paintings Archives - Page 2 of 4

Smart Secrets of Great Paintings episode 1 – Gustave Courbet

Art / 3 minutes of reading / November 26, 2022 / By HDclump

Smart Secrets of Great Paintings episode 1 – Gustave Courbet: Paris shone brightly in the second half of the 19th century, with its fashionable restaurants, and its cabarets and theatres, which provided the spectacle of a carefree society. The industrial revolution produced wealth, and fortunes were amassed and lost. Gustave Courbet’s work is politically involved and provocative. It reveals his support for revolutionary movements, and condemns Napoleon III’s authoritarian regime. In addition to its critical dimension, the canvas has an air of mystery, and depicts contradictions. This series explores history of art in a totally new way. […]

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Apples, Pears and Paint – How to Make a Still Life Painting

Art / 2 minutes of reading / July 7, 2020 / By HDclump

Apples, Pears and Paint – How to Make a Still Life Painting: A richly detailed journey through the epic history of still-life painting, featuring a range of delights from the earliest existing Xenia mural paintings discovered at Pompeii to the cubist masterpieces of Picasso. Awash with rich imagery of fruit, flowers and humble domestic objects, this lively take on the story of still life encompasses the work of some of the genre’s greatest artists from Caravaggio to Chardin and Cezanne. But it also captures the surprising contributions of the less well-known, including asparagus enthusiast Adriaen Coorte and female

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Gauguin – A Dangerous Life

Art / 3 minutes of reading / December 10, 2019 / By HDclump

Gauguin – A Dangerous Life: documentary that sets Paul Gauguin’s artistic achievement against his sexual relationships with young girls in the Pacific and his role in 19th-century French colonialism. ‘I am indeed a savage. And civilised people sense it. My works surprise and disturb them because they see in them the savage that I can’t repress. That’s what makes my work inimitable.’ Actor Dominic West reads Paul Gauguin‘s self-revelatory words in a new film biography that recognises Gauguin’s formidable artistic achievement but also confronts his sexual relationships with young indigenous girls in the Pacific and his role in

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Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice

Art / 2 minutes of reading / December 9, 2019 / By HDclump

Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice: A look at how mankind’s struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages, with contributions from Grayson Perry, Will Self, Don McCullin and others. Art of Snow and Ice Part 1 Art of Snow and Ice Part 2 Winter was not always beautiful. Until Pieter Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow, the long bitter months had never been transformed into a thing of beauty. This documentary charts how mankind’s ever changing struggle with winter has been reflected in western art throughout the ages,

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Travels with Vasari

Art / 2 minutes of reading / December 4, 2019 / By HDclump

Travels with Vasari: Andrew Graham-Dixon searches for the shadowy figure who wrote one of the most important books on art and looks at some dazzling works, including masterpieces of the early Renaissance by Giotto, Masaccio and Donatello. Travels with Vasari part 1 The first part of an exploration of the extraordinary achievement of the chronicler of the Italian Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari, author of the monumental Lives of the Artists. Travels with Vasari part 2 Concluding the exploration of the extraordinary achievement of the chronicler of the Italian Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari, author of the monumental

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The Taking of Christ

Art / 2 minutes of reading / November 20, 2019 / By HDclump

The Taking of Christ: The extraordinary story of one of world’s great, lost masterpieces: Caravaggio‘s “The Taking of Christ”. This film traces the painting’s journey from its birth in Rome in 1602 to its amazing re-discovery in 1990. “The Taking of Christ” by Italian Baroque master Caravaggio today holds pride of place in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. Its subject is the arrest of Jesus, the moment when the son of God, is betrayed with a kiss – the Judas kiss. 400 years ago the painting was one of the most costly and celebrated artworks of

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In Search of Arcadia

Art / 3 minutes of reading / August 29, 2019 / By HDclump

Dr Janina Ramirez goes ‘In Search of Arcadia’ discovering the origins of the English landscape movement in a 12-mile stretch of the Thames between Hampton and Chiswick with waterman and historian John Bailey. In the early 18th century this stretch of the river was home to a group of writers, poets, artists and garden designers who were inspired by classical landscapes of antiquity and the ancient idea of Arcadia. Janina discovers the people and the ideas at the heart of this transformative movement and the landscape of the Thames – Nicholas Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego, the

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Bauhaus 100

Art / 2 minutes of reading / August 26, 2019 / By HDclump

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the

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Renaissance Revolution episode 3 – Piero Della Francesca – Baptism of Christ

Art / 2 minutes of reading / July 25, 2019 / By HDclump

Renaissance Revolution episode 3 – Piero Della Francesca – Baptism of Christ: Matthew Collings concludes the series by looking at the invention of Renaissance painting. The Baptism of Christ by Italian master Piero Della Francesca showed the household names of the High Renaissance how to use the big new trick of Renaissance painting – illusionism and perspective. Without him their achievements would have been impossible, but change came so rapidly in the Renaissance that the qualities that made Piero famous in his own time quickly went out of fashion. The Baptism was bought for the National Gallery in

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Renaissance Revolution episode 2 – Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights

Art / 2 minutes of reading / July 24, 2019 / By HDclump

In Renaissance Revolution episode 2, artist and writer Matthew Collings steps into the mysterious invented world of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, painted c.1505. This imposing work, full of strange and fantastical details, contains one of the most famous images in all of art: a man with a tree for a body, who gazes out at us from the section of the painting representing hell. The tree-man’s face is generally thought to be the artist’s self-portrait but, like almost everything else about Hieronymus Bosch – including the meaning of this, his most famous painting –

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Renaissance Revolution episode 1 – The Madonna of the Meadow

Art / 3 minutes of reading / July 22, 2019 / By HDclump

Renaissance Revolution episode 1: the new series on Renaissance painting, written and presented by Matthew Collings, begins with an artistic investigation into one of the most radiant and beautiful images in all of art history, The Madonna of the Meadow, painted in 1505 by Raphael. Renaissance art has become part of the 21st-century heritage industry but when Raphael was alive, it was a startling new form of visual expression, and Raphael’s vibrant ‘realism’ was striking and fresh. It became the model for western art for the next 400 years, right up until the birth of Modernism. Renaissance

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Art of Germany

Art / 2 minutes of reading / July 8, 2019 / By HDclump

Art of Germany: Three-part series in which Andrew Graham-Dixon explores German art, examining the country’s unique national style and 500-year cultural legacy. Art of Germany part 1 Andrew Graham-Dixon begins his exploration of German art by looking at the rich and often neglected art of the German middle ages and Renaissance. He visits the towering cathedral of Cologne, a place which encapsulates the varied and often contradictory character of German art. In Munich he gets to grips with the earliest paintings of the Northern Renaissance, the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer and the cosmic visions of the painter

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