Featured ARTicles
Is Hirst an Artist?
As readers of this blog know only too well, the ARTicle is not a fan of the once YBA Damien Hirst, so a piece by Julian Spalding *** in this morning’s Independent has restored our faith in common sense. Spalding may well be [...]
The Night Cafe: van Gogh v Gauguin
The Night Cafe Vincent van Gogh 1888 Vincent van Gogh painted the Night Cafe in 1888, it depicts the interior of The Cafe de la Gare in Arles. In a letter Vincent tells his brother Theo that he is intending to start the painting: I shall probably [...]
Cerca Trova
Today it was reported that Dr Maurizio Seracini has found paint behind Giorgio Vasari’s work at the Salone dei Cinquecento – the Hall of the 500 – in Florence that may be from Leonardo da Vinci’s lost painting the Battle of Anghiari. We know that da Vinci abandoned the painting in 1506, and that Raphael [...]
I like this painting because .. Izzy aged nine tells us why she likes Monet’s Water Lilies
I like this painting because …. it is very imaginative and creative. He is such an outstanding artist to do a painting like that. In this AMAZING painting there are willow branches hanging down. Plus the sun is shining on a peaceful, little waterfall. Also there are water-lilies at the bottom of the waterfall. I [...]
Looking at: In depth ARTicles
Looking at: The Kandinsky Code
The Kandinsky Code? Has The ARTicle gone all Dan Brown on us? No, we wouldn’t do such a thing; but Kandinsky was a fairly complicated chap, and his art isn’t just the colourful combination geometric shapes it might appear. So what’s this “code” thing all about? Wassily Kandinsky [...]
Looking at: White on White Kasimir Malevich 1918
Looking at: White on White Kasimir Malevich 1918 The work is by the Russian ‘supremacist’ Kasimir Malevich. It was painted the year following the October Revolution. It shows an asymmetric white square on a slightly warmer toned white field. Brush marks, and the uneven pencil line of the square can be clearly seen. It shows [...]
Looking at: Caravaggio
When anyone writes about Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) they normally start with his biography. This is mainly because he was the bad boy of baroque. Caravaggio had a lifestyle today’s tabloid journalists would have loved. Caravaggio was often involved in ‘pub’ brawls and was accused of killing a man in one such brawl. From [...]
Looking at: Mr and Mrs Andrews – Thomas Gainsborough
From what we know of him, Gainsborough never really liked his rich patrons, in fact, some say he loathed the upper classes. From his letters it would seem that he was patronised in every sense of the word. Indeed, he wrote to friends that most of his clients only had one part worth looking at [...]
Looking at : Guernica
Picasso completed this huge work in 1937 after the bombing of the small Basque town Guernica by German forces supporting General Franco that same year. In a post blitz, post holocaust, post atom bomb age attacking a civilian population in this manner is, sadly, nothing new, but in 1937 it was an outrage. It changed [...]
Portrait of a marriage? Looking at Van Eyck
Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, painted in 1434 is one of art’s most contested paintings. What is so contested about this painting? I hear you ask, it is a nice double portrait of a man and woman, and that’s that. The portrait hangs in the National Gallery in London and their official blumph about [...]
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