The Latest Art Mystery
Tomorrow night I will publish an update on our search for the Italian Princess. Was she really Italian royalty, or was she a cashier at the Bolton Co-op? Was she drawn by Leonardo da Vinci during the Renaissance or English forger Shaun Greenhalgh in 1978? That is our mystery. We are hot on the trail and have contacted leading experts and people involved in our mystery.
They have provided a few interesting clues.
The Latest Art Quiz
You have already seen the latest Art Quiz. It is the headline image. What you must do is to identify all of the paintings referenced in that picture, including the artist and the name of the painting. Some of them are obvious; others are a little harder to place. One is diabolical. Good luck! I will provide an answer key below.
KOS Art Expo 19
So that you don’t cheat and catch a glimpse of the answer key to the quiz, let me put an announcement here about the upcoming Expo. Artists and Poets from throughout kosland will join together on July 4 to present KOS Art Expo 19. If you would like to exhibit your paintings, sculptures, or poems, please send me a kosmail, and we'll get you started! Below is a beautiful painting from Ralphdog, who will be exhibiting in the Expo:
ANSWER KEY
These are the answers to today’s Art Quiz, with some being very difficult and others being very easy. I hope you did well! Let us know in the comments.
1. Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory
I needed a playground to fill up with fictional, historical and mythological creatures, as well as other curiosities. What better yard than Dalí’s? This exercise was bound to be surreal, so it made sense to use a painting by a Surrealist.
Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931. It has resided in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934. Much of what has been written about it has been wrong; perhaps this is as well:
It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Asked ... whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
2. Giotto, Lamentation of Christ
I’ve always marveled at this particular angel. It swooped down from heaven to find Christ dead, and, upon realizing that fact, hit what appears to be his or her airbrakes while simultaneously expressing profound sorrow.
The story is that, after the crucifixion, friends and family removed the body of Jesus from the cross and lamented. That’s the scene depicted in the painting. Giotto di Bondone completed the fresco in 1305, and it is located in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. This is a place I would love to visit because there are walls and walls and walls covered in frescoes by Giotto.
Giotto reintroduced the concept of painting from nature, which was much different than the highly-stylized Byzantine forms that were much less believable. You can enlarge the painting here to get a closer look at Giotto’s work. I adore his portrayal of the faces of those gathered around the figure on the ground.
3. Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night
This is the first answer to a two-part trick question. As you can see in the title image, there are four heavenly bodies that look like they were lifted from a Van Gogh painting. They all were.
Just not the same painting.
The detail on the right and two others were taken from The Starry Night, which was painted in 1889 and now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
We know that Van Gogh finished the painting in June 1889 because he wrote to his brother about it and included a croquis, or quick sketch, in his letter. As you can see in the snippet, the croquis did not show the town, which was imaginary and would not have been in Van Gogh’s view from the window of his asylum room in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It did, however, include very large heavenly bodies and the towering cypresses that he loved.
For a larger rendition of the iconic painting, please try this Wikipedia link.
4. Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night Over the Rhône
There is one star in our Art Quiz that was stolen from Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône, which was painted in 1888. It’s different from the other stars because the artist used even more of an impasto technique to pile on the paint and create texture.
Proportionally to the other objects in the painting, these stars were also significantly smaller than the ones above in The Starry Night. This is what Van Gogh had to say about painting out-sized stars in a November 1989 letter to Emile Bernard:
When Gauguin was in Arles, I once or twice allowed myself to be led into abstraction, as you know, in a woman rocking a cradle, a dark woman reading novels in a yellow library, and at that time abstraction seemed an attractive route to me. But that’s enchanted ground, — my good fellow — and one soon finds oneself up against a wall. I’m not saying that one may not take the risk after a whole manly life of searching, of fighting hand-to-hand with reality, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t want to rack my brains over that sort of thing. And the whole year, have fiddled around from life, hardly thinking of Impressionism or of this or that.
However, once again I’m allowing myself to do stars too big, &c., new setback, and I’ve enough of that.
We love them, Vincent! At this Wikipedia link, you can enlarge the painting to see brushstrokes and the remarkable impasto technique.
MEMORY TEST
We are going to take a break from the Answer Key and test your memory. Salvador Dali’s painting is called The Persistence of Memory after all. Without looking at the title image, can you tell me what color the apple near the middle of the image was?
Congratulations to those of you who got it right.
5. Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa
This is one of Japan’s iconic artworks, a wood-block print created between 1829 and 1833. It is part of a series of thirty-six prints that Hokusai made in a series centered around Mount Fuji, the “sacred mountain.” The series and this print in particular brought the artist world-wide fame.
What we don’t see in the detail used for the title image are all of the boats that the Great Wave is threatening, and, of course, Mount Fuji in the background. If you enlarge the print here, you can see that the artist made the tips of the waves look like the grasping talons of a great bird. The tension between the Great Wave and the fate of the three boats creates a dramatic story in one static image.
The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists were influenced by Japanese Art. Vincent van Gogh’s brother was an art dealer, but he didn’t sell Japanese prints. Instead, between the brothers, they collected hundreds of the prints. In a letter to his brother, Vincent mentions that they owned “300 views of the sacred mountain and scenes of manners and customs” by Hokusai.
In another letter, Van Gogh claims that if he had only one day to spend in Paris, he would call on a dealer “to go and see the Hokusais.”
6. Jackson Pollock, Convergence
In his The Persistence of Memory, Salvadore Dali included something that looked like an infinity pool. I’ve filled up the pool with Jackson Pollock’s drip painting called Convergence. To get it to fit Dali’s shape, photoshop tilted it on an axis.
Pollock used oil paints and his trademark drip method to create the piece in 1952. Measuring 93.5 by 155 inches, it can be found in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Are you scoffing? Scoff not! The gallery includes works by Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo. Afterwards, take a short trip to see Niagara Falls, which is one of the few things that, according to Charles Dickens, “America didn’t fuck up.”
He didn’t really say that; it was implied. At this Wikiart link, you can see and then enlarge Jackson Pollock’s Convergence.
7. Rembrandt van Rijn, The Night Watch
You know you’ve seen this fellow before. It could have been whilst at work or perhaps during that vacation you took to Amsterdam in 1642. Actually, it was in Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. He was Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch of the District II Militia Company, and for the bargain price of one hundred guilders from each registered member of the company, they became immortal.
These men were actual Musketeers, especially the handsome dandy in the yellow coat and white sash. The painting was placed in the Kloveniersdoelen or Musketeers' Meeting Hall. But the painting was moved.
To Amsterdam Town Hall. But to fit in there, they cut off a great deal of the painting, including two characters. It is now approximately twelve by fourteen and a third feet. If my calculations are correct, somebody decided to cut off approximately thirty-three square feet of Rembrandt’s canvas!
Could this be as bad as the fellow who decided to cut a door through Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper? Here’s where you go to drink in a really large version of Rembrandt’s Nightwatch.
8. Réne Magritte, The Son of Man
The apple in the Art Quiz is actually green, and it came from Magritte’s The Son of Man. Was your memory persistent, or did your memory melt away? We played a little game with the title of Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory.
I hope you don’t mind.
Magritte painted The Son of Man in 1964, and we’ll let him describe the intended effect:
Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.
To obtain a much larger view of Magritte’s painting—one that shows an eye creepily peeping out from behind the apple, click on this Wikiart link.
9. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
The little girl tugging on Plato’s toga comes from a painting by Georges Seurat. She’s out enjoying a beautiful day on the Island of La Grande Jatte, just the way a child in a Post-Impressionist painting should.
After two years of work, this ten-foot wide painting was completed in 1886. Seurat worked on about sixty studies before finishing. It took so long because it was painted using the Pointillism technique, “in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.” Televisions and computer printers use a similar technique.
If you want to see a much larger version of the painting—large enough to see Seurat’s dots—then click on this Wikimedia link. Of all the paintings in the Art Quiz, this one deserves a closer inspection because of the technique.
10. Raphael, The School of Athens
Because this is an Art Quiz and not an Art Book, the history of this painting and the biography of the painter will be afforded woefully little attention. Others have called it "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance."
What Raphael did with this fresco was to bring together the great Greek scholars under one roof, with the focus on Plato and Aristotle. Plato is pointing to the heavens, while Aristotle is concerned with what’s on Earth. Leonardo da Vinci was believed to be Raphael’s model for Plato.
In front of Plato and Aristotle, sitting with his head resting on his fist in a lavender shirt and brown leggings is believed to be Michelangelo playing the role of Greek philosopher Heraclitus. The fresco is massive, measuring twenty-five by sixteen-and-three-quarters feet. To get a better view of it, check out this Wikipedia link.
11. Titian, Venus and Adonis
As a schoolboy, I read everything about Greek and Norse mythology that I could lay my hands on. According to Ovid, Adonis was an extraordinarily handsome youth who spent his days hunting. Venus (the Roman counterpart for Aphrodite) saw him at the same time she was nicked by one of Cupid’s (the Greek god Eros) arrows. Their love lasted until Adonis was killed during a hunt.
The scene depicted by Titian is not exactly what Ovid described. In the latter’s rendition, it was Adonis who held Venus back. Apparently, Titian faced some controversy at the time because the painting wasn’t true to the story.
I think the painting tells the truer story.
It was Venus/Aphrodite who warned Adonis about the dangers of the hunt, so it would make sense for her to worry when he leaves. Moreover, although Venus’ beauty was over-powering, which would explain why Adonis might not want to leave her side, Cupid’s arrow was likely just as over-powering, causing Venus to hold onto the young man.
There are a number of versions of this painting by Titian or his workshop. The detail used for the Art Quiz is from the Lausanne version. Some people believe it was the original done by Titian. Others believe that “the Prado type,” which is shown below, was the original. To enlarge the Venus and Adonis painting by Titian, try this Wikipedia link.
12. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights
We saw Bosch in the last Art Quiz, and there’s not much I can do about that. He will likely be included in every Art Quiz I ever do from now on. Both of my Sisters love him. I love him but in a creeped-out way. In fact, this was the same painting we used in the last Art Quiz again. The same panel of the triptych, even!
There have been many interpretations for Bosch’s images. Most of the experts agree that he was keen to point out the wages of sin. Indeed, there are approximately one hundred verses in the bible that touch on ears or hearing.
My non-expert opinion is that we should consider Deuteronomy 15:17: “Then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever.” That looks like an old-fashioned “awl” piercing the ear: “a small pointed tool used for piercing holes, especially in leather.” Moreover, the third panel of Bosch’s triptych represents some kind of Hell, and there, you’ll be “a slave forever.”
You can enlarge The Garden of Earthly Delights at this Wikipedia link. This is just the right panel of the triptych, from which the knife-ear was obtained:
13. Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam
One of the most iconic paintings in the world is this fresco by Michelangelo, while craning his neck to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. Nine scenes from the Book of Genesis run across the ceiling with prophets on the outside and the stories of Jonah and Zacheria at the ends. Other, smaller biblical scenes are further out on the sides.
It was painted between 1508 and 1512. This is from a poem that the artist wrote about his toils inside the Sistine Chapel, which included a huge and equally remarkable fresco on the Sanctuary wall:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
Click on this Wikipedia link for a giant computer-screen-sized view of The Creation of Adam.
14. Leonardo da Vinci, The Lady with Ermine
Among his many talents, da Vinci was the ultimate portraitist. Even if you happen to be an ermine. One of his supposed portraits is at the center of our current Art Mystery. In fact, we’re going to have this painting in tomorrow’s diary because some of us think that The Lady with Ermine looks suspiciously like La Bella Principessa.
Your sharp eyes can help us out with that comparison. In case our sharp eyes aren’t enough, I’ve used facial recognition software to compare the two portraits.
To enlarge the da Vinci painting The Lady with Ermine, here’s a Wikipedia link.
15. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Students
Although some may cry blasphemy, I would say the painter in our Art Quiz with the most talent at painting from nature—better even than Rembrandt, Leonardo, and the rest of the Renaissance kings—is Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
What do you think?
In my defense, during my last trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, I played a game with myself. I looked at an unfamiliar painting and tried to guess the artist. What I noticed was that an out-sized number of beautiful paintings were created by French artists. Also, look at Labille-Guiard’s full painting below and pay particular attention to the reflection her dress creates on the floor.
Moreover, as a woman breaking into the ranks, she had to be extraordinary, and do it in girdles.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard became a member of the French Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783. She exhibited in Salons and was the first woman to have a studio at the Louvre. There she painted and taught. Labille-Guiard fought to provide women a place in the Royal Academy, and in 1790, her motion to allow an unlimited number of women into its ranks passed. Even her self-portrait, which included two female students, was a message.
If you want to enlarge—and I mean really enlarge—this painting by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, try this Wikipedia link.
16. Sandro Botticelli, Primavera
Like Degas painting ballerinas and race horses, and like Monet painting gardens, Botticelli was smart enough to paint something that was beautiful: Faces. We can’t help but be attracted to them.
Even his Centaurs are beautiful.
The three ladies in our detail are known as the Charites (Greek) or the Graces (Roman),
“minor goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, and fertility.” The painting hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence along with seven other works by Botticelli, including his essential Birth of Venus. In Primavera, Venus also has a role to play in the very center of the painting. Thus, the two most famous paintings by the artist track the birth and then rule of Venus/Aphrodite.
The painting is called Primavera (or Spring) for a reason. Botanists have identified five hundred species of plant and over one-hundred and fifty types of flowers. Here’s a Wikimedia link to Botticelli’s Primavera.
I hope to see you for tomorrow night’s Art Mystery diary. In the meantime, tell us how you did with the Art Quiz, and if we’re lucky, some of the exhibiters for KOS Art Expo 19 will show us some of their work in the comments below. Cheers!