Impressionism: a Disney movie without all of the singing

Nature? Good. Romance? I can dig it. Impressionism? Bite me. You know what Impressionism is? It’s a beautiful, made-up, dream-like view at an otherwise harsh, sometimes cruel reality. Impressionism is to art viewers what Disney movies are to the generation of 20-somethings that grew up expecting perfect hair, woodland friends, and Prince Charming – not to mention the desire to go around singing about everything all of the damn time.

Berthe Morisot, On the Lake, 1884.
Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm.
Private collection.

The Good, the Bad, and the 17th Century

Here we are again at the 17^th century, the time of Master Rembrandt and his many self-portraits. But, frankly, when I consider wanting to go back in time, I don’t fancy returning to the 17^th century. There were a tonne of wars. Famines in Russia, France, and Finland and a plague in both Seville and London. Shakespeare died, for crying out loud – I’m still mourning this loss.

 

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Landscape with the Three Trees, 1643.
Etching, drypoint, and engraving, 21.3 × 27.8 cm.
Collection of Marie and George Hecksher.

 

The Good:

• Jamestown, Virginia was established – which later led to a massacre of 347 English settlers by the natives (essentially score one and only)
• St Peter’s Basilica was completed
• Torture was outlawed in England (we’re still waiting for that in other countries)
• Cape Town was founded
• New Amsterdam was founded and soon thereafter renamed New York – I wonder what it would be like if it were still named as such?
• The Taj Mahal was started and completed
• The steam engine
• Bach and Monteverdi
• Rubens
• Donne and Milton
• Galileo and Newton
• (As discussed before) Ice cream

 

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with a Velvet Beret and a Jacket with a Fur Collar, 1634.
Oil on oak, 58.4 x 47.7 cm.
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

 

The Bad:

• The pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower
• Aurochs became extinct (I bet you don’t even know what they are)
• Mount Vesuvius erupted
• The Great Fire of London (which might be good because it got rid of that pesky plague)
• The Ottomans
• Louisiana was claimed by France
• Salem witch trials
• Calculus

 

So maybe a fair amount of interesting and positive things occurred, but the bad here weigh rather heavily. I’m much happier in the 21^st century, with the ability to look back smugly and mock.

 

Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels with a Velvet Beret, c. 1654.
Oil on canvas, 74 x 61 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.

 

Visit the de Young Museum in San Fran to see Rembrandt’s Century, through 2 June, whilst still enjoying all of the luxuries of today. Also, keep an eye out for Rembrandt by Émile Michel, out soon from Parkstone!

 

-Le Lorrain Andrews

Landscape Art, Depictions of a Nature That Might Cease to Exist

I’m supposed to talk about pretty landscapes and painters from the 17^th century until now that have slowly incorporated said landscapes into their paintings more and more, until finally Landscape became its own genre. And fine: nature is nice; butterflies, yay. Instead, I’d like to note that BP is sponsoring this. BP! The company that is ruining similar landscapes to the ones we’re meant to enjoy in the exhibition. Did the corporation’s discussion for putting this on the agenda include a “yeah, we better show them now before the destruction and decimation of our planet is complete”?



Meindert Hobbema,
The Avenue at Middleharnis, 1689.
Oil on canvas, 103.5 x 141 cm.
The National Gallery, London.

The extraction and ceaseless use of natural gasses and oil is doing palpable and appalling things to the environment and atmosphere. Nevertheless, as an international society, we choose to ignore the annihilation of our ecosystems and extinction of animals so that we can drive Hummers in already over-crowded cities and wear our sweaters in excessively air-conditioned rooms. We live in deserts but have lush, green lawns. We have large, rarely used but immaculately maintained personal swimming pools. We need BP as much as BP needs us and I think it’s time we become less dependent on one another.



Jules Dupré, Sunset after a Storm, 1851.
Oil on wood, 47 x 56.5 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing that such a large, well-known corporation is supporting the arts. I live in continual fear that one day I will wake up and society will not be able to provide music/art/drama classes for students and that museums and theatres will close and never open again because the skills will no longer be developed. But does it really have to be BP? Surely this is the most hypocritical exhibition to have ever existed.



J.M.W. Turner, Calais Pier, with French Poissards Preparing for Sea: an English Packet Arriving, 1803.
Oil on canvas, 172 x 240 cm.
The National Gallery, London.

I am argued out. How about you walk or cycle over to the Tate Britain to enjoy breath-taking landscapes in Looking at the View? Rather, sit in your own backyard or a park and read Landscapes by Émile Michel.

-Le Lorrain Andrews

Paint the Sky with Van Gogh

On the over-arching subject of Symbolism, I’d have to say I am a fan. Beautiful colours and images which ultimately stand for something much deeper and more heartfelt than what is in front of you; colours and symbols which are meant to touch people around the world and bring them together using one piece of art. When it happens successfully, it’s truly amazing.

Take Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night (below), a piece recognised across time and place that enlists a quieting of the mind and moment of inner peace, which ultimately stirs in some of us a recognition of the fact that there may be more than just this life. However, some, namely Boy Meets World’s Cory Matthews, view this painting as an attack, a war over a small town. What do you see? More, how does it make you feel?


Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889.
Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Many Symbolists found modern cities over-bearing and claustrophobic, taking solace in open and expansive bodies of land, water, and sky. Who could blame them, what is more likely to make you smile from the inside out? Massive buildings, smog, and honking horns? Or tall, green trees swaying in the breeze, running barefoot in uncut grasses, and the sun on your face?

Feeling stuck in a season or landscape? Get yourself over to the National Gallery of Scotland before 14 October 2012 and check out all of the Symbolist landscape artists including Van Gogh. Also bring this ebook along to compare with the passing scenery on the way: Vincent van Gogh.

-Le Lorrain Andrews

So Peculiarly English: topographical watercolours

So peculiarly English.... a label I just can’t seem to shake off. But what is it that makes me and fifty million others so English, and so peculiar? I love the great stereotypes of England and its mad inhabitants, with our tea-drinking, cheese-rolling, queue-respecting and morris dancing. So how disappointed must I have been when I saw that the V&A, in order to celebrate Englishness, has put on an exhibition dedicated to English watercolour painting?

English watercolours are not peculiar in any way, shape or form. In fact, they are the opposite, the very essence of banality. The only peculiar thing about them is that the English were the only ones to bother with them, and that they insisted on doing it for so long.

Not only that, but topographical landscapes, so you can see the English countryside in all its... dreariness. Early topographical watercolours, writes Bruce MacEvoy, were “primarily used as an objective record of an actual place in an era before photography”; as land surveillance maps, for military strategy (to help us out with our colonising), for the mega-rich to show off their wealthy estates (built in all probability with money from the slave trade), and for archaeological digs, for when we wanted to have a record of whose lands we had already pillaged. Doesn’t it feel great to be English?


John Constable, Stonehenge, 1835. Watercolour on paper, 38.7 x 59.7 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

When we weren’t painting watercolours to celebrate our upper classes’ moral ineptitude, we were depicting scenes of England’s lush greenery, her rolling hills, picturesque villages and rocky coastline. Or rather, Turner, Constable and Gainsborough were. People can’t get enough of their tedious seascapes and landscapes, as if they’ve never seen a tree or a rock before in their lives. The only redeeming feature of Turner is that apparently he once had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea, which a great example of English eccentricity right there.


J.M.W. Turner, Warkworth Castle, Northumberland – thunder storm approaching at sunset, 1799.
Watercolour on white paper, 52.1 x 74.9 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K.

Forget the 427 identical paintings of abbeys and vales, heaths and lakes; I’d rather see something truly peculiar, like a painting of Turner tied to a mast of a sinking ship. Then, and only then, would I come to your watercolour exhibition.

If, unlike me, you have a great love for the topographical landscapists of yore, get down to the V&A for their exhibition ‘So Peculiarly English: topographical watercolours’ (from the 7th June 2012 - 1st March 2013). Read up on a classic English painter before (or after) your visit with this Turner ebook, or find more art you'll love on the Ebook-Gallery.