The Ballet Class by Edgar Degas

The Ballet Class by Edgar Degas was painted between 1871 and 1874. From 1870 until his death in 1917, the artist's favorite subject were ballerinas, either rehearsing or not. One of his friends played in the orchestra in the Paris opera house, so Degas was introduced to the backstage area of the opera. He would spend much time there.

What I really like about this painting, just like others by Degas, is that everything looks very natural. I don't know whether or not this is true, but it doesn't look like the dancers were posing for the painting. It seems as though none of them notice that the artist is there, painting.
Another major part of this painting that  I noticed was the room that they are in. Not nearly every dance studio has marble columns used as accents! Some surprising details of the painting include the watering can and Yorkshire Terrier in the bottom left corner. I wonder how those got into the dance studio...
Another thing I realized, after reading the following quote, was how good the floor looks. It's not the dominant element in the painting, but it looks very real. The wide floorboards, just like many old buildings have, make the painting look very authentic.

Degas is one of the very few painters who gave the ground its true importance. He has some admirable floors.

-Paul Valéry

The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Briullov

The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov was painted in 1830-1833. It is located in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. However, the painting had not been located there originally. Prince Anatole Demidov, who had commissioned the piece of art, donated it to Nicholas I of Russia. The Russian Emperor had the painting displayed at the Imperial Academy of Art, so that students could view the picture and learn from it. When the Russian Museum opened in 1895, the painting was moved there, so that more people would be able to view it. Also, the painting had been exhibited in Rome and in the Louvre in Paris.

The painting is very large - 15 1/4 feet by 21 1/3 feet - no wonder the artist took three years to complete the painting.

An interesting fact is that the artist portrayed himself as one of the characters of the painting. Can you find him??? You probably don't think so - unless you kow exactly what he looks like. Here's a hint - look for a dude with art supplies. Give up? In the left part of the painting there is a man with a box on his head. In the box are paintbrushes and other supplies. He seems to be the only person not panicing. But then again, why? He's not actually experiencing the terror, unlike the other people he drew.

The painting must have been awfully difficult to draw, since he had to have pictured all of the people and how they react to what's going on around them. The artist did visit the remains of Pompeii, and made many sketches, but I don't think that there was as much left of Pompeii as you can see in the picture. And you cannot fully recreate everything that is happening; I doubt somebody would agree to stand for several hours in the same pose holding another person. And I especially doubt that the artist found a dead bird lying around and decided to take it with him to add to the painting. (The bird is at the bottom of the stairs, to the right of the three people huddled together. It's hard to see in this image... so you should come to Russia to look at the dead bird.)

"The Coronation in Saint-Denis" by Peter Paul Rubens

The Coronation in Saint-Denis by Peter Paul Rubens is part of the Marie de' Medici cycle, a series of 24 paintings. They were commissioned to the artist by Marie de' Medici, the second wife of the French king Henry IV. Marie had ordered the paintings for a gallery in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The whole series is now located in the Louvre. Rubens received the commission in the autumn of 1621, and the contract and terms were negotiated and agreed upon by early 1622. The artist was supposed to have two years to work on the whole series, so that the completion would coincide with the time of marriage of Marie's daughter, Henrietta Maria. Twenty-one of the paintings were to be about Marie's own struggles and triumphs in life, the other three were to be portraits of her.
These paintings are simply undescribable - you can stare at it for hours on a computer screen, but it's not even close to seeing it in real life. I had the great fortune to see it in the Louvre, and it's certainly something not to be forgotten. First of all, they are huge - they are all about 12 feet tall, but they vary in width. This one in particular is about 21 feet wide this is one of the largest paintings in the series.. It's surprising that the artist managed to finish 24 paintings (all of which are very large) in only two years, considering the extraordinary amount of detail in each one. You could stare at the picture for hours and find new details all the time.

What I really like about this is how all of the flowing dresses and robes are drawn - they all look real, almost as if you could reach into the picture; step into it.
At first when I was looking at the picture, I though it was fairly average (except for the size), but then I noticed the people flying above everybody - some mythological people. When I looked at the other images, I noticed that most of them had some sort of mythologic scene in a part of the painting. I think that that is a good part of the images. That is what ties them all together, lets you know that they are all part of one series.
I think it's slightly funy that, in an image of a very important event, there are two dogs in the foreground, and one of them seems to be itching. If I were an artist, I would attempt to make something seem better than it actually is; if there was an imperfection, I would ignore it for the painting. Rubens, apparently, was an honest artist.

Monsieur Boileau by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

This painting, Monsieur Boileau by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was completed in 1893, and belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Its location surprises me a little since that is not necessarily what comes to mind when I think of modern art. I tend to picture an image with some blobs of paint and then a title of what it was supposed to be. Needless to say, I don't picture the image to be what the title says. This painting, though, definitely looks like it could be Monsieur Boileau.

Regardless of its strange placement, I like this painting. It seems to capture a little moment of daily life in... wherever that is.The only thing that has me concerned is the suspiciously green substance in the glass on the edge of a table. I don't recall seeing a beverage that was that bright a green. On second though, I have, but I doubt they had Starbucks blended tea beverages in the late 1800s.

I also wonder: what are the little black things laying on the table? I wish artists would sometimes label otherwise unidentifiable objects. It would help so much.

Georges Pierre Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte"

This is one of Georges Pierre Seurat's most famous paintings, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte. It took the artist 2 years to complete the painting; he worked on it from 1884-1886.

Even though it might not be visible in a small version of the painting, it consists of many small dots that, when viewed from a distance, all blend together to make one picture. This is an example of pointillism. Knowing this, it's no surprise that the painter took 2 years to complete the painting, which is approximately 7 feet by 10 feet in size.

What I like about this painting is that it's a scene from real life. No posing, no models (I think). On the other hand, last time I checked, having a monkey that you're walking in the park isn't part of most people's daily routine. But then again, maybe that's what rich people did in the late 19th century. No TV, no internet, monkeys!

It's quite interesting how all of the people are dressed in very formal attire, and the women have their incredibly long dresses, and that's what they wore to the park. Obviously, they didn't have jeans and t-shirts, but I would think that at least the women would get shorter dresses that don't trail on the grass. You can't wash a dress like that too easily, can you?

This painting seems to capture a snapshot of daily life on a wonderful sunny day. If only our weather could be like this right now...

Cartier Mystery Clocks

I got to see Cartier and America at the Legion of Honor (again).

The most interesting objects there (in my opinion) were the Cartier "mystery clocks." You cannot tell very well from the picture, but everything around the hands is crystal - invisible crystal. This astounded me when I first saw it. I took a closer look, "Yup; it's clear." I really had no clue how it works. Apparently they had it written somewhere in the exhibition. That surprised me; I thought it was some long-kept secret technology. I guess not. The way it works is that the center part (the rock crystal) is cut in half, and the middle part is taken out, just enough to make room for two discs, about the size of the hands. These discs are what hold the hands. They also connect the hands to the base of the clock (or where ever the clock mechanism is).

Apart from having the "invisible" clock mechanism, these clocks have some other attributes. How about the gold and diamond patterns that form the frame? Do you like a clock worth over $1,000,000? Well, who wouldn't?

Antiques - Violano Virtuoso

OK... So you might be thinking, "Antiques? How is that art? That's just old stuff..."

Nope. I mean, some antique stores are filled with useless old stuff that a granny turned in for some cash, but some antique stores are really something special.

We came across one of these good stores in Solvang. It was a huge store with all different kinds of things. They had a See's Candies scale, several pianos, a foot organ (you have to push two pedals for sound), lots of older kinds of music boxes, and various small collectibles.

But the object that fascinated me the most was something called a Violano Virtuoso. It's basically a piano and a violin that play themselves put together in one box. True, it doesn't sound too impressive considering all of the advances we've made in recording/listening to music in the past several decades. If you consider that this was made in the 1920's and that it still works, it's pretty cool. Of course, it can't play very many pieces, and it might be just a "little bit" bigger than a CD player (it's "only" about 6 feet tall).

This is a picture of part of a Violano Virtuoso.

It must have been a very creative person that came up with this idea. And how talented the people who made it were. It took them 13 years to finish the project, and it was well worth it.

Of course, these are no longer for practical uses; they have become a true collctible. Some estimate there to be about 700-800 left out of several thousand.

Jean as a Huntsman by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I had the great fortune of seeing an exhibition of Renoir paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this week. Out of the paintings there, this was one of my favorites.

The painting, completed in 1910, is of the artist's son, Jean. He was asked about the painting and remembers having to pose for it.

"When I was fifteen years old, I wore a jacket that reminded my father of a hunter, so he had me pose with a gun and with Bob for a hunting dog. The gun was borrowed from one of our farmers."

-Jean Renoir

What I really like about this painting is the fact that you can see the strokes of the paintbrush, but it's not huge strokes that make the whole picture blurry. They don't force you to have to step away from it in order to see the subject.

One of the things you see in many of Renoir's paintings in the background. It's there, and you know the subject is not floating in space, but it is done in a way that forces you to focus on the subject, not what's around it.

Renoir was an impressionist painter, even though later in his life he tried to separate himself from the impressionists. But even when you compare his painting to those of other impressionists, you can clearly see the difference; you don't even have to be very familiar with his art in order to be able to tell if it's Renoir or not. He paints in a way that you can really tell that it's a painting, not a photo. I admire the fact that some people can paint something that looks like a photo, but what's the point? That person didn't leave their mark, their style on it. Renoir found a perfect balance between accurateness and an artist's touch.

Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles by Vincent Van Gogh

This painting is Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles, by Vincent Van Gogh. This is one of the versions of this painting. There are three versions total.

I do not understand the point of painting the painting, almost identical, again. Possibly he couldn't find anything new to paint, so he recreated older pieces to earn some money.

There are very slight differences in the paintings - mostly color-wise. The color on the walls differs slightly in all three pictures. Another difference is the color of the table. The floor color also varies from painting to painting. I doubt Van Gogh repainted his room twice over the course of two years and redid the flooring. Why did he make these objects a different color? Did this make it easier to tell the paintings apart?

It's interesting how when you look at a painting closer, you find yourself asking a lot of questions...

Still Life with Musical Instruments by Pieter Claesz

This is Pieter Claesz's Still Life with Musical Instruments. It was painted in 1623 and is located in the Louvre. Before I get to talking about the picture, I have a few things to say about the author. He was born in Berchem, near Antwerp, in the Netherlands. He was a still life painter. None of his paintings portray people. And the guy really should have used some sort of "stage name." I can't even begin to guess the pronounciation of it.

Now, about the painting. In general, it's not bad. It looks very realistic, and that's a quality I admire a lot in paintings, since no matter what I draw, it's never realistic.

One of the things I like about it is that it stands out from the standard still life. Usually, it will contain flowers, fruits, maybe a pitcher of water or something. This is the first still life I have seen with violins and a turtle! I like the fact that the painter found something that would make his still life stand out from the crowd. The objects on the table are very interesting, when examined more closely. There's a compass, a book, several unidentifiable objects on a plate ( I can't call it food - looks inedible). There's also a mirror with the reflection of the glass of... something (wine?). Off to the left, there are some more strange objects in what looks like a gravy boat, as well as a metal object with a cord around it. I suppose the artist found everything that looks interesting that he had in his house, put it on the table, and drew it. Creative.