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This outline below is one that I have found very helpful. It is by Tony Bartolucci

How Shall We Then Live?
Francis Schaeffer
Began: June, 2006 | Finished November: 2006

IV. Chapter Four: The Reformation
A. Two Movements
The High Renaissance in the south and the Reformation in the north must be viewed side by side.
They dealt with the same problems, but gave completely different solutions.
B. Forerunners
1. John Wycliffe (1320-84)
2. John Huss (1369-1415)
Huss further developed Wycliffe’s views on the priesthood of the believer. Huss was promised safe
conduct to speak at the Council of Constance, but was betrayed and burned at the stake on July 6,
1415.
a. The Bohemian Brethren
Founded in 1457 by followers of Huss. There ideas were spread by their emphasis on music and
hymns as well as their doctrines.
3. Savonarola
He drew large audiences in Florence between 1494-98. He has hanged and his body burned in the
square before the Florence Town Square.
B. Reformers
1. Martin Luther (1483-1546)
a. His 95 Theses (Oct. 31, 1517)
2. John Calvin (1509-64)
3. Zwingli (led Zurich to break with Rome in 1523
a. Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 – this was political but did open the
door for a Protestant England
C. Different Perspectives
The north was entrenched with Reformation thought while the south waslooking to man as the final
answer to life. The south was following Thomas Aquinas’ view that the mind of man was not fallen.
Humanists believed that man could think his way to solving all of life’s questions and problems. We
see this philosophy alive and well today.
1. This is Not to Say that the Reformation was Blind to all Progress
They learned from the Renaissance but filtered it through a theistic worldview. “At its core, the
Reformation was the removing of the humanistic disortions which had entered the church.” [page
122]
D. How Humanistic Thought Showed Itself
1. Authority of the Church Made Equal to the Bible
2. Human Work was Added to the Work of Christ
3. After T. Aquinas Biblical Teaching and Pagan Thought were Synthesized
E. Erasmian Humanism
Erasmus only wanted partial reform. Farel disassociated himself from Erasmus because of this.
F. The Reformers Didn’t Have a “Nature vs. Grace” Problem
In their worldview there was meaning in the particulars and no universals vs. particulars dilemma.
Science and art were “set free” to operate under this worldview. Humanism, which focuses on the
individual, ends up leaving the individual meaningless. Bible = man made in God’s image.
1. The Rood Screen
In pre-reformation churches the people were separated from the altar by a high grill of iron or wood.
When reform came those screens were often removed and a Bible put in their place. Symbolic of sola
scriptura and the priesthood of every believer.
G. The Reformers and Art
They were not against art, but differentiated between cult images and genuine works of art that
exalted God. Many of the cult images were destroyed by their very donors who had come to faith
in Christ!
1. Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) Painted Luther and his Wife Many Times
2. The Reformation and Music
The Geneva Psalter was so lively that it was referred to as “Geneva jigs.” Luther was a superb
musician who placed a high priority on music in worship.
a. Reformation Composers
(1) Bach (1685-1750)
If there had been no Luther there would have been no Bach. Bach was a reformed believer who on
his score tributes to God such as “With the help of Jesus,” and “To God alone be the glory.”
(2) Handel (c. 1750)
3. Albrecht Durer
He was in the Netherlands in 1521. He heard a false rumor that Luther had been taken captive. In
fact, Luther’s friends had hidden him. Durer kept a diary in which he prayed that God keep Luther
safe (cf. pages 130-31). He wrote a letter to Spalatin in 1520 recommending Luther to him and
asking for the opportunity to “etch him in copper.” He also said that Luther has written more clearly
than anyone else in the past 140 years. He was probably thinking of John Huss (1369-1415). Durer
did many beautiful woodcuts and paintings.
4. Rembrandt (1606-69)
In 1663 he painted the “Raising of the Christ” for Prince Frederick Henry of Orange. A man in a blue
painter’s beret raises Christ on the cross. That man is Rembrandt himself.
To say that the Reformation depreciated or demeaned art is pure nonesense!
H. Jacob Burckhardt’s “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy”
In his work (1860) he pointed out a crucial difference between the Reformation in the north and the
Renaissance in the south. Freedom was introduced in both locations. Yet, in the south it went to
license whereas in the north it did not. The reason being that the south’s Renaissance humanism left
man with no way to being for meaning to the particulars of life and no absolutes in morals. In the
north there was freedom restrained by the absolute values of Scripture.

This outline below is one that I have found very helpful. It is by Tony Bartolucci

How Shall We Then Live?
Francis Schaeffer
Began: June, 2006 | Finished November: 2006

V. Chapter Five: The Reformation, Continued
A. The Secondary Effects of the Reformation
We must recognize that the Reformation was not a “Golden Era” and that the reformers and the
church (and culture) they were influencing was far from perfect. There was a positive influence that
went beyond the church to the culture, including the arts and politics.
1. Gradual Political Freedom
a. There was Freedom w/o Chaos (something never-before seen)
b. Martin Bucer (1491-1551) and his Influence on Calvin
Bucer was a leader of the Reformation in Strasbourg. He had strong constitutionalist ideas that
influenced John Calvin greatly over in Geneva. Such was the Presbyterian model of church
government carried over into state government, recognizing such things as the need for an absolute
standard (the Bible) as well as limitations on powers in light of the sinfulness of men.
2. Later Political Ramifications
a. Samuel Rutherford (1600-61)
Rutherford was a Scot who wrote “Lex Rex: Law is King” (1644). This was an example of one of
many positive contributions Scotland made on England. In Lex Rex Rutherford contended that a
government must be based on immutable law (Bible) so that we could have freedom w/o chaos which
would result if decisions were made arbitrarily by sinful men. The exercise of rule by one man, or a
group of men, or by the 51% vote was doomed to failure as the whims of men are tainted by sin.
There must be a foundational absolute, biblical law, which forms the immutable foundation.
Therefore, one single individual could have a say and be right even if the majority disagree.
Rutherford’s work had great influence on the US Constitution. This was mediated through two
sources: 1) John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian and only pastor to sign the Constitution. 2) John
Locke. Rutherford emphasized the ideals of govt. by consent, separation of powers and the right
of revolution–all based on a biblical foundation. Locke didn’t have this foundation and based his
views on empiricism. But empiricismleaves no roomfor inalienable human rights which are universal
and not based on experience. Locke wished the results of biblical Christianity w/o having the
foundation of it. Thomas Jefferson picked up on this secularized form.
3. Places where the Christian Ideal Fell Short
a. A Perverted View of Race and the Misuse of Wealth
(1) Race / Slavery
Aristotle called a slave “a living tool.” Many Christians believed this lie and viewed certain people
as less than human because of their sin. Slavery was universal, however, and practiced by many
cultures. But this was no excuse for “Christian” nations. It must be kept in mind that many who
called themselves Christian were not in fact Christian and that God used genuine believers to
eradicate the slave trade, among them John Wesley – 1703-91 (who preached against slavery), John
Newton – 1725-1807 (who was a slave trader who jettisoned his occupation and spoke against it upon
coming to faith in Christ), Thomas Clarkson – 1760-1846 (the son of a Church ofEngland pastor who
spoke out against slavery and greatly influenced Wilberforce), and William Wilberforce – 1759-1833
(who fought against slavery in England and didn’t see the fruit of his labor until he was on his
deathbed in 1833 when a bill was passed in England abolishing slavery).
The USA failed in that it took longer to address this issue and do away with it once and for all.
However, groups such as the Reformed Presbyterian Church decreed as early as 1800 that no slave
holder be admitted to their fellowship.
(2) Wealth
The Industrial Revolution was a high point in this failure. There were many benefits of the growth
of technology and industry, but all-too-often those in England and America failed to remember the
Bible’s emphasis on caring for the less fortunate. The slums in London grew during this time and
children and women were exploited (cf. America’s early factories).
VI. Chapter Six: The Enlightenment
A. England’s Bloodless Revolution
England stands in contrast to France in this regard because England had a reformation base and
France did not. Voltaire was in exile in England (1726-29) and was impressed. France could not
reproduce what happened in England due to France’s humanistic, enlightenment base. The result in
France was a bloodbath that ended with the rule of Napoleon (1769-1821).
B. The Utopian Dream of the Enlightenment
This dream can be summed up with 5 words: reason, nature, happiness, progress and liberty. The
Renaissance humanism had blossomed into the Enlightenment.
1. The Reformation was Antithesis of the Enlightenment
They stood for 2 different things and that’s why they had two different results.
a. The Enlightenment in France
If these men had a religion it was Deism. Even during the “Reign of Terror” they held to their
utopian dream that men and society were perfectible. Voltaire sketched out four stages of history
with his being the apex! Voltaire was a skeptic who illogically complained of God’s lack of
intervention during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
In June 1789 the French Revolution was at its height. The members of the National Assembly based
their constitution on a humanistic theory of rights. On August 26 of that year they issued the
Declaration of the Rights of Man. For France, man became what for America was a Supreme Being
(the Creator that the USA based their Declaration upon 13 years prior). America had a Reformation
base, France a humanistic one. It took two years for France to draft a constitution (1789-91). It
failed within a year, the result being the Second French Revolution and a bloodbath.
b. Parallels
The American Revolution parallels that of the bloodless English, while the French Revolution
parallels that of the later Russian Revolution (with Napoleon and Lenin parallel to one another).
2. Communism’s Ideals
For communists, socialism is a step toward the ideal of utopian communism. However, this utopian
ideal always leads to repression.
3. Humanism and Absolutes
Humanism has no way to say that anything is right or wrong. For them, the final thing that exists,
the impersonal universe, is silent and neutral about right and wrong. For example, Marx’s Manifest
of the Communist Partycalled marriage a part of capitalism, or “private prostitution.” The family was
minimized. Later, the state decreed a code of family laws that were needed for the time. They were
an historical absolute for a limited time in history, utilitarian, not moral, in purpose.

HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 4

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Featured artist is Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson: Family Resemblance | “Exclusive” | Art21

Tim Hawkinson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tim Hawkinson
Born	1960 San Francisco

Tim Hawkinson (born 1960) is an artist from the United States of America who mostly works as a sculptor.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Education
• 2Work
• 3Exhibitions
• 4Solo exhibitions
• 5References
• 6External links

Education[edit]

Hawkinson was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from San Jose State University; in 1989 he earned an MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Work[edit]

Hawkinson′s work is mostly sculptural, ranging in scale from minute to huge. His themes include his own body (although some of his work could be called self portraiture), music, and the passing of time, as well as his artistic engagement with material, technique, and process. Some of his pieces are mechanized (the mechanism usually fully on view), or involve sound. His 2005 sculpture Bear is a part of the Stuart Collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.

Hawkinson is renowned for creating complex sculptural systems through surprisingly simple means. His installation “Überorgan”—a stadium-size, fully automated bagpipe—was pieced together from bits of electrical hardware and several miles of inflated plastic sheeting. Hawkinson’s fascination with music and notation can also be seen in “Pentecost,” a work in which the artist tuned cardboard tubes and assembled them in the shape of a giant tree. On this tree the artist placed twelve life-size robotic replicas of himself, and programmed them to beat out hymns at humorously irregular intervals. The source of inspiration for many of Hawkinson’s pieces has been the re-imagining of his own body and what it means to make a self-portrait of this new or fictionalized body. In 1997 the artist created an exacting, two-inch tall skeleton of a bird from his own fingernail parings, and later made a feather and egg from his own hair. Believable even at a close distance, these works reveal Hawkinson’s attention to detail as well as his obsession with life, death, and the passage of time.

Exhibitions[edit]

Hawkinson has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including the Venice Biennale (1999), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, (2000), the Power Plant in Toronto, Canada (2000), the Whitney Biennial (2002), and the 2003 Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C. Tim Hawkinson resides in Los Angeles with his wife.

A 2009 exhibition of new works included sculptures crafted from eggshells and a life-sized motorcycle constructed out of feathers. It was on view from May 8 through July  4, 2009 at The Pace Gallery, New York (32 East 57th Street). Hawkinson has been represented by The Pace Gallery since 2005.

Solo exhibitions[edit]

• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. February 11 – May 29, 2005.^[1]
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art. June 26 – September 5, 2005.^[2]
• J. Paul Getty Museum. March 6, 2007 – September 9, 2007
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia. 2008

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ https://web.archive.org/web/20090110185148/http://whitney.org/www/exhibition/feat_hawk.jsp. Archived from the original on January 10, 2009. Retrieved January 17, 2009. Missing or empty |title= (help)
2. Jump up^ Tim Hawkinson—June 26–August 28, 2005. Lacma.org, retrieved February 20, 2011

• Lawrence Rinder. 2005, Tim Hawkinson (Whitney Museum of American Art)

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tim Hawkinson.

• The Pace Gallery
• Taking the Measure of the World Exhibition review by Ken Allan in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly
• Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century – Season 2 (2003).
• Doug Harvey’s LA Weekly review of Hawkinson’s Mid-Career Survey

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 96607078 LCCN: n96059244 ISNI: 0000 0001 1478 1539 SUDOC: 109473620 BNF: cb15123877z (data) ULAN: 500125533 RKD: 240543

Categories:

• 1960 births
• Living people
• Contemporary sculptors
• 20th-century American sculptors
• 21st-century American sculptors
• American male sculptors
• San Jose State University alumni
• Artists from San Francisco

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How Shall We Then Live?—Francis Schaeffer

Episode Three: The Renaissance
Key Terms

1. “Cultural transformation” always begins with the thinkers (philosophers and theologians). They develop ideas which influence the artists who depict the new ideas. These ideas are then picked by the politicians, lawyers, doctors, and wealthy businessmen. It then passes on to the educators who influence the students. The students return home and influence the common people. Cultures are thus usually transformed from the top down. The only exception was the Reformation which in many situations went from the bottom (i.e. the common man) to the top.
2. “Syncretism” is the attempt to combine different worldviews into one system. Many have tried to combine Christianity with pagan worldviews in order to make Christianity “relevant” or “modern.”
3. Examples:

• Parmenides + Heraclitus = Plato
• Gnosticism + Christianity = Arianism and Modalism
• Plato + Christianity = Augustine
• Aristotle + Christianity = Aquinas
• Leibnez + Hume = Kant
• Kant + Christianity = Barth
• Existentialism + Christianity = Kierkegarrd
• Marxism + Christianity = Liberation Theology
• Neo-Kantianism + Christianity = Dooyeweerdianism
• Greek humanism + Christianity = Molinism
• Process philosophy + Christianity = “Open View of God”

D. The flow of philosophic ideas has a certain pattern. This pattern can be traced in the
history of ideas.

• Plato: mind
• matter
• Aristotle: essence
• form
• Aquinas: grace
• nature
• Roman sacred
• Catholicism secular
• Rousseau: freedom
• nature
• Kant; noumenal
• phenomenal
• Barth faith
• facts
• modern: non-rational
• rational
• religion
• politics
• religion
• science

HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 4

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Featured artist today is Wassily Kandinsky

Composition VIII, 1923 

Composition VII (1913)

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky^[a] (/kænˈdɪnski/; 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist.

He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works.^[1] Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe‘s private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Artistic periods
  • 1.1Youth and inspiration (1866–1896)
  • 1.2Metamorphosis
  • 1.3Blue Rider Period (1911–1914)
  • 1.4Return to Russia (1914–1921)
  • 1.5Bauhaus (1922–1933)
  • 1.6Great Synthesis (1934–1944)
• 2Kandinsky’s conception of art
  • 2.1The artist as prophet
  • 2.2Artistic and spiritual theorist
• 3Theoretical writings on art
  • 3.1Concerning the spiritual in art
  • 3.2Point and Line to Plane
• 4Miscellaneous information
  • 4.1Art market
  • 4.2In popular culture
  • 4.3Exhibitions
• 5See also
• 6References
  • 6.1Notes
  • 6.2Books by Kandinsky
  • 6.3References in English
  • 6.4References in French
• 7External links

Artistic periods[edit]

Der Blaue Reiter (1903)

Kandinsky’s creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art.

Youth and inspiration (1866–1896)[edit]

Early-period work, Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula (1908)

Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, a tea merchant.^[2][3] His family comprised German aristocrats, and from his maternal side he also had Tatar origins, to which he ascribed the “slight Mongolian trait in his features”.^[4] Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics. Later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew. In 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them, he felt that he was moving into a painting. This experience, and his study of the region’s folk art (particularly the use of bright colours on a dark background), was reflected in much of his early work. A few years later he first likened painting to composing music in the manner for which he would become noted, writing, “Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”.^[5] Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968).

In 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck.^[6] He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own. That same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the impressionistic style of Haystacks; this, to him, had a powerful sense of colour almost independent of the objects themselves. Later, he would write about this experience:

That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me. I could not recognize it. This non-recognition was painful to me. I considered that the painter had no right to paint indistinctly. I dully felt that the object of the painting was missing. And I noticed with surprise and confusion that the picture not only gripped me, but impressed itself ineradicably on my memory. Painting took on a fairy-tale power and splendour.^[7]

— Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky was similarly influenced during this period by Richard Wagner‘s Lohengrin which, he felt, pushed the limits of music and melody beyond standard lyricism.^{[citation needed]}He was also spiritually influenced by Madame Blavatsky (1831–1891), the best-known exponent of theosophy. Theosophical theory postulates that creation is a geometrical progression, beginning with a single point. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles and squares. Kandinsky’s book Concerning the Spiritual In Art (1910) and Point and Line to Plane (1926) echoed this theosophical tenet. Illustrations by John Varley in Thought Forms (1901) influenced him visually.^[8]

Metamorphosis[edit]

In the summer of 1902, Kandinsky invited Gabriele Münter to join him at his summer painting classes just south of Munich in the Alps. She accepted, and their relationship became more personal than professional. Art school, usually considered difficult, was easy for Kandinsky. It was during this time that he began to emerge as an art theorist as well as a painter. The number of his existing paintings increased in the beginning of the 20th century; much remains of the landscapes and towns he painted, using broad swaths of colour and recognizable forms. For the most part, however, Kandinsky’s paintings did not feature any human figures; an exception is Sunday, Old Russia (1904), in which Kandinsky recreates a highly colourful (and fanciful) view of peasants and nobles in front of the walls of a town. Riding Couple(1907) depicts a man on horseback, holding a woman with tenderness and care as they ride past a Russian town with luminous walls across a river. The horse is muted while the leaves in the trees, the town, and the reflections in the river glisten with spots of colour and brightness. This work demonstrates the influence of pointillism in the way the depth of field is collapsed into a flat, luminescent surface. Fauvism is also apparent in these early works. Colours are used to express Kandinsky’s experience of subject matter, not to describe objective nature.

Perhaps the most important of his paintings from the first decade of the 1900s was The Blue Rider (1903), which shows a small cloaked figure on a speeding horse rushing through a rocky meadow. The rider’s cloak is medium blue, which casts a darker-blue shadow. In the foreground are more amorphous blue shadows, the counterparts of the fall trees in the background. The blue rider in the painting is prominent (but not clearly defined), and the horse has an unnatural gait (which Kandinsky must have known). Some art historians believe^{[citation needed]} that a second figure (perhaps a child) is being held by the rider, although this may be another shadow from the solitary rider. This intentional disjunction, allowing viewers to participate in the creation of the artwork, became an increasingly conscious technique used by Kandinsky in subsequent years; it culminated in the abstract works of the 1911–1914 period. In The Blue Rider, Kandinsky shows the rider more as a series of colours than in specific detail. This painting is not exceptional in that regard when compared with contemporary painters, but it shows the direction Kandinsky would take only a few years later.

From 1906 to 1908 Kandinsky spent a great deal of time travelling across Europe (he was an associate of the Blue Rose symbolist group of Moscow), until he settled in the small Bavarian town of Murnau. In 1908 he bought a copy of Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1909 he joined the Theosophical Society. The Blue Mountain (1908–1909) was painted at this time, demonstrating his trend toward abstraction. A mountain of blue is flanked by two broad trees, one yellow and one red. A procession, with three riders and several others, crosses at the bottom. The faces, clothing, and saddles of the riders are each a single color, and neither they nor the walking figures display any real detail. The flat planes and the contours also are indicative of Fauvist influence. The broad use of color in The Blue Mountain illustrates Kandinsky’s inclination toward an art in which color is presented independently of form, and which each color is given equal attention. The composition is more planar; the painting is divided into four sections: the sky, the red tree, the yellow tree and the blue mountain with the three riders.

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  Odessa Port, 1898, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

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  Akhtyrka, 1901, Lenbachhaus, Kunstarealm, Munich

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  Rotterdam Sun, 1906

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  Murnau, Dorfstrasse (Street in Murnau, A Village Street), 1908, Werner Merzbacher (de)Collection

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  Houses in Munich, 1908

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  Murnau, train & castle, 1909

Blue Rider Period (1911–1914)[edit]

See also: Der Blaue Reiter

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II), 1912, oil on canvas, 47 3/8 x 55 1/4 in. (120.3 x 140.3 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show.

Kandinsky’s paintings from this period are large, expressive coloured masses evaluated independently from forms and lines; these serve no longer to delimit them, but overlap freely to form paintings of extraordinary force. Music was important to the birth of abstract art, since music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the inner feelings of the soul. Kandinsky sometimes used musical terms to identify his works; he called his most spontaneous paintings “improvisations” and described more elaborate works as “compositions.”

In addition to painting, Kandinsky was an art theorist; his influence on the history of Western art stems perhaps more from his theoretical works than from his paintings. He helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (Munich New Artists’ Association), becoming its president in 1909. However, the group could not integrate the radical approach of Kandinsky (and others) with conventional artistic concepts and the group dissolved in late 1911. Kandinsky then formed a new group, the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) with like-minded artists such as August Macke, Franz Marc, Albert Bloch, and Gabriele Münter. The group released an almanac (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held two exhibits. More of each were planned, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 ended these plans and sent Kandinsky back to Russia via Switzerland and Sweden.

His writing in The Blue Rider Almanac and the treatise “On the Spiritual In Art” (which was released in 1910) were both a defence and promotion of abstract art and an affirmation that all forms of art were equally capable of reaching a level of spirituality. He believed that colour could be used in a painting as something autonomous, apart from the visual description of an object or other form.

These ideas had an almost-immediate international impact, particularly in the English-speaking world.^[9] As early as 1912, On the Spiritual In Art was reviewed by Michael Sadleir in the London-based Art News.^[10] Interest in Kandinsky grew apace when Sadleir published an English translation of On the Spiritual In Art in 1914. Extracts from the book were published that year in Percy Wyndham Lewis‘s periodical Blast, and Alfred Orage‘s weekly cultural newspaper The New Age. Kandinsky had received some notice earlier in Britain, however; in 1910, he participated in the Allied Artists’ Exhibition (organised by Frank Rutter) at London’s Royal Albert Hall. This resulted in his work being singled out for praise in a review of that show by the artist Spencer Frederick Gore in The Art News.^[11]

Sadleir’s interest in Kandinsky also led to Kandinsky’s first works entering a British art collection; Sadleir’s father, Michael Sadler, acquired several woodprints and the abstract painting Fragment for Composition VII in 1913 following a visit by father and son to meet Kandinsky in Munich that year. These works were displayed in Leeds, either in the University or the premises of the Leeds Arts Club, between 1913 and 1923.^[12]

• 

  The Cow, 1910

• 

  Study for Improvisation V, 1910

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  The Rider, 1911

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  Landscape With Two Poplars 1912

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  Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913

• 

  1913

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  Composition 6, 1913

• 

  Aquarell 6

Return to Russia (1914–1921)[edit]

The sun melts all of Moscow down to a single spot that, like a mad tuba, starts all of the heart and all of the soul vibrating. But no, this uniformity of red is not the most beautiful hour. It is only the final chord of a symphony that takes every colour to the zenith of life that, like the fortissimo of a great orchestra, is both compelled and allowed by Moscow to ring out.

— Wassily Kandinsky^[13]

From 1918 to 1921, Kandinsky dealt with the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in art education and museum reform. He painted little during this period, but devoted his time to artistic teaching, with a program based on form and colour analysis; he also helped organize the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow. In 1916 he met Nina Andreievskaya (she died in 1980), whom he married the following year. His spiritual, expressionistic view of art was ultimately rejected by the radical members of the Institute as too individualistic and bourgeois. In 1921, Kandinsky was invited to go to Germany to attend the Bauhaus of Weimar by its founder, architect Walter Gropius.

Bauhaus (1922–1933)[edit]

Kandinsky taught the basic design class for beginners and the course on advanced theory at the Bauhaus; he also conducted painting classes and a workshop in which he augmented his colour theory with new elements of form psychology. The development of his works on forms study, particularly on points and line forms, led to the publication of his second theoretical book (Point and Line to Plane) in 1926. His examinations of the effects of forces on straight lines, leading to the contrasting tones of curved and angled lines, coincided with the research of Gestalt psychologists, whose work was also discussed at the Bauhaus.^[14] Geometrical elements took on increasing importance in both his teaching and painting—particularly the circle, half-circle, the angle, straight lines and curves. This period was intensely productive. This freedom is characterised in his works by the treatment of planes rich in colours and gradations—as in Yellow – red – blue (1925), where Kandinsky illustrates his distance from the constructivism and suprematism movements influential at the time.

The two-meter-wide Yellow – red – blue (1925) of several main forms: a vertical yellow rectangle, an inclined red cross and a large dark blue circle; a multitude of straight (or sinuous) black lines, circular arcs, monochromatic circles and scattered, coloured checkerboards contribute to its delicate complexity. This simple visual identification of forms and the main coloured masses present on the canvas is only a first approach to the inner reality of the work, whose appreciation necessitates deeper observation—not only of forms and colours involved in the painting but their relationship, their absolute and relative positions on the canvas and their harmony.

Kandinsky was one of Die Blaue Vier (Blue Four), formed in 1923 with Klee, Feininger and von Jawlensky, which lectured and exhibited in the United States in 1924. Due to right-wing hostility, the Bauhaus left Weimar and settled in Dessau in 1925. Following a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin, until its dissolution in July 1933. Kandinsky then left Germany, settling in Paris.

• 

  Small worlds I, 1922

• 

  Circles in a Circle, 1923

• 

  On White II, 1923

• 

  Several Circles, 1926

• 

  Soft Hard, 1927

Great Synthesis (1934–1944)[edit]

Living in an apartment in Paris, Kandinsky created his work in a living-room studio. Biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines appear in his paintings—forms which suggest microscopic organisms but express the artist’s inner life. Kandinsky used original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.

This period corresponds to a synthesis of Kandinsky’s previous work in which he used all elements, enriching them. In 1936 and 1939 he painted his two last major compositions, the type of elaborate canvases he had not produced for many years. Composition IX has highly contrasted, powerful diagonals whose central form gives the impression of an embryo in the womb. Small squares of colours and coloured bands stand out against the black background of Composition X as star fragments (or filaments), while enigmatic hieroglyphs with pastel tones cover a large maroon mass which seems to float in the upper-left corner of the canvas. In Kandinsky’s work some characteristics are obvious, while certain touches are more discreet and veiled; they reveal themselves only progressively to those who deepen their connection with his work.^[15] He intended his forms (which he subtly harmonized and placed) to resonate with the observer’s soul.

• 

  Brown with supplement, 1935

• 

  Composition IX, 1936

• 

  Composition X, 1939

Kandinsky’s conception of art[edit]

The artist as prophet[edit]

Composition VII—according to Kandinsky, the most complex piece he ever painted (1913)

Writing that “music is the ultimate teacher,”^[16] Kandinsky embarked upon the first seven of his ten Compositions. The first three survive only in black-and-white photographs taken by fellow artist and friend Gabriele Münter. While studies, sketches, and improvisations exist (particularly of Composition II), a Nazi raid on the Bauhaus in the 1930s resulted in the confiscation of Kandinsky’s first three Compositions. They were displayed in the State-sponsored exhibit “Degenerate Art“, and then destroyed (along with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc and other modern artists).

Fascinated by Christian eschatology and the perception of a coming New Age,^[17] a common theme among Kandinsky’s first seven Compositions is the apocalypse (the end of the world as we know it). Writing of the “artist as prophet” in his book, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky created paintings in the years immediately preceding World War I showing a coming cataclysm which would alter individual and social reality. Having a fervent belief in Orthodox Christianity,^[18] Kandinsky drew upon the biblical stories of Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the whale, Christ’s resurrection, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the book of Revelation, Russian folktales and the common mythological experiences of death and rebirth. Never attempting to picture any one of these stories as a narrative, he used their veiled imagery as symbols of the archetypes of death–rebirth and destruction–creation he felt were imminent in the pre-World War I world.

As he stated in Concerning the Spiritual In Art (see below), Kandinsky felt that an authentic artist creating art from “an internal necessity” inhabits the tip of an upward-moving pyramid. This progressing pyramid is penetrating and proceeding into the future. What was odd or inconceivable yesterday is commonplace today; what is avant garde today (and understood only by the few) is common knowledge tomorrow. The modern artist–prophet stands alone at the apex of the pyramid, making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow’s reality. Kandinsky was aware of recent scientific developments and the advances of modern artists who had contributed to radically new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.

Composition IV and later paintings are primarily concerned with evoking a spiritual resonance in viewer and artist. As in his painting of the apocalypse by water (Composition VI), Kandinsky puts the viewer in the situation of experiencing these epic myths by translating them into contemporary terms (with a sense of desperation, flurry, urgency, and confusion). This spiritual communion of viewer-painting-artist/prophet may be described within the limits of words and images.

Artistic and spiritual theorist[edit]

Composition VI (1913)

As the Der Blaue Reiter Almanac essays and theorizing with composer Arnold Schoenberg indicate, Kandinsky also expressed the communion between artist and viewer as being available to both the senses and the mind (synesthesia). Hearing tones and chords as he painted, Kandinsky theorized that (for example), yellow is the colour of middle C on a brassy trumpet; black is the colour of closure, and the end of things; and that combinations of colours produce vibrational frequencies, akin to chords played on a piano. Kandinsky also developed a theory of geometric figures and their relationships—claiming, for example, that the circle is the most peaceful shape and represents the human soul. These theories are explained in Point and Line to Plane (see below).

Kandinsky’s legendary stage design for a performance of Mussorgsky‘s “Pictures at an Exhibition” illustrates his synaesthetic concept of a universal correspondence of forms, colors and musical sounds.^[19] In 1928 in the theater of Dessau Wassily Kandinsky realized the stage production of “Pictures at an Exhibition”. In 2015 the original designs of the stage elements were animated with modern video technology and synchronized with the music according to the preparatory notes of Kandinsky and the director’s script of Felix Klee.

During the studies Kandinsky made in preparation for Composition IV, he became exhausted while working on a painting and went for a walk. While he was out, Gabriele Münter tidied his studio and inadvertently turned his canvas on its side. Upon returning and seeing the canvas (but not yet recognizing it) Kandinsky fell to his knees and wept, saying it was the most beautiful painting he had ever seen. He had been liberated from attachment to an object. As when he first viewed Monet’s Haystacks, the experience would change his life.^{[citation needed]}

In another episode with Münter during the Bavarian abstract expressionist years, Kandinsky was working on his Composition VI. From nearly six months of study and preparation, he had intended the work to evoke a flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth simultaneously. After outlining the work on a mural-sized wood panel, he became blocked and could not go on. Münter told him that he was trapped in his intellect and not reaching the true subject of the picture. She suggested he simply repeat the word uberflut (“deluge” or “flood”) and focus on its sound rather than its meaning. Repeating this word like a mantra, Kandinsky painted and completed the monumental work in a three-day span.^{[citation needed]}

Theoretical writings on art[edit]

Kandinsky’s analyses on forms and colours result not from simple, arbitrary idea-associations but from the painter’s inner experience. He spent years creating abstract, sensorially rich paintings, working with form and colour, tirelessly observing his own paintings and those of other artists, noting their effects on his sense of colour.^[20] This subjective experience is something that anyone can do—not scientific, objective observations but inner, subjective ones, what French philosopher Michel Henry calls “absolute subjectivity” or the “absolute phenomenological life“.^[21]

Concerning the spiritual in art[edit]

Published in 1912, Kandinsky’s text, Du Spirituel dans l’art, defines three types of painting; impressions, improvisations and compositions. While impressions are based on an external reality that serves as a starting point, improvisations and compositions depict images emergent from the unconscious, though composition is developed from a more formal point of view.^[22] Kandinsky compares the spiritual life of humanity to a pyramid—the artist has a mission to lead others to the pinnacle with his work. The point of the pyramid is those few, great artists. It is a spiritual pyramid, advancing and ascending slowly even if it sometimes appears immobile. During decadent periods, the soul sinks to the bottom of the pyramid; humanity searches only for external success, ignoring spiritual forces.^[23]

Colours on the painter’s palette evoke a double effect: a purely physical effect on the eye which is charmed by the beauty of colours, similar to the joyful impression when we eat a delicacy. This effect can be much deeper, however, causing a vibration of the soul or an “inner resonance”—a spiritual effect in which the colour touches the soul itself.^[24]

“Inner necessity” is, for Kandinsky, the principle of art and the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. He defines it as the principle of efficient contact of the form with the human soul.^[25] Every form is the delimitation of a surface by another one; it possesses an inner content, the effect it produces on one who looks at it attentively.^[26] This inner necessity is the right of the artist to unlimited freedom, but this freedom becomes licence if it is not founded on such a necessity.^[27] Art is born from the inner necessity of the artist in an enigmatic, mystical way through which it acquires an autonomous life; it becomes an independent subject, animated by a spiritual breath.^[28]

The obvious properties we can see when we look at an isolated colour and let it act alone, on one side is the warmth or coldness of the colour tone, and on the other side is the clarity or obscurity of that tone.^[29]Warmth is a tendency towards yellow, and coldness a tendency towards blue; yellow and blue form the first great, dynamic contrast.^[30] Yellow has an eccentric movement and blue a concentric movement; a yellow surface seems to move closer to us, while a blue surface seems to move away.^[31] Yellow is a typically terrestrial colour, whose violence can be painful and aggressive.^[32] Blue is a celestial colour, evoking a deep calm.^[33] The combination of blue and yellow yields total immobility and calm, which is green.^[34]

Clarity is a tendency towards white, and obscurity is a tendency towards black. White and black form the second great contrast, which is static.^[31] White is a deep, absolute silence, full of possibility.^[35] Black is nothingness without possibility, an eternal silence without hope, and corresponds with death. Any other colour resonates strongly on its neighbors.^[36] The mixing of white with black leads to gray, which possesses no active force and whose tonality is near that of green. Gray corresponds to immobility without hope; it tends to despair when it becomes dark, regaining little hope when it lightens.^[37]

Red is a warm colour, lively and agitated; it is forceful, a movement in itself.^[37] Mixed with black it becomes brown, a hard colour.^[38] Mixed with yellow, it gains in warmth and becomes orange, which imparts an irradiating movement on its surroundings.^[39] When red is mixed with blue it moves away from man to become purple, which is a cool red.^[40] Red and green form the third great contrast, and orange and purple the fourth.^[41]

Point and Line to Plane[edit]

Points, 1920, 110.3 × 91.8 cm, Ohara Museum of Art

In his writings, Kandinsky analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting—the point and the line. He called the physical support and the material surface on which the artist draws or paints the basic plane, or BP.^[42] He did not analyze them objectively, but from the point of view of their inner effect on the observer.^[43]

A point is a small bit of colour put by the artist on the canvas. It is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and colour. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. It can be isolated or resonate with other points or lines.^[44]

A line is the product of a force which has been applied in a given direction: the force exerted on the pencil or paintbrush by the artist. The produced linear forms may be of several types: a straight line, which results from a unique force applied in a single direction; an angular line, resulting from the alternation of two forces in different directions, or a curved (or wave-like) line, produced by the effect of two forces acting simultaneously. A plane may be obtained by condensation (from a line rotated around one of its ends).^[45]

The subjective effect produced by a line depends on its orientation: a horizontal line corresponds with the ground on which man rests and moves; it possesses a dark and cold affective tonality similar to black or blue. A vertical line corresponds with height, and offers no support; it possesses a luminous, warm tonality close to white and yellow. A diagonal possesses a more-or-less warm (or cold) tonality, according to its inclination toward the horizontal or the vertical.^[46]

A force which deploys itself, without obstacle, as the one which produces a straight line corresponds with lyricism; several forces which confront (or annoy) each other form a drama.^[47] The angle formed by the angular line also has an inner sonority which is warm and close to yellow for an acute angle (a triangle), cold and similar to blue for an obtuse angle (a circle), and similar to red for a right angle (a square).^[48]

The basic plane is, in general, rectangular or square. therefore, it is composed of horizontal and vertical lines which delimit it and define it as an autonomous entity which supports the painting, communicating its affective tonality. This tonality is determined by the relative importance of horizontal and vertical lines: the horizontals giving a calm, cold tonality to the basic plane while the verticals impart a calm, warm tonality.^[49] The artist intuits the inner effect of the canvas format and dimensions, which he chooses according to the tonality he wants to give to his work. Kandinsky considered the basic plane a living being, which the artist “fertilizes” and feels “breathing”.^[50]

Each part of the basic plane possesses an affective colouration; this influences the tonality of the pictorial elements which will be drawn on it, and contributes to the richness of the composition resulting from their juxtaposition on the canvas. The above of the basic plane corresponds with looseness and to lightness, while the below evokes condensation and heaviness. The painter’s job is to listen and know these effects to produce paintings which are not just the effect of a random process, but the fruit of authentic work and the result of an effort towards inner beauty.^[51]

This book contains many photographic examples and drawing from Kandinsky’s works which offer the demonstration of its theoretical observations, and which allow the reader to reproduce in him the inner obviousness provided that he takes the time to look at those pictures with care, that he let them acting on its own sensibility and that he let vibrating the sensible and spiritual strings of his soul.^[52]

Miscellaneous information[edit]

Art market[edit]

In 2012, Christie’s auctioned Kandinsky’s Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8), a 1909 view of a man wielding a broadsword in a rainbow-hued village, for $23 million. The painting had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1960 and was sold to a European collector by the Volkart Foundation, the charitable arm of the Swiss commodities trading firm Volkart Brothers. Before this sale, the artist’s last record was set in 1990 when Sotheby’s sold his Fugue (1914) for $20.9 million.^[53] On November 16, 2016 Christie’s auctioned Kandinsky’s Rigide et courbé (rigid and bent), a large 1935 abstract painting, for $23.3 million, a new record for Kandinsky.^[54][55] Solomon R. Guggenheim originally purchased the painting directly from the artist in 1936, but it was not exhibited after 1949, and was then sold at auction to a private collector in 1964 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.^[55]

In popular culture[edit]

The 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation refers to a “double-sided Kandinsky” painting.^[56] No such painting is known to exist; in the 1993 film version of the play, the double-sided painting is portrayed as having Kandinsky’s 1913 painting Black Lines on one side and his 1926 painting Several Circles on the other side.^[57]

The 1999 film Double Jeopardy makes numerous references to Kandinsky, and a piece of his, “Sketch”, figures prominently in the plotline. The protagonist, Elizabeth Parsons (Ashley Judd), utilizes the registry entry for the work to track down her husband under his new alias. Two variations of the almanac cover of “Blue Rider” are also featured in the film.^[58]

In 2014, Google commemorated Kandinsky’s 148th birthday by featuring a Google Doodle based on his abstract paintings.^[59][60]

A picture-book biography entitled The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art was published in 2014. Its illustrations by Mary GrandPre earned it a 2015 Caldecott Honor.

His grandson was musicology professor and writer Aleksey Ivanovich Kandinsky (1918–2000), whose career was both focused on and centered in Russia.^[61][62]

Exhibitions[edit]

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum held a major retrospective of Kandinsky’s work from 2009-2010, called Kandinsky.^[63] In 2017, a selection of Kandinsky’s work is on view at the Guggenheim’s current exhibition, Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim.^[64]

See also[edit]

• Bibliothèque Kandinsky
• Goethe‘s Theory of Colours
• History of painting
• Kandinsky Prize
• List of Russian artists
• Russian avant-garde
• Thought-Forms (book)
• Wassily Chair
• Western painting

References[edit]

Note: Several sections of this article have been translated from its French version: Theoretical writings on art, The Bauhaus and The great synthesis artistic periods. For complete detailed references in French, see the original version at fr:Vassily Kandinsky

Books by Kandinsky[edit]

• Wassily Kandinsky, M. T. Sadler (Translator), Adrian Glew (Editor). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (New York: MFA Publications and London: Tate Publishing, 2001). 192pp. ISBN 0-87846-702-5
• Wassily Kandinsky, M. T Sadler (Translator). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover Publ. (Paperback). 80 pp. ISBN 0-486-23411-8. or: Lightning Source Inc Publ. (Paperback). ISBN 1-4191-1377-1
• Wassily Kandinsky. Klänge. Verlag R. Piper & Co., Munich
• Wassily Kandinsky. Point and Line to Plane. Dover Publications, New York. ISBN 0-486-23808-3
• Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80570-7

References in English[edit]

• John E Bowlt and Rose-Carol Washton Long. The Life of Vasilii Kandinsky in Russian art: a study of “On the spiritual in art” by Wassily Kandinsky. (Newtonville, MA.: Oriental Research Partners, 1984). ISBN 0-89250-131-6
• Magdalena Dabrowski. Kandinsky Compositions. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002). ISBN 0-87070-405-2
• Hajo Düchting. Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944: A Revolution in Painting. (Taschen, 2000). ISBN 3-8228-5982-6
• Hajo Düchting and O’Neill. The Avant-Garde in Russia.
• Will Grohmann. Wassily Kandinsky. Life and Work. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc., 1958).
• Thomas M. Messer. Vasily Kandinsky. (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1997). (Illustrated). ISBN 0-8109-1228-7.
• Margarita Tupitsyn, Against Kandinsky (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2006).
• Michel Henry: Seeing the Invisible. On Kandinsky (Continuum, 2009). ISBN 1-84706-447-7
• Julian Lloyd Webber, “Seeing red, looking blue, feeling green”, Daily Telegraph 6 July 2006.
• Sabine Flach, “Through the Looking Gass”, in: Intellectual Birdhouse (London: Koenig Books, 2012). ISBN 978-3-86335-118-2

References in French[edit]

• Michel Henry. Voir l’invisible. Sur Kandinsky (Presses Universitaires de France) ISBN 2-13-053887-8
• Nina Kandinsky. Kandinsky et moi (éd. Flammarion) ISBN 2-08-064013-5
• Jéléna Hahl-Fontaine. Kandinsky (Marc Vokar éditeur) ISBN 2-87012-006-0
• François le Targat. Kandinsky (éd. Albin Michel, les grands maîtres de l’art contemporain) ISBN 2-226-02830-7
• Kandinsky. Rétrospective (Foundation Maeght) ISBN 2-900923-26-3 ISBN 2-900923-27-1
• Kandinsky. Œuvres de Vassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) (Centre Georges Pompidou) ISBN 2-85850-262-5

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wassily Kandinsky.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Wassily Kandinsky

• Video remake of the stage production of “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Kandinsky in 1928 in Dessau, 2015.
• Wassily Kandinsky papers, 1911–1940. The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California.
• Discussion of Yellow – Red – Blue by Janina Ramirez and Marc Canham: Art Detective Podcast, 19 April 2017

Writing by Kandinsky

• Works by Wassily Kandinsky at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Wassily Kandinsky at Internet Archive
• Works by Wassily Kandinsky at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) 
• “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”. Guggenheim Internet Archives. Retrieved 25 October 2013.

External video

Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912, Smarthistory

Paintings by Kandinsky

• Wassily Kandinsky at the Museum of Modern Art
• Artcyclopedia.com, Wassily Kandinsky at ArtCyclopedia
• Glyphs.com, Kandinsky’s compositions with commentary
• Wassilykandinsky.net – 500 paintings, 60+ photos, biography, quotes, articles

Helen Mirren on Vasily Kandinsky

Francis Schaeffer in the episode, “The Age of Fragmentation,” Episode 8 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN  LIVE? noted:

101 Western painters you should know

A list of the Best Painters of all-time in Western Painting, the 101 most important painters of the history of western painting, from 13th century to 21st century

by G. Fernández – theartwolf.com
Although this list stems from a deep study of the painters, their contribution to Western painting, and their influence on later artists; we are aware that objectivity does not exist in Art, so we understand that most readers will not agree 100% with this list. In any case, theartwolf.com assures that this list is only intended as a tribute to painting and the painters who have made it an unforgettable Art

1. PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) – Picasso is to Art History a giant earthquake with eternal aftermaths. With the possible exception of Michelangelo (who focused his greatest efforts in sculpture and architecture), no other artist had such ambitions at the time of placing his oeuvre in the history of art. Picasso created the avant-garde. Picasso destroyed the avant-garde. He looked back at the masters and surpassed them all. He faced the whole history of art and single-handedly redefined the tortuous relationship between work and spectator

2. GIOTTO DI BONDONE (c.1267-1337) – It has been said that Giotto was the first real painter, like Adam was the first man. We agree with the first part. Giotto continued the Byzantine style of Cimabue and other predecessors, but he earned the right to be included in gold letters in the history of painting when he added a quality unknown to date: emotion

3. LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519) – For better or for worse, Leonardo will be forever known as the author of the most famous painting of all time, the “Gioconda” or “Mona Lisa”. But he is more, much more. His humanist, almost scientific gaze, entered the art of the quattrocento and revoluted it with his sfumetto that nobody was ever able to imitate

4. PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) – “Cezanne is the father of us all.” This famous quote has been attributed to both Picasso and Matisse, and certainly it does not matter who actually said it, because in either case would be appropriate. While he exhibited with the Impressionist painters, Cézanne left behind the whole group and developed a style of painting never seen so far, which opened the door for the arrival of Cubism and the rest of the vanguards of the twentieth century

5. REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-1669) – The fascinating use of the light and shadows in Rembrandt’s works seem to reflect his own life, moving from fame to oblivion. Rembrandt is the great master of Dutch painting, and, along with Velázquez, the main figure of 17th century European Painting. He is, in addition, the great master of the self-portrait of all time, an artist who had never show mercy at the time of depicting himself

6. DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ (1599-1660) – Along with Rembrandt, one of the summits of Baroque painting. But unlike the Dutch artist, the Sevillan painter spent most of his life in the comfortable but rigid courtesan society. Nevertheless, Velázquez was an innovator, a “painter of atmospheres” two centuries before Turner and the Impressionists, which it is shown in his colossal ‘royal paintings’ (“Meninas”, “The Forge of Vulcan”), but also in his small and memorable sketches of the Villa Medici.

7. WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944) – Although the title of “father of abstraction” has been assigned to several artists, from Picasso to Turner, few painters could claim it with as much justice as Kandinsky. Many artists have succeeded in painting emotion, but very few have changed the way we understand art. Wassily Kandinsky is one of them.

8. CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) – The importance of Monet in the history of art is sometimes “underrated”, as Art lovers tend to see only the overwhelming beauty that emanates from his canvases, ignoring the complex technique and composition of the work (a “defect” somehow caused by Monet himself, when he declared that “I do not understand why everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love”). However, Monet’s experiments, including studies on the changes in an object caused by daylight at different times of the day; and the almost abstract quality of his “water lilies”, are clearly a prologue to the art of the twentieth century.

9. CARAVAGGIO (1571-1610) – The tough and violent Caravaggio is considered the father of Baroque painting, with his spectacular use of lights and shadows. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro became so famous that many painters started to copy his paintings, creating the ‘Caravaggisti’ style.

10. JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1851) – Turner is the best landscape painter of Western painting. Whereas he had been at his beginnings an academic painter, Turner was slowly but unstoppably evolving towards a free, atmospheric style, sometimes even outlining the abstraction, which was misunderstood and rejected by the same critics who had admired him for decades

11. JAN VAN EYCK (1390-1441) – Van Eyck is the colossal pillar on which rests the whole Flemish paintings from later centuries, the genius of accuracy, thoroughness and perspective, well above any other artist of his time, either Flemish or Italian.

12. ALBRECHT DÜRER (1471-1528) – The real Leonardo da Vinci of Northern European Rennaisance was Albrecht Dürer, a restless and innovative genious, master of drawing and color. He is one of the first artists to represent nature without artifice, either in his painted landscapes or in his drawings of plants and animals

13. JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956) – The major figure of American Abstract Expressionism, Pollock created his best works, his famous drips, between 1947 and 1950. After those fascinating years, comparable to Picasso’s blue period or van Gogh’s final months in Auvers, he abandoned the drip, and his latest works are often bold, unexciting works.

14. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI (1475-1564) – Some readers will be quite surprised to see the man who is, along with Picasso, the greatest artistic genius of all time, out of the “top ten” of this list, but the fact is that even Michelangelo defined himself as “sculptor”, and even his painted masterpiece (the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel) are often defined as ‘painted sculptures’. Nevertheless, that unforgettable masterpiece is enough to guarantee him a place of honor in the history of painting

15. PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903) – One of the most fascinating figures in the history of painting, his works moved from Impressionism (soon abandoned) to a colorful and vigorous symbolism, as can be seen in his ‘Polynesian paintings’. Matisse and Fauvism could not be understood without the works of Paul Gauguin

16. FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746-1828) – Goya is an enigma. In the whole History of Art few figures are as complex as the artist born in Fuendetodos, Spain. Enterprising and indefinable, a painter with no rival in all his life, Goya was the painter of the Court and the painter of the people. He was a religious painter and a mystical painter. He was the author of the beauty and eroticism of the ‘Maja desnuda’ and the creator of the explicit horror of ‘The Third of May, 1808’. He was an oil painter, a fresco painter, a sketcher and an engraver. And he never stopped his metamorphosis

17. VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890) – Few names in the history of painting are now as famous as Van Gogh, despite the complete neglect he suffered in life. His works, strong and personal, are one of the greatest influences in the twentieth century painting, especially in German Expressionism

18. ÉDOUARD MANET (1832-1883) – Manet was the origin of Impressionism, a revolutionary in a time of great artistic revolutions. His (at the time) quite polemical “Olympia” or “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe” opened the way for the great figures of Impressionism

19. MARK ROTHKO (1903-1970) – The influence of Rothko in the history of painting is yet to be quantified, because the truth is that almost 40 years after his death the influence of Rothko’s large, dazzling and emotional masses of color continues to increase in many painters of the 21st century

20. HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954) – Art critics tend to regard Matisse as the greatest exponent of twentieth century painting, only surpassed by Picasso. This is an exaggeration, although the almost pure use of color in some of his works strongly influenced many of the following avant-gardes

21. RAPHAEL (1483-1520) – Equally loved and hated in different eras, no one can doubt that Raphael is one of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance, with an excellent technique in terms of drawing and color

22. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) – Basquiat is undoubtedly the most important and famous member of the “graffiti movement” that appeared in the New York scene in the early’80s, an artistic movement whose enormous influence on later painting is still to be measured

23. EDVARD MUNCH (1863-1944) – Modernist in his context, Munch could be also considered the first expressionist painter in history. Works like “The Scream” are vital to understanding the twentieth century painting.

24. TITIAN (c.1476-1576) – After the premature death of Giorgione, Titian became the leading figure of Venetian painting of his time. His use of color and his taste for mythological themes defined the main features of 16th century Venetian Art. His influence on later artists -Rubens, Velázquez…- is extremely important

25. PIET MONDRIAN (1872 -1944) – Along with Kandinsky and Malevich, Mondrian is the leading figure of early abstract painting. After emigrating to New York, Mondrian filled his abstract paintings with a fascinating emotional quality, as we can se in his series of “boogie-woogies” created in the mid-40s

26. PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (1416-1492) – Despite being one of the most important figures of the quattrocento, the Art of Piero della Francesca has been described as “cold”, “hieratic” or even “impersonal”. But with the apparition of Berenson and the great historians of his era, like Michel Hérubel -who defended the “metaphysical dimension” of the paintings by Piero-, his precise and detailed Art finally occupied the place that it deserves in the Art history

27. PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) – Rubens was one of the most prolific painters of all time, thanks in part to the collaboration of his study. Very famous in life, he traveled around Europe to meet orders from very wealthy and important clients. His female nudes are still amazing in our days

28. ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) – Brilliant and controversial, Warhol is the leading figure of pop-art and one of the icons of contemporary art. His silkscreen series depicting icons of the mass-media (as a reinterpretation of Monet’s series of Water lilies or the Rouen Cathedral) are one of the milestones of contemporary Art, with a huge influence in the Art of our days

29. JOAN MIRÓ (1893-1983) – Like most geniuses, Miro is an unclassificable artist. His interest in the world of the unconscious, those hidden in the depths of the mind, link him with Surrealism, but with a personal style, sometimes closer to Fauvism and Expressionism. His most important works are those from the series of “Constellations”, created in the early 40s

30. TOMMASO MASACCIO (1401-1428) – Masaccio was one of the first old masters to use the laws of scientific perspective in his works . One of the greatest innovative painters of the Early Renaissance

31. MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985) – Artist of dreams and fantasies, Chagall was for all his life an immigrant fascinated by the lights and colors of the places he visited. Few names from the School of Paris of the early twentieth century have contributed so much -and with such variety of ideas- to change modern Art as this man “impressed by the light,” as he defined himself

31. GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877) – Leading figure of realism, and a clear precedent for the impressionists, Courbet was one of the greatest revolutionaries, both as an artist and as a social-activist, of the history of painting. Like Rembrandt and other predecessors, Courbet did not seek to create beauty, but believed that beauty is achieved when and artist represents the purest reality without artifice

33. NICOLAS POUSSIN (1594-1665) – The greatest among the great French Baroque painters, Poussin had a vital influence on French painting for many centuries. His use of color is unique among all the painters of his era

34. WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997) – After Pollock, the leading figure of abstract expressionism, though one of his greatest contributions was not to feel limited by the abstraction, often resorting to a heartbreaking figurative painting (his series of “Women” are the best example) with a major influence on later artists such as Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud

35. PAUL KLEE (1879-1940) – In a period of artistic revolutions and innovations, few artists were as crucial as Paul Klee. His studies of color, widely taught at the Bauhaus, are unique among all the artists of his time

36. FRANCIS BACON (1909-1992) – Maximum exponent, along with Lucian Freud, of the so-called “School of London”, Bacon’s style was totally against all canons of painting, not only in those terms related to beauty, but also against the dominance of the Abstract Expressionism of his time

37. GUSTAV KLIMT (1862-1918) – Half way between modernism and symbolism appears the figure of Gustav Klimt, who was also devoted to the industrial arts. His nearly abstract landscapes also make him a forerunner of geometric abstraction

38. EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798-1863) – Eugène Delacroix is the French romanticism painter “par excellence” and one of the most important names in the European painting of the first half of the 19th century. His famous “Liberty leading the People”also demonstrates the capacity of Painting to become the symbol of an era.

39. PAOLO UCCELLO (1397-1475) – “Solitary, eccentric, melancholic and poor”. Giorgio Vasari described with these four words one of the most audacious geniuses of the early Florentine Renaissance, Paolo Uccello.

40. WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) – Revolutionary and mystic, painter and poet, Blake is one of the most fascinating artists of any era. His watercolors, prints and temperas are filled with a wild imagination (almost crazyness), unique among the artists of his era

41. KAZIMIR MALEVICH (1878-1935) – Creator of Suprematism, Malevich will forever be one of the most controversial figures of the history of art among the general public, divided between those who consider him an essential renewal and those who consider that his works based on polygons of pure colors do not deserve to be considered Art

42. ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506) – One of the greatest exponents of the Quattrocento, interested in the human figure, which he often represented under extreme perspectives (“The Dead Christ”)

43. JAN VERMEER (1632-1675) – Vermeer was the leading figure of the Delft School, and for sure one of the greatest landscape painters of all time. Works such as “View of the Delft” are considered almost “impressionist” due to the liveliness of his brushwork. He was also a skilled portraitist

44. EL GRECO (1541-1614) – One of the most original and fascinating artists of his era, with a very personal technique that was admired, three centuries later, by the impressionist painters

45. CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840) – Leading figure of German Romantic painting, Friedrich is still identified as the painter of landscapes of loneliness and distress, with human figures facing the terrible magnificence of nature.

46. WINSLOW HOMER (1836-1910) – The main figure of American painting of his era, Homer was a breath of fresh air for the American artistic scene, which was “stuck” in academic painting and the more romantic Hudson River School. Homer’s loose and lively brushstroke is almost impressionistic .

47. MARCEL DUCHAMP (1887-1968) – One of the major figures of Dadaism and a prototype of “total artist”, Duchamp is one of the most important and controversial figures of his era. His contribution to painting is just a small part of his huge contribution to the art world.

48. GIORGIONE (1478-1510) – Like so many other painters who died at young age, Giorgione (1477-1510) makes us wonder what place would his exquisite painting occupy in the history of Art if he had enjoyed a long existence, just like his direct artistic heir – Titian.

49. FRIDA KAHLO (1907-1954) – In recent years, Frida’s increasing fame seems to have obscured her importance in Latin American art. On September 17th, 1925, Kahlo was almost killed in a terrible bus accident. She did not died, but the violent crash had terrible sequels, breaking her spinal column, pelvis, and right leg.. After this accident, Kahlo’s self-portraits can be considered as quiet but terrible moans

50. HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER (1497-1543) – After Dürer, Holbein is the greatest of the German painters of his time. The fascinating portrait of “The Ambassadors” is still considered one of the most enigmatic paintings of art history

51. EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917) – Though Degas was not a “pure” impressionist painter, his works shared the ideals of that artistic movement. Degas paintings of young dancers or ballerinas are icons of late 19th century painting

52. FRA ANGELICO (1387-1455) – One of the great colorists from the early Renaissance. Initially trained as an illuminator, he is the author of masterpieces such as “The Annunciation” in the Prado Museum.

53. GEORGES SEURAT (1859-1891) – Georges Seurat is one of the most important post-impressionist painters, and he is considered the creator of the “pointillism”, a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors.

54. JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684-1721) – Watteau is today considered one of the pioneers of rococo. Unfortunately, he died at the height of his powers, as it is evidenced in the great portrait of “Gilles” painted in the year of his death

55. SALVADOR DALÍ (1904-1989) – “I am Surrealism!” shouted Dalí when he was expelled from the surrealist movement by André Breton. Although the quote sounds presumptuous (which was not unusual in Dalí), the fact is that Dalí’s paintings are now the most famous images of all the surrealist movement.

56. MAX ERNST (1891-1976) – Halfway between Surrealism and Dadaism appears Max Ernst, important in both movements. Ernst was a brave artistic explorer thanks in part to the support of his wife and patron, Peggy Guggenheim

57. TINTORETTO (1518-1594) – Tintoretto is the most flamboyant of all Venetian masters (not the best, such honour can only be reclaimed by Titian or Giorgione) and his remarkable oeuvre not only closed the Venetian splendour till the apparition of Canaletto and his contemporaries, but also makes him the last of the Cinquecento masters.

58. JASPER JOHNS (born 1930) – The last living legend of the early Pop Art, although he has never considered himself a “pop artist”. His most famous works are the series of “Flags” and “Targets“.

59. SANDRO BOTTICELLI (1445-1510) – “If Botticelli were alive now he would be working for Vogue”, said actor Peter Ustinov. As well as Raphael, Botticelli had been equally loved or hated in different eras, but his use of color is one of the most fascinating among all old masters.

60. DAVID HOCKNEY (born 1937) – David Hockney is one of the living myths of the Pop Art. Born in Great Britain, he moved to California, where he immediately felt identified with the light, the culture and the urban landscape of the ‘Golden State’

61. UMBERTO BOCCIONI (1882-1916) – The maximum figure of Italian Futurism, fascinated by the world of the machine, and the movement as a symbol of contemporary times.

62. JOACHIM PATINIR (1480-1524) – Much less technically gifted than other Flemish painters like Memling or van der Weyden, his contribution to the history of art is vital for the incorporation of landscape as a major element in the painting.

63. DUCCIO DA BUONINSEGNA (c.1255/60 – 1318/19) – While in Florence Giotto di Bondone was changing the history of painting, Duccio of Buoninsegna provided a breath of fresh air to the important Sienese School.

64. ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN (1399-1464) – After Van Eyck, the leading exponent of Flemish painting in the fifteenth century; a master of perspective and composition.

65. JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837) – John Constable (1776-1837) is, along with Turner, the great figure of English romanticism. But unlike his contemporary, he never left England, and he devoted all his time to represent the life and landscapes of his beloved England.

66. JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (1748-1825) – David is the summit of neoclassicism, a grandiloquent artist whose compositions seem to reflect his own hectic and revolutionary life.

67. ARSHILLE GORKY (1905-1948) – Armenian-born American painter, Gorky was a surrealist painter and also one of the leaders of abstract expressionism. He was called “the Ingres of the unconscious”.

68. HIERONYMUS BOSCH (1450-1516) – An extremely religious man, all works by Bosch are basically moralizing, didactic. The artist sees in the society of his time the triumph of sin, the depravation, and all the things that have caused the fall of the human being from its angelical character; and he wants to warn his contemporaries about the terrible consequences of his impure acts.

69. PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER (1528-1569) – Many scholars and art critics claim to have found important similarities between the works by Hyeronimus Bosch and those by Brueghel, but the truth is that the differences between both of them are abysmal. Whereas Bosch’s fantasies are born of a deep deception and preoccupation for the human being, with a clearly moralizing message; works by Bruegel are full of irony, and even filled with a love for the rural life, which seems to anticipate the Dutch landscape paintings from the next century.

70. SIMONE MARTINI (1284-1344) – One of the great painters of the Trecento, he was a step further and helped to expand its progress, which culminated in the “International Style”.

71. Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) – Church represents the culmination of the Hudson River School: he had Cole’s love for the landscape, Asher Brown Durand’s romantic lyricism, and Albert Bierstadt’s grandiloquence, but he was braver and technically more gifted than anyone of them. Church is without any doubt one of the greatest landscape painters of all time, perhaps only surpassed by Turner and some impressionists and postimpressionists like Monet or Cézanne.

72. EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967) – Hopper is widely known as the painter of urban loneliness. His most famous work, the fabulous “Nighthawks” (1942) has become the symbol of the solitude of the contemporary metropolis, and it is one of the icons of the 20th century Art.

73. LUCIO FONTANA (1899-1968) – Father of the “White Manifesto”, in which he stated that “Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art”. His “Concepts Spatiales” are already icons of the art of the second half of the twentieth century.

74. FRANZ MARC (1880-1916) – After Kandinsky, the great figure of the Expressionist group “The Blue Rider” and one of the most important expressionist painters ever. He died at the height of his artistic powers, when his use of color was even anticipating the later abstraction.

75. PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919) – One of the key figures of Impressionism, he soon left the movement to pursue a more personal, academic painting.

76. JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER (1834-1903) – Along with Winslow Homer, the great figure of American painting of his time. Whistler was an excellent portraitist, which is shown in the fabulous portrait of his mother, considered one of the great masterpieces of American painting of all time.

77. THEODORE GÉRICAULT (1791-1824) – Key figure in romanticism, revolutionary in his life and works despite his bourgeois origins. In his masterpiece, “The raft of the Medusa”, Gericault creates a painting that we can define as “politically incorrect”, as it depicts the miseries of a large group of castaways abandoned after the shipwreck of a French naval frigate.

78. WILLIAM HOGARTH (1697-1764) – A list of the great portrait painters of all time should never miss the name of William Hogarth, whose studies and sketches could even qualify as “pre-impressionist”.

79. CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875) – One of the great figures of French realism in the 19th century and certainly one of the major influences for the impressionist painters like Monet or Renoir, thanks to his love for “plen-air” painting, emphasizing the use of light.

80. GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963) – Along with Picasso and Juan Gris, the main figure of Cubism, the most important of the avant-gardes of the 20th century Art.

81. HANS MEMLING (1435-1494) – Perhaps the most complete and “well-balanced” of all fifteenth century Flemish painters, although he was not as innovative as Van Eyck or van der Weyden.

82. GERHARD RICHTER (born 1932) – One of the most important artists of recent decades, Richter is known either for his fierce and colorful abstractions or his serene landscapes and scenes with candles.

83. AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884-1920) – One of the most original portraitists of the history of painting, considered as a “cursed” painter because of his wild life and early death.

84. GEORGES DE LA TOUR (1593-1652) – The influence of Caravaggio is evident in De la Tour, whose use of light and shadows is unique among the painters of the Baroque era.

85. GENTILESCHI, ARTEMISIA (1597-1654) – One of the most gifted artists of the early baroque era, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

86. JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET (1814-1875) – One of the main figures of the Barbizon School, author of one of the most emotive paintings of the 19th century: The “Angelus“.

87. FRANCISCO DE ZURBARÁN (1598-1664) – The closest to Caravaggio of all Spanish Baroque painters, his latest works show a mastery of chiaroscuro without parallel among any other painter of his time.

88. CIMABUE (c.1240-1302) – Although in some of his works Cimabue already represented a visible evolution of the rigid Byzantine art, his greatest contribution to painting was to discover a young talented artist named Giotto (see number 2), who changed forever the Western painting.

89. JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949) – Violent painter whose strong, almost “unfinished” works make him a precursor of Expressionism

90. RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898-1967) – One of the leading figures of surrealism, his apparently simple works are the result of a complex reflection about reality and the world of dreams

91. EL LISSITZKY (1890-1941) – One of the main exponents of Russian avant-garde painting. Influenced by Malevich, he also excelled in graphic design.

92. EGON SCHIELE (1890-1918) – Another “died too young” artist, his strong and ruthless portraits influenced the works of later artists, like Lucian freud or Francis Bacon.

93. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882) – Perhaps the key figure in the pre-Raphaelite movement, Rossetti left the poetry to focus on classic painting with a style that influenced the symbolism.

94. FRANS HALS (c.1580-1666) – One of the most important portraitists ever, his lively brushwork influenced early impressionism.

95. CLAUDE LORRAIN (1600-1682) – His works were a vital influence on many landscape painters for many centuries, both in Europe (Corot, Courbet) and in America (Hudson River School).

96. ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1977) – Along with Andy Warhol, the most famous figure of the American Pop-Art. His works are often related to the style of the comics, though Lichtenstein rejected that idea.

97. GEORGIA O’KEEFE (1887-1986) – A leading figure in the 20th century American Art, O’Keefe single-handedly redefined the Western American painting.

98. GUSTAVE MOREAU (1826-1898) – One of the key figures of symbolism, introverted and mysterious in life, but very free and colorful in his works.

99. GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888-1978) – Considered the father of metaphysical painting and a major influence on the Surrealist movement.

100. FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955) – At first a cubist, Leger was increasingly attracted to the world of machinery and movement, creating works such as “The Discs” (1918).

101. JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES (1780-1867) – Ingres was the most prominent disciple of the most famous neoclassicist painter, Jacques Louis David, so he should not be considered an innovator. He was, however, a master of classic portrait.

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How Shall We Then Live?—Francis Schaeffer

Episode Two: The Middle Ages
Key Terms:

1. “Asceticism”: The view that matter is inherently evil and that by afflicting the body you will gain salvation. Under this idea the monks would inflict physical pain on their bodies to gain spiritual blessings. The idea did not come from the Bible but from Greek philosophers such as Plato.
2. “Usury”: Charging interest on loans made to others. It has been modified at times to mean the charging of unjust loans through high interest rates.
3. “Conciliar movement”: The attempt to place the authority of the council of the bishops under the authority of the popes.
4. “Infinite reference point”: In logic, you cannot have a universal in the conclusion unless you have one in the premise. In philosophy, only an infinite absolute can give meaning to the particulars of life.
5. “Christian art”: As Christianity became corrupted by the intrusion of pagan philosophy, the art reflected this change. It went from real people in real backgrounds to unreal people (symbols) in real backgrounds to unreal people in unreal backgrounds.
6. Christian music was also corrupted by pagan thought. The message of the music was emphasized over the medium. Then it slowly changed to the medium over the message. The Gregorian chants are an illustration of this process. The chants were in a language which the common man did not understand. But it did not matter as the music of the chants gave man a non-rational religious experience that did not center in truth but in the experience itself. It made you “feel” religious.
7. The Middle Ages produced some pre-reformers such as Huss and Wycliff who warned that the Roman Church had departed from the Gospel and that the common man with his Bible could decide religious truth. They taught that the Bible was the absolute authority in all matters of faith and practice- not the arbitrary rulings of the clergy.
8. This threatened the popes because their authority was arbitrary and not based on anything other than their own personal opinion. Not having any biblical support for such things as the Mass or such doctrines as purgatory, the popes then used the power of the state to kill those who disagreed with them.

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HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 4

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Featured artist today is Marlene Dumas

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Marlene Dumas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marlene Dumas
Self Portrait at Noon, 2008
Born	3 August 1953 (age 64) Cape Town, South Africa
Education	Michaelis School of Fine Art, de Ateliers
Known for	Painting
Awards	Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts(2011)
Website	www.marlenedumas.nl

Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African born artist and painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In the past Dumas produced paintings, collages, drawings, prints and installations. She now works mainly with oil on canvas and ink and watercolor on paper.^[1] Almost all of Marlene Dumas’s paintings can be traced back to a photographic source, either collected from the media or taken by the artist herself.^[2]

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Life
  • 1.1Early Years
• 2Work
  • 2.1Writing
  • 2.2Teaching
• 3Exhibitions
• 4Collections
• 5Recognition
• 6Art market
• 7References
• 8Sources
• 9External links

Life[edit]

Early Years[edit]

Marlene Dumas was born on a wine farm in Kuilsrivier, a semi-rural area in the outskirts of Cape Town in South Africa. She attended Bloemhof Girls’ High in Stellenbosch after her father’s death in 1966. Among her schoolmates were Marlene van Niekerk and Sandra Kriel, who also is an artist. Dumas attended the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. The artist describes the impact art school had on her and her art: ” Art school in South Africa was very stimulating in a theoretical way, issues that only now are becoming important for some Europeans, like… what is political art? I learn a lot about ethics, philosophy and theory in South Africa, while in Holland I started to look at paintings for the first time. I started to appreciate the pictorial or visual intelligence of remarkable paintings. So, that’s important to my work, as well as being white in a black country influenced my philosophy in life. I was not the victim of the bad system. I was part of the wrong system. So I don’t make work about being victimized (although apartheid as a whole was very bad for the spirit of its people). I rather find everyone capable of terrible things and I fear my own weakness and blindness first”.^[3] In the summer of 1976, Marlene Dumas moved to Europe.^[4]

Work[edit]

The White Disease, 1985

Dumas attended the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa from 1972-1975 and relocated to Amsterdam in 1976, where she attended the University of Amsterdam as a student of painting and psychology from 1979-1980. At this time, Dumas was aspiring to be an abstract painter and was influenced by artists such as Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter.^[5] The works Dumas produced between 1975 and 1979 demonstrate the development in the artist’s characteristic style, where the subject matter; the apartheid in South Africa, is presented in abstract style in painting. As Cornelia Butler, the curator of Dumas’s retrospective exhibition “Measuring Your Own Grave” in Tate Modern asserts, “Dumas’s paintings are products of the contemporary image world – that is, they are drawn from directly from the events of our time, abstracted to resonate in content and form.”^[6] In 1984, Dumas started painting heads and figures.^[7] These head and figure drawings were usually ink-wash based. Between the years 1979 to 1984, Marlene Dumas took a break from painting, and she primarily produced works on paper. These works are often a collage of drawings in pencil, ink or crayon with a title or a quote, newspaper clippings and magazines and sometimes objects. The paper used would usually be cut from a large roll, scratched, stained and torn.^[8] A series of paintings she executed in the mid-1980s, titled “The Eyes of the Night Creatures”, explores recurring themes in the artist’s oeuvre, including racial and ethical intolerance. Dumas also gained recognition on the European scene for her series of painting in “The Eyes of the Night Creatures.”^[9] The White Disease(1985) is a painting of an ageing South African woman with pale blue eyes taken from a medical photograph. The painting projects the disease of apartheid and Dumas acknowledges it as one of her favourites. Christie’s auction lot notes observes that the painting recalls the influence of predecessors such as Egon Schiele and Leon Golub. Translucent white paint creates a ghostly shade, alluding to the subject’s illness, while water-saturated colors gives the portrait an unreal transparency, suggesting the fugitive nature of life. The shape of the nose is replaced by a simple blob of pink color, symbolising a loss of humanity and the subject’s indifference to her state.^[10][11][12]

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dumas produced a series of works based around the subject of pregnancy and babies.^[13] Dumas states: “To create an artwork (to make an image of) and to give birth have essentially nothing to do with one another. Yet this is no reason to stop loving metaphors or avoiding the unrelated. But the poetry that results from mixing different kinds of language, disappears into sloppy thinking, when we imagine that these differences can ever be solved harmoniously; or even worse, when we forget that these realities we are mixing are of a beautiful and often cruel indifference towards each other.” ^[14] In 1987, she gave birth to her daughter, Helena, and a great body of work followed. The most compelling is The First People, which is a series of four canvases devoted to newborn infants. Each painting is large (many times greater than life-size) and each is composed vertically. She does not idealize her images; instead the babies are unattractive, squirming little beings with gnarled fingers and toes, bloated bellies, and wrinkled skin. Depicting a similar, rather horrifying, large baby is Warhol’s Child, painted on a horizontal plane, during the same period. It is a homage to Alice Neel, specifically the portrait Andy Warhol (c.1970).^[15] Alice Neel is among the many artists who influenced Marlene Dumas’s works.

In the 1990s, Dumas indirectly returned to the subject of apartheid.^[16] Between 1998 through 2000, in collaboration with the photographer Anton Corbijn, she worked on a project called “Stripping Girls”, which took the strip clubs and peep shows of Amsterdam as their subject;^[17] while Corbijn exhibited photographs in the show, Dumas took Polaroids which she then used as sources for her pictures.

Since she first began painting portraits in the 1980s, famous figures ranging from Osama Bin Laden to Naomi Campbell, various family members, friends and even unknown persons have been the subjects of her work. The haunting and distorted faces and bodies of her figures are a product of her use of thinned down paint, wiping the pigment away from the canvas to create the washed out, smudged figures that are characteristic of her work. At times dark and disturbing, always weighted in poignancy, and drawn on topical and contentious material, she repeatedly mixes the personal with the political.^[18] She has said that her works are better appreciated as originals, to mirror the at times shocking, discomforting intimacy she captures with her works.

Dumas uses oil and water color in her paintings. Many of her works confront themes such as pornography and segregation. A large number of her symbolic paintings depict either erotic or disconcerting nude bodies in acts.^[19][20]

For Manifesta 10 in St Petersburg, Dumas created Great Men, a series of 16 ink and pencil portraits that depict famous gay men who have all influenced the artist, including James Baldwin, Leonard Matlovich, Rudolf Nureyev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alan Turing, Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams.^[21] Each of the men depicted was persecuted, in one way or another, because they were suspected of being gay. According to Dumas, the series is to “contribute to a mentality change” in Russia at a time of increasingly anti-gay legislation in the country.^[22]

Writing[edit]

In addition to being a visual artist, Dumas is also an active writer. Her exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues are populated by a number of Dumas’ essays, poems, and passages about her work. A collection of these writings entitled Sweet Nothings: Notes and Texts was published by Tate in 2015. When used in conjunction with her work, Dumas’ writing can be both helpful and confusing, contributing additional layers to the work’s content and interpretation. Dumas is certainly not the first to use text in her work, but the way she directly addresses the reader by using the pronoun ‘you’ is a significant departure from Barbara Kruger‘s plural statements (‘We won’t play nature to your culture’) and Jenny Holzer‘s objective truisms (‘Abuse of power comes as no surprise’).^[23]

Teaching[edit]

Dumas is committed to teaching. In a 2007 interview she said, “I see teaching as a very important thing, and not only because I teach [the students] things, but also because we have a dialogue, and you see what you really want. You find things out. I still believe in the Socratic dialogue. Art is really something that you learn from being around people”.^[24] Marlene Dumas has also stated that she believes an artist defines and understand themselves only in relation to other artists, which is one of the reasons why she holds and attends lectures and discussions worldwide.^[25]

Exhibitions[edit]

Marlene Dumas, Narutowicz. the President 1922, 2012, Zachęta National Gallery, Warsaw

Marlene Dumas’s works have been exhibited in galleries across the US, Canada, Japan and Europe, including Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, Sweden, France, Austria, Portugal, Iceland, Norway and Poland. While her first exhibition was in 1984, in the Centraal Museum in Netherlands, she was exhibited in her homeland only in 2008, pointing to her art’s reception in South Africa.^[26] Dumas’s first all-painting show was held in 1985, at the Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam, and it brought together nine portraits. Three of the portraits were of women named Martha; Martha Freud, the artist’s grandmother, and a worker. The women depicted sharing the same name demonstrates the significance language holds for Marlene Dumas, who has repeatedly commented on her meticulous selection of the titles for her works.^[7]

In 1992 Dumas participated in Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany. Her catalogue entry for the show, My Thoughts on Big Shows presents the artist’s perspective of group shows which she would attend many of throughout her career.

“It’s not possible to participate in – Big Shows – without feeling this urge – to bite – the hand that feeds you.

Give me a face instead of a place – I don’t understand Kassel (as a place) – it’s too grey, too cold and too – far away for me.

Give me – the head of – John the Baptist. “^[27]

In 1995 Dumas represented the Netherlands in the 46th Venice Biennale (together with Marijke van Warmerdam and Maria Roosen).^[28][1] Dumas’s first international solo museum exhibition, “Marlene Dumas: Name No Names,” opened at the New Museum in 2002.^[29] A major American museum exhibition and midcareer retrospective entitled “Measuring Your Own Grave”, opened in June 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and moved to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Menil Collection in Houston.^[7] Also in 2008, the South African National Gallery, Cape Town, and the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, presented two consecutive shows of the artist’s work, marking the first time Dumas had solo exhibitions in her homeland. The Haus der Kunst, Munich, showed “Marlene Dumas: Tronies” in 2011.^[30] The Stedelijk Museum, the Tate Modern, and the Beyeler Foundation have organized a major retrospective of the artist called “Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden”, which includes artworks from the 1970s until 2014, set to debut in Amsterdam in September 2014 and due at the Tate 5 February – 10 May 2015.^[31]

In 2017, works of art by Marlene Dumas are on display as part of group exhibitions in the Het Atzewige Museum in Belgium; from April 20 until August 13, National Portrait Gallery in London; from March 27 until October 1, Galerie Gebr in Germany; from March 25 until April 29, and Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands; from February 17 until May 21.^[32]

Marlene Dumas’s works will also be exhibited at the ABN AMRO Headquarters in Amsterdam; from January 19, 2017 until March 2018.^[32]

Dumas is represented by the David Zwirner Gallery, Gallery Koyanagi, Frith Street Gallery, Zeno X Gallery and Galerie Paul Andriesse.

Collections[edit]

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Work by the artist is held in the public collections of various museums, including Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,^[33] the ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, Copenhagen; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Bawag Foundation, Vienna; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Centro de Artes Visuales Helga de Alvear, Caceres; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; De Ateliers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Flemish Ministry of Culture, Brussels; Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain Picardie, Amiens; Gemeentemuseum, Arnhem, The Netherlands; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam; Kasteel Wijlre / Hedge House, Wijlre, The Netherlands; Krannert Art Museum and Kinhead Pavilion, Champaign, Illinois; Kunsthalle zu Kiel der Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Denmark; Lieve Van Gorp Foundation for Women Artists, Antwerp, Belgium; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Museum De Pont, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum het Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium; Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands; Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; Paleis Vught, Vught, The Netherlands; Saatchi Gallery, London; Scheringa Museum voor Realisme, Spanbroek, The Netherlands; Stadsgalerij Heerlen, Heerlen, The Netherlands; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Gouda, The Netherlands; Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, The Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Schiedam, The Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London, England; and ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe.

Recognition[edit]

Dumas has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Antwerp (2015), Stellenbosch University (2011) and Rhodes University (2010). She was the winner of the 2011 edition of the Rolf Schock award in Stockholm.^[34]

In 1998, Dumas received the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award. In 2007, Dumas received the Dusseldorf Art Prize. In 2012, Dumas won the Johannes Vermeer Award.^[35]

Art market[edit]

Dumas’s artworks were first auctioned in 1994 in the Netherlands, where three paintings and drawings were sold for between $790 and $3,100. In 1999, following her debut exhibition at the Museum Kunst Hedendaagse in Antwerp, her drawing Checkered Skirt was sold for $22.000 at Christie’s New York.^[36] By 2002, the record for Dumas’s paintings, only a few of which had come to auction, stood at about $50,000. Jule, die Vrou (Jule, the Woman), a 1985 close-up of a transvestite’s face, was auctioned at Christie’s for $1.24 million in 2004. In 2005 at Christie’s in London, The Teacher (Sub a) (1987), a rendering of a posed class photograph, was sold for $3.34 million.^[37] In 2008, The Visitor (1995) sold for £3.1 million at Sotheby’s in 2008, making Dumas the most expensive living female artist at the time.^[38] In an interview conducted by a correspondent of Vogue, Dumas asserted that she is not at ease with being an artist whose works are being sold at such high prizes. She stated: “If you know the history of art, the people whose work fetched the highest prices have often been terrible artists”.^[39] However, most of Dumas’s works are sold to well-established institutions. Her portrait of the late Amy Winehouse, Amy-Blue(2011), was acquired by London’s National Portrait Gallery for £95,000 ($150,000) in November 2012.^[40]

Sources[edit]

• Selma Klein Essink, Marcel Vos and Jan Debbaut, Miss Interpreted, exhibition catalogue, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 1992
• Jonathan Hutchinson, Chlorosis, exhibition catalogue, The Dougles Hyde Gallery, Dublin 1994
• Catherine Kinley, Marlene Dumas, exhibition broadsheet, Tate Gallery, London 1996
• Gianni Romano, Suspect, Skira, Milan, 2003
• Cornelia Butler, Marlene Dumas: painter as witness, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008
• Ilaria Bonacossa, Dominic van den Boogerd, Barbara Bloom and Mariuccia Casadio, Marlene Dumas, Phaidon Press, London, 2009
• Neal Benezra and Olga M. Viso, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. 1996

External links[edit]

• Official website
• Marlene Dumas at David Zwirner
• Marlene Dumas: New Museum archive
• [1] “Figuring Marlene Dumas,” profile by Deborah Solomon in The New York Times Magazine,15 July 2008
• Dutch Master interview in W magazine
• Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave Brief description of the artist’s exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
• Zeno X Gallery – Marlene Dumas images, biography and CV
• The Saatchi Gallery – Marlene Dumas

Categories:

• 1953 births
• Amsterdam artists
• Contemporary painters
• Dutch women painters
• Dutch contemporary artists
• Living people
• Michaelis School of Fine Art alumni
• Artists from Cape Town
• South African emigrants to the Netherlands
• South African painters
• South African women painters
• South African contemporary artists
• 20th-century women artists
• South African women artists

__

Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000 years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 “The Age of Fragmentation”, episode 7 “The Age of Non-Reason” , episode 6 “The Scientific Age” , episode 5 “The Revolutionary Age” ,  episode 4 “The Reformation”,  episode 3 “The Renaissance”, episode 2 “The Middle Ages,”, and  episode 1 “The Roman Age,” . My favorite episodes are number 7 and 8 since they deal with modern art and culture primarily.(Joe Carter rightly noted, “Schaeffer—who always claimed to be an evangelist and not a philosopher—was often criticized for the way his work oversimplified intellectual history and philosophy.” To those critics I say take a chill pill because Schaeffer was introducing millions into the fields of art and culture!!!! !!! More people need to read his works and blog about them because they show how people’s worldviews affect their lives!!!!)

There is evidence that points to the fact that the Bible is historically true as Schaeffer pointed out in episode 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE  HUMAN RACE? There is a basis then for faith in Christ alone for our eternal hope. This link shows how to do that.

____________________

Francis Schaeffer with his son Franky pictured below. Francis and Edith (who passed away in 2013) opened L’ Abri in 1955 in Switzerland.

Featured artist is George Grosz

George Grosz’s Metropolis

_

George Grosz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Grosz
George Grosz in 1921
Born	Georg Ehrenfried Groß July 26, 1893 Berlin, German Empire
Died	July 6, 1959 (aged 65) West Berlin
Nationality	German, American (after 1938)
Education	Dresden Academy
Known for	Painting, drawing
Notable work	The Funeral (Dedicated to Oscar Panizza)
Movement	Dada, New Objectivity

George Grosz (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his earlier work, he exhibited regularly and taught for many years at the Art Students League of New York. In 1956 he returned to Berlin where he died.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1Life and career
• 2Works
• 3Legacy and estate
• 4Quotes
• 5See also
• 6Notes
• 7References
• 8External links

Life and career[edit]

George Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Gross (German spelling Groß; German pronunciation: [ɡʀoːs]) in Berlin, Germany, the son of a pub owner. His parents were devoutly Lutheran.^[1] Grosz grew up in the Pomeranian town of Stolp (now Słupsk, Poland),^[2] where his mother became the keeper of the local Hussars Officers’ mess after his father died in 1901.^[3][4] At the urging of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a local painter named Grot.^[5] Grosz developed his skills further by drawing meticulous copies of the drinking scenes of Eduard von Grützner, and by drawing imaginary battle scenes.^[6] From 1909 to 1911, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle, and Osmar Schindler.^[7] He subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik.^[7]

George Grosz, Daum marries her pedantic automaton George in May 1920, John Heartfield is very glad of it, Berlinische Galerie

In November 1914 Grosz volunteered for military service, in the hope that by thus preempting conscription he would avoid being sent to the front.^[8] He was given a discharge after hospitalization for sinusitis in 1915.^[8] In 1916 he changed the spelling of his name to “de-Germanise” and internationalise his name – thus Georg became “George” (an English spelling), while in his surname he replaced the German “ß” with its phonetic equivalent “sz”.^[9] He did this as a protest against German nationalism^[7] and out of a romantic enthusiasm for America^[10] – a legacy of his early reading of the books of James Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte and Karl May – that he retained for the rest of his life.^[11] His artist friend and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld likewise changed his name to John Heartfield at the same time.

In January 1917 Grosz was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit.^[12]

George Grosz, Republican Automatons, 1920, watercolor on paper, Museum of Modern Art, New York

In the last months of 1918, Grosz joined the Spartacist League,^[13] which was renamed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in December 1918. He was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents. In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in a 300 German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection Gott mit uns (“God with us”), a satire on German society. In 1928 he was prosecuted for blasphemy after publishing anticlerical drawings, such as one depicting prisoners under assault from a minister who vomits grenades and weapons onto them, and another showing Christ coerced into military service. According to historian David Nash, Grosz “publicly stated that he was neither Christian nor pacifist, but was actively motivated by an inner need to create these pictures”, and was finally acquitted after two appeals.^[14]By contrast, in 1942 Time magazine identified Grosz as a pacifist.^[15]

In 1922 Grosz traveled to Russia with the writer Martin Andersen Nexø. Upon their arrival in Murmansk they were briefly arrested as spies; after their credentials were approved they were allowed to meet with Grigory Zinoviev, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Vladimir Lenin.^[16] Grosz’s six-month stay in the Soviet Union left him unimpressed by what he had seen.^[17] He ended his membership in the KPD in 1923, although his political positions were little changed.^[18]

Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York.^[19] In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12, 1933, he and his family emigrated to the United States.^[20] Grosz became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. In the 1930s he taught at the Art Students League, where one of his students was Romare Bearden, who was influenced by his style of collage. He taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955.

Made in Germany (German: Den macht uns keiner nach), by George Grosz, drawn in pen 1919, photo-lithograph published 1920 in the portfolio God with us (German: Gott mit Uns). Sheet 48.3 x 39.1 cm. In the collection of the MoMA

Grosz’ tomb in the Friedhof Heerstraße, Berlin

In America, Grosz determined to make a clean break with his past, and changed his style and subject matter.^[21] He continued to exhibit regularly, and in 1946 he published his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No. In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician in 1950. In 1954 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Though he had U.S. citizenship, he resolved to return to Berlin, where he died on July 6, 1959, from the effects of falling down a flight of stairs after a night of drinking.^[22]

Works[edit]

Although Grosz made his first oil paintings in 1912 while still a student,^[7] his earliest oils that can be identified today date from 1916.^[23] By 1914, Grosz worked in a style influenced by Expressionism and Futurism, as well as by popular illustration, graffiti, and children’s drawings.^[8] Sharply outlined forms are often treated as if transparent. The City (1916–17) was the first of his many paintings of the modern urban scene.^[24] Other examples include the apocalyptic Explosion (1917), Metropolis (1917), and The Funeral, a 1918 painting depicting a mad funeral procession.

In his drawings, usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor, Grosz did much to create the image most have of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects (for example, see Fit for Active Service). His draftsmanship was excellent although the works for which he is best known adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature. His oeuvre includes a few absurdist works, such as Remember Uncle August the Unhappy Inventor which has buttons sewn on it,^[25] and also includes a number of erotic artworks.^[26]

After his emigration to the USA in 1933, Grosz “sharply rejected [his] previous work, and caricature in general.”^[27] In place of his earlier corrosive vision of the city, he now painted conventional nudes and many landscape watercolors. More acerbic works, such as Cain, or Hitler in Hell (1944), were the exception. In his autobiography, he wrote: “A great deal that had become frozen within me in Germany melted here in America and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting. I carefully and deliberately destroyed a part of my past.”^[28] Although a softening of his style had been apparent since the late 1920s, Grosz’s work assumed a more sentimental tone in America, a change generally seen as a decline.^[29] His late work never achieved the critical success of his Berlin years.^[30]

From 1947 to 1959, George Grosz lived in Huntington, New York, where he taught painting at the Huntington Township Art League.^[31] It is said by locals that he used what was to become his most famous painting, Eclipse of the Sun, to pay for a car repair bill, in his relative penury. The painting was later acquired by house painter Tom Constantine^[32] to settle a debt of $104.00. The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington purchased the painting in 1968 for $15,000.00, raising the money by public subscription. As Eclipse of the Sun portrays the warmongering of arms manufacturers, this painting became a destination of protesters of the Viet Nam War in Heckscher Park (where the museum is sited) in the late 1960s and early 70s.

In 2006, the Heckscher proposed selling Eclipse of the Sun at its then-current appraisal of approximately $19,000,000.00 to pay for repairs and renovations to the building. There was such public outcry that the museum decided not to sell, and announced plans to create a dedicated space for display of the painting in the renovated museum.^[33]

Legacy and estate[edit]

George Grosz’s art influenced other New Objectivity artists such as Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Anton Räderscheidt, and Georg Scholz.^[34] In the United States, the artists influenced by his work included the social realists Ben Shahn and William Gropper.^[35]

In 1960, Grosz was the subject of the Oscar-nominated short film George Grosz’ Interregnum. He is fictionalized as “Fritz Falke” in Arthur R.G. Solmssen‘s novel A Princess in Berlin (1980). In 2002, actor Kevin McKidd portrayed Grosz in a supporting role as an eager artist seeking exposure in Max, regarding Adolf Hitler‘s youth.

The Grosz estate filed a lawsuit in 1995 against the Manhattan art dealer Serge Sabarsky, arguing that Sabarsky had deprived the estate of appropriate compensation for the sale of hundreds of Grosz works he had acquired. In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Grosz estate claims that Sabarsky secretly acquired 440 Grosz works for himself, primarily drawings and watercolors produced in Germany in the 1910s and 20s.^[30] The lawsuit was settled in summer in 2006.^[36]

In 2003 the Grosz family initiated a legal battle against the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, asking that three paintings be returned. According to documents, the paintings were sold to the Nazis after Grosz fled the country in 1933. The museum never settled the claim, arguing that a three-year statute of limitations in bringing such a claim had expired. It is well documented that the Nazis stole thousands of paintings during World War II and many heirs of German painters continue to fight powerful museums to reclaim such works.^{[citation needed]}

George Grosz’s younger son is jazz guitarist Marty Grosz.

Quotes[edit]

• My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon. … I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands … I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket … I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. — George Grosz ^[37]

See also[edit]

• Jedermann sein eigner Fussball, an artists’ book by George Grosz and John Heartfield
• Assoziation revolutionärer bildender Künstler, an association of German artists
• List of German painters

Notes[edit]

1. Jump up^ The Progressive. Retrieved 2011-12-24 – via Google Books.
2. Jump up^ “munzinger.de”. munzinger.de. Retrieved 2011-12-24.
3. Jump up^ henze-ketterer.ch^{[dead link]}
4. Jump up^ “zeit.de”. Hamburg: ZEIT ONLINE GmbH. 1955-01-27. Retrieved 2011-12-24.
5. Jump up^ Grosz 1946, p. 22.
6. Jump up^ Grosz 1946, pp. 24, 26.
7. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d} Kranzfelder 2005, p. 92.
8. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c} Kranzfelder 2005, p. 15.
9. Jump up^ The letter “ß” is called in German a “scharfes S” or “Eszett”, the latter meaning simply “SZ”. It was common usage at that time when typing to transcribe the ß as “sz”, so his choice of transcription was essentially a neutral phonetic rendering.
10. Jump up^ Sabarsky 1985, p.250.
11. Jump up^ Schmied 1978, p.29.
12. Jump up^ Sabarsky 1985, p. 26. According to Sabarsky, no records can be found to substantiate the version of events described by Grosz in his autobiography, i.e., that he was accused of desertion and narrowly avoided execution.
13. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 28.
14. Jump up^ Nash, David S. (2007). Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 112. ISBN9780199570751.
15. Jump up^ [1]
16. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, pp. 54–55.
17. Jump up^ Sabarsky 1985, pp. 33, 251.
18. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 58.
19. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 93.
20. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 78.
21. Jump up^ Grosz 1946, pp. 301–302.
22. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 90-93.
23. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 21.
24. Jump up^ Kranzfelder 2005, p. 22.
25. Jump up^ “Remember Uncle August the Unhappy Inventor”. centrepompidou.fr. Retrieved 2008-04-01.
26. Jump up^ “George Grosz erotic artwork”. AMEA/World Museum of Erotic Art. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
27. Jump up^ Grosz 1946, p. 276.
28. Jump up^ Grosz 1946, p. 270.
29. Jump up^ Michalsky 1994, pp. 35–36.
30. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} Joyce Wadler (August 27, 2001), The Heirs of George Grosz Battle His Dealer’s Ghost; A Protracted Lawsuit Outlives Its Target, But Not Its Anger New York Times.
31. Jump up^ “George Grosz at The Heckscher Museum of Art”.
32. Jump up^ “Thomas Constantine : The Second Acquirer Of George Grosz’s “Eclipse Of The Sun””.
33. Jump up^ Genocchio, Benjamin (February 19, 2006). “George Grosz,Eclipse of the Sun, Heckscher Museum of Art”. The New York Times.
34. Jump up^ Michalsky 1994, pp. 33, 100.
35. Jump up^ Walker et al. 1988, p. 21.
36. Jump up^ Robin Pogrebin (November 15, 2006), Met Won’t Show a Grosz at Center of a Dispute New York Times.
37. Jump up^ Friedrich, Otto (1986). Before the Deluge. USA: Fromm International Publishing Corporation. pp. 37. ISBN 0-88064-054-5

References[edit]

• Grosz, George (1946). A Little Yes and a Big No. New York: The Dial Press.
• Kranzfelder, Ivo (2005). George Grosz. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-0891-1
• Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
• Sabarsky, Serge, editor (1985). George Grosz: The Berlin Years. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-0668-5
• Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0184-7
• ‘Peter M. Grosz,’ obituary of George Grosz’s son, New York Times, 7 October 2006.
• Walker, B., Zieve, K., & Brooklyn Museum. (1988). Prints of the German expressionists and their circle: Collection of the Brooklyn Museum. New York: Brooklyn Museum. ISBN 0872731154

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: George Grosz

• A collection of Grosz’s paintings
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Mario Vargas Llosa on George Grosz in TATE ETC. magazine Spring 2007

Categories:

• 1893 births
• 1959 deaths
• 20th-century American painters
• American male painters
• 20th-century German painters
• German male painters
• Artists from Berlin
• American artists
• Modern painters
• German watercolourists
• German Expressionist painters
• German military personnel of World War I
• Dada
• Expressionism
• Art Students League of New York faculty
• German communists
• German emigrants to the United States
• German pacifists
• Guggenheim Fellows
• Exiles from Nazi Germany
• American people of German descent
• Political artists

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Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

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