Still Lifes "After Cezanne"

After learning about the life of French painter Paul Cezanne, the upper class group created a still life in his style using Neocolor II Aquarelle Artists' Crayons ("Neocolors" for short).

Neocolors are softer than colored pencils, denser than children's wax crayons, and extremely responsive to a wet brush. Wet and dry techniques can be combined in the same drawing. Because of their strong pigmentation, light colors cover dark colors and vice-versa.

I'm very pleased with the children's results. (Click image to enlarge)

 Hudson

 Wes

 Avery

“Today our sight is a little weary, burdened by the memory of a thousand images. And these museums, and the paintings in them! … And the exhibitions! … We no longer see nature; we see pictures over and over again. To see the works of God! That is what I am striving for."
          

     - PAUL CEZANNE 

Jules Borély, “Cézanne à Aix,” l’Art Vivant (Paris: 1926), quoted in Richard Kendall, ed., Cézanne by Himself (London: Macdonald Orbis, 1988)

"After Vincent"

The eight year olds finished their Van Gogh project. 

Francesca outdid herself.

Portraits

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French 1841 - 1919)
Portrait of Mademoiselle Legrand, circa 1875
Oil on canvas
32 x 23 1/2 inches

Philadelphia Museum of Art

CCS's budding artists will be studying and making portraits this Fall. This process will entail students looking at and discussing qualities of well-known portraits, working with a variety of media and techniques and eventually creating a self-portrait to display in the CCS Hallway Gallery. Moms and Dads will want to be on the look out for sales on picture frames this year.

Art Minute

The Sleeping Christ Child

Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
Born: August 25, 1609 – Died: August 8, 1685

For 2009, the USPS chose Sassoferrato’s Madonna and Sleeping Child as the image for its annual Christmas stamp.

Junglescapes

All ten third grade artists recently completed "Junglescapes", inspired by His great works and the "primitive" French artist, Henri Rousseau. Their artwork is currently displayed in the Front Hall Gallery.

Art Minute: Happy Birthday Pierre-Auguste . . .

RENOIR

Art Minute: Happy Birthday GRANT WOOD!

Grant Wood (February 13, 1891 – February 12, 1942) was an American painter, born in Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.

Wood painted American scenes and subjects during the first half of the 20th century in a simplified style reminiscent of American folk art. Like poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Wood wished to tell and preserve stories of the American Revolution.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Grant Wood, 1931
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

‎".....A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere."

From the poem, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860

Longfellow wrote his poem 88 years after the event when he found letters belonging to his grandfather, who had known Revere. Only a few people who had been children during the Revolution were still alive in 1860 when he wrote Paul Revere's Ride. Wood based his 1931 painting on Longfellow's heroic poem with no attempt to make it historically accurate.

Art Minute: Happy Birthday Norman Rockwell!

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States, where Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades.

"As a commercial illustrator, he was peerless, and many people’s objections to his work have to do with the pieties they imagine he wanted to force-feed everyone. His sin was finding the beauty in mainstream culture, and casting a calm cool approving gaze over the ordinary things ordinary people did". -James Lileks

Art Minute: Happy Birthday Édouard Manet!

Édouard Manet (23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.

Manet depicted many scenes of the streets of Paris in his works. The Railway was painted in 1873. The setting is the urban landscape of Paris in the late 19th century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter, Victorine Meurent, sits before an iron fence holding a sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap. Next to her is a little girl with her back to the painter, who watches a train pass beneath them.

Le Chemin de fer
(The Railway)
Oil on canvas
1873
National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, United States)
Art Renewal Center

Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which "boldly stretches across the canvas." The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus. The traditional convention of deep space is ignored.

Historian Isabelle Dervaux has described the reception this painting received when it was first exhibited at the official Paris Salon of 1874: "Visitors and critics found its subject baffling, its composition incoherent, and its execution sketchy. Caricaturists ridiculed Manet's picture, in which only a few recognized the symbol of modernity that it has become today".

The critical resistance that did not abate until near the end of his career. Although the success of his memorial exhibition and the eventual critical acceptance of the Impressionists—with whom he was loosely affiliated—raised his profile by the end of the 19th century, it was not until the 20th century that his reputation was secured by art historians and critics.

Manet's disregard for traditional modeling and perspective made a critical break with academic painting's historical emphasis on illusionism. This flaunting of tradition and the official art establishment paved the way for the revolutionary work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Manet also influenced the path of much 19th- and 20th-century art through his choice of subject matter. His focus on modern, urban subjects—which he presented in a straightforward, almost detached manner—distinguished him still more from the standards of the Salon, which generally favored narrative and avoided the gritty realities of everyday life. Manet's daring, unflinching approach to his painting and to the art world assured both him and his work a pivotal place in the history of modern art.

Art Minute: Happy Birthday Paul Cezanne!

Born in Aix-en-Provence, France on Jan. 19, 1839, French painter, Paul Cezanne, was one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists, whose works and ideas were influential in the aesthetic development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, especially Cubism. Cézanne's art, misunderstood and discredited by the public during most of his life, grew out of Impressionism and eventually challenged all the conventional values of painting in the 19th century through its insistence on personal expression and on the integrity of the painting itself. He has been called the father of modern painting.

Paul Cézanne, French (1839–1906)

Maison Maria with a View of Château Noir
c. c. 1895

Oil on canvas
, 25-5/8 x 31-7/8 in. 

Kimbell Art Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas


Provençal buildings with stucco walls and red-tiled roofs—often, as here, observed from a road turning into the picture—formed one of Cézanne’s favorite subjects.


By the late 1870s, Cézanne had devised his hallmark manner of applying color in short parallel strokes, no differently for objects than for empty space. Here the distinctive way in which the trees are rendered with jagged broken lines, along with the density of the sky, relates stylistically to paintings that he made in 1895 at a quarry near the Château Noir.

It was at the Château Noir, an unfinished and abandoned nineteenth-century building complex in the Gothic style, visible in the right background of the Kimbell painting, that Cézanne stored his art supplies beginning in 1887. 

Landscapes such as this, in which Cézanne shows corners of rural France with simple domestic buildings, were to be a major source of inspiration for Braque and Picasso, and by extension for Cubism and early twentieth-century art. -Notes from the Kimbell's web page




On a sunny day last October, CCS's upper grade students traveled to Ft. Worth and were fortunate to see this Cezanne painting during our tour of the Kimbell's permanent collection.

(Both photos were taken in the natural light diffused into the space by a series of baffles. Carter Wiseman, author of Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said that "the light in the Kimbell gallery assumes an almost ethereal quality, and has been the distinguishing factor in its fame ever since." So very true.)

Art Minute: Happy Birthday John Singer Sargent!

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
John Singer Sargent
Tate Gallery, London, England
68.50 inch wide x 60.50 inch high

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era, as well as a gifted landscape painter and water colorist. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents.

Sargent studied in Italy and Germany, and then in Paris under Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran.

Turner to Monet Exhibit Opening in Austin

Claude MONET 1840 France – 1926
Meules, milieu du jour [Haystacks, midday]

Tomorrow, the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin opens Turner to Monet. This selection of 40 nineteenth-century paintings includes works from Impressionist artists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, as well as British and American masters J.M.W. Turner, Gilbert Stuart and Asher B. Durand. Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin masterpieces are included as well.

You won’t ever see works by all these artists together again as there isn’t a single collection in the world that has this whole gamut of 19th century landscape art.

You're An Original

Click on an image to enlarge

CCS's budding artists will be studying and making portraits this Fall. This process will entail students looking at and discussing qualities of well-known portraits, working with a variety of media and techniques and eventually creating a self-portrait to display in the CCS Hallway Gallery. Moms and Dads will want to be on the look out for sales on picture frames this year.


Before Drawing, Seeing

I can explain to someone exactly how to draw a circle, but if I place a circle before them and ask them to draw it and they draw a square… well, that is all about seeing and not drawing. The ability to see, and after that the ability to render what you see… that has to be developed. For most that means a lot of drawing and a lot of looking.

The ability to see doesn’t spring up overnight, and I often tell eager young artists they have about 500 or so bad drawings in them they have to draw out first before they start noticing the subtle things that hide inside the human face.

Every building, no matter how complex, starts out with a foundation and framework. Look at this simple drawing:




Place these shapes in their proper relationship, and you have a human face. It really is that simple. Drawing the shapes accurately, so they recognizably represent the subject’s features, is the basis for a good likeness. Beyond that is nothing but details… things like dimples, wrinkles, eyelashes, cheekbones, etc. They are the decor to your building… the millwork, furniture and drapery that makes the place unique and filled with life. Without the strong foundation, however, it can all come tumbling down.

The Young Schoolmistress
probably c.1735-6
Jean-Siméon Chardin
 (1699 - 1779)
The National Gallery, London

In closing, Jean-Siméon Chardin’s painting "The Young Schoolmistress" inspires a meditation on learning and hopefully leads the child to ask God, “Help me to listen to everybody who is good and wise and not think that I already know everything.”

Oh, The Places You'll Go in Art!

* You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go.

* You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

* I'm sorry to say so
But, sadly it's true
That bang-ups and hang-ups
Can happen to you.

* On and on you will hike, And I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up of course, as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go.

So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
And remember that Life’s a great balancing act.

Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

* Will you succeed?
Yes you will indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

- Dr. Seuss

Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, wrote and illustrated dozens of children’s books and other media. His well-known images we’ve all grown to love were often inspired by his father, a zookeeper, who would send him horns, antlers, and other sundry animal parts.

Whether someone is out to convince you of lies or truth, keep your eyes and ears open. Do a little research and you’ll be okay. As it is with everything in life, you can’t be fooled by what they’re selling unless you’re buying. Learning about artists, looking at works of art and making all kinds of your own art will help you decide for yourself what the word “art” means.

Oh, and before I forget, be prepared to make big messes and "never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left."

Pissarro, French Impressionist Painter

Camille Pissarro. Landscape at Chaponval. 1880. Oil on canvas.

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France. Source: Olga's Gallery

"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." ~ Camille Pissarro (1830-1903, French Impressionist painter)

Links to Famous Works of Art

1. Henri Matisse
2. Paul Cezanne
3. Raphael
4. Michelangelo
5. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
6. Edgar Degas
7. Claude Monet
8. Illuminated Manuscripts
9. Georgia O'Keeffe
10. Vincent Van Gogh
11. John Singer Sargent
12. Fra Angelico
13. Saints in Art (various artists)
14. Madonna and Child (various artists)
15. Biblical Art (various artists)
16. Marc Chagall
17. Still Life (various artists)
18. Gustave Caillebotte - French
19. Portraits
20. Fiber Arts (textiles, weaving, etc.)
21. Ceramics
22. Illustration
23. Leonardo Da Vinci
24. Images of Christ in art
25. The Annunciation in Christian Art
26. Grant Wood
27. Thomas Hart Benton
28. Camille Pissarro
29. William Blake
30. LANDSCAPES
31. Children

Video on block printing