Caravaggio, Vincent van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Georges de la Tour - Essay Example

AS level Personal Investigation Introduction Artists throughout the centuries have used light to create images and imply moods. Painting with full command of color is a goal of most artists. With some insight into the characteristics of color, and some experimentation, one can soon paint with greater confidence and skill. For example, George de la tour used the technique of Chiaroscuro which is the effect of using light source to boldly contrast light and shadow. He used almost an almost pointilistic technique to produce the varying hues of both dresses in his master piece "The Newborn." All these people were unique in their own ways. Nature is an amazing source of inspiration for all. As rightly quoted by Debra Hurd; "A very ordinary scene can be perceived differently when painted with a bit of exaggerated colour and an awareness of light." 1 Georges de la Tour The paintings of La Tour's maturity are marked by a startling geometric simplification of the human form and by the depiction of interior scenes lit only by the 1 Debra Hurd. [Source: www.debrahurd.com] glare of candles or torches. His religious paintings done in this manner have a monumental simplicity and a stillness that expresses both contemplative quiet and wonder. The chronology and authenticity of some works attributed to him are still debated. Georges de la Tour used two kinds of lighting in his pictures. One was natural lighting, where people were illuminated from above with cool white light--like the painting reproduced with this article. The other kind of lighting he used was for nighttime pictures. They were called "nocturnes." The light for these pictures came from a single source, such as a fire or a candle. Georges de la Tour is considered to be a follower of Caravaggio due to his dependency on specific elements of the Caravaggesque style. Most notably the use of chiaroscuro and tenebristic techniques. In his interpretation of those certain stylistic qualties, however, Georges was unique in his design and composition, and presented an entirely new way of looking at common realistic works of art. "Georges de la Tour is classed as a realist. Realist he is in that his subjects, predominantly if not exclusively religious, are represented in terms of "real" life, often the life of his own country-town and surroundings in Lorraine. But he avoided naturalism; rather, he chose to simplify, modelling his forms by marked contrasts of light and shade, and using large volumes and severe lines, with great selective economy of detail" (Furness 70, 1996). 2 George de la Tour's attention to mood is a predominant quality that pervades his works. The paintings, especially the night scenes, have an almost meditative or pensive quality about them. Though the subject matter may, at times, be rather ambiguous, the spirituality communicated through the mood diminishes the importance of deciphering what scene we're looking at. Rather, the focus is on the way the painting makes us, as the viewer, feel through simple observation. A visual element that helps the viewer to focus on the scene before them is achieved through the absence of a background in the scenes. George De La Tour's sparsely populated pictures almost always represent scenes that take place nowhere, if they are judged by the almost complete absence of scenery. The boundaries of the settings are, nevertheless, delineated. There appear to be walls, but they have no texture and the colour is not descriptive. Georges de la Tour's works can be distinguished most especially through the unique use of lighting in his nocturnal scenes. The paintings are lit with a candle, a nightlight, or a torch, which are sometimes visible or are, at other times, hidden behind a figure's hand or another object. As for his less numerous and less popular daylight scenes, the figures are rendered with an acute eye to detail and a simplicity within the scene that is not found in the works of any other artist at the time. In examining various 2 "The Realism of Georges de la Tour" Furness 70, 1996. examples his oeuvre, both daylight and nocturnal scences, it is quite easy to see the elements of his style come to fruition. It is also the best way to understand the unique qualities of his artistic genius as they presented themselves in scenes of very different subject matter from varying years of his career. In his masterpiece, The new-born child, there is no explicit religious symbolism--simply a woman and her child and an attendant, observed in static calm in the warm, steady glow of the candle flame with utterly cool detachment--yet it is one of the fullest records of the miracle of birth, human or divine, ever painted. The light is used not so much to model in three dimensions as to delineate the forms sharply against a dull, darkling background. An almost sordid subject is treated with an abstract transfiguring stillness. The characteristics that impress at once in Georges de la Tour's work are grandeur of form and nobility of spirit: they are the basic qualities of his style. It is comparatively easy to isolate the elements of them; difficult indeed to define the creative power that combined them, which was the genius of the man himself. The elements are these specialised kind of lighting founded on the Tenebrist method that was developed by Caravaggio and carried on by his followers; a first principle of which was, insistence on the value of shadow--even darkness--as well as of light, the one enveloping, the other revealing, with the emphasis of contrast. It has been said that "the seventeenth century found a beauty in the darkness that swallows up form". This use of chiaroscuro Georges de la Tour developed by his own methods to his own ends; giving, evidently, special study to the effects of different lights on colour; to the suitability of certain colours to certain lights, from the aesthetic and from the spiritual point of view; and to the appropriate use of both in relation to subject. Certainly colour had distinct psychological value, perhaps, too, mystical implications, in de la Tour's feeling; and colour, even, in pictures that are almost completely monochrome, is one of his most powerful means of expressing and communicating his feeling. It is also worth noting that Georges de La Tour never uses backgrounds in his paintings. In all his oeuvre, Georges de La Tour uses brown or russet as the dominant colors. One might think this could easily produce a certain monotony, but looking at his paintings makes us realize there are numerous browns, ochers, beiges, combinations of russet, of orange, all of which sing out in perfect unison. Nonetheless, in the middle of this beautifully conceived harmony, some of the colors are amazingly violent. In any case, Georges de La Tour never resorted to the harsh colors found in some of Caravaggio's paintings, colors as if freshly crushed. La Tour sought to achieve total harmony between expression, form, and color. In his paintings, La Tour always brings in one actor more alive than a human being: the play between shadow and light. This makes the painting vibrate like the spurts of a dying flame. Moreover, it allows a new range of shades: yellows. Further, it creates a "background mystery" of all that cannot be seen. The play of light and shade turns some of his personages into specters; it underscores both the uncertainties of life and its miraculous or supernatural aspects. Light plays a major role in Georges de La Tour's painting. Just as in Caravaggio's work, all is night and light, night and sun, night and flame. Caravaggio, however, never shows the source of his light: it comes from outside, from higher up; he portrays reality transcended. La Tour, on the other hand, always depicts the source of light within his works. Light is designated in his paintings, so that here the halo of light forming the center of the composition comes from the candle, and everything turns around this center of gravity. An unending palaver proceeds from one face to another, from the faces to the candle, from the hands to the faces, from misery to comfort, from well-being to decline, as if in an eternal cycle of questioning. CARAVAGGIO Caravaggio was an Italian painter. A series of large paintings on the life of St. Matthew established him as the most renowned and controversial painter in Rome of his era. Breaking with conventional formulas used in depicting saints, he used ordinary people as models and painted them with unforgiving realism; his inclination against tradition gave new meaning to the interpretation of traditional themes in religious painting. His use of tenebrism-dramatic, selective illumination of form out of deep shadow to heighten the emotional tension, focus the details, and isolate the figures-became the most outstanding feature of his style and a hallmark of the Baroque period. He had an enormous impact on painting throughout Europe. Caravaggio painted two pictures of the Supper at Emmaus, one in 1601 and the other probably five years later. The earlier, painted for Cariaco Mattai, now hangs in the National Gallery in London. The second Supper hangs in Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera. The difference between the two pictures is obvious. The first, the 'London' Supper, is bright, exciting, full of enthusiasm. The second, the 'Milan' Supper, is subdued, quiet, even somber in tone. The depictions of the body are quite different, not only in the case of the resurrected Jesus, but also in that of the other figures. Clearly we have two distinct interpretations of the Supper at Emmaus, and two interpretations of the resurrection appearance of Jesus. The two paintings are displayed side by side, and the contrast could not be more striking. The earlier painting is brightly lit from the left foreground, casting shadows of the standing figure onto the wall behind the table. The brightness lights up the table with its abundant feast, a still life in its own right. The moment of revelation is an expansive one: Christ's arm is stretched forward, the disciple to his right has his arms flung wide, the seated disciple to the left of the picture is pushing his chair back. This is revelation as a physical moment. In the 1606 painting, the mood is altogether different. The resurrected Christ is not the young man of the earlier painting, but an older figure of calm based on experience, offering a much smaller hand gesture. The painting is lit from behind, so that there is a large dark space unlit in the top left corner of the canvas. This dark empty space is a recurrent element in these later paintings. Where the earlier disciples are expanding outwards, the later figures are moving in, almost eavesdropping on an intimate moment. The faces are worldly, more experienced. Even the meal before them has shrunk to basic fare. What is most striking, seeing them together, is the way the composition of the later piece almost directly mirrors the composition of its predecessor. This is a new way of understanding the same theme, so that the revelation now becomes a psychological event, rather than a physical one. These paintings represent one of the truly breathtaking moments in art history, when a painter who had already revolutionised the art world around him came, in the words of one critic, "to revolutionise his own painting." His earlier works already show a modern painter seeking to represent a physical truth. They bristle with action and dynamism. These later works bring a darker psychological depth to that liveliness. They are fully-formed portrayals of life, and they are ambiguous, open to interpretation. There is nothing trite about Caravaggio's work, and it is this moral and physical complexity that strikes such a chord with a modern audience. The queues around the block represented not just a desire to see these paintings, but a desire to see something expressive of the complex truth of humanity. In his quest to depict the truth in his painting, Caravaggio made dynamic use of dramatic tension, of intimacy and violent motion. Most especially, he sought to portray in his figures a physical truth: his saints looked like urchins, like the people he saw around him. It is this representation of physicality that makes Caravaggio so strikingly contemporary. It involved breaking from the idealised images of religious experience that had prevailed throughout the previous century, and rejecting the Mannerism that was then dominant. Because of this "naturalism," Caravaggio suffered the ire of his contemporaries. His work developed along naturalistic lines, using ordinary people for the models in his large-scale religious and mythological scenes. His work aroused deep feelings. Although condemned by many, the influence of his innovation was already being celebrated. Caravaggio's distinctive qualities of clarity of design, intense light and a precise rendering of detail described in bright local colours are already apparent in his earliest works, principally of still-life subjects, painted after his arrival in Rome. Caravaggio's style consists of a rejection of idealization in favour of a seeming realism vividly depicted in contemporary costumes and settings. Solidly defined figures are represented with expressive and often violent gestures, in unusual and dramatically arresting groups composed within a shallow foreground space; his pictures are realized in a powerful chiaroscuro which emphasizes the three-dimensional form. His method of painting was regarded as revolutionary; instead of following the traditional procedure of working from drawings and sketches, he painted directly from the posed model on to the canvas, often making changes as he advanced. As a consequence, his works succeed in creating an immediate and sometimes startling effect on the beholder. Although by the middle of the 17th century Caravaggio's demonstrable influence had largely disappeared, he can be regarded as an ultimate source of inspiration for many artists of later generations. As rightly quoted; "Never before had an artist presented religious drama as contemporary life...nor had any earlier painter dared to break so dramatically with long established studio traditions, painting his figures from nature, directly onto the canvas, with complex effects of studio lighting. (Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: a life , 1998.) 3 Caravaggio's realism makes his religious art immediately accessible, and his pious characters are unambiguous exemplars for the devout. In his paintings of individual saints, Caravaggio used a dark background to isolate the figures, which focuses the viewer's attention entirely on the expressive emotional qualities of the saint. He directed strong light on the figure, which adds to the drama as the divine light reinforces the epiphany experienced by the saint. Caravaggio paintings were known for their realistic naturalism. However Caravaggio's heightened chiaroscuro brought high drama to his subjects. The emotional intensity that his realism brought combined with this high drama to make his paintings, what can be called, a static performance. VINCENT VAN GOGH Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch draughtsman and painter, classified as a Post-Impressionist. Vincent van Gogh had such a profound influence on art that, over 100 years later, he's still one of the most popular and inspiring artists. Vincent van Gogh was a very prolific artist: some 870 oil paintings, 1,035 drawings, and 150 watercolours have survived. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most 3 Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: a life , 1998 popular and most expensive pieces. Van Gogh has been acknowledged as a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism and has had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists, and with a line that continues through to the Abstract Expressionism of Willem de Kooning and the British painter Francis Bacon. When he first devoted himself to painting full time, in 1880, Van Gogh used dark and gloomy earth colours such as raw umber, raw sienna, and olive green. Typical colours in Van Gogh's palette included yellow ochre, chrome yellow and cadmium yellow, chrome orange, vermillion, Prussian blue, ultramarine, lead white and zinc white, emerald green, red lake, red ochre, raw sienna, and black. Van Gogh painted very rapidly, with a sense of urgency, using the paint straight from the tube in thick, graphic brushstrokes . In his last 70 days, he is said to have averaged one a day. He painted dark outlines around objects, filling these in with areas of thick colour. He knew that using complementary colours make each seem brighter, using yellows and oranges with blues and reds with greens. His choice of colours varied with his moods and occasionally he deliberately restricted his palette, such as with the sunflowers which are almost entirely yellows. In his own words; "To exaggerate the fairness of hair, I come even to orange tones, chromes and pale yellow ... I make a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky. Instead of trying to exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully." (Vincent van Gogh) Van Gough suffered with mental illness, and this is reflected in his style of intense color, distorted forms and a coarse brush. One of his most famous paintings, Starry Night, was painted in a windowless room in an insane asylum. Van Gogh's Impact on Art Vincent Van Gogh lived more then 115 years ago, and yet his artwork is still altering the way mankind views beauty, persona, individuality, and style in art. His thousands of paintings and drawings have various characteristics that have been copied by thousands and duplicated by none. Van Gogh's unique life has inspired millions to become active in art. In fact, what many people today consider to be the archetypical "artist persona" is largely a result of his influence. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is that artists continue to mimic the style that Van Gogh created over one hundred years ago. The impressionists and post impressionists of Vincent's time influenced him greatly after he moved to Paris in 1886. The bright new palette reigned heavily over Gogh's previous dark muted color scheme. Van Gogh's use of this new impressionist and post impressionist style altered not only his work, but also all of art history. Van Gogh had two periods one for almost half his life where he painted only sad and dark paintings, the other half where he painted bright pictures. Van Gogh's style of painting was to paint in blots of colorful paint. When the violent colors are next to each other, they trick the eye in a sensation of movement. He painted a variety of things: people, landscapes, and objects "Starry Night" is one of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous artworks. It is the picture of a town guarded by the pointed church steeple and tall cypress trees. The lines Van Gogh made are very thick. They appear to be painted over again. The shapes he used are mostly curved, such as the church. The textures are rough, it is particularly visible for the stars and the mountains. The colors he used were orange, yellow, green, purple, and white. The colors that are repeated most are black, orange and yellow. "Starry Night" looks balanced because it looks like the town weighs as much as the cypress trees. Van Gogh said; "It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done." Van Gogh made his paintings seem alive with color. The strength of feeling in his painting makes him one of the world's greatest artist. He is considered a post-Impressionist painter, his style quite different from that of the Impressionists. His work is heavily concerned with the expressionism characteristic of modern art. He was fascinated with color and its effects, and often experimented with different ranges of tone. In most of his paintings there is a strong presence of blue tones. In his correspondence, he often wrote of the importance of a balance between yellow and blue in his work. Van Gogh liked to experiment with different styles and palettes to suit the impression of each painting. It is possible, if not likely, that the profusion of yellow is present solely as part of his artistic style. Nonetheless, xanthopsia induced by digitalis or some other agent provides an interesting hypothesis to account for the predominance of yellow in van Gogh's various works. PABLO PICASSO Picasso's highly original style continuously evolved throughout his long career, expanding the definition of what art could be. During his lifetime, the artist went through different periods of characteristic painting styles. The Blue Period of Picasso lasted from about 1900 to 1904. It is characterized by the use of different shades of blue underlining the melancholic style of his subjects - people from the grim side of life with thin, half-starved bodies. His painting style during these years is masterly and convinces even those who reject his later modern style. During Picasso's Rose Period from about 1905 to 1906, his style moved away from the Blue Period to a friendly pink tone with subjects taken from the world of the circus. Picasso painted in many styles, including Cubism and Expressionism. He also sculpted. In cubism, he tried to show the dimensions of the objects in his paintings. When he painted in the classical style, his shapes were round and soft. In cubism, his shapes were square and hard. When Picasso painted, he had a blue period and a rose period. For about three years in his early twenties, he used mostly light blue colors in his paintings. The rose period came after the blue period. It began after he moved from Spain to France. Picasso painted people and things very differently than how they really looked. He painted people who had eyes and noses in the wrong places. Because he could work in multiple styles, Picasso became very famous. He used great lines and color in his paintings. Cubism is modern art made up mostly of paintings. The paintings are not supposed to look real. The artist uses geometric shapes to show what he is trying to paint. Early cubists used mainly grays, browns, greens, and yellows. After 1914, Cubists started to use brighter colors. Cubism was the beginning of the Abstract and Non-objective art styles. In Expressionist Art, the artist tries to express certain feelings about some thing. The artists that painted in this style were more concerned with having their paintings express a feeling than in making the painting look exactly like what they were painting. Picasso was not only a very prolific printmaker, but also a very diverse one in the use of a great variety of different techniques. He created lithographs, etchings, drypoints, lino cuts, woodcuts and aquatints. Always on the search for something new, he experimented a lot with these techniques. Some of Picasso's graphic works are combinations of several techniques. HENRI MATISSE Henri Matisse was one of the first painters to take an interest in "primitive" art. Matisse abandoned the palette of the Impressionists and established his characteristic style, with its flat, brilliant color and fluid line. His subjects were primarily women, interiors, and still lifes. His paintings are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail. History recalls Henri Matisse as one of the giants of twentieth-century art. Readily identified with the fauvist art style and later with paper cut-outs, Matisse continued experiments with color and line throughout his art career. He experimented with all of these mediums and some of his works were very unique and have become some of the most famous works of art in history, such as The Goldfish, and these paintings of his began to symbolize what modernism was. Matisse enjoyed looking into these different areas of art, and it allowed him to be different and creative with what he did. His style of painting, throughout the years, changed with the times and he experimented with these different styles so that he could find out what he really enjoyed, and what he felt expressed his feeling best. But he was known, also, as one of the leaders of Fauvism. Fauvism was a style of painting in France from 1898 until 1908. It used bright intense colors to create the sensation of an explosion upon the canvas. He always used color in bold patterns, using distinct colors that contrasted and blended nicely, to create unique works of art. He also used many different sorts of expressive abstraction, for example in, The Blue Nude. In it's thoughtfulness, steady development, benign lucidity, and wide range of historical sources, Matisse's work utterly refutes the notion that the great discoveries of modernism were made by violently rejecting the past. All the paintings that Matisse are considered as masterpieces. He was a genius and his works have inspired not only artistically, but also mentally. He was very ahead of his time and yet people never scoffed his work, but adored it. Many painters and sculptors followed in his footsteps and admired him and tried to emulate his works and style. His works have been remembered through the ages, which is a sign of a fabulous painter. His masterpieces are priceless works of art that will always be admired. He liked to do paintings with people because it made it easy for him to express his feelings about life. He especially liked to paint women, because he said they held the answer to the mystery of life. Matisse also did many pieces of art using cut paper. He was also a sculptor and an etcher. His works never gave off the feeling of loneliness. They always uplifting, positive images, and though he lived through some of the most traumatic political events in history, his works were always comforting. Matisse was meticulous in creating his art, and though he wanted it to be perfect, he often experimented with many different mediums to achieve the look he wanted. He was noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original raftsmanship. As a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but principally as a painter, Matisse is one of the best-known artists of the twentieth century. CONCLUSION Light is as useful to the artist as colour. Mastering color making it work so it contributes to painting success can be difficult for even the most experienced painter, and plunging ahead into a piece without a real plan for color and value can lead to disappointment and frustration. Direct observation is the best way to see and analyze the elements of color. Being creative is not merely being good at painting or singing or writing poems. It is the spark of the divine Creator that lies nascent within all of us. References Ahuja R.V. 'The New Era". Eastern Book Company. Lucknow. 2005. "Fine Art, Matisse" Lucidcafe.com Retrieved on December 16, 2006. [www.lucidcafe.com/library/matisse] "French, Spanish, and Dutch Baroque" Library.thinkquest.org Retrieved on December 16, 2006. [http://library.thinkquest.org/] "French Painting in the Seventeenth Century." Merot, Alain. Yale University Press. New Haven.1994. "Georges de la Tour, of Lorraine".S. M. M. Furness. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1949 "Georges de La Tour and His World." Conisbee, Philip. Yale University Press. New Haven. 1996. Ingo F. Walther, "Picasso", Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 1999, Koln ISBN 3-8228-6371-8 "Matisse Biography". Ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Retrieved on December 15, 2006. [http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/juliana/matisse/biography.] "PLASTIC FEATURES". Bergerfoundation.ch. Retrieved on December 17, 2006 [http://www.bergerfoundation.ch/LaTour/] "Paris exhibit sheds light on Georges de la Tour". Southcoasttoday.com Retrieved on December 16, 2006. [http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/] "Some Observations on Georges deLa Tour's Painting Practice." Gifford, E. Melanie, Claire Barry, Barbara Berrie, and Michael Palmer. 1996, 237-258 "The Shock of the New". Hughes, Robert. McGraw-Hill, 1990. Pp. 132-141. "Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night. A history of matte" Boime, Albert ISBN 3-634-23015-0 "Vincent Van Gogh by Mike Venizia" Kyrene.org Retrieved on December 16, 2006. 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