Feb

22

Café scene by Raoul Dufy

Published on 2018-02-22 by Eric Bourdon | Comments Off on Café scene by Raoul Dufy
Category(ies) : Analysis, Drawing, Painting  


raoul dufy cafe scene 440 eric bourdon

(Zoom on the work of Dufy)

 

Café scene

Watercolor and gouache on paper by Raoul Dufy
Executed around 1934 – Artwork size : 50,8 x 66,8 cm
Sold £50,000 at Sotheby’s London on Feb 6, 2014

 

     In 1926, while watching a little girl running on the dock of Honfleur, Raoul Dufy realizes that the mind records color faster than the outline. He will then dissociate the colors and the drawing. Dufy adds his drawing to large bands of horizontal or vertical colors, or to large colored spots.

     Watercolor and gouache become more and more important after 1930. The “puddles of color” of the background are spread on a paper previously wet and stretched on a drawing board. When they are dry, he draws with a fine brush the various elements of the subject.

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Feb

13

The Desperate Man by Gustave Courbet

Published on 2018-02-13 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis, Painting, Portraits  


gustave courbet the desperate man self-portrait 440 eric bourdon

(Zoom on the self-portrait by Courbet)

 

The Desperate Man

Oil painting on canvas by Gustave Courbet
Artwork size : 45 x 54 cm, 1843-1845
Conseil Investissement Art BNP Paribas

 

     The Desperate Man is a painting by the French painter Gustave Courbet. The artwork is a self-portrait of the artist. It is thought that he made this painting between 1843 and 1845, at the beginning of his installation in Paris. It shows him “desperate” but especially in full youth.

     Courbet was very attached to this canvas since he took it with him into exile in Switzerland in 1873. A few years later, Dr. Paul Collin at the bedside of Courbet during his last days, describes the painter’s studio and, more particularly, “a painting representing Courbet with a desperate expression and that he had entitled Despair for this reason”.

     The painting belongs to a private investment collection, but was exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in 2007.

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Feb

7

The peaceful landscapes of Alfred Sisley

Published on 2018-02-07 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis, Painting  


alfred sisley landscapes eric bourdon 440

(Zoom on the painting)

 

The bridge at Moret (Le pont de Moret)

Oil painting on canvas by Alfred Sisley, 1893
73 x 92 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

 

     Born in Paris in 1839, Alfred Sisley is a British artist painter and engraver, attached to the Impressionist movement and living and working mainly in France. He will be admitted to the Salon of French Artists in 1866, 1868 and 1870.

     The pictorial language of Alfred Sisley has always been strongly in keeping with Impressionism, but he has also always shown his attachment to his first inspirers, Jean-Baptiste Corot and Charles-François Daubigny. Sisley is exclusively a landscape painter, one who, with Claude Monet, best sought and succeeded in expressing the most subtle nuances of nature in the Impressionist landscapes. His paintings show his keen interest in the colorful impressions of trees and buildings, and the changing play of light and clouds above the landscape.

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Jul

16

On the road to holidays… and bullfights

Published on 2017-07-16 by Eric Bourdon | Comment (2)
Category(ies) : Analysis, Drawing, Drawings on paper  


bullfights-eric-bourdon-440

[ drawing in English ] [ dessin en français ] [ dibujo en español ]

 

“On the road to holidays… and bullfights”
 
(Spanish-style bullfights = corridas de toros)
Pen and marker on paper, 2017
© Eric Bourdon

 

     This drawing was inspired by the contrast between the awareness campaigns against the abandonment of pets on the roads to holidays, carried out by the animal welfare associations, and the festive torture of other animals, supported by the law and mostly funded by public money.

     Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. While empathy is stimulated on one side, it is reduced to nothingness on the other. Even more, one encourages not only to stay passive, but also to take a positive pleasure in the spectacle of another’s suffering.

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Jan

30

Read a Nazi philosopher with no reference to Nazism ?

Published on 2016-01-30 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis, Drawing, Drawings on paper  


nazi philosopher martin heidegger nazism

(Zoom on the drawing)

 

Read Heidegger with no reference to Nazism ?

Pen and marker drawing on paper,
with digital retouching
by Eric Bourdon © 2016

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Jul

21

Celtic art and monsters coming to UK…

Published on 2015-07-21 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis, Exhibitions  


Don’t panic, they’re not really ‘Celtic’ !…

Silver Gundestrup cauldron Denmark

 

Silver Gundestrup cauldron from northern Denmark
© John Lee / The National Museum of Denmark

 

Source : From monsters to manga : golden age of art by the Celtic race that never was, by Maev Kennedy, 10 July 2015

 

Julia Farley, the London curator, said the museums hoped to explode the view that the Celts were a distinct race who kept moving west from eastern Europe until they ended up stranded to this day in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

 

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Jul

17

Western collections of Assyrian art more valuable…

Published on 2015-07-17 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis, Exhibitions  


Western collections of Assyrian art more valuable than ever…

thanks to ISIS !…

 

Source : British Museum could send loans worth £1bn to the Gulf
An article by Martin Bailey, published
on theartnewspaper.com (15 July 2015)

The Banquet Scene

 

The Banquet Scene
Gypsum wall panel relief fragment, 645BC-635BC
© The Trustees of the British Museum

 

Islamic State destroyed 50 complete panels at Nimrud in northern Iraq in April, which has made the remaining reliefs in museums, including the Louvre [Paris] and Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York], even more important. Although the £100m valuation may seem high for the British Museum’s Banquet Scene, Sotheby’s sold the Guennol Lioness (3000–2800BC) for $57m in 2007. The limestone figure of a lioness, believed to have been discovered near Baghdad, measures just 8cm in height. […]

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Jul

13

Athens’ ruins could reveal true art…

Published on 2015-07-13 by Eric Bourdon | Comment
Category(ies) : Analysis  


In Athens, the ruins of the State and market could reveal true art…

George Vamvakidis and Stathis Panagoulis of The Breeder Athens
 

George Vamvakidis and Stathis Panagoulis of The Breeder, Athens.
Photo : via artnet.com

 

“The art market is basically dead right now in Athens”, said George Vamvakidis in a telephone interview. Vamvakidis is a co-founder of The Breeder, a successful gallery that specialized in Greek contemporary artists and is known on the international art fair circuit. “The state is unable to fund the arts and the private collectors, the biggest ones, choose not to support the local market. So as a result almost every single commercial gallery of our generation has closed its doors. […]”

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