Jackson Pollock's Art Studio

The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces. --Jackson Pollock

Jacques Tati : Treasured Film Artist

If you ever get a chance to see any of the films by French comedian Jacques Tati you will quickly become a fan like I did. Jacques Tati is a national treasure of French cinema. His films have charms like nothing else you will ever see on the screen. In the tradition of Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton, who were his comedic idols, Jacques Tati is a wonderful "silent" physical comedian in which there is very little talking. He is much like today's British film comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean). Monsieur Hulot's Holiday is my favorite of Jacques Tati's films in which he directs and acts. It is so well done. It's the vacation you remember you had even if you've never had one or the vacation you wish you could have. Beautiful scenery, wonderful sound effects and enchanting music, its a great old fashioned comedy that will lift your spirits and make you feel as if you've been on vacation yourself.

Picasso Documentary

Here is a great hour long modern documentary about Pablo Picasso. Includes analysis of his art, an interview with one of his friends who knew him and documentary about the women in his life.

Marc Chagall : Pioneer Of Modernism

Marc Chagall

July 6, 1887 - March 28, 1985

The Walk

Marc Chagall

1917

"When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".

The Betrothal and Eiffel Tower

(Les fiances de la tour Eiffel)

1913

Oil on Canvas

Marc Chagall began his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. The young Chagall said, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". He said there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.

Self Portrait with Seven Digits

1913

Oil on Canvas

Chagall was a pioneer of modernism who synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism.

Blue Lovers

1914

Oil on Cardboard

Chagall relocated to Paris from Russia to develop his artistic style in 1910.

The Painter To The Moon

1917

Gouache

Marc Chagall with his model, 1955

The Juggler

1943 

Oil on Canvas

Marc Chagall walking with son David on Mohonk Rd in High Falls, NY.  photo by Charles Leirins.

Marc Chagall lived in High Falls, NY with Virginia Haggard from 1946 through 1948.

The Four Seasons

Chicago

Time Magazine Cover

July,1965

Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso 1955

Happiness

1980

"Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things I love." -

Marc Chagall

Picasso: The Visionary

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.- Picasso

Picasso is unquestionably the most famous artist of the 20th Century. In his artistic life, lasting more than 75 years he created tens of thousands of works, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, original lithographs, etchings, linoleum cuts and ceramics. No single artist has had a greater influence on Modern Art and has changed art more profoundly in the 20th Century. Picasso has been described as having lived several lifetimes artistically. He created Cubism (with friend George Braque) and continued thereafter to develop his art with a velocity that is comparable to the pace and dramatic change of the 20th Century.

Picasso loved to tell the story of his birth. He was born October 25, 1881. The tiny baby was stillborn and not moving. After the usual prods and slaps the midwife believing the baby was dead began to comfort the mother. But the doctor, who in those days was smoking a cigar, blew cigar smoke in the baby's face, at which point the baby Picasso grimaced and let out a cry.

Pablo Picasso At 10 In Malaga.

Picasso with a young Brigitte Bardot. 

Picasso's full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

It is said that Picasso whose hatred of schools verged on phobia, began to draw before he could talk. His father who was also a painter, a professor of art and the curator of a local museum. is said to have nailed dead pigeons to the wall and obliged the young Picasso to draw perfect renderings of them. His first picture was painted in 1889 when he was 8 years old. 

"Le picador", a man riding a horse in a bullfight

Picasso's first painting.

1889

Painter and his model (Le paintre et son modele)

Oil on Canvas

1928

At thirteen Picasso produced his first oil painting and began to exhibit and sell his work.

At sixteen years old Picasso's father sent him to art school in Madrid. Then at eighteen Picasso traveled to Paris to study art. It was only a few short years later that Picasso changed the course of modern art.

Boy with a pipe

(Garcon a la pipe)

1905

Oil on Canvas

Bull

1946

Portrait of Picasso's first wife, whom he married in 1918 and separated from in 1927 but never divorced.

Portrait Olga dans un Fauteuil by Pablo Picasso, Picasso Museum

The Sailor

1938

Oil on Canvas

It is believed that Picasso painted 13,500 paintings or more over his lifetime.

Family of acrobats (Jugglers), Famille de saltimbanques (Les bateleurs) 1905

Partition, bottle of port, guitar, playing cards

1917

Oil on Canvas

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Pablo Picasso  

The Dream

1932

Oil on Canvas

Picasso draws in light 1949

Picasso’s “light drawings,” were made with a small electric light in a darkened room; in effect, the images vanished as soon as they were created — and yet they still live, six decades later, in Mili’s playful, hypnotic images. Many of them were also put on display in early 1950 in a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Pablo Picasso   

Woman with child on the seashore (Femme et enfant au bord de la mer)

1921

Oil on Canvas

Head, Céret, spring 1913

Picasso died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more."

Highest of High Art

The Card Players

Paul Cezanne

Oil on Canvas

1892/93

The world's most expensive painting ever sold is The Card Players by Paul Cezanne.

It sold in April 2011 to the Royal Family of Qatar for $259 million.

It is one of several paintings Cezanne did of card players. The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cézanne family estate.

Fashion Or Folly

Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

Some researchers claim that it was common at the time for women to pluck them, as they were considered unsightly. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa originally had delicately painted eyelashes and eyebrows, but that they had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning