Showing posts with label Painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Painting. Show all posts

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Broadway Boogie Woogie - Mondrian


We just learned about the painting Charing Cross Bridge by artist André Derain.

Another famous work of art is Broadway Boogie Woogie by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian in 1943.

When the painter moved to New York, he was impressed by the city streets forming a grid in New York city, and he really liked the music called boogie woogie music.
The lines and sounds are for the cars and people moving all over in the city.
And the colors help give the feel of the fun boogie woogie music.


(from: wikipedia - broadway boogie-woogie)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Sunspots

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Charing Cross Bridge - Derain


We just learned about the famous work of art Landscape in Graubünden with Sun Rays by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

Another famous work of art is the painting Charing Cross Bridge by French artist André Derain in 1906.

Derain was part of a group of artists painting in a style called Fauvism which came from the French words les Fauves, meaning the wild beasts.
This kind of art used lots of strong colors and wild shapes.

Derain's painting is of the Charing Cross Bridge in London, which goes over the River Thames and is in front of the Palace of Westminster which is the castle where the royal family and leaders of England are.

All of the colors are very bright, and the shapes are thick.
The sky is pink which was a color used a lot in Fauvism paintings for the brightly colored sky during a sunset.
The castle is green, and the hills are blue.
The businesses on the left are all different colors, and the river is reflecting the buildings, bridge and sky in bright colors.

The colors and shapes are wild and different, and that is to try and show the beauty of a painting that might look boring if it was just painted to look exactly like the real world.

(from: wikipedia - andré derain)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar - Magnetic Field

Saturday, June 20, 2015

First Abstract Watercolor - Kandinsky


We just learned about the work of art Primavera by Sandro Botticelli.

Another famous work of art is the painting First Abstract Watercolor by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in 1910.

Around the time Kandinsky painted this, people were starting to change the way they made art.
For a very long time artists tried as hard as they could to make paintings that looked real.
But people started to want to make paintings that were different, like paintings that didn't look like people or things or really anything at all.
They called this style Abstract Art.

Kandinsky's First Abstract Watercolor is just a bunch of shapes and colors, and isn't really supposed to be a picture of anything.
It really doesn't even have a name, it's just the first abstract painting he did in water color, so they call it Kandinsky's First Abstract Watercolor.

Many other artists made abstract paintings after Kandinsky, but people usually think of his painting as the first ever famous abstract art painting.

(from: wikipedia - kandinsky's first abstract watercolor)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar - Convection Zone

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Primavera - Botticelli


We just learned about the work of art The Fox Hunt - Winslow Homer

Another famous work of art is Primavera by Italian artist Sandro Botticelli in 1482.

This painting is showing people from stories long ago, where seasons like spring and fall were powerful magical people.

On the right the person in dark is Zephyrus, the cold wind from March.
He is colored dark and scary because of the cold hard days sometimes in March.

Next to him is Flora, the first wind of Spring, and you can see flowers coming out of her mouth.
Next to Flora is Primavera who stands for all the flowers and life of Spring.

After Flora comes Venus, who is like the Queen in the back watching over everyone.
There are three women dancing together who are known as the Graces, who are for beauty and nature.
Above the Graces is cupid, ready to shoot his love arrows at them.

Last on the left is Mercury, and he is holding up a staff that is keeping the garden safe from clouds.

Since this painting is trying to tell a story, many people for many years have talked about it, and even had arguments about which person stands for what, or what the whole painting means.


(from: wikipedia - primavera (painting))


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar - Radiation Zone

Saturday, June 6, 2015

The Fox Hunt - Winslow Homer


We just learned about the famous work of art His Station and Four Aces by C. M. Coolidge.

Another famous work of art is The Fox Hunt by American painter Winslow Homer in 1893.

In this painting you can see that it is winter, a time when it is hard for animals to find food.
There is a fox looking for food, and a berry branch that he might be able to eat.
Above the fox are crows that are flying and looking down at the fox like they might eat him.

The painting shows the cycle of life and how different animals survive.

When Homer was painting this, someone gave him a real fox and crows that were no longer alive, and he used them to try and get all the colors and actions right. He went out and made a lot of sketches of crows while they were jumping and flying around, and used that to try and make a painting that looked real.

(from: wikipedia - the fox hunt)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar Core - Energy

Saturday, May 30, 2015

His Station and Four Aces - Coolidge


We just learned about the famous painting At the Front by George Cochran Lambdin.

Another famous work of art is the painting His Station and Four Aces by C. M. Coolidge in 1903.

Coolidge was paid to make sixteen paintings advertising cigars, so he came up with the idea to have dogs playing poker while smoking.

The dog in blue is the train conductor, and he is telling everyone that it is time to get off the train.
The dog sitting on the left has really great cards, and a lot of poker chips on the table so he was about to win some money, but since it is time to get off the train he won't be able to win, and he is making a very upset face.

These paintings became very popular for people to have in restaurants and homes because they thought they were funny.


(from: wikipedia - dogs playing poker)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar Core - Density

Saturday, May 23, 2015

At the Front - George Cochran Lambdin


We just learned about the famous work of art the Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera.

Another famous work of art is the painting At the Front by American painter George Cochran Lambdin in 1866.

During the American Civil War, Lambdin had a job bringing medicine and bandages to soldiers who were out in the field.
Since he saw lots of soldiers in the war, he was able to make paintings that could show people what the war was really like.

In his painting At the Front, there is a soldier sitting on a log by a tent, near a campfire.
He is holding his hat in his hands, and looking down like he is worried or sad.

Many soldiers in the war had to leave their families, or they had to sometimes even fight against their own brothers in the war, so this painting helps to show that even though some stories of war sound exciting with swords and guns and cannons, the real life of war is very hard for soldiers.

(from: wikipedia - george cochran lambdin)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar Core - Heat

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Detroit Industry Murals - Diego Rivera


We just learned about the famous work of art Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt.

Another famous work of art is the Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera in 1933.

In the 1930s the area of Detroit Michigan was the best in the world at building things like cars very quickly using machines for manufacturing.

The Detroit Institute of Arts museum asked the famous mural painter Diego Rivera to come make paintings about Detroit's manufacturing.

He painted 27 different murals as frescos showing people using machines to build cars.
In the paintings he tried to make the people and machines very similar, so that people might even think about where the person ended and the machine started.

(from: wikipedia - detroit industry murals)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar Core - Size

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - Gustav Klimt


We just learned about the Statue of Liberty by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.

Another famous work of art is the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt in 1907.

Klimt made many paintings through his life as an artist, and at one point decided to start using something called gold leaf in his paintings.
Gold leaf is gold that is hammered down very flat so that it is as thin as paper.
Klimt would use normal oil paint for the parts of his painting that had many colors, and then he would use shaped pieces of gold leaf to fill in the shiny gold parts.

He became very famous for doing this type of artwork, and people call his paintings using gold leaf his gold period.

(from: wikipedia - portrait of adele bloch-bauer i)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: The Sun

Saturday, April 18, 2015

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère - Manet


We just learned about The Calling of St. Matthew by Caravaggio.

Another famous work of art is a painting called A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by French painter Édouard Manet in 1882.

The painting is of a woman who is serving people at a bar, and she is standing in front of a mirror.
Many people talked about the reflection of people in the mirror, and that the reflection of the serving barmaid is off to the right instead of right behind her where it should be if the person is standing right in front of her.

There are green feet hanging down from the top left part of the painting, because in the restaurant there was someone on a trapeze above the restaurant as a performer.

Manet was a part of what was called the Realism movement, which meant his paintings looked like normal real people in real situations, and nothing was made up.


(from: wikipedia - a bar at the folies-bergère)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Last Quarter Moon

Saturday, April 11, 2015

The Calling of St. Matthew - Caravaggio


We just learned about The Thinker by artist François-Auguste-René Rodin.

Another famous work of art is The Calling of Saint Matthew in 1600 by Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

This is a painting of when Jesus came to call Matthew the tax collector to be one of his followers.

Jesus is on the right hand side, pointing his finger to Matthew.
The light coming from the window is almost like light being shined on Matthew because Jesus is calling him.
Also the way Jesus is holding his hand is just like the painting of Adam on The Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.

Matthew is the bearded man on the left, who has a look on his face like "Who, me?" as Jesus is calling him.
All of the tax collectors are dressed very fancy, with nice robes and shoes, and Jesus is wearing a robe and is barefoot.
This helps show the difference between earthly and heavenly treasures.

Caravaggio painted two other pictures of Saint Matthew.
One was called The Inspiration of Saint Matthew and was about Matthew writing the Gospel.
The other was called The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and was about when Matthew was killed for his beliefs in Jesus.
All three paintings are on the walls at the Contarelli Chapel in Rome.

(from: wikipedia - the calling of st matthew (caravaggio))


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Waning Gibbous

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Charles IV of Spain and His Family - Francisco Goya


We just learned about the famous painting No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock.

Another famous painting is Charles IV of Spain and His Family by Spanish painter Francisco Goya in 1801.

Goya became a famous painter in Spain and the royal family liked his art so much they hired him to do some family portraits.

The painting of Charles IV and his family is interesting because many people believed that his wife Louisa was really in charge, so Goya painted her to be in the middle of the painting.
He also painted them in very fancy expensive clothing, to show how rich they were.
The lighting in the painting shows that although the family is in light right now, there is a dark shadow coming toward them.

Many people were not happy with the kings and queens, so that is why Goya painted them with the queen in the middle, wearing rich and fancy clothes that no one else could afford, and a shadow coming toward them meaning they would not be kings and queens for much longer.

Goya also painted himself in the painting in the back left in the dark, standing at an easel.


(from: wikipedia - charles iv of spain and his family)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: First Quarter Moon

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Relativity - M.C. Escher


We just learned about the painting The Night Watch by Rembrandt.

Another famous painting was called Relativity by Dutch painter Maurits Cornelis Escher, also known as M. C. Escher, painted in 1953.
Escher was known for making his paintings very detailed and sometimes using math ideas to make his pictures interesting.

In his Relativity painting, there are many stairways that connect in strange ways, and people that look like they must be standing on the ceiling or on the walls.


(from: wikipedia - m. c. escher)

The way he made his painting was using something called a lithograph on limestone.

For a lithograph, first the artists take a large slab of limestone, and scrape it clean so there a nice flat surface to draw on.
Then they use something like a greasy oily crayon to draw the painting.
When the painting is done, they pour a type of acid and gooey sticky thing called gum arabic on the painting and spread it around and let it dry.
The acid and gum arabic sticks only to the parts that don't have oily crayon, and works like a clear cover for those areas.
After it is dry, they use something called a solvent, which washes away the oils from the crayon.
Then they pour liquid ink onto the limestone and rub it in, and that ink sticks only to where the oily crayon was.
They wash the limestone with water, and that washes off the liquid ink from the areas that didn't have crayon, because they are protected by that clear cover from the acid and gum arabic.
After all of that, the stone has oily ink only on the parts where the drawing is. They lay a sheet of paper on top of it, and press it down onto the stone, and when they remove the paper it has a copy of the painting the artist did.
They can make many copies from the same lithograph limestone, kind of like a copy machine before the copy machines were invented.



(from: wikipedia - lithography)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Lunar Eclipse

Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Night Watch - Rembrandt


We just learned about the famous work of art Campbell's Soup Cans by artist Andy Warhol.

Another famous work of art was called The Night Watch by Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn.

It is also called Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch.

This painting is very big, at almst 15 feet wide and 12 feet high!

After many years the painting had faded and become so dark that people thought it was a picture of soldiers marching at night.
When some people went to fix up the painting and help make it look like it did when it was first painted, they saw that it was a painting during the daytime, the people are just coming out of a dark place into the sunlight.

Rembrandt was very good at painting people in a way that made them look like they were in the middle of moving, and not just standing still.

(from: wikipedia - the night watch)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Blue Moon

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Campbell's Soup Cans - Andy Warhol


We just learned about the famous work of art Guernica by artist Pablo Picasso.

Another famous work of art was called Campbell's Soup Cans by artist Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol started off working in advertising where he would use something called silk screening.
Silk screening is like using a stencil to fill in colors, and the open parts of the stencil have a screen over them with holes in it, just like a screen you might find in a window.
Using this silk screening it was easy to make the same picture over and over again.

Warhol made paintings of 32 different Campbell's soup cans.
When he showed them to people at an art gallery, some people were very upset and didn't think he was a good artist.
Other people thought it was very interesting, showing art using something you'd find at a grocery store.

Warhol was very famous for something called Pop Art.
This type of art was of famous people or things you might see in TV commercials.
Pop was short for popular, so anything that was really popular might end up in a painting.


(from: wikipedia - campbell's soup cans)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Lunar Phase

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Guernica - Picasso


We just learned about the famous work of art A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by artist Georges Seurat.

Another famous work of art is the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

This painting was about a war that was going on in Spain, and Picasso wanted to make a painting that would make people realize that war was bad.
Picasso was famous for painting in a style known as cubism, which was a very different way to paint pictures of things.
The artist would think about all of the sides of something that they wanted to paint, like the left, front, right and back sides, and then in the painting would show more than just one side.
Usually in a painting you only see one side of a person, like their front or left side.
But with cubism things could be painted to show more sides, and it usually looked very strange.

In the painting Guernica there are many pictures of things that you can find if you look closely.
A bull, a woman holding a baby, a horse, a light bulb, and faces of different people who are scared, surprised or sad.

Because the cubism style of painting is so strange looking, some people have looked and found other types of hidden pictures like a skull or a bull, or even other people.


(from: wikipedia - guernica (painting))


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Solar Eclipse

Saturday, January 31, 2015

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - Georges Seurat


We just learned about the famous work of art Impression, Sunrise by artist Claude Monet.

Another famous work of art is the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by artist Georges Seurat.

Just like Claude Monet, Georges Seurat was part of the impressionist movement.

He also used something called pointillism, which means his painting is made up of tiny little dots of color.
If you look closely you can see bright colors up next to darker colors, and if you look from farther away the two colors mix together to make a medium color.

Seurat used this method to mix colors together, and make areas where the sun was shining look bright and the shady areas look darker.
The Island of La Grande Jatte is an island near Paris, and Seurat spent two years studying the park on this island.
He sat in the park and made many sketches of the figures there and how the light and colors looked on them in the sunlight.


(from: wikipedia - a sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Moon Tides

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Impression, Sunrise - Monet


We just learned about the famous work of art the Raphael Rooms by artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, also known as Raphael.

Another famous work of art is the painting Impression, Sunrise by artist Claude Monet in 1872 in Paris.

When Monet made this painting, he used very small thin brush strokes.
He tried to make the sunlight look right in his paintings.
He tried to paint simple things like boats, and he tried to paint things that were moving.

When he made this painting, some of the people looking at his art did not like it, so they used the word Impressionism to describe his painting.
Lots of other people liked this style of painting a lot, and they started painting that way.
Today Monet is one of the most famous painters in history.

In this painting you may notice the bright red sun, and the lines in the painting that make it look like things have movement.

(from: wikipedia - impression, sunrise)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Gravity On The Moon

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Raphael Rooms - Raphael


We just learned about the famous work of art The Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata by Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, also known as Donatello.

Another famous work of art is a collection of paintings called the Raphael Rooms by artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, also known as Raphael in Italy in 1509.

Just like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, these were frescoes.
They were painted during the Italian Renaissance, which was a time when artists from all over Europe came to Italy to share their art and work with other artists.

The leaders of the Catholic church named Pope Julius II asked Raphael to paint four rooms, and in each room to paint all four walls and the ceiling, which is twenty paintings.

Unfortunately, Raphael died after he had only completed two of the rooms, so the other artists that he worked with finished the other rooms.

The first room he painted was The Stanza della segnatura, meaning Room of the Signatura.
The four paintings there were to represent theology (God), philosphy (wisdom), jurisprudence (law) and poetry.

The painting for philosophy was called The School of Athens and many people feel it was his greatest painting ever.

Raphael painted 21 different people in the painting, and the people in the painting are supposed to be famous philosophers through history.
Two of the most famous philosophers were Aristotle and Plato, who are in the middle of the room by the door.
Each of the philosophers is dressed and posed different, to help show who they all are and the things in life they tried to study.

(from: wikipedia - the school of athens)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Lunar Rocks

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Whistler's Mother - Whistler


We just learned about the famous painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.

Another famous piece of art is the painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 by painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871.

The painting is better known by it's nickname Whistler's Mother, because it is a painting of Anna McNeill Whistler, who was the painter's mother.

Many people have asked what the painting means or what is the story behind it, but the artist Whistler very strongly believed in something called Art for Art's sake.
This means that he believed his paintings should be good enough for someone to enjoy, just by looking at them.
In French this was called l'art pour l'art which means "the art for the art".

Since it is a famous painting of an artist's mother, this painting has been used many times as a way to get people to remember their mothers and feel good about them.

(from: wikipedia - whistler's mother)


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