Showing posts with label henri matisse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label henri matisse. Show all posts

Sunday

Rembrandt and Me

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt, 1653

I'm no Rembrandt but I do think that I can learn from him.  Some of the things that I like best about him are the formal things.  The heavy light and shadow (chiaroscuro) his thick impastos of paint and the wonderful composition. 

Dissing Harmony in Red, oil on canvas 24"x24"


Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red (The Dessert)
I also dig his content.  The humanity that his work radiates.  In this painting, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt, 1653, I think Rembrandt nails the idea of an artistic heritage and the dreams of every creative person when looking back at their heritage.  Homer is really the first great thinker of the Greek world from around 800BCE and Aristotle was his heir from the Athenian Golden age more than four hundred years later.  I was thinking of all this when I made this painting.
This is one of my favorite students who was half Italian and half African American and he lived in two worlds.  The heritage he was studying with me was a white Eurocentric one and I wanted to show how he had this background of European artists like Matisse in the background.  

I was also thinking that in his world there was a disharmony between the classical past that I educating him in with the present world.



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Monday

Henri Matisse and Me

There is a wonderful exhibit right now that explores the relationship of Picasso and Matisse's in San Francisco work called the Steins Collect Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde.

While I know I'm nowhere in the league of these two giants I think that it's important to know art history and to acknowledge and incorporate art historical sources into ones art work.  So, in my continuing series of posts discussing this I thought it might be cool to discuss this.


The paper cut out collage by Henri Matisse called the Parakeet and the Mermaid has always had a powerful allure for me.  I love Matisse's use of color and his beautiful sense of design.   I have a postcard of this hanging in my studio and I had this idea to incorporate the way Matisse's work makes me feel.  To this end I used some acid free colored pastel paper and made use of Matisse's forms as a partner to some of my portraits that I have in my show in San Francisco at ArtHaus Gallery at 411 Brannan Street.  Here are the two pieces:


Morry Eale  
20"x16" collage, oil paint, 
and graphite drawing on masonite
Read some stories about this character here:
http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.com/2011/03/write-story-about-morry-eale-and-win.html 


Eddie Currents 
20"x16" collage, oil paint, 
and graphite drawing on masonite
Read some stories about this character here:
http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.com/2011/02/write-story-about-eddie-currents-and.html  

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Similar blog posts about technique and the use and misuse of art history:



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