Sunday, July 28, 2013

Module 11 Video Blog


1.)
            The reason I chose the first video Matisse and Picasso was because I was interested in learning more about the artist Martisse.  I also wanted to see the similarities and differences between both artists.

2.)
         There are several important concepts I learned from the video entitled Matisse and Picasso.  This video served as a comparison between the two artists Matisse and Picasso, and the differences were clearly obvious.  Matisse was a serene, self-indulgent father figure.  He was deliberate, rational and very French in the way he organized his thoughts.  In 1917 he finds the light he wants to paint in Nice, France.  By 1930, he traveled to America where he was welcomed with the Carnegie Prize, the Nobel of the art world.  He works on the clock on a regular schedule, and often wondered where his inspiration would come from. 
         Picasso was the eternal adolescent and fiery primitive.  He was a worker, impulsive and immerses himself in his painting.  In 1912, he invents the first collage, which is at the forefront of cubism.  He parodies his work in order to provoke Matisse, and also it distracts him from his wife with whom he hates.  He did not travel, but worked in solitude in his studio.  He worked at night when he is as close as possible to the unconscious.  Three fourths of the content of Picasso’s paintings di don’t exist outside the paintings, his inspiration came from life.
            Although these two artists share many differences, they also had some shared characteristics.  For example, both broke with tradition with the establishment.  They also served as influences on each other.  Picasso uses lines borrowed from Matisse, and later Matisse borrows subjects, color, or lines from Picasso.  By 1945, London hosted an exhibition of paintings by Picasso and Matisse.  In 1948, both Matisse and Picasso moved to the south of France. 

            There were several important concepts from the video The Mystical North: Spanish Art from the 19th Century to Present.  Northern Spain has produced some of the world’s most celebrated artists including, Picasso, Goya, and Antoni Gaudi.  Goya foreshadowed modern painting with his dark political consciousness.  He was often referred too as the father of modern art, he left 80 etchings of war that reveal his dark political consciousness.  He was completely deaf, focusing his artistic vision on death, the wrath of God, and man’s inhumanity to man.  He isolates himself in a house whose walls he leaves his infamous black paintings of witches, violence and devil worship.
            Antonin Gaudi was an architect that exemplified Barcelona’s spirits of exuberance.  This can be seen in his work in Park Guell.  Unlike Goya, who rejected religious, Gaudi clung to the certainties of Spain’s Catholic part.  Gaudi’s Casa Mila earned the name La Pederea because it series of curvy cave-like balconies looked like a stone quarry.  This movement towards the primitive is similar to Henry Moore’s abstract monumental bronzes.  In 1997, a new building in the north of Spain broke with the past and ushered in a new form of architecture and a new future for Spanish art.   Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a Picasso-inspired monument of Spain’s past and future.

3.)
            Both videos relate to the readings in some ways.  The readings cover a majority of what was said in the videos, however the videos offer a much broader prospective on both topics.  For example, the first video offers a great comparison between two artists Picasso and Matisse.  The second video also gives a great comparison of different Spanish artists and their effects on modern art.

4.)
            I really enjoyed both of the videos.  I think they both offered a vast amount of information that I had not learned before in this class or in other art classes before.

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