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Leonardo Da Vinci (Book Review)
Leonardo Da Vinci (Book Review)
POSTED 1/22/2018
As much as I enjoyed Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein, I was even more taken with his Leonardo DaVinci. Leonardo embodies the “Renaissance man” - a polymath who excelled in painting, sculpting, architecture, and engineering, and dissected cadavers to learn anatomy. A genial soul with many friends, while he was at the court in Milan he created set designs for festivals and theatrical performances, and entertained friends and the court with riddles and pranks. He was an acute observer of nature and was one of the early practitioners of what came to be the scientific method. Isaacson places Leonardo's genius in a marvelously drawn Renaissance Italy. READ MORE
Guernica
Guernica
POSTED 1/31/2018
One of the "must-see's" for my 2017 trip to Spain was Picasso's Guernica. This mural-sized painting is perhaps the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in Western art. It was returned to Spain from the Museum of Modern Art in New York some years after the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco - Picasso having stipulated that the painting not be returned to Spain until democracy was re-established there. It now resides at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid....Read more
Monet's Étretat
Monet's Étretat
POSTED FEB 3, 2018
Memory is a funny thing. The painting that, more than any other, got me interested in art was Claude Monet's painting of the cliffs at Étretat. Thing is: Monet made several paintings of this natural rock formation on the Normandy coast, and I cannot decide which was the one that first had such an impact. Monet was an Impressionist. His painting "Impression, Sunrise" gave the name to the movement...READ MORE
Musical Keys and Our Emotions
Musical Keys and Our Emotions
POSTED 2/3/2018
The major mode in music is generally considered bright and happy; the minor mode, dark and sad. People have wrestled with the question as to why this association of happy with major and sad with minor is so....
Beyond this distinction between major and minor modes, there are emotions associated with specific keys. For example, C major is “Completely pure. Simplicity and naivety. The key of children. Free of burden, full of imagination. Powerful resolve. Earnestness. Can feel religious....” Read more
Science Fiction as Literature and Art
Science Fiction as Literature and Art
POSTED 2/23/2018
Science fiction books and movies have always been among my favorites. “Hard” sci-fi often deals with some of our deepest imaginings – the nature of consciousness and of time, quantum theory and parallel universes, system-scale engineering and cosmology, immortality and cosmic destruction. READ MORE
Three of the Best Movies You (Probably) Haven't Seen
Three of the Best Movies You (Probably) Haven't Seen
POSTED 2/26/2018
The Academy Awards are just over the horizon. Front runners for this year's Best Picture include Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Shape of Water and Dunkirk. But those three films are not what this post is about. This is about three different films – ones you may not have seen or even heard about. My Dinner With André (1981), Babette's Feast (1987), and The Best of Youth (La meglio gioventù, 2003) have won a combined total of just one Oscar. Two portray events that take place over several decades, while one is a conversation between two friends over a single meal. They take place in New York City, rural Denmark and Italy, respectively. Each is brilliant in its own way whether it be intellectual, spiritual, or emotional....Read more
In Search of Beethoven
In Search of Beethoven
POSTED 3/30/2018, RJC
Written and directed by Phil Grabsky, In Search of Beethoven (2009) is informative, well written and beautifully photographed - at times almost impressionistic. Grabsky draws on expert commentary from contemporary musicians and composers as well as on Beethoven's letters to paint a portrait of the musical genius. The film brings out the humanity, compassion, and ultimate optimism of this troubled cultural icon, who was totally deaf by the end of his life. Best of all, there are more than 60 segments of live performances of Beethoven's works. It is a good introduction to the man who is, by most reckonings, the greatest composer the world has ever seen. Read More....
La Sagrada Familia and St. Paul's Cathedral
La Sagrada Familia and St. Paul's Cathedral
POSTED 5/2/2018
For millenia, artists, sculptors, and others have tried to depict the connection of the earth with the heavens - that is, with something beyond the here and now of the immediately present physical world. Two more recent works continue the ancient tradition: Gaudi's masterpiece, the La Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona, is approaching completion after nearly 150 years of design and construction. Bill Viola and his wife Kira Pirova are using video art to bring back the sense of the sacred in art in the early 21st century at London's St. Paul Cathedral. READ MORE
"Read the Best Books First"
"Read the Best Books First"
POSTED 5/12/2018
Henry David Thoreau advised his contemporaries to "Read the best books first, otherwise you'll find you do not have time." Today, there are numerous "best books" lists available on the internet for every taste, but what Thoreau was really getting at was books that give insights into how to live well...Some greatest books lists and advice from Emerson and Tolstoy .....READ MORE
The Greek Awakening
The Greek Awakening
POSTED 5/26/2018
Around 500 B.C., Greek thinkers, artists and sculptors revolutionized the way we see and represent the world. "The transformation of Greek art during the fifth century BC, when artists pioneered a heightened, idealised naturalism, was so extraordinary and irrevocable" that it has come to be known as the "Greek Awakening". The next century and a half would see the Greeks invent democracy, philosophy, history, science and mathematics and lay the foundations of Western civilization. Read
Color and Emotions in Art and Cinema
Color and Emotions in Art and Cinema
POSTED 6/12/2018
Color has come a long way - from Isaac Newton's seven colors of the rainbow to today's LCD monitors displaying more than 16 million, from 14th century artists trying to better replicate reality to film directors using color to influence our mood. The psychology of color has been examined in scientific journals as well as in less rigorous subjective surveys. One of the earliest formal explorations of color theory came from an unlikely source — the German poet and artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who in 1810 published Theory of Colors, his treatise on the nature, function, and psychology of colors.
Read more for a side-by-side comparison of theories of the effect of colors on our emotions.
Goethe's Color Wheel (c.1810)
A Small Luminist Gallery
A Small Luminist Gallery
POSTED 6/25/2018
Luminism is an American art movement* that developed around 1850. Like Impressionism, it is all about the depiction of light. However, its treatment is different. "While an Impressionist landscape may be said to surround and engulf the viewer with its depiction of sunlight, a luminist landscape typically contains a much deeper perspective, along with objects captured in detail in crystal clear light - like a frozen moment when time stops. The effect of this is very often a sense of great tranquility and calm, which is further enhanced by the luminist technique of concealing all visible brushwork beneath a smooth, slick finish." (Visual Arts Encyclopedia)
Here are a handful of Luminist paintings, hopefully providing that "sense of great tranquility and calm." (Click on link for gallery)
The Great American Read
The Great American Read
POSTED 7/7/2018
PBS is having a contest to determine the "Great American Read". People vote (until October 18) for their favorites from a list of one hundred novels. The books range from 19th century classics (e.g., Jane Eyre) to series best known for their TV or film adaptations (e.g., The Hunger Games). I've read about 30 of the 100 nominees. You can vote once a day and today I've cast my first ballot for "A Confederacy of Dunces". READ MORE (includes the PBS list of America's 100 most loved books)
The World's Most Beautiful Buildings
The World's Most Beautiful Buildings
POSTED JULY 21, 2018
Like most "best" lists, a listing of the world's most beautiful buildings is subjective. What is considered beautiful in one era may be thought less so in another. However, there are some buildings whose beauty cuts across cultures and time. A look at some of the most beautiful buildings in the world...READ
Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque style came into its own, though, in the early 17th century and flourished throughout Europe until the late 18th century - particularly in, but not limited to, Catholic countries. Baroque architects, composers, painters and sculptors created works that were ornate, complex, at times extravagant, and also of great beauty. The baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe...Bernini, Caravaggio, Rubens, Pachelbel, Corelli, more... (POSTED 8/4/2018)....READ
Poets and Poetry
Poets and Poetry
POSTED AUGUST 19, 2018
Years ago, a high school English teacher said to our class, "I hope that some evening you will sit down with a book of poems and read and enjoy them." I still enjoy poetry immensely fully agreeing with Matthew Arnold's words on the subject: “The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power . . . the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them.” Selections from some of my favorite poets: Andrei Vosnesenzky, Robert Desnos, T.S. Eliot, William Wordsworth, John Keats, more....READ
Paul Cézanne: 19th century bridge to 20th century modernism
Paul Cézanne: 19th century bridge to 20th century modernism
POSTED SEPTEMBER 3, 2018
Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839. He is one of the cultural giants of the nineteenth century who paved the way for the revolutionary changes at the turn of the twentieth century...Cézanne is credited with "paving the way for the emergence of twentieth-century modernism, both visually and conceptually. In retrospect, his work constitutes the most powerful and essential link between the ephemeral aspects of Impressionism and the more materialist, artistic movements of Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, and even complete abstraction." ... READ MORE
The 14 best pieces ever written for piano
The 14 best pieces ever written for piano
POSTED SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
Classic FM has pulled together videos for their top 14 works for piano - embedding all the videos on a single web page...READ
La Serenissima - An Homage to Venice
La Serenissima - An Homage to Venice
Venice through the eyes of painters, writers, composers, and film makers
Venice through the eyes of painters, writers, composers, and film makers
POSTED SEPTEMBER 28,2018
Venice is my favorite city. There is no other like it. The ever-changing light, the canals and bridges, the churches and palaces, the history, the timeless cultural works, the sheer engineering marvel that it is...all combine to make Venice the most intriguing as well as the most beautiful city of all. Venice existed as a sovereign state for a millennium between the 8th and 18th centuries. During a time when most of the world was ruled by kings, tsars, and emperors, Venice was a republic. Notable artistic achievements during this period include the paintings of the Venetian school (15th to 18th century) and the development of the opera form of entertainment (17th century).
The outstanding characteristic of Venetian painting through the centuries has been "a love of light and colour." Gombrich writes of the beginnings of the Venetian school in "The Story of Art": "The atmosphere of the lagoons, which seems to blur the sharp outlines of objects and to blend their colors in a radiant light, may have taught the painters of this city to use color in a more deliberate and observant way than other painters in Italy had done so far." Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto are some of the most renowned Venetian painters. Read more...
The Spanish Grand Masters: Velázquez, El Greco, Goya
The Spanish Grand Masters: Velázquez, El Greco, Goya
POSTED OCT 10, 2018
Before Picasso, Dalí, and Miró burst on the scene in the twentieth century, Spain had a rich artistic tradition. Diego Velázquez, "El Greco", and Francisco Goya are the most renowned of these earlier painters - a triumvirate of Grand Masters whose work extends from the late Renaissance through the Romantic period. While their paintings are exhibited in museums around the world, the Prado in Madrid, which celebrates its bicentennial next year, has a great collection of their paintings...Read more...
A 'very premature' 21st century literary canon and PBS viewers choose America's favorite novel
A 'very premature' 21st century literary canon and PBS viewers choose America's favorite novel
POSTED OCTOBER 23, 2018
Looking for something to read? The September 17 issue of New York magazine had an article on the best books, so far, of the 21st century....Simultaneously and coincidentally, PBS was conducting its "Great American Read" event, in which they asked their viewers to vote for their favorite books from a list of 100...READ MORE
How Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
How Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
Part I: From Cezanne to Cubism
Part I: From Cezanne to Cubism
POSTED NOVEMBER 1, 2018
It seems arbitrary that the greatest painters of the late 19th century are referred to as the Post-Impressionists. Granted, they did come after the Impressionists and their art was a response to that enormously influential movement. More than this, though, they sowed the seeds for the modern art movements of the 20th century. The work of the most renowned of these painters - Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin - ultimately led to Expressionism, Cubism and various forms of Primitivism* and Symbolism. Each of these great painters of the late 19th century had his individual goals for his works. They were not content to reproduce nature nor were they concerned with the exact representation of objects....READ MORE
How Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
How Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
Part II: From Van Gogh to Expressionism:
Part II: From Van Gogh to Expressionism:
"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."- Vincent Van Gogh
"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."- Vincent Van Gogh
POSTED NOV 5, 2018
Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a Dutch vicar and a deeply religious person. He had worked for several years as a lay preacher in England and Belgium. Impressed with the work of Millet and his social message and introduced to the Impressionists by his brother Theo, he took up painting in 1881...Like Cezanne, Van Gogh was "not mainly concerned with correct representation. He used colors and forms to convey what he felt about the things he painted, and what he wished others to feel."* In a letter to Theo, he describes what today's psychologists would call a state of flow: "...the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without being aware of working...and the strokes come with a sequence and coherence like words in a speech or a letter." ... READ MORE
How Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
How Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin inspired 20th century art
Part III: From Gauguin to Primitivism and Symbolism
Part III: From Gauguin to Primitivism and Symbolism
POSTED NOV 20, 2018
Neither Cezanne, in his quest for a new harmony, nor Van Gogh, in his search for a new message, posed as revolutionaries; they did not want to shock complacent critics...This was not the case with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), reflected in his statement that "All art is either revolution or plagiarism."
Gauguin had become convinced that Western art was in danger of becoming slick, of consisting of techniques that could be learned to produce certain effects. As part of the Paris art scene in the 1870's, Gauguin's works were influenced by Impressionism. He gradually became disillusioned with Impressionism and began experimenting...READ MORE
The 16 Best Works for Violin
The 16 Best Works for Violin
POSTED DECEMBER 5, 2018
Classic FM has pulled together videos for their top 15 works for violin. They've embedded all the videos on a single web page along with a brief commentary on each piece...
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