Have you ever tried to feel the color through a grain of paint? George Seurat not only succeeded in doing that, but also began a revolutionary movement.

George Seurat was a lonely person. He never let people see anything but his work. His private life was tucked away from the eyes of friends or even family. His own parents found out, he got married after his death. The only thing he left behind was his revolutionary style of painting. A color grain seated near another until the eye discovers a whole image. This was pointillism.

Seurat passed unknown to the art world for many years after his death. It was in the 1900s that his work had been appreciated to its real value. One of his representative paintings is without any doubt “Bathers at Asnieres”. Seurat only made two pictures in a large format, and this one was his first. The painting includes techniques from fresco painters of the 15th century, of contemporary Impressionism and of color theory. However, the artwork wasn’t made like the classical Impressionist paintings, on the spot. Actually, Seurat began a series of studies before settling on the version as we know it. He recorded the landscapes and figures on the spot, working in oil on small wood panels. He also made drawings of the same subjects in Conte crayon, testing the positions of the characters in the landscape setting. Each of them concentrated on specific details. Seurat studied through the drawings, mainly the contrast between light and dark. Some of the sketches were so good, that he included them into the painting without any change. Some 14 oil sketches and 10 drawings survived that era.

In terms of color, the artist adopted a technique from Delacroix. This consisted in applying white highlights to the local colors. He first applied an undertint over a pale-colored ground. Then, he affixed cross-wise brushstrokes on top of each other. Seurat didn’t make the composition in pointillist technique, because he had not yet invented it. However, in 1887, the artist later reworked areas of the painting using dots of color. The contrast between light and dark had a particular importance for Seurat. He studied the relation between the two in his drawings, and then he interpreted this through color by bringing luminous key notes throughout the painting. As an example, the surface of the water is darker or brighter along the outlines of the characters, making them appear more three-dimensional.

Despite the big number of characters in the painting, Seurat’s figures seem to be isolated and lonely. They seem to be tied up only through a hobby, bathing, as if they don’t really know each other, not even their names. However, the characters are memorable and dignified in their isolation. Looking close to their clothing and manners, the figures can be considered to be part of the lower class in the suburb, who relaxes at the end of a hard-working day. In fact, The Academy of Moral and Political Science had declared in 1874 that the key in developing a moral code among the working class was a day of rest. Thus Sunday had been declared a day off, on which people would spend time with their family.

Nevertheless, the working men preferred to have the day off on Monday and spend it with friends. This is why the figures in the painting are all men, except for a woman standing on the ferry. The female has been included in the picture in order to outline the difference between the classes, the lower one and the rich.
Seurat tried to exhibit the painting in the official Parisian Salon in 1884, but he was rejected. However, the Society of Independent Artists protested against the Salon’s decision, and thus Seurat’s painting was included in the major exhibition in the Paris Pavilion on the Champs-Elysees in December 1884.

The picture was appreciated by the French critics, such as Arsene Alexandre. He wrote: “The Bathers shows Seurat to be the artist of the young school, one of the few who understands how to compose a major work and use new techniques whilst doing so.”

The painting, “Bathers of Asnieres” resides these days on the wall of The London National Gallery Museum.

The following is a list of the top posts of the week that we’ve shared with our facebook friends on the overstockArt.com facebook page. We try and make our facebook posts informative and engaging as we love to hear what our fellow art lovin’ friends have to say about particular artists and their art. So if you have a moment, check out the overstockArt.com facebook page and share your passion for art and wall decor with us!

1. Winter weather usually leads to more time indoors, and while the view outside may be bleak, by bringing the outdoors in with floral oil paintings the transition can be far less depressing. A. Yaari’s spontaneous brushwork and candid use of color gives “Sensota Flowers” a vibrant energy that can wake up your walls and help keep the winter doldrums at bay.

   Looking for art with stylish appeal to transform your home for the holidays? Our floral gallery features some of the greatest floral oil paintings of all time, from a variety of artists and styles to compliment a wide array of tastes.

   Find art that offers instant appeal and inspires you by browsing our entire floral gallery.

2. Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918) was an exceptionally prolific Austrian Expressionist whose formidable talents were fully matured when he was a teenager. After studying with Gustav Klimt at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna, Schiele became his protégé.

   Klimt helped groom Schiele and the two held many exhibitions together. Schiele is best known for creating emotionally charged portraits and nudes in contorted positions, often with a grotesque or erotic focus. While being stationed in Prague in WWI, he was able to continue creating artwork while serving as a prison guard. Returning to the art world in Vienna in 1917, he brought back with him a newfound maturity which was reflected in his work.

   Sadly, he and his pregnant wife Edith who’s portrait is featured here, fell victim to a Spanish flu epidemic, and passed away the next year, only three days apart from one another. Schiele left a legacy of almost 3,500 compelling artworks.

3. Mad Men Inspired – Rothkos
   We’ve pulled together some of our favorite Mad Men-inspired Mark Rothko pieces. Flip through our Rothkos and take a trip down Madison Avenue.

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Frida Kahlo lived in a society where the woman’s ambition was to be a devoted wife and mother. The events that she encountered along her life prevented the artist from achieving such goals. Physical suffering, caused by an accident in her youth, which led to many spinal operations, was reflected in her paintings. Her weakened column detained her from becoming a mother, and in 1939 her husband Diego Rivera decided not to stand next to his “dove”. This was a turning point in Frida’s life, a moment when the suffering caught an even greater proportion, becoming a crucial theme in her paintings. It is also the time when she started making the monumental paintings, which will define her as an artist. The strong Kahlo in the “The Two Fridas” portrait is the woman she became when she realized that her society’s traditions and cultural expectations were unrealistic for her.

In mid-October 1939, the emblematic couple of Mexico, applied for divorce by mutual consent to the Court of Coyoacan. However, the decision to divorce was taken by Diego. He confesses in his autobiography that he couldn’t sit next to Frida in order not to harm her anymore. “I guard her from future trouble. I’ve decided to break up with her. I just wanted to be free, so I could go to the women to whom my desire pushed me.” However, he admits in his autobiography that his love for Frida did not diminish. He hoped to cut off the umbilical cord, rather than break the deep feelings he had for her.

The effect of this decision was the deep loneness that Frida felt, the loss of reference, the breaking ties with her friends and the isolation. All this suffering is shown in a series of images, in which the artist sees herself as a martyr. Her only comfort is the mirror image perceived by the artist as a long known friend that stands beside her in good but mostly in bad moments.

Her own shadow joined her in the painting “The Two Fridas.” The characters are placed on a bench with a straight torso, fixed eyes, as if after the suffering she endured, nothing can knock her down as long as she has herself beside.

In this painting, she tries to return to her origins. “The two Fridas” appear to hold hands, one in a European-clothed, the other as a Mexican. The Tehuana dress refers to her relationship with Diego, that was cut by divorce, represented in the painting by the scissors. A bloody vein connects the suffering heart to the intact one.

The courageous Frida joins hands with the suffering Frida, as if hoping to relieve her pain. Both have a vision that gives the viewer the impression of an agreement with herself, having triumphed over pain by closing Diego in a small medallion that she holds between her fingers.

The painting’s origin is explained by the artist herself in her memoirs. Frida tells how as a child she lived with intensity an imaginary friendship with a girl. She used to make steam on the window glass in her room. With her finger, she drew a door. Through this door, she entered in a dream: “I speedily descend inside the Earth, where my imaginary friend expected me. I didn’t keep in mind any face, any color to remind me of her. But I know she was happy – she laughed a lot.”

Maybe that’s why the face of her imaginary friend turned into the artist’s face, in order to help her pass easily over the sufferings of life. “I used to follow her movements while she was dancing and told her all my secret problems.” Isolating herself from friends, after the divorce, Frida felt the need for a reliable person whom she could tell her drama. After all, what other person may be more reliable than yourself? Who else can keep your secrets so well? Who knows better the depths of your soul in order to give you the best advice, than yourself? “How much time have I spent with her? I do not know. A second or thousands of years… I was happy. I wiped the window with my hand, and she disappeared”, said Frida. The story ends when the young girl ran to the back courtyard with the secret of her imaginary friend. She hid herself at the root of a large cedar and started shouting and laughing. After 34 years of this memory, Frida paints the story of her magical friendship while being in a time of suffering, in order to bring happiness back.

“The Two Fridas” was exhibited in 1940 at the grand “International Exhibition of Surrealism” in Mexican Art Gallery of Ines Amor. Later, the painting appeared in the “Twenty centuries of Mexican art” retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico.

The following is a list of the top posts of the week that we’ve shared with our facebook friends on the overstockArt.com facebook page. We try and make our facebook posts informative and engaging as we love to hear what our fellow art lovin’ friends have to say about particular artists and their art. So if you have a moment, check out the overstockArt.com facebook page and share your passion for art and wall decor with us!

1. Like the majority of artists as revered as Gustav Klimt, he showed artistic promise from an extremely young age. And, as soon as his professional training began at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna at age fourteen, Klimt learned every technique under the sun – painting, drawing, sculpture, mural, fresco, mosaic, etc. He became confident enough in his own developed style that his work became quite sought after. Many esteemed commissions came his way.

   As his determination increased some of his work received critical opposition. Rather than fold under the criticism, Klimt forged ahead as an artistic rebel for several years. But, his talent was so undeniable that society couldn’t help but embrace his work. From erotic decorative panels sparkling with gold, to demure and hyperrealistic landscapes, Klimt continued to produce awe-inspiring pieces until the very end. He fell victim to a pneumonia epidemic and passed away in 1918.

2. Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967), America’s foremost Realist was known for his melancholy depictions of alienation in everyday life. Eerily realistic, his stark urban and rural scenes are a desolate montage of deserted streets, half-empty theaters, isolated railroad tracks and dreary rooming houses.

   Portraying scenes in New York and New England, Hopper underscored their grim nature with sharp lines, large, impersonal shapes, flat expanses of color and hard angles.

   In “Nighthawks.”, inspired by a restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village, Hopper’s unflinching style depicts the sad beings in the diner as together, yet solitary and seperated as well from the viewer by the glass window of the diner.

3. After many years of Paris life wearing him down and his health on a steady decline, Vincent Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles, France in 1888. He found this place and its residents to be “from another world”, yet the local landscape enchanted him. The way in which the light showcased the bright colors within the scenery there inspired him to create many paintings during his stay. Sadly, another darker side of his life would become synonymous with Arles. After the infamous, violent scuffle with Paul Gauguin (when van Gogh lost his ear), his mental and physical state worsened, eventually causing the townspeople to escort him out of Arles.

   Now revered as a gifted and visionary artist, Vincent Van Gogh struggled with mental illness throughout his life. During his career, Van Gogh saw only one sale of his work. His last painting ever made “Wheat Field With Crows” was sold at auction for millions of dollars more than a century later.

4. Today, in celebration of Claude Monet’s birthday, we bring you one of his more notable portraits of his mother painted in the Impressionist style.

   Monet (1840 – 1926) was born in Paris, and started drawing at an early age. His family moved to Le Havre when he was a child, and it was there that he started his artistic career—around the age of eleven he began selling charcoal caricatures on the street. Monet studied drawing and painting a bit more formally in the 1850s, under the tutelage of artist Eugène Boudin. Boudin taught him to use oil paints, techniques for painting “en plein air,” and encouraged Monet’s love of natural subjects.

   Though Monet would ultimately make his name by painting outdoor scenes and landscapes, before he adopted the Impressionist style, he was very skilled at painting according to the standards of the Académie des Beaux Arts. The Académie preferred paintings with traditional themes like history, portraiture, and religion, and valued above all depictions that were as realistic as possible. In his twenties, Monet followed Académie strictures, and earned serious recognition with several portraits like the painting shown here, painted in 1875.

5. Paul Klee’s personal style spanned an astounding range, blending primitive art, Surrealism, Cubism, and children’s art. Extremely inventive, Klee created imaginative works filled with wit and references to dreams, music, and poetry — and he’s one of the artists we suggest inviting home not just for the holidays, but to enjoy all year.

   Greet family and friends this holiday season with a home spruced up with art that expresses your personal style. Whether you decorate with the fruits of your own creative imagination or with special pieces by favorite artists (or a combination of the two), the holidays are a wonderful time to celebrate home as where the art is.

6. A master of Primitivism, Paul Gauguin once said that “art is either plagiarism or revolution” – on which side of that spectrum would you place Gauguin?

   Born in Paris as Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903), he spent his early years living in both France and Peru (where his mother’s family was from). One of his earliest childhood memories was of his mother dressed in the traditional costume of Lima, and it is thought that her traditional native garb influenced his later move toward Primitivism.

   Gauguin was a stockbroker until the age of 40, but for decades he developed his artistic skills by painting in his free time. He was friends with Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne, and flirted with Impressionism before practicing in other styles. Gauguin’s work evolved towards Cloisonnism (characterized by flat areas of color and bold outlines), and he used this aesthetic when depicting the people of French Polynesia, where he lived in the 1890s.

   Gauguin deemed European civilization “artificial and conventional,” and was drawn to the simplicity of the primitive Polynesian lifestyle, which is now immortalized in his many paintings and sculptures of the natives.

7. “I’ve never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso” – Diego Rivera

   Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) was a painter who wore many hats–muralist, communist, proponent of native Mexican tropes, and husband to Frida Kahlo. He was born in Guanajuato to a well-to-do family, and began drawing when he was only three. A muralist from the very beginning, Rivera’s parents caught him drawing on the walls at a young age; rather than punish him, they covered the walls with chalkboards and canvasses to nurture his artistic talents. As a teenager, Rivera studied art in Europe, and tried out both Cubist and Post-Impressionist aesthetics, began developing his own native style upon returning to Mexico in the 1920s.

   During that decade, the Mexican government sponsored a mural program for public buildings, which was an auspicious development for Rivera. He was one of several muralists to rise to prominence during this time, and it was during this period that he developed his signature native style-large, simplified figures in bold colors, with a clear Aztec influence. His works focused largely on Mexican society and the 1910 Mexican Revolution, and were tinged with the ideologies of the country’s communist party (which he joined in 1922).

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The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow is accused of displaying a fake painting by Amedeo Modigliani. The charges come from a leading Russian collector who does not wish to be named, as well as other figures in the Russian art world.

The discussions about the authenticity of the painting came in 2006. The collector wanted to buy the portrait of Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (also known as Marvena) for $3 million, but changed his mind after a scientific testing at the Swiss Institute for Art Research. “After 40 days, I got the evaluation back from the Institute, which indicated that some of the pigments used in this painting were synthetic, produced after 1940,” he says. He is now revolted that the fake, as he calls it, is displayed in the Moscow museum as a genuine. The work is on loan from a private collection.

The director of the Pushkin Museum, Irina Antonova, is aware of the allegations concerning the portrait. She thinks the painting is genuine. In addition, she is not concerned about the doubts regarding the authenticity of the work, because these discussions can help reveal new information about the portrait.

Other Russian specialists in the fine arts support the collector’s allegations saying: “It doesn’t look like Marevna at all. This is not typical to Modigliani. You could always find traits of a resemblance in his portraits. Here, they are entirely absent. Furthermore, in her memoirs, Marevna doesn’t mention anywhere that Modigliani painted her portrait.”

These statements are contradicted by the president of the Modigliani Institute in Rome, Christian Parisot, who has the legal right to authenticate Modigliani’s work. He offers various documents, including a declaration by Marevna saying that she posed for Modigliani, and cites the results of scientific tests as proof. “Current chemical and spectrographic tests demonstrate that the support, the canvas and all the colors used in this painting are of the period of the artist, and are comparable to those of other paintings by Modgiliani,” he says.

Christian Parisot adds that there is no scientific research from any laboratory claiming otherwise. In addition, he supports that one of the most respected scholars of Modigliani, Ambrogio Ceroni believed the work to be genuine. Furthermore, the art specialist has a declaration by the scholar’s widow Angela Bernardelli Ceroni, dated 19 June 1980, stating that Ceroni, who died in 1970, had authenticated the portrait.

The Modigliani Institute also points out that the painting was attributed to the artist when it was shown in 1983 at the Musee Bourdelle in Paris, when Marevna was still alive.

Who was Marevna?

Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends while he was in Montparnasse. Among these artists was Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera and Marevna. The painting with “Marevna” was included in a show at an extensive Modigliani exhibition “Amedeo Modigliani,” that opened in 2010 and ran until February this year at the Municipal House in Prague. This work is believed to be on the market, priced at €9 million.

“Marevna,” as she was called, was a Russian painter who also lived a great part of her life abroad. In France, she had her formative years as a cubist. In England, she lived towards the end of her life. Marevna is said to be the first female cubist. She is known for combining elements of cubism with pointillism. She had a relationship with the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, that ended after their daughter, Marika Rivera, was born in 1919.

overstockArt.com announced last week that it has joined forces with Bravo and Magical Elves to launch a new line of artwork from the cable network’s series “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.” The exclusive line of reproduced artwork is created by the artists participating in the creative competition series produced by Magical Elves and Pretty Matches Productions.

The artwork featured in “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” will be made available for purchase exclusively on overstockArt.com following airing of new episodes each Wednesday. Reproduced artwork created by artists who competed in the first season of the show will also be made available for purchase. The new line will be available at overstockArt.com/workofart.html.

Bravo’s “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” is a creative competition series that seeks to discover new talent and shed light on the artistic process that typically occurs behind closed doors. Assembled in New York City under the watchful eye of art world elites, 14 up-and-coming artists are ready to make their mark on the industry and battle it out for a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum and a cash prize of $100,000.

“We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate, furthering the proliferation of our brand while providing added value for our customers,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “This collaboration will take overstockArt.com to the next level by leveraging our commitment to creating high-quality, affordable art with Magical Elves’ dedication to discovering today’s hottest up-and-coming artists and jointly bringing quality products to market.”

The “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” canvas transfer art reproductions will be offered in a variety of sizes with prices starting at $119. Customized frames can also be purchased. Reproduced artwork is first available exclusively on overstockArt.com and will later be made available for purchase by overstockArt.com’s partner online retailers.

“This partnership builds on the success of both brands, providing us the unique opportunity to engage with our fans and viewers and to connect with consumers beyond the television screen,” said Ellen Stone, Senior Vice President of marketing for Bravo.

“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist,” is produced by Pretty Matches and Magical Elves for Bravo. Dan Cutforth, Jane Lipsitz, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alison Benson and Eli Holzman serve as executive producers.