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Looking at paintings
Discover the elements of art seen in such masterpieces as The Dream of Pope Sergius by van der Weyden, La Promenade by Renoir, River Landscape by Koninck, Still Life with Apples by Cézanne, The Entombment by Rubens, Christ Crowned with Thorns by van Honthorst, Vase of Flowers by van Huysum, and Irises by van Gogh. Created by Getty Museum.
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- So when he is talking about the sequence of events in a picture, I wondered: since Europeans read left-to-right, they paint their sequence of events that way. But if someone from a right-to-left reading country paints a picture with several events, do they always paint right-to-left? Or will it also be understood if they do it the opposite way?(11 votes)
- I know a little about ancient Chinese paintings, and here's what I think. Ancient Chinese read right-to-left and up-to-down (actually, Chinese didn't read left-to-right until after 1919), and the narrative paintings were painted right-to-left and up-to-down as well. In addition, people who use other right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Hebrew, Farsi, etc., paint right-to-left as well I believe.(8 votes)
- What is the name of the painting with the woman and the guy in the forest? It looks pretty cool(6 votes)
- It is La Promenade, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (an Impressionist painter).(10 votes)
- At around4:50: who on Eart is Sazon? (transciption!)(5 votes)
- Pretty poor subtitles to get Cezanne's name wrong several times on an art video. Sazon?? Suggest KA get it fixed!(6 votes)
- Van Gogh seems to have a rather abrasive brush stroke in most of his pictures. Did his mental instability contribute to this?(4 votes)
- Not necessarily. Van Gogh was influenced by the Impressionists' experimentation with brushstrokes, and in some cases, he was trying to imitate the look of woodcuts in his paintings. There's an essay on Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" here on Khan Academy, in the Post-Impressionism section, in which the author states "… Van Gogh was experimenting with a style inspired in part by medieval woodcuts, with their thick outlines and simplified forms."(6 votes)
- What is the name of the first painting shown in the video? Who painted it?(3 votes)
- The painting is The Dream of Pope Sergius, Attributed to Rogier van der Weyden
Netherlandish, late 1430s
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=696(5 votes)
- why did you pick those pictures?(2 votes)
- Well, the video mainly speaks of depth and shadows and surface, and sometimes the third dimension. All of the paintings here illustrate those.(4 votes)
- Was this before linear perspective?(2 votes)
- What year did Van Gogh paint the Irises?(2 votes)
- 10.02 could it be argued that the invention of photography liberated artists such as van Gogh away from realism in their painting (unlike van Huysum?(2 votes)
- Why is it a different person ? It isn't Beth Harris & Steven Zucker(1 vote)
- Though Drs Harris and Zucker may seem to be omniscient, they are not omnipresent. There are many teachers out there, many people from whom we learn. Enjoy them all.(2 votes)
Video transcript
Voiceover: How do you
tell a story in a picture and indicate that one thing happened and then another and then another? Figuring out how to arrange subjects so that a composition
makes sense to a viewer is a crucial part of
the painter's process. The artist who painted this
scene used architectural elements to divide the
story into sections, describing a sequence of
events in a Pope's dream. If you showed the story like a cartoon, it would look like this. In the first event, Pope
Sergius dreams of an angel bringing him an important message. A bishop has been assassinated
and he must appoint a replacement. The second scene takes
place a little farther away within a brick enclosure where two figures kneel beside the Pope. In the top right corner of the painting, the Pope is seen again
blessing a new bishop. Events in the painting
progress from the present in the foreground to the
future in the background. To draw our attention to distant events, the artist omitted part
of the courtyard wall and arranged the second
scene to take place within two narrowing lines. He positioned the third scene along a line formed by a river and a road. These tapering lines lead
us into the painting, while strong horizontal and vertical lines provide a sense of balance. Composition does more than lead our eye. The placement of figures and events can tell us who or what is important. When Pierre Auguste-Renoir
painted this scene, he wasn't interested in
recording a specific place. He wanted to capture a
single moment in time. Renoir lavished much more attention on the young woman than on her companion, who is crowded into the
top of the painting. Notice how the diagonal
line of sight from the man to the woman echoes
their clasped hands and is repeated again by the trail. This diagonal emphasis
leads us to consider what might happen if she follows him to the secluded area
he is gesturing toward. Renoir arranged the figures to
convey a feeling of openness. Follow the lines formed
by the figure's arms and by their gazes. These implied lines help us focus on the interaction between the man and the woman. See how the relationship
between the two figures is disrupted when their
positions are reversed? Renoir's painting is balanced and unified because it has a well
thought out composition. There is something curious
about this birdseye view. Philips Koninck painted this landscape as if he was looking at it
from the top of a mountain. But there aren't any mountains in Holland. In a picture artists
use a variety of devices to create the illusion of
space on a flat surface. Koninck, like other artists, used a mathematical
system for representing three-dimensional objects on
a two-dimensional surface. This system, called perspective, is based on the realization that our eye reads parallel lines as coming
together as they recede. Here you can see how the lines converge at a single point on the horizon. Notice how things at
the bottom of the canvas appear closer to us? Instead of looking into the painting, which is the natural thing to do, look at the painting from bottom to top. As your eye moves up the canvas, the landscape seems to recede and things appear farther away. Comparing these two figures shows us how artists paint obects in the foreground larger and with more detail
than objects in the background. This also helps achieve the illusion of space receding away from us. If Koninck had recorded
actual observations of the Dutch landscape, the picture would have
looked more like this. Trees and hills would have obstructed his view over the horizon. Instead, Koninck painted the illusion of a panoramic countryside. What might this painting look
like if the figures were removed? Without the romantic
couple there is little sense of depth. Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted the figures so that they carve out the space. But only as long as branches and vines fall before them. Without the vines climbing in front of the woman's dress and the branches falling over the man's shoulder,
the space appears shallow. The figures look as if they
could easily slide down the path. Put the foliage back
and the figures appear fully integrated into the landscape. Look closely at this
painting by Paul Cezanne. Do things seem like they're
tilted forward a little too much? Cezanne intentionally depicted these objects from multiple viewpoints. That's why everything seems askew. In more realistic perspective, this scene would look something like this. Look again. Cezanne's perspective. More realistic perspective. The green vase would look
more like this in reality. But watch how drastically different Cezanne's view is. We could only see the vase from this angle if we were looking into it from above. The views that Cezanne
shows us are all possible but not at the same time. If the table really existed
the way Cezanne shows it, the apples would roll right off. Cezanne played with
proportions and viewpoints to make us aware that in paintings depth is an illusion on a flat surface. Artists use color to
unify elements to draw our attention to specific
details and to express emotion. This is especially
evident in this painting of Christ's entombment
by Peter Paul Rubens. His use of color dramatizes the suffering of those surrounding Christ. Rubens used a palate
of red, blue and white. But the white of Christ's
body is vastly different than the fabric wrapped around him. Rubens painted Christ's
flesh with blue undertones to convey his cold and lifeless state encouraging viewers to
contemplate his death. Notice how Christ appears thrust toward us on the left where John the evangelist supports his upper body? This effect is achieved
partly through composition, the way that Christ is slumped
diagonally across the canvas. But the effect is increased
by John's flushed cheaks and brilliant red robe. This is because warm colors like red appear to expand and move toward us. When the robe is changed
to another color like blue, Christ doesn't appear
to come so far forward. Cool colors appear to recede visually. This helps create depth. Behind Christ, the three
Mary's are all draped in blue. The cool blue color
keeps them firmly fixed in the background. Rubens emphasized the relationship between Christ and the virgin
Mary through his treatment of their faces. The grieving virgin Mary's face, and especially her lips, appear even more blue
than that of her dead son. Her pink hand contrasted
with the blue of Christ's arm and her tearful eyes convey
that she is physically alive while her pallor
expresses her bereavement. Rubens used extremely
intense and saturated colors to help tell the story
of Christ's suffering and the grief of those who
were closest to him in life. When light radiates from a central point, it creates strong highlights and shadows. This is especially evident on and around the central figures in this
painting by Garrit Van Honthorst. Without the dark shadows
on and behind Christ's leg, his figure seems less substantial. The shadows help convey volume, enhancing the solidity of Christ's form. Notice how the light is reflecting off the armor of the man across from Christ? Like shadows, highlights and reflections provide clues about surface and shape. Honthorst used light to
indicate who was important, to add drama, and to create depth. Can you see where the light is
coming from in this painting? It's not as obvious as in
Honthorst's night scene. Here the light is scattered suggesting the movement of foliage. The man is so hidden that
we can hardly see his face. Branches in the brim
of his hat cast shadows across most of his form. The woman on the other
hand seems surrounded by light. She is especially radiant in
contrast to the thicket behind her. Renoir made clear that
the woman is the prime focus of the picture. The path to the right of the figures is also largely in sunlight. This helps lead us into the picture and makes us wonder what will happen if she follows her companion
into the secluded area at the end of the trail. Renoir orchestrated the
lighting to give this scene of a casual walk in the
park a sense of movement and spontaneity. When you look at a painting like this one, you can tell that the artist worked hard to convey the tactile
qualities of each leaf, flower and butterfly. The artist, Jan Van Huysum, was so concerned with creating a realistic picture that he included
a fly and drops of dew on flower petals. He did all this while
concealing his brushwork, so we get little sense of the pressure and movement of his
hand across the surface of the painting. The tactile quality of
Vincent Van Gogh's irises is quite different. Clumps and dashes of
thickly built up paint create texture on the surface so the paint itself takes on a sensuous three-dimensional quality. How an artist treats
the surface is important because smooth surfaces reflect the light differently than textured surfaces. When a painting has a glassy surface, color rather than texture
is used to create highlights like the white highlights on the underside of this red flower. Can you tell which
artist had more training or was more skilled? We often make hasty
assumptions about an artist's ability based simply on how the surface of the painting appears. Both artists strive to depict qualities found in nature but
one was more interested in depth and details while the other was more interested in
vitality and movement.