If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.

Albrecht Dürer

Praying Hands 1508

Albrecht Dürer is the greatest exponent of Northern European Renaissance art. While an important painter, in his own day Dürer was renowned foremost for his graphic works. Artists across Europe admired and copied Dürer’s innovative and powerful prints, ranging from religious and mythological scenes, to maps and exotic animals.

Technically, Dürer’s prints are exemplary for their detail and precision. The son of a goldsmith, Dürer was trained as a metalworker at a young age. He applied the same meticulous, exacting methods required in this delicate work to his woodcuts and engravings, notably the Four Horsemen of his Apocalypse series (1498), and his Knight, Death and Devil (1513).

Dürer’s training also involved travel and study abroad. He went to Italy in 1494, and returned again in 1505-6. Contact with Italian painters resonated deeply in his art. Influenced by Venetian artists, who were renowned for the richness of their palette, Dürer placed greater importance on colour in his paintings. His Feast of the Rose Garlands (1506), removed any doubt that, as well as a master of prints, he was an accomplished painter.

Dürer was also a great admirer of Leonardo da Vinci. He was intrigued by the Italian master’s studies of the human figure, and after 1506 applied and adapted Leonardo’s proportions to his own figures, as is evident in his drawings. Later in his life, in the 1520’s, he illustrated and wrote theoretical treatises instructing artists in perspective and proportion.

Dürer was a humanist and a creator. His awareness of his own role as an artist is apparent in his frontal, Christ-like Self Portrait, 1500, just one of many self portraits that he painted in his career. More than simply producing works for his own time, Dürer saw his fame and his contribution as enduring, and as part of history.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/durer_albrecht.html

Though the artist must remain master of his craft, the surface, at times raised to the highest pitch of loveliness, should transmit to the beholder the sensation which possessed the artist.

Alfred Sisley

The Church at Moret 1894

Sisley, Alfred (b. Oct. 30, 1839, Paris, Fr.–d. Jan. 29, 1899, Moret-sur-Loing), painter who was one of the creators of French Impressionism.

Sisley was born in Paris of English parents. After his schooldays, his father, a merchant trading with the southern states of America, sent him to London for a business career, but finding this unpalatable, Sisley returned to Paris in 1862 with the aim of becoming an artist. His family gave him every support, sending him to Gleyre’s studio, where he met Renoir, Monet and Bazille. He spent some time painting in Fontainebleau, at Chailly with Monet, Bazille and Renoir, and later at Marlotte with Renoir. His style at this time was deeply influenced by Courbet and Daubigny, and when he first exhibited at the Salon in 1867 it was as the pupuil of Corot.

By this time, however, he had started to frequent the Café Guerbois, and was becoming more deeply influenced by the notions which were creating Impressionism. During the Franco-Prussian war and the period of the Commune, he spent some time in London and was introduced to Durand-Ruel by Pissarro, becoming part of that dealer’s stable. In the mean time, his father had lost all his money as a result of the war, and Sisley, with a family to support, was reduced to a state of penury, in which he was to stay until virtually the end of his life.

He now saw himself as a full-time professional painter and part of the Impressionist group, exhibiting with them in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882. His work had by this time achieved complete independance from the early influences that had affected him. In the 1870s he produced a remarkable series of landscapes of Argenteuil, where he was living, one of which, The Bridge at Argenteuil (1872; Brooks Memorial Gallery, Memphis, USA) was bought by Manet. Towards the end of the decade Monet was beginning to have a considerable influence on him, and a series of landscape paintings of the area around Paris, including Marly, Bougival and Louveciennes (1876; Floods at Port-Marly, Musée d’Orsay), shows the way in which his dominent and evident lyricism still respects the demands of the subject-matter. From his early admiration for Corot he retained a passionate interest in the sky, which nearly always dominates his paintings, and also in the effects of snow, the two interests often combining to create a strangely dramatic effect (1880; Snow at Véneux; Musée d’Orsay). Naturally different, he did not promote himself in the way that some of his fellow Impressionists did, and it was only towards the end of his life, when he was dying of cancer of the throat, that he received something approaching the recognition he deserved.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/sisley/

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

Robert Delaunay

Eiffel Tower with Trees, 1910

Although trained in fine arts in Paris, Delaunay worked in set design before beginning his painting career in 1905. He found his initial influences in the Neo-Impressionists, but gradually moved on to join Der Blaue Reiter in 1911. His Paris cityscapes began to take on a distinctive style that studied the effect of contrasting color patterning. Delaunay’s unique method spurred friend and poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, to place his paintings in a new movement, which he called Orphism. Later in his career, Delaunay reverted back to theatre design, often collaborating with his wife, Sonia. Delaunay’s original approach to color and arrangement of forms encouraged the development of abstract art in the 1920’s.

http://wwar.com/masters/d/delaunay-robert.html

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

Willem de Kooning

Woman/Verso: Untitled, 1948

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that came to be referred to variously as Abstract expressionism, Action painting, and the New York School. Other painters that developed this school of painting include Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford Still among others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy.

Georges Rouault

The Crucifixion 1937

Georges Henri Rouault (27 May 1871 – 13 February 1958) was a French Fauvist and Expressionist painter, and printmaker in lithography and etching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Rouault

To be stopped by a frame’s edge is intolerable.

Clyfford Still

1946-H (Indian Red and Black) 1946

Clyfford Still was born November 30, 1904, in Grandin, North Dakota. He attended Spokane University in Washington for a year in 1926 and again from 1931 to 1933. After graduation, he taught at Washington State College in Pullman until 1941. Still spent the summers of 1934 and 1935 at the Trask Foundation (now Yaddo) in Saratoga Springs, New York. From 1941 to 1943, he worked in defense factories in California. In 1943, his first solo show took place at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and he met Mark Rothko in Berkeley at this time. The same year, Still moved to Richmond, where he taught at the Richmond Professional Institute.

When Still was in New York in 1945, Rothko introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a solo exhibition at her Art of This Century gallery in early 1946. Later that year, the artist returned to San Francisco, where he taught for the next four years at the California School of Fine Arts. Solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1947, 1950, and 1951 and at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, in 1947. In New York in 1948, Still worked with Rothko and others on developing the concept of the school that became known as the Subjects of the Artist. He resettled in San Francisco for two years before returning again to New York. A Still retrospective took place at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in 1959. In 1961, he settled on his farm near Westminster, Maryland.

Solo exhibitions of Still’s paintings were presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1963 and at the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, in 1969–70. He received the Award of Merit for Painting in 1972 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became a member in 1978, and the Skowhegan Medal for Painting in 1975. Also in 1975, a permanent installation of a group of his works opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gave him an exhibition in 1980. Still died June 23 of that same year in Baltimore.

http://www.clyffordstill.net/biography.html

An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea.

Hans Hofmann

Rising Moon 1964

Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880 the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. In 1932 he immigrated to the United States, where he resided until the end of his life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hofmann

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.

Georges Seurat

The Models 1887-88

(b. Dec. 2, 1859, Paris–d. March 29, 1891, Paris)
Painter, founder of the 19th-century French school of Neo-Impressionism whose technique for portraying the play of light using tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colours became known as Pointillism. Using this techique, he created huge compositions with tiny, detached strokes of pure colour too small to be distinguished when looking at the entire work but making his paintings shimmer with brilliance. Works in this style include Une Baignade (1883-84) and Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte (1884-86).

A French painter who was a leader in the neo-impressionist movement of the late 19th century, Georges Seurat is the ultimate example of the artist as scientist. He spent his life studying color theories and the effects of different linear structures. His 500 drawings alone establish Seurat as a great master, but he will be remembered for his technique called pointillism, or divisionism, which uses small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create subtle changes in form.

Georges-Pierre Seurat was born on Dec. 2, 1859, in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. His teacher was a disciple of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Young Seurat was strongly influenced by Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya.

After a year of military service at Brest, Seurat exhibited his drawing Aman-Jean at the official Salon in 1883. Panels from his painting Bathing at Asnieres were refused by the Salon the next year, so Seurat and several other artists founded the Societe des Artistes Independants. His famous canvas Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte was the centerpiece of an exhibition in 1886. By then Seurat was spending his winters in Paris, drawing and producing one large painting each year, and his summers on France’s northern coast. In his short life Seurat produced seven monumental paintings, 60 smaller ones, drawings, and sketchbooks. He kept his private life very secret, and not until his sudden death in Paris on March 29, 1891, did his friends learn of his mistress, who was the model for his painting Young Woman Holding a Powder Puff.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/seurat/

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Balthus

 

The Guitar Lesson 1934

Name at birth: Balthasar Klossowski de Rola

Balthus was a French painter in the second half of the 20th century, famous for his somewhat disturbing paintings of pubescent girls and for his association with some of the greats in modern art, including Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Balthus painted figures and landscapes in a more traditional style than his cubist and surrealist contemporaries, and throughout his career was supported primarily by other artists and dealers. He claimed to be a count, but he was also known to be a prankster who fabricated biographical details while keeping his real life story a mystery. In the 1970s the exhibition of The Guitar Lesson in New York caused a controversy (the painting depicts a suggestive act between a teacher and pupil) and became his most famous work as a result. In his later years he rarely granted interviews and lived in near isolation in Switzerland with his family.

Extra credit: In 1932 Balthus illustrated an edition of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/balthus.html

Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I’m working in.

Barbara Kruger

Untitled (Your Body Is a Battle Ground) 1989

Barbara Kruger is internationally renowned for her signature black, white and red poster-style works of art that convey in-your-face messages on women’s rights and issues of power. Coming out of the magazine publishing industry, Kruger knows precisely how to capture the viewer’s attention with her bold and witty photomurals displayed on billboards, bus stops and public transportation as well as in major museums and galleries wordwide. She has edited books on cultural theory, including Remaking History for the Dia Foundation, and has published articles in the New York Times, Artforum, and other periodicals. Monographs on her work include Love for Sale, We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture and others. She is represented in New York by Mary Boone Gallery. A major exhibition of her work will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in fall 1999, and at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2000.

http://www.umich.edu/~ws483/Kruger.html