Frida Kahlo art journals reveal handwritten entries, letters, and colored-ink entries also full of doodles, sketches and paintings. Over her lifetime, the artist contributed over 200 paintings to Surrealism, self-portraits, portraits of  family and friends, and still life works primarily. Kahlo proved to be very resilient as a person; though suffering from polio at age six and other accidents and illnesses, as a child she participated in sports and loved to ride her bicycle. Of her siblings, she was her father’s favorite, considered the most like himself. Her father taught her how to retouch and color prints and a family friend gave her drawing lessons. She described herself as a child that “went about the world in colors.” This resiliency is a part of her legacy as a person and artist.

The art journal she kept during the last decade of her life which was “… preoccupied with death, in declining health, isolation and repeated surgery from the bus accident that severely damaged her spine, pelvis, right leg and right foot at age 18,” according to Publisher’s Weekly. Kahlo spent three months recovering in a full body cast. as she suffered a broken spinal column, broken collar bone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, and additional traumatic injuries. Throughout her life she experienced health difficulties associated with the bus collision of her past. Kahlo noted feeling isolated and attributed this to the abundance of self-portraits she rendered, ”I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

The artist was admired by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kadinsky, and Pablo Picasso (who gifted Kahlo with earrings shaped like hands which she wore in a self-portrait). She had a long and trying marriage with Diego Rivera, though they stayed connected after their divorce as they carried love within their hearts for one another. The artist’s life may have been physically challenging, but Kahlo was passionate about living life to the fullest.

The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait by Carlos Fuentes discusses her last art journal, featuring seventy watercolor images rendered by the artist. It is Frida Kahlo in her own words and artwork, though Fuentes does narrate the entries with his own interpretations. Frida Kahlo paintings are quite a treasure but are made even more so by this personal and incredible account of her life by her perspective.

Redecorating a home can be challenging and picking out a new color scheme may seem like the most daunting part of the process. Reds, blues and greens are all viable options, but which shade? What about the trim? Then begins the frenzy of online searches, torn out pages from magazines, and stealthily analyzing the homes of friends and family for inspiration.

After the headache of choosing colors and painting the walls, another challenge arises: What to decorate the walls with? Let’s start with that question. Choose a work of art to inspire your color scheme and forget the online searches for “wall colors ideas.” When you go to peruse the paint chips in the home depot store, you will be prepared. Here are three examples from the reproduction art galleries of Overstock Art to inspire you as you choose home wall colors. Click on the hyperlink art titles to have the ability to zoom on each painting as if it were inches from your eye.

• Klimt’s The Kiss

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-08) is an iconic painting of two lovers sharing a romantic kiss among a bed of flowers. Which colors appear the most vibrant to you? Where is your eye immediately drawn toward? Now, imagine if you chose the same color to paint the walls with. Perhaps it is the brightest yellow that you are drawn toward. If you painted the walls with this color, the painting and the wall color would appear to vibrate as if you were staring at the sun. It would be advisable to select a color a shade slightly different than the most vibrant color. The most vibrant color or colors could be chosen as an accent for the trim, if selecting a slightly varied shade. A red pulled from the painting could be a possible choice as it is less used in the composition but would make the painting also stand out.

• Renoir’s Near the Lake

Piere-Auguste Renoir’s Near the Lake (1880) marks transition from the artist’s painting in the style of Impressionism and a return to Classicism. The color palette here is warm. Soft country yellows or sage greens can be pulled. Choose colors that remind you of a sunset. Perhaps the room you are painting receives light from a beautiful sunset. If you prefer a less warm palette but still love this painting, take inspiration from the sea and the mountains in the distance, the clothing the young woman is wearing, and choose a blue-grey.

• Sisley’s The Church at Moret in Morning Sun

Alfred Sisley The Church at Moret in Morning (1893) painted fourteen variations of  Eglise Notre-Dame at Moret from a southwest direction. In his time, the artist became acquainted with Monet and Renoir. Here the color palette is cool. A rustic yellow ochre can be chosen and the blue color has associations soothing and relaxation as the vibrant painting, while the yellow ochre would have an inviting warmth. Choosing a blue from this painting is also a viable choice; notice an almost indigo color that can be used as a possible trim or accent.

Keep in mind a few tips. Remember to not match a warm and cool color together as predominant colors. Choose one color as your predominant color, and then use other colors as accents. Bright, vibrant colors add visual weight, such as a vibrant yellow which can mimic the effect of staring at the sun; this effect of visual weight can also appear to retract a room or make the room seem to expand. Sometimes a nice, deep red in a small room can make it seem lively and intimate, depending upon your taste. Warm and cool colors can even affect our perception of the temperature in a room.

These paintings by Klimt, Renoir and Sisley are only suggestions to get you started on choosing the best wall colors. Perhaps consider color schemes throughout your home from art styles, such as Impressionism or Traditional. The possibilities are limitless. Your friends and family are sure to envy your inspired idea for home wall colors based on fine art.

Fauvism art had its beginning at the turn of the twentieth century as a break from Impressionism. In 1905, Henri Matisse painted a series of works while staying in the small fishing port of Collioure along the Mediterranean with artist Andre Derain. The colors were vibrant and unmixed. These works showed at the Salon d’Automne in Paris (1905), where art critic Louis Vauxcelles called the works “wild beasts” or fauvs, a term which would later be applied to artists who painted in this style.

The Young Sailor, Henri Matisse

After having applied the techniques of Post-Impressionism (Think Van Gogh or Gauguin) and Neo-Impressionism (Think Signac or Seurat), Henri Matisse avoided rendering three-dimensional space and focused instead on color planes. This can be seen in his work The Young Sailor I (1906), a portrait of then eighteen-year-old sailor Germain Augustin Barthélémy Montargès. Matisse adds a bit of theatrics and wit to the sailor’s expression.

This theatrical addition to the model’s expression becomes a component of  the renderings of Fauvism artists.  The aspect of emotionalism led some Fauvism artists to work in the style of Cubism, an art movement focusing more in the logical organization of geometric shapes, often abstracted in a puzzle-like manner. Though the art movement was not prevalent among some of the master artists we recognize today, the traits of Fauvism, such as the use of the color plane and expressive form, it still had its influence. The most popular Fauvism paintings include works by Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Louis Valtat, Charles Camoin, Henri-Charles Manguin, Jean Puy, Othon Friesz, and Georges Rouauland influenced such artists as  Max Pechstein and Natalya Goncharova. These artists rendered everything from female beauty, leisure, nature, and everyday beauty.

Fauvism had its share of naysayers at Salon d’Automne in Paris, but the movement also had many admirers. Gertrude and Leo Stein purchased Matisse’s Woman With a Hat (1905). The encouraged Matisse, whom had been dissuaded by the negative reviews. Artist Andre Derain is also seen as a father of the Fauvism movement. Derain’s The Pool of London exemplifies his ability to balance the Expressionist quality of Fauvism with the simplified form. What is astounding about is work is also the balanced use of cool and warm colors. Henri Matisse also was able to balance the expressive quality with his use of form and color palette. This is a technique that many of the artists who turned away from Fauvism could not seem to master, or perhaps they were too turned off by the idea of any idea of expressiveness. Fauvism art can be compared to Expressionism, but where the movements differ is the amount of expressive quality: Expressionists focused on this quality primarily and solely, and Fauvists focused primarily on compositional organization of the color plane, with this quality as a secondary aspect of the style. In fact, the German Expressionists eventually incorporated influences of French Fauvist techniques into their own style.

The growth of Fauvism is primarily attributed to the dedication that Henri Matisse and Andre Derain placed into the practice of the style. After the show at the Salon in 1905, Ambroise Vollard, a French art dealer, commissioned Andre Derainto create a series of paintings about London. Derain produced over thirty paintings in the vibrant colors of Fauvism. It is through such commissions, shows, and adaptation of technique that Fauvism’s legacy prevails, but this is not to be paralleled with the dedication of the fathers of Fauvism—Matisse and Derain. The fathers of Fauvism created a wildly vibrant movement which had an important voice and legacy within art history.

William Bradford began as a proprietor of a clothing store, and in 1852 he started to paint professionally. “I spent too much time painting to succeed,” proclaimed Bradford. His father had not been supportive of art as a full time career. At the time Bradford invested in painting on a full time basis, he resided in New Bedford, Massachusetts and chose a studio overlooking the harbor.

Bradford – Panther Among Icebergs in Melville Bay, 1874

When Bradford peered out into the water, his subject matter claimed him—whaleships. Whether ported, at land, or adrift at sea, the artist captured his subject matter in the influence of the Romantic era, resonating with Hudson Valley River School techniques. By 1855, the artist was procuring commissions of portraits of merchants and whaleships.

The Romantic period of fine art was nearing its end in 1860. Much of the art of the time echoed philosophic ideals that rallied against the Enlightenment movement. Bradford wasn’t solely a painter; he was also a photographer, researcher and explorer.  Raised in a Quaker family, his self-control and calmness was remarked as a part of his background and a valuable attribute when applied to research and painting. Bradford was fascinated by the more treacherous northern Frigid Zone, where expeditions had a large degree of risk and challenge. From 1861-1867 Bradford organized voyages to Nova Scotia and Labrador to render the northern scenery and the icebergs of the Frigid Zone. In 1869 he booked his most challenging expedition with a crew of 40 other men, including fellow researchers and photographers, traveling as far as Greenland and returning with a series of photographs and sketches. His depiction of the Frigid Zone garnered much interest.

Born in 1823 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, William Bradford passed in 1892. Bradford spent the 1870s and beyond in New York, painting from many of the sketches and photographs he had taken on his voyages. The depictions of the Artic embody the pursuit of the ages, the clash of the Romantic and Enlightenment movements and the marriage of photography to fine art.

There are some people who think that only artists like Andy Warhol are truly integrated within or exemplify pop culture. That’s just not true.  Internet memes are the internet’s way of documenting the ironic humor and strange concerns of the web’s digital citizens. If you Google search “memes,” the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term as:

1. memes  plural of meme (Noun):
2. 1. An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
3. 2. An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.

Memes are a phenomena. Would you believe it if you were told that memes are being turned into fine art or that fine art and master artists were becoming the subject of memes?

Most of us who frequent the worldwide web know who Grumpy Cat is, among other interesting visages; well, these memes are being turned into art. Czech artist Jeremiah Palecek may have helped pioneer a new art genre termed on his website as Net Surrealism. He has been quoted as being a next  ”Web Warhol.”

“If something hits me the right way then I want to paint it. This could be a series of paintings about internet memes, or it could be paintings of video games I played when I was little, it could be sketches of webcam girls in a chatroom, or Sarah Palin with a third eye….I know that I will then I don’t really care,”  Palecek says in his artist statement.

Palecek’s statement emphasizes a movement that some artists are beginning to leap into without reserve as to what most of us think of as “true art.” Take a look at a few of the following examples to get a feel of the modern meme art competing alongside Net Surrealism.

Grumpy Cat Painting Immortalizes a Meme Icon

For those not familiar with the Grumpy Cat meme phenomena, first look here. Now that everyone has been familiarized with Grumpy Cat (a.k.a. Lil Bub), it is time to be exposed to Grumpy Cat paintings. Listed below are two sample paintings inspired by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” The artist of these works is Aja of Sagittarius Gallery, whose works are available in her Etsy shop. Peruse the shop and one will notice that Aja’s art is definitely more than meme art.

Title: “Lil Bub Meets The Scream” Artist: Aja from Sagittarius Gallery.
Grumpy Cat Painting Inspired By Edvard Munch (Image courtesy creativegreed.com)

This painting was inspired by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Title: “Vincent Van No.” Artist: Aja from Sagittarius Gallery.
Grumpy Cat Inspired by Van Gogh (Image courtesy creative greed.com)

This image was clearly inspired by Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

About Aja

Aja resides in New York and has a strong focus in figure art. Her bold lines are reminiscent both Munch’s and Van Gogh’s use of stroke and outlining; however, her colors are bright and powerful, reminding one of a midsummer’s day. She also focuses on landscape and urbanscape. With over 500 patrons in 70 countries, the artist is well sought. She has this to say about her work, “The process is conscious yet subconscious–an image is rarely preconceived, but it materializes through the oil laden swipe of the knife. It’s rather chaotic in it’s conception in that traditional sketches are not only abandoned but ignored entirely.” Even in her other paintings, you may see traces of Munch, Van Gogh, and other artists.

Van turns Van Gogh into Decal Art

Usually decals are those company logos for your local plumbing company that says something along the lines of: “To the rescue! Fast, affordable leaky faucet fixers,” with a plumber’s silhouette holding a wrench and running toward the leaky faucet which is incorporated into the logo. Well, the graphic designer/artist that got commissioned to render “Starry Night” by Van Gogh onto the van must have been relieved to break up the monotony.

Look At That Van Go

It is interesting to see how master artists, such as Munch and Van Gogh, are having their work interpreted in the Age of Information Technology. If there truly is a Net Surrealism or modern meme art emerging among artists, it begs the question of what counter art movement will arise? Every art movement has its counter movement, as Neoclassicism had Impressionism. What is certain is that we live in an interesting, if not strange, age for aesthetics.

Last night on the Grimm, Nick struggled with the kiss of the Musai, a Wesen equivalent of the Muse, and we discovered an interesting connection to two master artists: Van Gogh and Gauguin. Just to warn you, spoilers may be ahead. Read at your own risk.

“I don’t force them,” says Chloe, the Musai, as being even closer to her makes Nick hers, but that’s the catch… No one can ever possess her. The manifestation of desire is purely natural around her. The concept of the Muse is seen throughout many cultures. In Celtic myth, the muse becomes almost vampiric in the end, living off the essence of the creativity and addiction of the artistic lover, while he dies.

As the plot progresses, Monroe, Rosalee, Hank, and Juliette must band together and save him, as he saved Juliette. Monroe’s research leads to the discovery that the mysterious woman is is a Musai, a Wesen whose true form resembles a cross between a sparkly Twilight vampire and the blue pointy-eared Na’vi from Avatar.

Of course, Musai have a thing for artists or that yet to manifest potential within, as Monroe discovers in his reading. From a mere kiss, the victim becomes obsessed with the Musai, with the relationship terminating always in madness and/or death. In this episode (“Kiss of the Muse”), the Musai tells Nick that to be with her… he must kill her obsessive, stalker artist ex-boyfriend Anton. The key to saving Nick is Juliette.

We also learn through Monroe’s research that a Wesen Musai apparently had a hand in Van Gogh slicing off his ear. The Musai, in this fictional world, is Rachel, a woman who posed several times for Van Gogh and Gauguin. Gauguin had charged Nick’s ancestor to figure out the cause of Van Gogh’s madness.

Stories indicate that when Van Gogh and Gauguin lived together one night they had dinner and later that evening Van Gogh present a razor in Gauguin’s presence and threatened to kill him. Gauguin locked himself in his quarters, and Van Gogh returned to his, using the razor to slice off an ear. Later he presented his muse and mistress Rachel with the ear. She was horrified and he was briefly hospitalized.

We have a new theory now, and artists…be wary of your muses.

The art experts at the popular online art gallery overstockArt.com revealed today its official top 5 must have oil paintings for Mother’s Day 2013. Treat mom to a gift that never stops giving – the gift of fine art. overstockArt.com’s most desired art for Mother’s Day is sure to be a favorite of Moms’ everywhere:

1.“Poppy Field in Argenteuil,” Claude Monet – In this colorful oil painting, originally created in 1873, Claude Monet painted his wife and son strolling together among the poppies.

2. “Le tre eta della donna (Mother and Child),” Gustav Klimt – Mother and Child is part of Klimt’s famous oil painting Three Ages of Woman. The painting depicts an image of a mother cradling her young son. The original was created in 1905, three years after the death of Klimt’s baby son, Otto.

3. “Madame Monet and her Son,” Claude Monet – While Monet successfully captured life’s reality in many of his works, his aim was to analyze the ever-changing nature of color and light. Known as the classic Impressionist, one can not help but have deep admiration for his talent. The original masterpiece was created in 1875.

4. “Bouquet of Pink Peonies,” Camille Pissarro – Originally painted in 1873, Jacob-Abraham-Camille Pissarro, was a French Impressionist painter who’s focus on landscapes, as well as, rural and urban French life have always been a favorite of the viewing audience.

5. “Maternal Caress,” Mary Cassatt – Mary Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France befriending Degas and exhibiting with other Impressionists. Cassatt often portrayed the social and private lives of women, with a focus on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. This original masterpiece was created in the 1800′s – mom is sure to appreciate the attention given the little girl’s happy face with a loving look from her mother.

“Mothers are as unique as works of art,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “We love sharing our unique insights with the art world. We really feel these pieces will express to mom just how special she really is.”

Checkout more great art for Mother’s Day at the overstockArt.com Mother’s Day Gallery.

Did you know there was an Italian Proto-Impressionism? The Macchiaoli movement was active in Florence during the mid-nineteenth century. A few disenchanted, youthful men were fed up with the “Neoclassical” movement and met at Caffe Michelangiolo with other creatives to discuss politics and the rebirth of a type of art to encompass the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and the whimsical realism of Rembrandt. Macchia translates to “stain,” inspiring the name for the Macchiaoli art movement.

Macchiaoli (1855-1862) preceded Impressionism by a difference of about ten years, and the movements have quite a few things in common historically. When paired side by side the similarities are significant enough for any art enthusiast to raise a questioning eyebrow. A few of these strange similarities include:

1. The formation of each movement was in opposition to a “Neoclassical” and and politically-correct school with a very strict definition of art. The Impressionists made their own outdoor gallery to show their works in the early 1870′s by the  Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Macchiaoli painters were noted to be very anti-academy.
2. The name of each movement was coined by a critic in a review with similar meanings and intended disdain. For Impressionism: The paintings were incomplete child’s play, and the name of the movement was taken from Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” painted in 1872. For Macchiaoli: The paintings were made up of “stains” and were no more than sketches in a harsh review published on November 3, 1862 in the journal Gazzetta del Popolo, first mentioning “macchia“.
3. Haystacks. (This one is a stretch.) Giovanni Fattori today is recognized as a prominent Macchiaoli artist. For a time he focused on haystacks as a subject matter, much like Monet’s prominent Haystacks series. Many Macchiaoli artists relied on plein-air sketches, but many Impressionists skipped the studies and rendered the light immediately on canvas as a painting. Irregardless, both movements shared a tendency and insistence on a plein-air element.
4. Each movement surrounded civil war and unrest. Macchiaoli: The second Italian Independence war in the late 1850′s.Impressionism: The Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870′s.

Interestingly, Macchiaoli had an influence through Italian landscape painter Giovanni Costa who was associated with the French painter Corot. “The typical Macchiaolo elongated format, however, owes more to Corot {curiously overlooked}….Giovanni Costa who knew the Frenchman’s work had already adopted this format in the early 1850s,” relays art reviewer Sandra Beresford (255.) Costa has no mention as actively a part of the Macchiaoli movement by scholars or critics, but his work and those he was influenced by had its impact on the movement.  Beresford also mentions that Costa wrote to the art critic Diego Martilli at times.

Macchiaoli and Impressionism did have an art critic and enthusiast in common, one Diego Martilli. Art historian Norma F. Broude describes: “During the artist revolution which had taken place in Florence during the 1850′s, Martilli, an early supporter of the Macchiaoli, told his audience “ . . . the macchia was found in opposition to form . . . it is said that form did not exist and since, in light, everything appears as a result of colors and chiaroscuro, the effects of nature should therefore be obtained soley by means of patches [macchie] , either of the color or of the tone.” Like the conservative critics who had first attacked the Macchiaoli some fifteen years earlier, Martelli sees the macchia in opposition to “form”, but the meaning which he attaches to these terms are new” (406). Broude relays that in the 1860′s and early seventies, Martelli’s writings reflect the concept of the contemporary French art which was “then current among the Italians” (407). Broude reveals that Martilli “in Paris for the first time in 1863 he waxed enthusiastic over the paintings of Corot, Millet, and Courbet, while the work of Manet, which he saw for the first time at Salon des Refuses of that year, struck him…” (406-407). Scholars of Manet will recognize his later work as a precursor to the Impressionist movement.

Martilli became one of the first critics to support French Impressionism. Was Diego Martilli a spy for the French, who had a secret time-traveling device able to to fling him back and forth between decades?  Not likely. Scholars, such as Broude, indicate that 1863, Paris was Martilli’s first exposure to Impressionism as we know it today and that Impressionism, as he witnessed it, was hardly inspired indirectly by him, though the connection is valid to the suggested element of influence.

Edgar Degas did paint Martilli in 1879. The painting now hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland. Common sense would have us suppose that Martilli shared some aspects of his knowledge of Macchiaoli technique. Martilli was also friends with Macchiaoli painter Giovanni Boldini, who “learned enduring lessons from the Macchiaioli, reinforced by his exposure to Manet, Degas and others in French Impressionist circles,” according to writer Roderick Morris in this New York Times article. With the Macchiaoli and Impressionist movements being merely a decade apart, artists from these movements would have inspired and grown from exposure to one another’s work. It’s not that Impressionism “ripped off” the Macchiaoli movement but shows evidence of cross-pollination in art rendering. Perhaps here we witness how the growth of art naturally progresses, just as various cultures across the world share very similar myths and traditions.

The Musée d’Orsay will host a show revealing several Macchiaoli paintings to the French public from Apr 9, 2013 – Jul 22, 2013.

Sources:

Beresford, Sandra. “The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento. Representing Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Italy (by Albert Boime).”Burlington Magazine. Apr 1995: 255. Print.

Broude, Norma F. “The Macchiaioli as “Proto-Impressionists”: Realism, Popular Science and the Re-shaping of Macchia Romanticism, 1862-1886.”Art Bulletin. 52.4 (1970): 404-414. Print.

Morris, Roderick Conway. “In Impressionist Paris, the Face of the Belle Époque.” New York Times. 13 Nov 2009: 1-2. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.

Philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised seventy-eight individual Cubist works of paintings, sculpture, and photography to the Met. It is cited as one of the most substantial gifts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s history, which was approved at a board meeting this past Tuesday.

The gift will fill a hole in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s timeline of early twentieth century art, which lacks a Cubist collection comparable to other recognized art museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York or the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Cubism incorporates multiple approaches in perspective and technique, including multimedia: newspaper clippings, typography, cardboard, stencils, leaves, twigs, and more. What defines Cubism is the abstracted, broken-up rendering of an object or objects, like arranging a puzzle. Paul Cezanne is often noted as the Father of Cubism among painters, though Picasso and the Cezanne-influenced Brague are recognized as the pioneers of Cubism.

Many of the works in Mr. Lauder’s collection have historical significance. Two landscapes are from the 1908 Kahnweiler exhibition: Braque’s “Terrace at the Hotel Mistral,” from 1907, and his “Trees at L’Estaque,” from 1908. Even the Met notes that “The Trees at L’Estaque’ is considered one of the very first Cubist pictures that recognizes a new type of perspective in the landscape, which Braque arrived at upon analysis of Cezanne’s work.

Rebecca Rabinow, a curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s department of Modern and contemporary art, noted other firsts in the gift: “Picasso’s “Oil Mill,” from 1909, was the first Cubist painting seen in Italy, which influenced the Italian Futurists. Another of his works, “The Fan (L’Independent),”from 1911, is one of the first works in which Picasso experimented with typography, in this case the gothic type masthead from a local French newspaper. Braque’s “Fruit Dish and Glass,” from 1912, is the first Cubist paper collage ever created,” as cited in the New York Times.

Some criticism is discussed among  the public that this is merely a tax write-off for the tycoon. While Lauder may benefit in this way, the opportunity for individuals to view the artwork is to not be ignored as exciting in and of itself as is the re-allocation of the works into a public arena where true artistic and cultural conversation can be encouraged and nurtured within the community. The “Art/Tax issue” is a valid discussion. Some argue that “art ownership” is reserved for the extraordinarily privileged rich and recognized. However well we know know the names of Cezanne and Picasso, we also know that these artists, among others, took quite a while to be recognized as aesthetically valued or to be labeled as “true art.”

Mr. Lauder spent the past forty of his eighty-year life slowly building this valuable collection where other notable collectors have been seduced by art fads and need for any “hot” name of a master artist. The value Mr. Lauder and his researchers placed into the collection can be seen in the historical significance traced throughout its time line. The collection’s gift to future generations has no price tag.

When the viewer considers a famous work of art the artist often comes to mind. What did the artist intend to communicate? Why does the artist choose this subject above others? What makes the art what it is: shape, line, use of space and volume, or the use of color? Consider four works of art by Hopper, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Degas. Consider four quotes by each of these artists as you look at their paintings.

“If you could say it in words, there’d be no reason to paint….No amount of skilful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.” – Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper completed “Chop Seuy” in 1929, oil on canvas. According to the National Gallery of Art, Hopper and his wife often frequented a restaurant like the one depicted in this painting, and the artist depicts a moment “before or after the main event,” — the meal. The female figures do not seem to be engaged in conversation, and indeed though there is a degree of skillful invention in the composition, it is left to the reader to create the story, to fill in the blank. The artist has placed the scene at this restaurant on an upper floor, and it is as though the viewer is seated at an ajacent table.

“I shut my eyes in order to see” – Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin completed “Will You Marry Me?” in 1892, oil on canvas. It is known that Gauguin traveled to Tahiti  in 1891 for the first time. In a time where colonists forced native people to wear missionary clothing, Gauguin portrayed one more fluid and organic figure juxtaposed with a more rigid and “properly” dressed figure.

When the eyes are shut, the details are committed to memory, but the details can shift based on the artist’s or viewer’s interpretation. Abstraction, as used here, may allow a concept to be realized more fully than photo realistic use of light and line.

“As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.” – Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh completed “Starry Night Over the Rhone” in 1889, oil on canvas. It is on the banks of the Ronne River in Arles, France. Here Van Gogh captures the effects of gas lamp light across water in the night. The artist is known to have suffered from severe mental anxiety and many suggest his dramatic brushwork was as eventful as his emotional life, the two inexplicably linked. His use of light is the result of the journey to Arles later in his career. At this time, we witness the “Starry Night style” that Van Gogh becomes famous for coming to life.

“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” – Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas completed “Miss Lala at The Cirque Fernando” in 1879, oil on canvas. According to The Morgan Library and Museum, Degas attended the performance of an aerialist known as Miss La La. He produced many studies of the performer before finishing his celebrated painting. The aerialist performed her tricks over seventy feet above him as he created his studies, suspended by a rope clenched between her teeth.

Degas is famous for his portrayal of performers and bathers, his ability to capture the power of movement nearly in a single frame.

Later in life, Degas began to lose his eyesight but his work and technique remains just as powerful as the beginning of his career.

The viewer will see that art is more than composition and technique. By each artist’s own words we witness the need of the artist to render the clues to the imagination, the raw presence of the aerialist, of gas lights on water, and silence of contrasting figures. As Gauguin suggests, perhaps we should take in the elements and close our eyes to truly see.