Ancient Greece was one of the models for Western Civilization. Their artwork remains compelling after thousands of years.
Vatican Amphora by Exekias “Made by Exekias, an Ancient Greek painter and potter, the amphora depicts Achilles and Ajax, though fully dressed in their body armor and holding spears, playing a board game, probably a variant of backgammon or checkers. The amphora, on display at the Vatican Museums, showcases Exekias’ talent as an artist.”
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French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) has been called both the last Old Master and a precursor to Modern art. In 2018 New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted exhibits of Delacroix’s paintings and drawings.
“The last great artist who was not a modernist, Delacroix synthesized very complex visual and verbal traditions in stunning works that, by summarizing the old master European worldview, open the way to modernism. Political and artistic transitions are tricky to deal with — but his handling of this transition was exemplary.”
Eugène Delacroix “Self Portrait in Green Vest” 1837
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Peter Doig ” Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror)” oil on canvas 76.7″ x 106.3″ 1999
Peter Doig is a contemporary painter who I was very interested in at one time – until I discovered he uses a projector to create his art. I have strong feelings against this practice, as I wrote about in an earlier piece, The Image Morgue:
“Projector artists. Artists who cheat themselves and their audience by projecting an image onto their canvas and doing a paint-by-numbers routine to create their works. Artists like this have reduced themselves to a mere cog in a mechanical reproduction process, not creating, but taking dictation from their gadgets. They let their tools make their discoveries for them. It is an inferior mode of creation.
“If you’re an artist, do your own rendering.”
Still, Doig has done wonderous things with color and the handling of the paint. which is why I continue to enjoy his work. He can evoke beauty.
It’s estimated Doig’s 1999 painting Country-Rock (Wing-Mirror) will be setting some auctions records.
“In 1972, sixteen-year-old Berg Johnson – a self-anointed ‘Caretaker of Dreams’ – painted a rainbow over the grey façade of a roadside underpass on the outskirts of Toronto. Johnson was inspired by the memory of a friend, Sigrid, who had tragically died in a car accident nearby. He would often complain to her that people in Toronto ‘never looked up’ and following her death he wanted to do something to make people smile.
“It is Johnson’s rainbow tunnel, just off Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway, that we glimpse as if from the passenger seat of a passing car in Peter Doig’s Country-rock (wing-mirror), 1999. This mysterious landscape is distinctly Doig: characterised by his trademark otherworldliness and capturing the familiar ennui of such peripheral spaces.
“Every time a major landscape by Doig is offered at auction it represents an important market moment: only last year, Swamped, 1990, established a new artist record of US$39 million. Replete with mystery and intrigue, Country-rock (wing-mirror)will be a highlight of Sotheby’s Hong Kong Contemporary Evening Auction this autumn, the most significant work by Doig to be offered at auction in Asia.”
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Art is not an American male priority. With our focus on responsibility and practicality, art might seem frivolous. It’s considered a hobby, therapy, good for the kids. We have little sense of its potential power.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), nicknamed Tintoretto, was an inventive and prolific painter. He had more Modernist approach to art and business than many of his Renaissance colleagues. The Old Masters still have much to teach us about painting.
“Jacopo Tintoretto was without a doubt the prodigy of sixteenth-century Venice. His bold brushwork and innovative, rapid technique inspired countless artists—from Rubens and Velasquez to Delacroix and Manet. His compelling storytelling and animated compositions have propelled him as the most prominent religious narrative painter. It further set him apart from Titian’s subtle and sensual art and from Veronese’s diligently colored and orderly canvases. Yet, art history started to value his work late into the twentieth century.”
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Art is for everyone, but not everyone is an artist.
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
I was first exposed to Giorgio Morandi ((July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) in a used art book I picked up somewhere. It was a compilation, with one small art image and a brief artist bio on each page.
I read of an Italian painter who focused on still lifes of boxes and bottles on a small shelf in his studio. Even with just a small reproduction of one of Morandi’s works, I knew I was looking at a magical kind of painter.
Morandi’s deceptively simple, quiet pictures are powerful, masterly examples of painting. He fulfilled the Modernist philosophy that the craft of how a thing is done is the true subject, no matter what is depicted.
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi“Still Life (1946)”
Giorgio Morandi“Still Life (1957)”
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I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
Chilean artist Roberto Matta (1911-2002) was the last of the Surrealists associated with the original movement, as organized by André Breton. I’ve always loved Matta’s wild science fiction vibe.
The Art Institute of Chicago has a selection of Matta’s work from their collection posted on their website.
I don’t fundraise off of my blog. I don’t ask for Patreon or Paypal donations. If you’d like to support the Remodern mission, buy abook. Or a painting.
THE REMODERN REVIEW 