Gertrude Greene: Purity of Form

Gertrude Greene - Construction 1946 - 1946 - Oil on wood and fiberboard - 40 1/8 x 30 1/8 x 5/8 in. (101.9 x 76.5 x 1.6 cm.) - Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.American Abstract Expressionist Gertrude Glass Greene (1904-1956) was an abstract sculptor and painter from New York. Although she and her husband, artist Balcomb Greene (1904-1990), were heavily involved in political activism to promote mainstream acceptance of abstract art, Gertrude did not overtly express societal concerns in her art. However, she and Balcomb were founding members of the American Abstract Artists organization.

Gertrude was one of the earliest American artists to produce non-objective relief sculptures in the early 1930s. She synthesized Cubist and Russian Constructivists themes into her work, and was heavily influenced by what she saw as the “purity” of those two movements. By the 1940s, her work also revealed an interest in Mondrian and Neo-Plasticism. She produced her last sculpture in 1946. For the rest of her life she concentrated on abstract painting.

Édouard Vuillard: An Intimist

Édouard Vuillard – The Album – 1895 – Oil on Canvas - 26 3/4 x 80 1/2 in. (67.9 x 204.5 cm) – Metropolitan Museum of Art (click photo for larger image)French Symbolist painter Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) was a member of the Symbolist group known as Les Nabis (from the Hebrew and Arabic term for "prophets" and, by extension, the artist as the "seer" who reveals the invisible). However, he was less drawn to the mystical aspects of the group and more attracted to fashionable private venues, where philosophical discussions about poetry, music, theatre, and the occult occurred. Because of his preference for painting interior and domestic scenes, Vuillard is often referred to as an "intimist".

The work featured here is best described by the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

In 1894–95, Thadée and Misia Natanson commissioned from Vuillard a series of five decorative panels known collectively as "The Album." The unusual character of these works matched that of the Natansons' Paris apartment, a large open space adjoined by several small alcove areas. Its unconventional decor reflected Misia's taste, which was inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement. The apartment often served as an alternative office for Thadée's lively avant-garde journal, "La Revue blanche." Among the contributors to this influential publication were Claude Debussy, Léon Blum, Stéphane Mallarmé, and André Gide. The evocative Symbolist qualities of Mallarmé's poetry and Debussy's music find echoes in Vuillard's five panels, which take their name from this painting.

You can read more about the Symbolists and Vuillard on this site. Just search “Symbolists” and “Vuillard” and you find several articles of interest.

Spring Art History Classes Offered By Jill Kiefer

Impressionism (click photo for larger image)Scarsdale Adult School – Click HERE for More Info and to Register

IMPRESSIONISM and NEO- and POST-IMPRESSIONISM--GATEWAYS TO MODERN ART: Register for the Series or for Individual Sessions.

• THE SEEDS OF IMPRESSIONISM: FOCUS ON MANET, DEGAS, AND MORISOT - Thursday – March 22, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• IMPRESSIONISM IN FULL BLOOM: FOCUS ON MONET AND PIERRE RENOIR - Thursday – March 29, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• THE WINDS OF IMPRESSIONISM: FOCUS ON PISSARO AND SISLEY, and NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS SEURAT and SIGNAC - Thursday – April 12, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• POST-IMPRESSIONISM--A NEW DIRECTION: FOCUS ON CÉZANNE—THE “FATHER OF MODERN ART” - Thursday – April 19, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• GRAND LEAPS OF THE POST-IMPRESSIONISTS: FOCUS ON VAN GOGH AND GAUGUIN - Thursday – April 26, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM

The Center for Continuing Education (Larchmont-Mamaroneck). Click HERE for More Info & to Register.

• THE ART OF MEXICO: A RICH AND TEXTURED TRADITION - Thursday, March 8, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• REINCARNATIONS: FINDING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT - Thursday, March 15, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• MUSES: SECRETS AND SCANDALS - Thursday, March 22, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• GENDER IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ART - Thursday, March 29, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• THE FANTASTIC NAÏFS—INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS - Thursday, April 12, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS! - Thursday, April 19, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• UNDER THE COVER OF NIGHT—INSIDE AND OUT - Thursday, April 26, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• NAKEDNESS AND THE NUDE IN ART - Thursday, May 3, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• MICHELANGELO: COSMIC GRANDEUR - Thursday, May 10, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM
• THE GIANTS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: EARLY JEWELS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MEDIUM - Thursday, May 24, 2018 – 9:30-11:30 AM

Modern Art (click photo for larger image)WHAT AM I LOOKING AT? A SURVEY OF MODERN ART: Register for the Series or for Individual Sessions

• THE FAUVES: “WILD BEASTS” - Thursday – May 3, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• CUBISM: IT CHANGED THE WAY WE SEE - Thursday – May 10, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• EXPRESSIONISM: DON’T THINK…FEEL! - Thursday – May 24, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM
• DADA: THE ANTI-ART and SURREALISM: THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS COLLIDE - Thursday – May 31, 2018 – 1:00-3:00 PM BOTH SESSIONS

“The Lone Traditional Easel Painter of the Art Deco Style”

Tamara de Lempicka - Woman with Arms Crossed - Oil on canvas - 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkTrained at the height of post-Cubist experimentation, Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) was nevertheless a painter in the Art Deco style. Her faceted, geometric forms rendered in an Art Deco palette result in sublime portraits of figures that become objects. Her work is a unique synthesis of art and design created in a language that embodies all of the avant-garde movements of her day—along with her controversial bold sexuality.

“As a female painter representing the female nude, she subverted the conventional arrangement in which a naked woman is displayed exclusively for the viewing pleasure of the male onlooker. The result is a kind of egalitarian voyeurism.”

Whether one likes de Lempicka’s work or not, no one can deny that it is wholly her own. You can read (and see) more about her right here on What About Art? 

Georges Braque: A Multifaceted Painter

Georges Braque - L’Estaque - 1906 - Oil on canvas - Private collection (click photo for larger image)Although Georges Braque (1882-1963) is best known for his collaboration with Pablo Picasso on the development of Cubism, he had a long career during which he explored objects through color line and texture. 

Braque’s early paintings reveal the influence of the Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, and later he carefully studied the structures and synthesis of color and tonal values in the art of Paul Cézanne. He later wholly engaged with the intense use of color by the Fauves—prior to moving on to the Cubist experiments for which he is best known.

Braque also was an artist who preferred being alone in his studio—rather than “being a personality in the art world”. For this reason, his achievements were and remain somewhat overshadowed by the developments of his fellow collaborator, the dynamic Picasso. The two actually were good friends. It is impossible to say which of them was the principal inventor of the revolutionary new style, because we know that they exchanged ideas almost daily. However, we do know that it was Braque who initiated the tendency toward using geometric forms, largely based upon his respect for the work of Cézanne.

In the work featured here, we see Braque’s Fauvist interpretation of L’Estaque, an area frequently visited by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

You can read more about all of the artists mentioned here elsewhere on this site.