1. BBC Matisse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APaXLXAVkmQ
Matisse was an artist who followed a rigorous work ethic. This is true even toward the fag-end of his career, when he conceived and created his monumental chapel. It is ironic that his architecture should garner such popularity, when for most part of his career he gained fame as a painter. He was not a believer in Christianity, or any other religion, for that matter. Yet, as a token of gratitude for a Christian nun who took care of him during his convalescence, Matisse set upon this final artistic work. The chapel he built was unconventional in many ways. Symbolic scultures were preferred over regular iconography. Instead of murals and frescos, huge translucent sheets of window panes were chosen as mediums of art. In these, using brilliant combination of colors and patterns, Matisse was able to invoke an atmosphere of optimism and regeneration within the enclosed space.
2. Wassily Kandinsy, Composition VII
Composition VII is a complex painting on a grand scale. The abstract name suggests how the painter is attempting to draw parallels to musical symphonies. Kandinsy’s close friendship with music composer Schoenberg further bears out this hypothesis. Just as Schoenberg’s music is typified by its atonality, Kandinsy’s work creates a similar mood. This affective mood is achieved through the use of dissonant colors, shapes and object orientations. This very abstract work raises suggestions of chaos and doom. Produced before the break of the First World War, it could be taken as a harbinger of events to unfold. But the underlying message seems to be that destruction is followed by renewal. Invoking Christian symbolism, Kandinsy is perhaps implying the great hope that lies beyond impending apocalypse. In sum, the painting is intriguing and intellectually satisfying.
3. Otto Dix, German artist
No other painter captured the horrors of war as Otto Dix had done. Based on his first hand experiences during the First World War, Dix produced some of the most vivid, graphic and provocative war sceneries ever. Where it suits him, Dix abstracts the idea of destruction into various manifestations. Though his images belong to what he saw during the Great War, it could equally apply to any war ever fought. This is so because human suffering is a constant across wars of various epochs. As one of the paintings sadly conveys, it is worms which are the real winners in any war. Dix also captured the cultural atmosphere during the inter-war years. Pictures of this genre showed human decadence in lurid detail. The cheap excesses of brothel interiors and the gaudy make-ups of prostitutes were particularly well-rendered. Due to his mastery of human facial expression, Dix was highly sought after as a portraitist.
4. Marcel Duchamp clip from the shock of the new
The prodigious painting talent of Marcel Duchamp allowed him to master styles like Impressionism, Futurism and Cubism with ease. He was also keen on innovation, as The Descending Staircase demonstrated. The painting is admired and derided in equal measure. It is admired for its complex and imaginative use of the Cubist style. It was derided for the painting was seen as lacking aesthetic taste and for being too academic. A career highlight of Duchamp is his experiments with the medium of glass. The Large Glass, which is considered his masterpiece, is an intricate conception of profane love. Divided into two halves, the Bride teases by perennially unrobing in the top half of the glass. The bachelors in the bottom half, partitioned off access from the Bride, are left frustrated and their love unrequited. An interesting feature of the work is how Duchamp leaves a printed legend to explain the different parts of a painting. The legend is printed in the fashion of a operation manual to a heavy mechanical device. In this way, Duchamp hints at the mechanization of love in the twentieth century.
5. Salvador Dali, the persistence of memory
The persistence of memory is a remarkable piece of painting indeed. The painter is not explicit in the message he wants to convey to the audience. Taking after the surrealist tradition, the painting can be interpreted in numerous ways. But certain features are striking, including the warping and decay of time and the eerie post apocalyptic stillness of planet earth. It appears that Dali’s apprehension about a future desolate world is prophetic, given the effects of Global Warming we are contemporaneously confronting. The melting, wrung out clocks can be taken to stand for the concept of entrophy. Hereby, as time passes, composite objects gradually but surely disintegrate. In terms of the relevance of entropy to planet earth, as time moves forward, the favorable ecological conditions that we happen to enjoy will slowly cease to be. With life forms all becoming extinct, the image of still oceans, rocky mountains and arid plains will become the norm, as the painting suggests. The process of decay is further expressed by Dali in how ants devour a decaying clock.
6. Modern Art Max Ernst & The Surrealis Revolution part 1
Max Ernst is the name foremost associated with the Surrealist Revolution. The word revolution is understood in two ways. First is the artistic revolution that Surrealism spawned. Second is the political revolution that it propagates. But the irony is that in most of Surrealist art, including that of Ernst, there is no overt political content. Ernst’s works came in a wide range of sizes, themes and techniques. While some of Ernst’s paintings employed vivid iconography, others were more atmospheric and evocative. Yet, his works are united by the recurring use of disparate objects and figures. Other characteristics are the dramatic change of scale within the picture, flattened objects and deep perspectives. Politics in Ernst’s works are subcutaneous. Through his repertoire of style and technique, Ernst’s paintings spoke of the horrors of Fascism and Totalitarianism. Ernst’s paintings also made acute observations on the human condition during the first half of the twentieth century.