Worlds Greatest Paintings
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Top Three
Mona Lisa by Da Vinci
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
Starry Night by Van Gogh
Starry Night by Van Gogh
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
Starry Night by Van Gogh
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
Demoiselles of Avignon by Picasso
The Mona Lisa is the
world's most famous painting
(Until FWB gets better known, of course)
-So tell us about it. What's she smiling about?
She just found out she is pregnant.
Or maybe she has a hot date tonight, and is planning to get pregnant, more likely.
That's why it is such a great painting-
not easy to paint such a faint,
suggestive smile and wise,
warm eyes the way Leonardo has done.
Where is the painting?
Everything is on Google Images.
No, the actual physical painting.
The Louvre, in Paris France. It always has
quite a crowd of people gaping at it.
This is Da Vinci's Lady with Ermine, and take a look at her hands. He made Lisa's hands a little more prominent than they needed to be, and he takes that to an extreme here. As art historians note, her little friend copies her gesture with its paw.
And here is her girlfirend Donna Velata by Raphael
No one could paint women more beautifully, although Renoir tried. Twinkle, what are you doing here? {Twinkle is Cocoa's mother}
She had a little doggie just like me, and I would play with it and her ermine when the girls went out for Starbucks.
Renaissance: it's time for some old church guys.
Titian
Michaelangelo
Tintoretto
But we will come back to you, Ms. Carpathia, because here is a modern painter who is giving Raphael a run for his money!
Who are you?
-I'm Metri di Trecce. Call me Darren.
Will Wilson painted both of us.
Five Six hundred years ago, the Popes had kids.
Here is Velasquez's Pope Innocent the 3rd and his grandsons. Are they trying to pull a fast one on him, or attending to his needs? And is he wise to them or not? This ambiguity is part of the power of this painting.
Velasquez also painted the pope himself, which is a more polished portrait - the folds and shading of the fabric create a lot of visual interest.
God Almighty, what's going to happen to me when I die? is what he's thinking.
Unlike Raphael's Pope Leo X and his boy toy cardinals, who have other thoughts and definite plans for the future, centered around money and power, more so than ecclesiatical matters. As Medicis, they are rulers of the Florentine city-state.
Here is my friend Mario. (Caravaggio's Boy with Basket of Fruit) We're going to a party in Rome tonight. I'll spare you the banana jokes.
Caravaggio was a master of light and shadow, but also a man of passion and violence, and his paintings are a far cry from the blissful madonnas of his contemporaries.
In his CardSharps, the boy is getting tricked out of his money and worse is to come.
I think Caravaggio inspired Arcimboldo and his Veggie Man (I am the Foot Yam)
Georges la Tour's The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds is a more lighthearted treatment of the same subject. The shady character is just that, but in this privileged whitest of white girls world, nothing too bad is going to happen.
Here is another party scene, but in a happier outdoor setting - Renoir's Boating Party (Men still wore top hats then. And see below for when he goes bar-hopping)
Here is the river they were just on - Manet's Banks of the Seine.
I like to Set Sail myself some times.
And all the folks on Seurat's Grande Jatte Island like to watch me on Sunday .
This is a big picture - it takes up a whole wall in Chicago's art museum
Hey, time to get off the beach - we got a wedding to go to tonight!
This is Van Eyck's wedding. Quite a outfit the man (boy?) is wearing. But at least the dame is willing.
Unlike the damsel who is this poor sap's object of affection. He is (WInslow Homer's)
Waiting for an Answer
(I am Fred the California doggie. When the real Fred doggie saw this commissioned portrait of himself, he barked!)
If she doesn't say yes, we will have to consider Benton's Ballad of the Jealous Lover.
Benton's paintings always look like he is doing drugs! Here is another visionary artist - Chagall's Newlyweds at the Eiffel Tower
.
His paintings depict imaginary scenes of G-rated lovers, completely unlike the reality of war-torn Europe that he was so happy to escape from and come to the US.
Not his famous Kiss, but another fine painting by Gustav Klimt, of Adele Bloch Bauer, his "golden girl".
Compare him to King Louis XIV (fourteenth) of France, Rigaud's most famous and greatest painting. Similar poses, each regarding the viewer with a steady gaze, as I do (I am Embrace).
I am Rhonda. I think David Hockney was influenced by Cezanne, with a little bit of Georgia O'Keefe thrown in - her Music pink and blue.
Speaking of paintings full of empty spaces, here is Edward Hopper's Western Motel, and Hopper himself.
.
Here is another hill which Christine is climbing. She is handicapped and can't stand up, so this is how she gets around. (Andrew Wyeth)
Cecelia Beaux was a master of warmer, more intimate scenes. Her Last Days of Infancy, and her cat Sarita
Chardin's Lady Taking Tea, and Renoir's Flowers in Vase. Chardin was fascinated by teapots. Great indoor paintings! Here is a fancy French countess by Ingress, and a lovely water lily pond outside by Monet. Ingres was an awesome photorealist, a prized skill before cameras were invented. Look at her reflection, and the flowers in the shadows. Whereas impressionists like Monet became all the rage once cameras were in common use, because this was a new way of looking at things.
The slight distortions and adventurist colorations of Impressionism caused fits of apoplexy among the Salonists of the gilded age, but progress could not be stopped, and the new (20th) century opened with some really weird stuff, like Cubism, leading directly into Abstractionism (if that is a word). Here are two Picassos, from his early blue and pink period and his later signature both-sides-of-a-face at once ouvre.
Above is Matisse's Woman with Hat,
below is Duchamp's Nude descending a Staircase, and I am Steppin' Out. Also Sonia Delaunay's Love of Circles. She was one of the earliest and still a top Op Artist.
I am Dijon the daddy of Cocoa! Right is one of the zaniest paintings of the whole 20th century - Dali's visionary Temptation of Saint Anthony, and also to the right is a powerful Alice Neel portrait. She simply did not care about Abstract Expressionism.
Now for a few landscapes with people in them. Gaugin's ladies of Tahiti (Muse Arearea) and Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Violating the museum's no-nudity policy for the first and last time because the intent is not prurient, her face is sweet and beautiful, and the composition is so harmonious.
I am Grace, and this is Vermeer's View of Delft
Also Mondrian's subdued Pier and Ocean. Not sure if this qualifies as a Water Painting. When you actually see it in person, the white spaces look pink
That's my friend Brigette tending (Manet's) Bar at the Folies-Bergere. She is having second thoughts about her boyfriend, [ yeah, he's always short of cash, and he doesn't kiss me like he means it. I don't want to end up in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting - I can do better!]. so she is checking out boater boy who seems to be interested in her, too.
Below are two of Jessica Park's finest works, the Flatiron building and Noah's Ark. She does not paint portraits.
But El Greco does, along with landscapes, all moody. St. Pete in penitence
and Holy Toledo
I am Red Dress. This is my grandmother - (Corot's Woman in) Blue Dress! She is not playing her mandolin at this moment. That is what most of his women do. He was also celebrated for painting hazy landscapes.
Here are two wonderful visionary landscapes by self-taught artists Herni Rousseau (Waterfall) and Romare Bearden (Purple Eden).
I am Cocoa! (Go to the WGP2 Tab to see more)