Musea is beginning a series of the best painters of the Western World (Renaissance to now). We start with PORTRAIT PAINTERS. Who's the best? Our choices may surprise you.
* * *
Best Painters: Portraits
Best Mother & Child Painters: Mary Cassatt. This "American in Paris' became an Impressionist (with a little help from Degas). But her to-this-day, way undervalued mother & child paintings are the best there are. These children LOOK like they're related (no easy task) and the bond between mother and child was never better painted (or chalked). Runners up: Raphael, the rock star of the Renaissance loved ladies and they loved him, and it shows in his Madonna with child paintings. Renoir. He idealized his woman and children but he was never cloying. How did he do that?
Best Painters of the High & Mighty: Diego Rodriguesz De Silva Velazquez. The painter's painter (and perhaps the worlds best) did everything right. His portraits are set in real space somehow, and they have, not skin but layers of skin. He was stuck with the protruding lip, fat jawed King Phillip IV, but he managed some extraordinary portraits of other, more interesting people of the Spanish court. Runners up: Holbein the Younger. Court painter to King Henry VIII (he kept his head while painting) Erasmus, Thomas More, Henry and the rest. An amazing mix of dignity and stillness; plus, he drew portraits even better. Titian. His 99? Years gave him time to do all the notables of that time, and develope a hazy style that preceded the Impressionists by a zillion years.
Best Painters of the Working & Meek: a tie between 2 Netherlanders: Bruegel & Van Gogh. Bruegel, 'the peasant painter' was better than almost anyone at painting the masses - working or playing. Ex. See his 'Children's Games' with all the contemporary children's games categorized in paint. And Van Gogh: Vincent lived, worked, and zealously praised the working men (though they thought he was NUTS) He painted not kings & queens - but weavers, farmers, and the postman.
Best Religious Painter: El Greco. Gaze at one of his many paintings of Saints - enough said!
Best Modern Portrait Painter: Modigliani. The Italian did nothging BUT portraits (that and drinking). A mix of African art, and vivid color make these portraits very special. Note those of his wife Jeanne, who committed suicide soon after Modi's death.
And Finally
Best Portrait Painter of Them All: Frans Hals. No one did people better period. He could do laughing children with all the innocence of a child or a stooped old lady with all the cares of the world on her shoulders (see the portrait in the Houston Museum of Art) or even a group of hardy musketeers. Fleeting moments - ageless moments, they're all here. And always these people ENGAGE you eye to eye (and often laughing in good humor as they do) Few works but all very fine!
Runners up: Rembrandt had better technical skill than Hals, and was and is more famous for his more emotional and diverse work. Goya painted everybody from Kings to madmen (see the Meadows insane asylum painting). An enlightened painter with a deep humanity.
(And still we haven't talked about Rubens, Durer, Van Dyke, Eakins, ... sorry - no more room on this canvas!)
Best Painters: Flowers
In this installment of our best painters of the Western world we look at flower painters. Here's our favorites:
Classic Master: Jan Van Huysum (1682-1741) Huysum came from a family of Dutch painters. Each had his own genre, his was flowers. He is by most accounts the most technically accurate flower painter - he was called the "Phoenix of Flower Painters'. But beyond the extraordinary skill, he lightened up the background from dark, to blue or green and he loosened the stiff arrangements that were so typical at the time. sometimes he'd wait months to get a certain rose to finish a painting. Everything from dew drops to butterflies was flawless. An extraordinary (and much undervalued) master.
Modern Master: Henri Fantin-Latour (1896-1904) while all around him Impressionism was rampant (He even painted portraits of his Impressionist friends) Fantin-Latour built his flower paintings more on the quiet simple model of Chardin. Though painted in a more sketchy manner than van Huysum, the flowers, leaves, and stems are all clear, and technically well shaped. He also somehow has a remarkable still zen-like quality to his work that is beyond describing. He painted many different subjects but his flower paintings may well be considered his best work. No one since has matched it.
Runners up: Vincent Van Gogh The Dutchman is known for his sunflowers but in the short time he painted, he painted just about every conceivable flower he could find. Decorative rich color - expressionistic. Emile Nolde. This German Expressionist did some vivid watercolors of flowers (without a line) that seemed to glow from a light from within. They look childlike in their simplisity but they are also hauntingly beautiful and striking. And finally a test question for the experts:
Q. Who painted the earliest known still life of flowers?
A. ??? Give up? It was Hans Memling c. 1490
Best Abstract Painters
This is the 3rd installment of Musea's look at the best painters of the Western world. First a little essay on abstraction
On Abstract Painting
or
'I don't Get it!'
I've often seen people stare at an abstract painting, then turn to their friend and say "I don't get it", as if they were looking at a blackboard of mathematical equations by Einstein. But it's not difficult to understand at all. An abstract painting is a painting that doesn't look like anything. It doesn't look like a book, or a tree, or a person. It just looks like paint.
You may say 'then what's the point?' Let me explain to you.
You have two lines
Line "A" is a smooth 's' shaped curve
Line "B" is a jagged line like a streak of lightning.
Which is more soothing?
If you answered seriously you said "A". But how can a line on a piece of paper have emotion or meaning? Yet you just said it did!
Question 2. Imagine in your mind 2 paintings:
Painting "A" is a light pastel yellow painted circle in a pink square
Painting "B" is a dark grey painted circle in a black square.
Which of the 2 appears happier in mood? If you answered like most you chose "A". But how can pure color be happy or sad? Yet you just said it did!
And when you get a very sensitive painter that has practiced his art for decades and that expresses his feelings not only through line and color, but through composition, brushstroke technique, shapes, depth perception, etc. etc. etc., you can get a very stirring and emotional painting; yet, it still does not look like a book, or tree, or a person.
In fact, without any pictorial boundaries getting in the way, the painting can communicate its mood, or feeling often even quicker than so called realism paintings.
You may have looked at abstract paintings and said, "My kid can do that." But trust me, when it comes to the few that are extremely talented in this type of art, your child CANNOT do that. Not even the 95% of OTHER abstract painters trying all their lives to do that - can do that!
Now go look at that abstract again.
Best Painters: Classical Abstract Painters
Modern art isn't modern anymore. Abstract art is nearing its 100th birthday. Surprised? Let's look back at those 100 years and see who Musea thinks were the best abstract painters of all time.
First where did abstract (modern abstract) art begin? Some say it was the late paintings of Monet. The Impressionist master (a rich man by now) was going blind and some of his last paintings of his garden and pond at Giverny were often no more than flowing strokes of pure color. These paintings would influence Jackson Pollock.
Or did it begin with Matisse and his bunch of 'wild beasts' (fauvism) who painted people with green cartoon faces and trees purple.
More likely it was Braque, one of the fauvists, who simplified Cezanne into cubes in 1909 along with Picasso who syncronized African Art with those cubes into 'cubism'. He and Braque, then developed this 'ism' with Braque adding collage to their discoveries. Yet even with their monumental break from 'realism' there was always the sense of someTHING represented in the painting.
So we start with our abstract masters AFTER Monet, Matisse, and Picasso/Braque; dividing them into 2 groups: the classical abstract masters and the modern abstract masters.
Best Classical Abstract Painters
Wassily Kandinsky: His early works were in the fauvism tradition, but by 1910 he had painted his 1st purely abstract work (and perhaps the 1st anywhere). Later in his 1911 essay "Concerning the Spiritual Art" he gave the 1st written theories of the new art. Quote"Graphic representation of a mood not a representation of objects." He called his paintings improvisations - lively, original, some works quite techno and sci-fi looking. A true pioneer!
Kasimir Malevich: Like Kandinsky, Malevich was born in Russia, but unlke him he staid and lived in Russia. After seeing cubism in Paris, he took it to another step calling it "Suprematism" 1913? 1915? By 1918 he had taken abstraction to its ultimate limit with his seminal painting called "A white square on a white ground." A true revolutionary, he called for "the liquidation of all the art of the old world." At 1st the Russian Revolution embraced him, his colleagues, and the new art. Later they denounced them as degenerates! Recently they've been getting the recognition more like they got at the start, and that I think they deserve. Hallelujah!
Piet Mondrian: Dutch painter that left the farm (Holland) for the big city (cubism in Paris). Yet his developed art style reached around 1928 and called Neo-Plasticism, was a far cry from anything resembling cubes! White square canavases and thin black horizontal and vertical grid lines, with some of the spaces filled in with pure color. Sounds easy - child like, but any attempt you might make in repeating them shows you just how sophisticated and modern these art city maps still are. In 1940 he moved to New York (war years) and had a profound influence on the New York Abstract Expressionists.
Best Painters: Modern Abstract Painters
Just like the classic abstract painters, we have another 3 way tie.
Jackson Pollock: His 1st one man show at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery began abstract expressionism or action painting. (Should he be called the first Action Jackson?) It differed from the earlier abstract painters in that, mixed with the no subject abstraction, was the surrealist idea of automatic writing - let your hand automatically paint and see what the subconscious expresses. Pollock went so far as to lay the canvas on the floor and drip, blot, and splash paint a cross the surface - which has unfortunately led to a lot of lunacy in modern art. What today's wannabees don't remember is that Pollock often did a number of preliminary studies and after the painting was finished, he carefully cut them to get the best compositions. And because of this, we, the viewer, end up with multi textured, multi patterned paintings, i.e. the most beautiful wallpaper in the world.! There is a problem though. One of his 'innovations' was the use of cheap house paints, metallic paints, etc. They are not holding up well (Also see Gregory K.H. Bryants essay "Pollock's Cockroach". Pollock's painting, "Lavender Mist" has a cockroach in it!
Willem De Kooning: Born in Rotterdam, moved to NYC in 1926. His abstractions evolved out of a series of very fluid and violent large paintings of women. Though highly praised today, they seem to me more like transitional paintings. I prefer those that followed: always incredible color, composition, and that breathtakingly fluid sweep of brushstrokes and color fields. To me De Kooning IS abstract expressionism. And unlike Pollock, who died young in a car crash, De Kooning lives and painted up to his 80's. But he is not well. He's suffering from Alzheimers disease, and those around him, like jackals, are waiting for the spoils - his works and money - when he dies. (This was written in '95. De Kooning has since died)
Mark Rothko: Another European immigrant. Born in Russia and came to America in 1913 where he lived in NYC with the others who collectively were often called the New York School. Yet unlike the others, Rothko's work could not be labeled action painting. It was the exact opposite: monumental, reverential, awe-inspiring, religious, and contemplative. If you've seen any modern art you have seen his work - usually two rectangles with fuzzy edges floating one above the other in a field of color. To me they are some of the most extraordinary paintings ever done by anyone. Rothko wrote that he hoped the viewer would have an intimate response to his work but also feel its physical and moral grandeur. They are extremely simplistic, but something in them brings out that Zen-enlightenment-flash type response, and often I come away from the best of them with a depth of feeling that's impossible to explain! Very extraordinary. And all this from a painter who committed suicide!
RunnersUp: Franz Kline large dramatic paintings limited to slashes of black on white; and Mark Tobey abstracts influenced by Chinese calligraphy with a wonderfully sophisticated sense of color.
3 Masters You've Never Hear Of
We can all tell the difference between a Da Vinci and a Van Gogh; but, can you tell the difference between a Mabuse and a Reni? What's that you say" You never heard of either? Well that's the purpose of this our 6th installment of the world's best painters, we look at 3 virtually unknown painters that are each a supreme master. If you know of them you'll agree, if not look for them at your next museum trip, and see what you think.
Pieter Saenredam (1597-1660) Dutch art was flowering like the tulips. There was Rembrandt, Halls, and Saenredam. Saenredam was a Haarlam painter who specialized in church interiors as his subject. On 1st sight you notice a cool precision: the interior views are well lit showing each arch and pillar of the church in superb realism. Yet there is a certain sophisticated stillness of balance, reminiscent of this contemporary, Vermeer, that permeates the space. Detail and grandeur - WOW! They are quite spectacular!
Juan Sanchez Cotan (1560-)1627) Velasquez was the leading light of Spanish painting in the 17th century but before his great work, an earlier contemporary was revolutionizing painting with some of the 1st and most innovative still lifes of fruits and vegetables. Though few in number each surviving painting is pure magic. Cotan took everyday food: cabbage, melons, parsnips, cucumbers, quince, etc. And placed them on a well lit window sill with a black background. The compositions are as offbeat as anything Degas or any modern could arrange but, unlike the moderns the objects are painted with an earthly realism that rivals any by anbody. Talk about fresh! These fruits and vegetables are as ripe today as they were on the day they were painted 400 years ago.
Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865) 1850-1900, a golden age of painting in this new country, this big America. Vistas of land that seemed never ending. But one landscape painter turned and went the other direction - turned toward the sea. After 1850 Lane lived in Glouchester, Mass. And painted the sea. It's notable enough that he could precisely and accurately paint sailing ships with every line and sail, or that he could paint the sea (that alone stops 99% of painters from painting seascapes) but Lane also infused a poetry of light in his works that took them way beyond academic exercises in proficiency. He is acknowledged as one of, or, depending on who you ask, THE best marine painter of all time.
(The Kimball has a Saenredan, the Amon Carter, a Lane - both in Fort Worth. For A Cotan - the Prado, Madrid!)
to be continued ...
Back to Main Page