Marc Chagall (July 6, 1887 – 28 March 28, 1985)

                                                                                                               

Bella with White Collar

1917

As a quick note, I'm leaving the city for a couple of days and, while I can usually post from away, this time I'll be in a desolate forested area, which will almost certainly have no reception. So, until the end of the weekend keep your expectations low for new posts. 

Now, to Chagall. The influence and stature of Chagall in the artistic community is tremendous, and even those  in the artistic community who take no pleasure in his work recognize him as a great painter. While there is a lot to laud in terms of Chagall's content,–the noted symbolism of which, he claimed to be unintentional and merely a viewer's subjective experience–it his use of color that he is best known for: a development from the Fauvist movement. It's perhaps a viable argument that, aside from Kandinsky, Chagall had the best sense of color in the 20th century. I'll round out this text with one of my favorite quotes by Chagall; "My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."

The Concert

1957

The Praying Jew

1914

Red Nude Sitting Up

1908

Cemetery Gates

1917

Paris Through the Window

1913

The Sun of Paris

1975

The Old Jew

1912

The Comedians

1968

Self-Portrait with White Collar

1914

Roger de la Fresnaye (July 11, 1885 - November 27, 1925)

                                                                                                

Conjugal Life

1913

Fresnaya was a soft combination of Cubism and Fauvism; I say soft, because the Fauvist aspects were rather lightly applied. But perhaps "soft" can be carried over to the overall character of his works, which, even though they contained harsh lines representing naturally smooth objects, still somehow retained a very gentle overall character. And ultimately Fresnaya himself was a soft character, whose health declined rapidly after his service in WWI, culminating in a very untimely death. 

The Factory Chimney, Meulan Landscape

1912 

Man with a Red Kerchief

1922

The Allée des Acacias in the Bois de Boulogne

1908

The Conquest of the Air

1913

Robert Delaunay (April 12, 1885 – October 25, 1941)

                                                                                                

Circular Forms

1930

Delaunay was one of those turn-of-the-century painters that acted as a midwife for all those wonderful styles that developed in that period. His best known paintings are colorful and full of varying circles, a style no doubt influenced by Kandinsky: Delaunay was a part of the Der Blaue Reiter group.

The City

1911

Saint-Séverin No. 3

1909-1910

Nude Woman Reading

1920

Champs de Mars: The Red Tower

1911/1923

The Three Graces

1912

Man with a Tulip or Portrait of Jean Metzinger

1906

Kazimir Malevich (February 23, 1879 – May 15, 1935)

                                                                                              

Self-Portrait

1911

Malevich was a massively prolific painter, whose various styles I tried, for fun, to capture in this post, and I think I've failed. Honestly I'm sure there must be some Impressionist and Post-Impressionist pieces of his out there that I haven't found, not to mention a slew of other styles that he worked in that I might be neglecting–oh well! 

Anyway, Malevich created a style known as Suprematism, which is founded upon the idea of using basic geometric shapes as the focus of a painting. His masterpiece in the style can be seen below, Black Square, which also at one dark time hung above his deathbed (or, rather, a version of it did). He described the creation of the Black Square thusly: "I felt only night within me and it was then that I conceived the new art, which I called Suprematism."

Black Square

1923-1929

Knife Grinder (Principle of Flickering)

1913

Oak and Dryads

1908 

The Female Bathers

1908

Suprematism (Supremus 58)

1916

Haymaking

1928

Cow and Violin

1913

Airplane Flying

1915

River in the Forest

1908

As an interesting–to me–aside, I believe there's an English translation of The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, that uses the below painting, An Englishman in Moscow, on its cover.

An Englishman in Moscow

1914

Charles Demuth (November 8, 1883 - October 23, 1935)

                                                                                            

The Figure 5 in Gold

1928 

The Great Figure

by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5 

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving 

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.

Charles Demuth was one of the major painters in the Precisionist movement or, an alternate name that rather aptly describes the style, Cubist Realism. Perhaps the most famous piece in the movement, and the nearest to abstraction the movement came, is the The Figure 5 in Gold, which was inspired by that famous poem, posted above, by WCW, a friend of Demuth. Also, Demuth is renowned for his Expressionist watercolors, which are extremely well stylized, and are often preferred to his more famous Precisionist paintings.

Man and Woman, Provincetown

1934

Modern Conveniences

1921

Red-Roofed Houses

1917

In Vaudeville: The Green Dancer

1916

My Egypt

1927

René Magritte (November 21, 1898 – August 15, 1967)

                                                                                              

Golconda

1953

Magritte is the best known Surrealist next to Dalí. Of course, as you can see, he experimented masterfully in a variety of styles, such as Cubism and Fauvism. Magritte thought of his works as "visible images which conceal nothing. They evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?' It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

Self-Portrait

1923

The Difficult Crossing

1926

The Lovers II

1928

The Empire of Light

1954

Dizziness

1947

Lyonel Feininger (July 17, 1871 – January 13, 1956)

                                                                                    

Ships

1917

Feininger was a very talented Cubist and Expressionist, who's fallen a bit into obscurity these days. I feel his greatest talent rested in depicting living bodies of water despite the difficulties the style of Cubism brought to the representation of life. Besides painting, Lyonel was known for branching into comic strips as well as being an able pianist and composer, though, like his paintings, all the former have slid into oblivion. 

Jesuits III

1915

Architecture II (The Man From Potin)

1921

On the Bridge (Ober-Weimar)

1913

Blue Coast

1944