Your Eyes to the World of Soft Pastel Art
Archive for February, 2011
Pastel Portrait of Vincent van Gogh
February 27, 2011
Henri de Toulouse Lautrec: Pastel Portrait of Vincent van Gogh
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Pastel Portrait of Vincent van Gogh
1887(1887)
Medium: pastel on cardboard
Dimensions 54 × 45 cm (21.26 × 17.72 in)
Current location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Edgar Degas, Swaying Dancer (Dancer in Green)
February 19, 2011
in Multimedia
The original of this paining is located in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. This is one of the entries in the Googles Art Project and you can check incredible details on this link.
Degas was fascinated by the world of ballet; hence, it figured prominently in many of his paintings. Here, the group of dancers is depicted in mid-performance, as viewed from an upper side box. Only one of the girls in green is shown full-length, captured as she executes a swift, complicated turn. The other figures are cropped, leaving the viewer to imagine the rest. In the background, a number of ballerinas dressed in orange stand against the landscape scenery, awaiting their turn. Degas’ use of a cropped, off-centred pictorial space was influenced by photography and by Japanese prints. He felt that the unfinished, transitory nature of reality could only be conveyed using a fragmented technique. Here, the fleeting nature of the movements is captured with rapid pastel strokes, applied with immense skill.
Google Art Project
February 14, 2011
in Multimedia
Google has made a new tool where you can see more than 1,000 works of art in extraordinary detail. They used a camera-carrying trolley to create 360-degree pictures of 17 galleries, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The viewers can focus on certain works and get close enough to see individual brushstrokes. Art Project also allows viewers to create their own galleries, saving views of pieces from different museums.
