Series - Forest in art
Camille Pissarro, The Countryside around Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 1874.
Ode to nature.
Spring makes you want nature.
"The Forest of Fontainebleau", 1876, Abbott Handerson Thayer (American painter).
It's incredibly modern for its time, isn't it?
A verdant Cézanne, "Le Pont de Maincy, near Melun", 1879.
The Maincy bridge is a somewhat special painting in Cézanne's work. In 1879, the painter stayed in Melun, very close to the Maincy bridge.
As he emerges from the Impressionist influence, few of Cézanne's canvases are splashed with such luminosity. You can feel the air circulating through the space and the water playing with multiple reflections.
AT At the dawn of the 1880s, a new language was developed based on the "invoice", the way in which the paint was deposited on the canvas. This approach, constantly explored and deepened thereafter, especially in landscapes, finds here a kind of perfect demonstration. The dialogue between space and masses, forms and their reflections achieves a rigorous balance, both powerful and delicate, within a rigorous structuring of the plane of the canvas.
Paul Cézanne, Avenue at Chantilly, 1888.
So much yet to discover and understand with Maurice Denis, it is true that his framing and his subjects are always surprising, like "Les Arbres Verts" from 1893 and which is incredibly modern, isn't it?
Autumn Forest by Gustave Klimt, 1902.
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), "Happy Quartet", 1902.
The format of the work being very vertical, I post a detail to discover the subtleties of this painting and the universe of Douanier Rousseau.
This somewhat atypical work was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1902. Rousseau obviously attached great importance to this painting, as an annotated catalog was found which shows that the asking price at the time was 2000 francs , either much more than all his other paintings exhibited at the same Salon.
Marcel Duchamp Garden and Chapel at Blainville 1902.
I could have done a quiz with this painting by Francis Picabia, "Bords du Loing en automne" from 1904, but I prefer to associate it with this poem by Guillaume Apollinaire from 1913.
"And that I love oh season that I love your rumors
Fruits falling unpicked
The wind and the crying forest
Leaves
That we trample
A train
who rolls
The life
Flows"
If I could, I would start each day by admiring a painting by Douanier Rousseau.
"Woman in red in the forest" - 1907.
This is a work that never ceases to amaze me.
"The snake charmer" by Rousseau, painted in 1907.
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) is an autodidact, it is undoubtedly what pleased Guillaume Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry and Pablo Picasso who understand that it is necessary to question all the principles of the history of art, free painting from its archaic academicism.
This painting has always fascinated me. It is all at once very poetic, undeniably free and extraordinarily modern, yet the craftsmanship is extremely precise and meticulous, almost academic.
Disturbing black Venus whose eyes capture our gaze, we are hypnotized, charmed, much more than snakes. It is incredible this exoticism, this luxuriant greenery, this impression of warmth, of moistness even, which emerges from this painting. Here we are in an exotic Eden. We can only succumb to the charm of this woman, so dark in the moonlight, her magnetism paralyzes us. Exotic vision, dream of another civilization?
For me Rousseau is one of the first painters to favor feeling over the subject.
Henri Rousseau has never traveled, it is in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, in the menagerie and the greenhouses that his spirit feeds. This painting was commissioned from the Douanier by the mother of the famous artist Robert Delaunay, it is now kept at the Musée d'Orsay.
A marvel of Henri Rousseau.
"Woman walking in a fantastic forest", 1910.
The customs officer Rousseau is recognized and esteemed by avant-garde painters such as André Derain or Henri Matisse. He became friends with Robert Delaunay, Guillaume Apollinaire, then with Pablo Picasso.
For painting, he strives to reproduce what he sees and tries to make what he sees coincide with what he knows of the facts. Exoticism abounds in his work even if Rousseau practically never left Paris. Its exoticism is imaginary and stylized, from the Jardin des Plantes, the Jardin d'Acclimatation, illustrated magazines and botanical magazines of the time.
Felix Vallotton, The Cart, 1911.
Natalia Goncharova, "Forest", 1912.
In 1909, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote: "We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and temerity."
In art and more precisely in painting, this enthusiasm for modernity is also born: "Futurism". First influenced by the pointillism of Seurat and Signac, the futurists will then discover cubism which will have a considerable influence on the style of their works.
Gustav Klimt, "Apple tree" 1912.
Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, Austria. He founded the Känstlercompanie (Artists Company) studio with his brother Ernst and the painter Franz Matsch. They were very successful as mural painters, securing contracts for museums, theaters and other decorative works of art for wealthy patrons. Then Klimt honed his personal style and the engraving skills his father had taught him.
In 1897 Gustav Klimt joins the Vienna Sezession, an Art Nouveau movement whose aim is to give young artists a chance to make themselves known and to revolt against the conservative attitudes of academic art.
"Apple Tree" is a work by Gustav Klimt in 1912. His paintings of women, considered scandalous, caused many orders to be cancelled. Out of financial need, Klimt then tried his hand at the landscape genre.
In 1917, he was made an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In January of the following year, at the age of 55, Klimt suffered a stroke. Weakened and suffering from pneumonia, he died on February 6, 1918.
The colors of autumn, in Canada with Tom Thomson and his painting Maples, 1916-1917. Luminous.
What a pity that Edvard Munch is known for almost only one work, "The Scream" of 1893, when he is a pioneer of the expressionist movement and modern painting. Munch remains, for me, one of the creators of a new era. Munch's art from the 1890s is best known, but I have a soft spot for those later paintings like this "Elm Forest in Autumn", from 1919.
Always enigmatic, with its backlighting, a work by Alphonse Osbert, "Contemplation d'automne", 1926.
Celebration of nature!
Peter Doig, "Great River", 2002.
The enigmatic paintings of Peter Doig are characterized by a figurative representation of melancholy in the romantic sense of the word, in which the viewer can get lost.
Doig is inspired by his personal memories in Canada as well as fragments of our present. He takes photos, press clippings, pop culture images such as album covers and film posters as the starting point for his canvases.
David Hockney, Early June Tunnel, 2006.
"Les Imageries" by Warja Lavater tells Perrault's tales using symbols that leave children (and not only) free to let their imagination build the characters.
Warja was wonderful and so attentive to the children.
Ohhh, a forest of Calder, at the Whitney Museum…
Off the beaten track, a magical and somewhat secret place in Arashiyama.
"The Kimono Forest" near Tenryu-ji Temple. A wonderful surprise. Beneath the station, gleaming cylinder-shaped pillars in a variety of colors and patterns line up like a winding forest through a fantasy dreamland. The pillars are made of fabric dyed using the traditional Kyo-Yuzen technique, a style of dyeing and of print used to create the vibrantly colored Kimono Yuzen in Kyoto.
The “kimono forest” is made up of about 600 pillars, it is breathtaking.
And when night falls on the Foundation and it emerges from the forest, it reveals other aspects of its beautiful architecture.
Since my childhood, I adore this house, but, as often, I don't want to see it for fear of losing the strength of my dreams.
The falling water house by Frank Lloyd Wright built between 1936 and 1939.
Of course I love autumn, but also spring, oh and then summer, of course, ahh but winter, I love it!
In fact I like!
