Pissing pug, Lucifer and other ambiguous sculptures that caused a lot of controversy
Any art form is controversial, and statues are no exception. Considering that they are made, as a rule, in honor of famous people, objects or events, all people simply cannot…

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“Maha dressed” and “Maha nude”: How passion flared up around the scandalous paintings of Francisco Goya
Surprisingly, the paintings of the famous Spanish artist, painted at the turn of the enlightened XVIII and XIX century gold, became the causes of scandals until the liberated XX. Despite…

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Secrets of famous paintings
Works of art often become particularly popular if they are legends about them or if they unexpectedly turn out to be not what they seem at first glance. "Kultura.RF" reveals…

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The painting and its role in the art market
Inevitably come to mind the prophetic words of Andy Warhol, who recognized business in art and art in business. By this, the existence of the same motive, both in profit…

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stages of directions

History of English watercolors, paintings by old masters

Watercolor is often called the most capricious and unpredictable technique. This is due to the many nuances of the behavior of water-based paints. An artist inexperienced in watercolor painting, even observing all the rules, may not get the result he expected. But at the same time, watercolor is a very grateful technique, as it allows to get the subtlest nuances of half-tones that are inaccessible to any other technique.
Watercolor came to Europe in the Renaissance. All lovers of old paintings known “Hare” by Albrecht Dürer. But only in the XVIII century, masters of English painting were the first to actively apply watercolor and developed the basic principles of this technique.
APPEARANCE OF AQUARELE IN ENGLAND. Continue reading

Russian avant-garde, Russian artist Kandinsky, Vasily Vasilyevich

Kandinsky became the creator of abstract art in its pure form, its theorist and creator. In his early works, which strongly influenced the French and German influence, and undoubtedly in the later ones, the artist asserts the possibility of self-expression, freed from reality, painting, born “from the artist”, “from the mental vibrations”; born not as a “dead word”, but as a “fertilizing abstract spirit that has found a form for revelation” and “spilling over into a symphony whose name is the music of the spheres”.
After the October Revolution, abstraction was for some time proclaimed official art, and Kandinsky held leading positions in virtually all institutes and colleges, research museums and centers, but his ideas were not in demand by the Soviet society. However, the rejection of art, where the “brush itself seeks paint,” began even before October. Continue reading

Artist Konstantin Andreevich Somov, Soviet painting

Konstantin Somov is one of the representatives of Russian symbolism. The development of the artist’s style was largely influenced by his studies at the Paris-based Colorassi studio (1897–1899); it was then that he mastered the lessons of modern and French rococo. The scenes of his canvases resemble gallant balls and masquerades, which were characteristic of the bygone XVIII century. Modernity in his works is mystically connected with the previous epoch, the genre scenes of his canvases are reminiscences of the last century, his characters vaguely resemble puppet Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, but unlike their predecessors, the artist endows those depicted more mystical ghostly than elegant elegance. V.A. Lenyashin rightly noted that the sources of Somov “beyond the borders of the past days” are much deeper, more blunt: Botticelli, Watteau, Hoffmann.
The ghostly transparent eroticism, without which Somov did not think of art, then permeates the irreversibly spicy pages of the Book of the Marquise, appears about (like the Casanova doll) in the naively challenging and mechanically outspoken image of Columbine. Continue reading

ANNI-ELIZABETH PERIOD OF THE HISTORY OF RUSSIAN PAINTING
In the Annensian era, the format of the coronation parade portrait was developed. The established scheme will exist for almost the entire XVIII century. At the end of the reign…

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"Great castration": As covered up the shame in paintings and sculptures at different times
The history of art knows many examples when, at a change in cultural epochs, works created by predecessors begin to be perceived not quite rightly. Probably the most significant in…

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