop his arts. Indeed he tried. The cubism, abstractionism and expressionism displayed in his 1970s-1980s works were really great attempt and he was so close to breaking his own limit and pattern. However, until the end, Lichtenstein did not really achieve a new hight. He was restricted by his own cognitions in his young period and did not get rid of the success in the past. His later work cannot give people an astonishing sense of the same as his peak in the 1960s. He was just copying his works in the past.

References

https://lichtensteinfoundation.org/biography/ https://www.roylichtenstein.com/ https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/the-valve-1954 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/drowning-girl-1963 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/face-green-nose-1986 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/bedroom-at-arles-1992 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/bull-i-1973 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/bull-iii-1973 https://www.wikiart.org/en/roy-lichtenstein/bull-vi-1973 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Mickey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaam!

Piet Mondrian (March 1872 – 1 February 1944) is a Dutch artist, a famous pioneer of 20th-century abstract art. He is also known as one of the originators of the “De Stijl (Neoplasticism)” movement.

Life

• In 1872, Mondriaan was born in Amersfoort in the Netherlands. His father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan, was a drawing teacher and the family moved to Winterswijk when his father became a headteacher at a local primary school. His uncle, Fritz Mondriaan was a pupil of Willem Maris of the Hague School of artists. Therefore, Mondriaan was introduced to art since he was a kid.
• Mondriaan accepted strict Protestant training and determined to be an artist. However, he first obtained a degree in education because of the insistence of his family.
• In 1892, instead of looking for a teaching position, Mondriaan entered and intermittently studied at the Academy for Fine Art in Amsterdam. He became a member of the art society Kunstliefde (“Art Lovers”) in Utrecht, where his first paintings were exhibited in 1893. Then he exhibited the second time in 1897.

• In 1903 Mondriaan visited a friend in Brabant, Belgium. It is believed that the calm beauty and the clean lines of the landscape largely influence his art style.
• In 1905, he returned to Amsterdam and his art had visibly changed to focus more on the compositional structure than the traditional picturesque values of light and shade.
• In 1907 Amsterdam sponsored the Quadrennial Exhibition, featuring a lot of Post-Impressionists such as Kees van Dongen, Otto van Rees, and Jan Sluijters. Their influence of daring using colour soonly reflected in Mondrian’s Red Cloud, a rapidly executed sketch from 1907.

• His new style was reinforced by his acquaintance with the Dutch artist Jan Toorop, who led the Dutch Luminist movement.
• In 1908, Mondriaan became interested in the ideas of Theosophy and he joined the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society in 1909.
• In 1911, in the Moderne Kunstkring exhibition of Cubism in Amsterdam, he saw for the first time the early Cubist works of Pablo Picasso. Almost immediately the concept of Cubism integrated into his work, for example, the different two versions of his Still Life with Gingerpot.

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• At the beginning of 1912, Mondriaan moved to Paris. He changed his name to “Mondrian” that dropping an ‘a’ from “Mondriaan”, to emphasize his departure from the Netherlands and his integration within the Parisian avant-garde.
• In the summer of 1914 Mondrian returned to the Netherlands to visit his father, who was seriously ill, and the outbreak of World War I prevented him from returning to Paris. During this period, he stayed at the Laren artists’ community, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, who were both exploring their own abstract art.
• In 1917, with other artists, Mondrian and Van Doesburg founded the art periodical and the movement of De Stijl. In this magazine, Mondrian first published essays defining his theory, which he called neoplasticism.
• In 1918, Mondrian went back to Paris.

• In 1924, Piet Mondrian decided to leave the group because of the disagreement with Van Doesburg. Although they were reconciled when they accidentally met in a café in Paris in 1929.
• In 1926, Katherine Dreier, co-founder of New York City’s Society of Independent Artists, visited Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris and acquired his Tableau I. This was then manifested during an exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum–the first major exhibition of modern art in America since the Armory Show.

• In 1931, Piet Mondrian joined the Abstraction- Creation line, which was more open to new styles, to new techniques, and to a difference in styles of work, which the artists would create.
• In 1938, due to the advancing fascism, Mondrian moved to London.
• In 1940, after the Netherlands was invaded and Paris fell, he left London for Manhattan, where he would remain until his death.
• On 1 February 1944, Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia. He was interred at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Style

Because of the influence of his father and uncle, Mondrian’s early paintings are closely connected with realism or impressionism. He always painted the landscape and still-life subjects around Amsterdam by using subdued hues and lighting effects.

This solid foundation of technique and cognition even still reflected in Mondrian’s beginning of twenty-century. For example, in his Mill of Heeswijk Sun, although his style had some kind of subtle change, the traces of realism can still be found in this painting.

However, in contrast, the later Post-Impressionists Arts obviously had a much more powerful impact on Mondrian’s style.

Mondrian’s colour became not as cautious as the past, his painting seems to infuse a powerful soul that told the story behind the image.

Continue to the constant style change in the first decade of twenty-century. Mondrian’s arts developed once again when he had contacted to the cubism.

This time, Mondrian got rid of the shackles of his past. The shapes of the objects in his paintings were started to be abstracted. The early influence of his family was almost disappeared in his arts. His structures became much more simple and the entirety looks more harmonic.

However, Mondrian who the contemporary society truly familiar with is after his meeting with Van Doesburg and Van der Leck. It could say that their abstract arts became the foundation of Mondrian’s future works to some extent. Especially, Van der Leck’s use of only primary colours in his art greatly influenced Mondrian.

At the initial creation of the abstract paintings, Mondrian surpassed his limit of cognition but did not really find his own way. His works are more like the experiments, that each style had a subtle difference with another.

Until the 1920s, Mondrian finally confirmed his art style. The iconic combination of straight lines with the colours of red, yellow, blue, black, and white was determined.

This simple abstract harmony remained the same for a long time, until Mondrian’s last few years, his works raised to the new heights. The lines were not only black and the complexity of colours had an obvious development. Mondrian’s harmony became much more dynamic but not only the visual balance in the first impression.

Personal Opinion

Piet Mondrian is an artist who is good at learning new stuff and having self-reflection. No matter realism, impressionism, cubism or abstractionism, he can always absorb their essences and improve his own art understanding. In my opinion, artists’ pursuits are breakthrough the current limit of human cognition and rising human spirit into a higher level, so artists must first surpass themselves’ stereotyped frame. However, Mondrian was a miraculous genius in pushing the limits of self. He revolutionarily transformed his style again and again by endlessly studying and pursuing his spiritual harmony. Even until the end of his life, I cannot imagine how he could further develop and evolve his pure abstract arts into such vigorously complicated colour combinations. He really did that changed the world by his art and redefined social aesthetics.

I like the harmony so much in his works. Mondrian’s all works are well balanced by his spiritual pursuit. From the earliest subdued hue value to the lastest primary colour, Mondrian’s works are just like a precise balance of light. They can always guide audiences’ eyes to easily find a comfortable way to look through the whole images. This must the result of his long-term research in theology and philosophy that the high-level understanding of the human spiritual world provided him with a significant background behind his arts.

References

https://www.piet-mondrian.org/ https://www.theartstory.org/movement/de-stijl/ https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/girl-writing-1895 https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-red-cloud.jsp#prettyPhoto https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/composition-in-color-a-1917 https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/avond-evening-the-red-tree-1910 https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/composition-2-1922 https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/the-gray-tree-1911 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Piet-Mondrian/Cubist-period-in-Paris https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/mill-of-heeswijk-sun https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/village-church-1898 https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/tableau-i-1921 https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-still-life-with-gingerpot-2.jsp https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-still-life-with-gingerpot-1.jsp#prettyPhoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Toorop https://kinderart.com/blog/mondrian/ https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-still-life-with-gingerpot-2.jsp https://www.piet-mondrian.org/the-still-life-with-gingerpot-1.jsp#prettyPhoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Toorop https://kinderart.com/blog/mondrian/

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) is a well-known Austrian symbolist painter. He was one of the founders and representatives of the Vienna Secession.

Life

• Gustav Klimt was born in Vienna in 1862 and was born in the middle and lower classes in Moravia. Klimt’s father Ernst Klimt the Elder was a gold engraver. Klimt has two younger brothers who are also talented in art, they are Ernst Klimt and Georg Klimt.
• From 1876 to 1883, Klimt studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule). He revered the foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart.
• In 1877, Gustav’s brother Ernst, who would become an engraver just like their father, also enrolled in this school. They began to work together with their friend Franz Matsch. By 1880, this team of three had received numerous commissions and they claim to be “Company of Artists”. They even helped their teacher painting murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. After school life, they formally founded a studio that specialized in interior decoration.
• In 1886, they were asked to decorate the Viennese Burgtheater. When the works completed in 1888, they were awarded the Golden Service Cross (Verdienstkreuz). Klimt was commissioned to paint the Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater which then brings him unprecedented fame.

• Unfortunately, however in 1892, Klimt’s brother and father had both died. This seriously influenced his life. He largely reduced public movement and then focused on the analysis of contemporary styles of art, as well as historical styles that were within the establishment, such as Japanese, Chinese, Ancient Egyptian and Mycenaean art.
• In the early 1890s, Klimt met fashion designer Emilie Louise Flöge who was to be his companion until the end of his life.
• In 1897, Klimt and forty other notable Viennese artists resigned from the Academy of Arts. They established the “Union of Austrian Painters” which usually known as the Vienna Secession. Klimt was immediately elected the president. 

• In 1902, Klimt finished the Beethoven Frieze for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition.
• In this Klimt’s “Golden Phase”, many of his paintings from this period truly used gold leaf.
• In 1904, Klimt collaborated with other artists on decorating the Palais Stoclet, that this building later became one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. The famous Stoclet Frieze, a series of three mosaics, was created at this time.

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• By 1910, Klimt had moved past his Golden Style. In 1911, his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. However, he then changed this work’s background to blue from the initial gold because this made him more satisfied.
• On February 6, 1918, Klimt died in Vienna with having the worldwide influenza epidemic of that year.

Style

At the most beginning, because of the conservative education in the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, Klimt’s early style was absolutely traditional and academic. The mentioned Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater is an extreme manifestation of this style. This might also relate to his idol Hans Makart who an academic history painter. In this period, it is obvious to see that Klimt’s works pursued reality and details in the figures and environment.

The death of his brother and father was one of the direct reasons for Klimt’s style changing. The sudden tragedy might just hit his cognition and pursuit. After he founded the Secession, this first transformation started to be demonstrated to the world. The feeling of traditions almost disappeared in his pictures.

Klimt began to flatten his painting, the shading was largely simplified. The original realistic details are erased and replaced by the purer colour and pattern. The overall version became more distorted but no more the past extremely careful scale and outline. Medicine is one of the works best displays those changes because it was created during this period.

After further development in the next few years, Klimt’s new style became more and more impressing and powerful. Women became an important topic and a lot of costumes were designed in his works.

Gold leaf was one of the biggest characteristics of his creation, Klimt used it because he wanted to achieve a planar effect. Klimt even used casein paint on dry plaster, which will make the colours look matt once it dries. By this comparing, the brightness of the gold will be much increased in the audiences’ eyes.

Although the time is not long, at the end of his life, Klimt’s style changed again and his art achievement got a breakthrough. This time he abandoned the appearance of arts but focused more on the deeper interior. Death and Life are the best proof of this development. Klimt removed the showy gold background. The overall version became much more balanced. Each part is more connected.

Personal Opinion

Klimt’s timeline of life is a standard pursuit of many artists. At the most beginning, get the systemic education for the foundation building. Then, developing a self-owned unique style. Finally, before the end, exceed the limitation of himself and get rid of the old method of creation, that truly achieving self-transcendence. I think I like the way how Klimt pursued his life and opposes the stubborn academic arts in Vienna. I also like that he truly tried to use everything in his works. The gold leaf worked very well for the memorable first impression.

References

https://www.gustav-klimt.com/Biography.jsp https://mouseinterrupted.wordpress.com/tag/allegories-and-emblems/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustav-klimt/the-old-burgtheater-1889 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frise_Beethoven http://art-klimt.com/biography.html

Henri Rousseau (21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910), was a French painter who was famous for his primitive paintings. He was a totally self-taught artist while having other jobs.

Life

• Henri Rousseau was born on 21 May 1844, in Laval, Mayenne.
• Since 1863, Rousseau joined the army for four years. 
• In 1868, Rousseau moved to Paris to work as a government employee for supporting mother after his father died.
• In 1871, Rousseau became a collector of the octroi of Paris, collecting taxes on goods entering Paris.
• Since 1886, Rousseau started to regularly exhibit his works in the Salon des Indépendants. The exhibited works included the Surprised.

• In 1893, Rousseau moved to a studio in Montparnasse that Rousseau truly started his professional artist carer. Furthermore, he worked and lived there until he died.
• In 1908, Pablo Picasso held a half-serious, half-burlesque banquet in his studio at Le Bateau-Lavoir in Rousseau’s honour so-called the banquet Rousseau. This banquet is not only an affirmation to Rousseau’s achievement but also an influential event for the next artistic development.
• In March 1910, Rousseau exhibited his last painting, The Dream. Six months later, he died from a blood clot on 2 September 1910.

Style

Rousseau’s art has a totally distinct style with other contemporary artists. Because he completely learned paintings by himself, his art also showed some kind of kid-like naive and imaginative. He used both high-level art technique and the naive aesthetics in his painting. The typical rule of traditional academic art cannot limit Rousseau’s creation.

Many of Rousseau’s works created with extremely disproportionation and exaggeration. For example, in the Boy on the Rocks, the boy can be seen as sitting on a series of mountains but not only rocks.

Personal Opinions

Rousseau is my favourite artist and his life is my pursuit. I want to create my art in this kind of freedom too, just as same as he did. The nature of art creation is not a rigid technical study, nor is it a serious discussion about human nature but the pursuit of happiness. Enjoying the process of making something, to create what truly belongs to the artist self, and to human beings.

The Sleeping Gypsy is my favourite painting by Rousseau. He used his imagination and creativity to illustrate an originally should be a terrifying lion to become peaceful and docile. In the first impression, this painting seems to be made of the separated portions, but indeed the overall combination together created this comfortable mood. Every part of this painting has its own value and be closely connected with other ones by Rousseau’s clever conception. For example, the background moon and desert together let audiences know this is a silent environment first. Then the main characters, the lion and Gypsy, are both illustrated in relaxed status. Those together build up an imaginatively peaceful scene.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeping_Gypsy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau http://www.henrirousseau.net/ http://www.henrirousseau.net/boy-on-the-rocks.jsp#prettyPhoto https://www.theartstory.org/artist/rousseau-henri/ https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BA%A8%E5%88%A9%C2%B7%E5%8D%A2%E6%A2%AD

Life

• Winslow Homer was born in Boston, February 24, 1836. Homer’s mother was an amateur watercolorist and his first art teacher. They closely kept contacting throughout their lives. 
• In 1855, Homer’s father arranged him for an apprenticeship to J. H. Bufford, a Boston commercial lithographer. Then, Homer wasted two years of his life in repetitively boring and useless typing business.
• In 1857, Homer began his freelance career. In 1859, he settled in New York.
• In 1861, Homer learned a little bit about oil painting by himself. In October, he was sent to Virginia, the front of the Civil War, as an editor and design chief for Harper’s Weekly. Because of this experience, Homer created a lot of war-related works, such as Prisoners from the Front, The Veteran in a New Field and Home, Sweet Home.

• In 1867, Homer travelled to Paris countryside where he then lived and worked for a year.
• From the late 1860s to the 1870s, Homer returned to New York and had a period for freely reflecting and aesthetically attempting. He worked as a painter and designing work for magazines and illustrations for these magazines. Homer mainly painted rural or idyllic scenes of farm life in this period

• Since the summer of 1873, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Homer started to regularly paint with watercolours.
• Homer left the noisy social life in the late 1870s, even lived a while with only the keeper’s family in the secluded Eastern Point Lighthouse. In this time, he began to closely observe the sea view which became the main theme of his later creations.
• In 1881–1882, Winslow Homer travelled to England, lived in the coastal village of Cullercoats, Tyne and Wear. His works from this period are almost exclusively watercolours.

• In November 1882, Homer got back the US, critics mentioned the change of his style and the growth behind his works and. In the next year, He moved to Prouts Neck, Maine and then worked in his studio here until he died in 1910.

Style

Winslow Homer’s distinct life experiences dramatically divided the development of his artistic skill and understanding.

In the beginning, the frontline life first time evoked Homer deeply reflecting on life, society and nationalism. Because of this affection, in the next decade, he created a lot of works which caught people’s mind to let them consider the deeper meaning behind the paintings.

Then, Homer began to pursue a peaceful rural life that became his most works’ themes later. This period is the turning point of Homer’s artistic career because he began to intentionally exercise his skill in watercolour. No matter if the material cost is the true reason for him to switch drawing media, switching to watercolour largely influenced Homer’s technique and style.

By the long-term live and observation of the coastal village, Homer found his own balance point between nature and human beings. The characters in his works are illustrated to be more detailed in spirit level but not only outline shapes. Just like the Critics said, Homer’s women were no longer “dolls who flaunt their millinery”.

During Homer’s maturity, initially, his painting became more worthful to think about the relationships between humans and nature. Especially the sea painting, the characters always have a sense of facing challenges.

In his later life, however, Homer’s works got rid of the weary thinking about the nature of human beings. He turned to display more the cheerful side of peoples’ life and of the natural environment.

Personal Opinion

Winslow Homer is the same type of artist as current me, who pursue the relaxable creation and spiritual entertainment. Drawing anything interesting in life and enjoy this process of finding art. Thinking about the deeper nature behind the phenomenon or the appearance of stuff. Finally, show happiness in art. I like how he catches the most identifiable details of subjects and the progress of finding his own understanding of art. However, I cannot decide if I truly want to have his kind of life, because at least now I want to have a more diverse life and artistic creation.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winslow_Homer https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/homr/hd_homr.htm http://www.winslowhomer.org/ http://www.winslowhomer.org/biography.jsp https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%B8%A9%E6%96%AF%E6%B4%9B%C2%B7%E9%9C%8D%E9%BB%98/6361622?fr=aladdin

Francois Boucher (Sept. 29, 1703, Paris, France – May 30, 1770, Paris) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher. One of the famous Rococo style masters.

Life

• Boucher’s father, Nicolas Boucher, was also a painter, that he gave Bocher his first artistic training when Bocher was young.
• When Boucher was 17, one of his works were admired by Francois Lemoyne, and then Boucher worked as his apprentice for three months until he went to the engraver Jean-François Cars.
• In 1720, Boucher won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but due to the financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, it has been 5 years later when he first came to study in Italy.
• After Boucher got back from Italy, he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731.
• In 1734, Boucher became a faculty member by submitting his Rinaldo and Armida as a reception piece. Then, he was promoted as the Rector of the Academy,

• Until 1765 Boucher had been the First Painter of the King.
• In 1770, Boucher suddenly died in his studio at the Palais du Louvre.

Art Style

Boucher is a very prolific painter, by exaggerated estimating, who has created over 10,000 drawings and 1,000 paintings in his lifetime. Most of his works closely connected with passionate and intimately amorous scenes, including the characterized various females. This made Boucher be attacked on his moral character. Especially in his later works, for example, the Blonde Odalisque was accused of a portrait that illustrated the extramarital relationships of the King.

Furthermore, Boucher’s works also reflect the large influence of Chinoiserie on him. He created some Chinese topic paintings full of Chinese elements both based on his imagination and the information from the French East India Company.

Although Boucher’s art achievement was concealed by the era transformation after his death, he is still a notable Rococo master. His colours and forms had been the symbols of Rococo style, his existence had represented Rococo the word itself.

Personal Opinions

Francois Boucher’s colours make me feel relax and his figure paintings are really vivid. The soft transformation between background and main objects further increased the harmony of his images. I really like that he always set the characters naturally in the environment, that their poses all make me feel comfortable to set in that ways,

References

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/boucher-francois/life-and-legacy/ https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E5%BC%97%E6%9C%97%E7%B4%A2%E7%93%A6%C2%B7%E5%B8%83%E6%AD%87 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Boucher https://www.wikiart.org/en/francois-boucher/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%BC%97%E6%9C%97%E7%B4%A2%E7%93%A6%C2%B7%E5%B8%83%E6%AD%87/7639319?fr=aladdin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinoiserie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_East_India_Company

Jan Vermeer(Johannes Vermeer) was one of the greatest Dutch artists in the Dutch Golden Age. He is famous for his technique and treatment of the light using in his works. For easier to immediately understand him, below, one of the most famous paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring, is his works.

Life

Vermeer was born on October 31, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands. His childhood is a mystery but someone said that Vermeer began to learn about art around the middle of the 1640s. His father, Reynier Vermeer, was an art dealer and silk weaver who probably was the earliest art enlightenment for Jan. However, his father dead in 1652, and then probably Vermeer took over his businesses of art and inn.

In April 1653, Jan Vermeer married Catharina Bolenes, who is from a wealthful Catholic family. They had 15 children, but this might be the reason for their unfortunately poor life. On 29 December, Vermeer joined the Guild of Saint Luke, which an art association helped Vermeer sold his works.

1672 the Rampjaar, disaster year, came, the Dutch Republic was almost crushed by the attack from France, Britain and other powers. Vermeer’s life is totally destroyed by this catastrophe. His arts were hard to sell and he almost had no economic income for years. Ultimately, Vermeer and his family moved to the home of his wife’s mother, Maria Thins. Until 15 December 1675, he suddenly died of illness.

His wife described his death by

“ …during the ruinous war with France he not only was unable to sell any of his art but also, to his great detriment, was left sitting with the paintings of other masters that he was dealing in. As a result and owing to the great burden of his children having no means of his own, he lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day and a half he went from being healthy to being dead.“

Art Style

In early, the warm colours of The Procuress relate Jan Vermeer’s style to the Rembrandt school, but the topic and composition displayed the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggism, of Caravaggio.

The Soldier and Laughing Girl noted the shift of Vermeer’s style because the pointillism first time appeared in his works.

Jan Vermeer usually made the light comes from the left in his works and used the light to build contrast with the shadings on the figures. He liked using yellow, blue and gray. Although some of those pigments are extremely expensive in that period, such as the lapis lazuli, he still used a lot of them in his arts even after his life was very impoverished after the Rampjaar.

Since the unimaginable details in Vermeer’s arts and his close relationship with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who invented single-lensed microscopes, a lot of people believe that Vermeer used camera obscura to support his creation.

Personal Opinions

Jan Vermeer is an unfortunate master. Although only a few of his works left now, we can still see what a strong dominance towards the light. His light is not so exactly sharp like Caravaggio, but more is a kind of gentle and warm. It makes me feel peaceful and comfortable, and even kind of truly touched with the warm light. His figures are not like others too, that are more normal and realistic. I really Raphael’s figures, but his paintings still are something untouchable that far away from life, however, Vermeer’s paintings are the absolutely normal humans. This sets the audiences closer to the art itself.

References

https://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/Vermeer-Jan.html https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Johannes_Vermeer_-The_Procuress-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Johannes_Vermeer_-De_Soldaat_en_het_Lachende_Meisje-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Meisje_met_de_parel.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

Life:

Raffaello Santi is a Famous Italian painter, who was born in 1483, Urbino.he had a nice family and had a good time in childhood, it formed his modest gentle personality. His father was an artist and teach him drawing when he was a child, a few years later he learned from Pietro Perugino. However, his parent died before his 11 years old.

in 1504, he decided stayed in Florence. At the same time, he painted “the “Marriage of the Virgin ”, this work even surpassed Perugino, and all his painting of virgin all show gentle mother. He is influenced by local thoughts and also learns the composition of Leonardo da Vinci and the body expression and style of Michelangelo.

1509, He was invited by the Pope Julius II to paint the Vatican frescoes. The murals in the signature hall are the most outstanding. those murals represent theology, philosophy, poetics and jurisprudence, respectively. Many good paintings also came out at the same time.

Style development:

In Raphael’s early life, he is strongly influenced by his master, Pietro Perugino. This can be seen by comparing his “Marriage of the Virgin” to Perugino’s “Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter”.

In Florence, Raphael’s art style develops a lot. For example, Raphael creates more works in pen and ink, his drawings have more figures, and the sense of movement becomes more powerful. Now, those are usually considered as the influence of the local awakening humanism and the other Florentine artist, such as Leonardo da Vici.

In later years, Raphael’s works show that he had deeply learned in Venetian art. His oil paintings and fresco paintings display that he paid more attention to colour and light, which is the main characteristics of Venetian art. Furthermore, some the ranges of impasto in his oil paintings are unprecedented, thus this is assumed as the rare innovation of Raphael.

Personal opinion

Raphael’s art represents the human awakening in humanism. His figure drawings are not like the earlier artists’ empty figures. Those of Raphael’s paintings are more accompanied by human thoughts and spirits because he more focused on the individuals depicting. In his drawings, each of his characters is considered as a living person but not only a copy of a human. This method made him a soft style in early and created more and more vivid figures after he arrived Florence

References

https://www.artble.com/artists/raphael/more_information/style_and_technique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Raffaello_-Spozalizio-_Web_Gallery_of_Art.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Raffael_026.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/%22The_School_of_Athens%22_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg

Life

Birth: Hugo van der Goes does not have an exact record for his birth but he is usually considered as born at Ghent or its environs in around 1440.

Early: Nothing documented about Hugo van der Goes, until he became a master in the painters’ guild of Ghent in1467. In the future years, he was required to make some decorations for events like papal blazons. For instance, 1468, van der Goes created decorations in the town of Bruges for celebrating the marriage between Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. Thereafter, he became more and more famous.

Highpoint: In around 1477, Van der Goes had achieved sizable reputations and secured important commissions from the Burgundian court, the church, and the rich peoples. However, Van der Goes choose to be a frater conversus (a lay brother) when it was the peak of his career. At the monastery, he had certain privileges such as allowed to continue to drink wine and to work on the painting.

Death: Hugo van der Goes died in the Rood Klooster in 1482. According to the cloister chronicler Ofhuys, Hugo van der Goes was suffering in an acute depression. After Hugo van der Goes unsuccessfully tried to suicide, his companions brought him back to Brussels and then to the Rood Klooster. Unfortunately, he died shortly thereafter and was buried in the atrium of the cloister.

Art Style

The early styles of Hugo van der Goes’s works are usually considered as a kind of illusionism which uses rich colours and a single vanishing-point perspective to build up a detailed description in pictures. For example, the centre panel of the Portinari Altarpiece.

In addition, the Portinari Altarpiece is the sole of surviving works that can be confidently linked to Hugo van der Goes. Later, his style pays more attention to the artificiality which built by the limited range of colours and the expressive distortion of figures as well as space. Afterward, he is also an important artist in portrait drawing. He made the portrait more real by increasing the details and shadings on the face and then let them look at something to make those characters look like having an experience of vision. Those developing techniques of the portrait drawing are usually considered as an individually cognitive awakening of human beings in those periods.

In my opinion, Hugo ver der Goe was one of the first pioneers who begin to challenge the unexplored region of art. However, he was still only one of the traditional artists who work for the church. Although there are a few changes in the portrait drawing and overall composition, most of his works still tightly connect with the style of Christian art. There is nothing much about his personal art pursuit and understanding in the inner of his works. He had not really expressed his thoughts and cognition in his arts yet. All in all, Hugo ver der Goe who is good enough as a successful artist in the early Renaissance.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monforte_Altarpiece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Shepherds_(Hugo_van_der_Goes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portinari_Altarpiece