Jennifer Stone Artwork

Jennifer Stone Artwork

At the Augustana College Center for Western Studies

Interesting acrylics and watercolors.

Salute to Vienna 2010

Salute To Vienna, at Strathmore Music Center, January 2, 2010.

An evening of Strauss music. What an elegant, happy way to welcome in the new year and the new decade.

And a contest at the concert! Who is that girl? Can you name the woman in the painting and the artist who painted her portrait?

I was able to name the artist, but missed the name of the woman. The artist was Gustav Klimt, who some art historians call one of the 20 most influential artists of the past 500 years. His most famous painting is The Kiss.




So who is the woman? I guessed that the woman in the painting was Klimt's wife, Judith.


However, I was mistaken; instead, it was Emilie Flöge, painted at the request of her husband.

Art History at Sea, Queen Mary 2

Botticelli to Warhol, The 20 Most Influential Artists of the Past 500 Years.

Aboard the Queen Mary 2, I attended this art history lecture in which the lecturers discussed their choices of the 20 most influential artists of the past 500 years.

1. Sandro Botticelli – 1445–1550. Mystical painter. The Birth of Venus.

2. El Greco – 1541–1614.

3. Pieter Bruegel – 1525–1569. Painted landscapes and influenced Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others.

4. Jacques Louis David – 1748–1825. First great French painter, which led to many other French painters.

5. JMW Turner – 1775–1851. British landscapes. Surreal, led to Impressionism. HMS Temeraire.

6. Edouard Manet – 1832–1883. Impressionism. Luncheon on the Grass.

7. Van Gogh – 1853–1890. Post Impressionism. Starry Night.

8. Gustav Klimt – 1862–1918. Austrian. The Kiss.

9. Paul Cezanne – 1839–1906.

10. Pablo Picasso – 1881–1973. Cubism. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Expressed everything as a combination of cone, sphere, and cylinder.

11. Henri Matisse – 1869–1954. Fauvism.

12. Marcel Duchamp – 1887–1968. Avante Garde. First to show motion in paintings. Nude Descending a Staircase. (I have a copy of this painting, which I have always thought is the greatest painting I have ever seen. To me, this painting should be titled, "Madonna Descending a Staircase".)

13. Giorgio de Chirico – 1888–1978. Futurism.

14. Constantin Brancusi – 1876–1957. Sculpture.

15. Piet Mondrian – 1872–1944.

16. Edward Hopper – 1882–1967. Precisionist. Nighthawks.

17. Jackson Pollock – 1912–1956. Note that after World War II, New York became the center of the art world.

18. Mark Rothko – 1903–1970.

19. ??

20. Andy Warhol – 1928–1987.

Exhibitions of J.M.W. Turner and Edward Hopper

Exhibitions of J.M.W. Turner and Edward Hopper at the National Gallery of Art

As a non-artist, and one who has little understanding or appreciation of fine art, I can only have impressions of the works of these two artists, and the strongest impression I have is of the incredible contrast between the two. It seems that the National Gallery of Art intentionally exhibited these two great landscape artists at the same time to demonstrate their completely contrasting styles. Although both painted landscapes, their styles were vastly different.

As shown in The Fighting Temeraire above, Turner’s paintings are impressionistic, and some have called him the first impressionist painter. His paintings depict vast, epic scenes flooded with powerful emotions, emphasized by dazzling accents of light. His paintings are filled with motion and drama, often depicting violent, devastating forces of man and nature. In contrast with his more dramatic paintings is his tranquil Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute, depicting the peace and serenity of gondolas on the Grand Canal.

Hopper painted Americana, as shown in Nighthawks, shown above. He painted buildings – houses, lighthouses, windows, roofs. Hopper’s paintings are completely sterile, completely devoid of motion, completely emotionless, completely lacking joy and vitality and life. The people in his paintings are motionless, gazing unfocused into the distance in deep thought. His buildings have no warmth, no plants, nothing associated with life. Sterile, lifeless paintings.

How fascinating to view these two art exhibits together.

Cezanne in Provence

An exhibition of 117 of Cezanne's paintings is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art. Cezanne This exhibition focuses on the paintings of Cézanne in and around his native Aix-en-Provence, and the exhibit marks the centenary of the death of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906). This exhibition displays landscape paintings around Provence, and also many other paintings of Cezanne during his lifetime -- portraits, still lifes, and watercolors. The exhibit displays Cezanne's development as an artist during the years that he lived in Provence, from 1860 until the end of his life. The exhibit shows his Impressionist paintings, his palette knife paintings, and his progression as a painter leading up to the beginnings of Cubism.

I am not a fan of Cezanne. Although I do enjoy some of his early Impressionist paintings, and I find his palette knife paintings interesting, I find much of his techinque and his subject matter uninspiring. Many of his paintings seem to be unfinished, leaving parts of the canvas unexposed. His paintings focus on trees (often filling the entire canvas with trees), large rocks, and a single mountain, Mont Sainte-Victoire. His paintings are filled with greys and blues, and seem dark and gloomy and uninspired. And his technique of painting blocks of color seems childlike. As a person untrained in art, it is hard for me to understand Cezanne's place in art. His works pale by comparison with those of other Impressionists, such as Monet, Pizarro, Renoir, and Degas, whose paintings fill one with awe and inspiration. Compare, for example the richness of Degas' painting, L'absinthe with a comparable painting of Cezanne, The Card Players. I am pleased that I went to the exhibition, but I am left with wonder, rather than awe. This is the Washington Post review of the exhibition.

Madame Matisse

Madame Matisse
Helen Frankenthaler, 1983
Acrylic on canvas, 60x122 1/2 inches
University Art Museum
State University of New York at Albany

Born in 1928 in New York City.

"Frankenthaler is best known for changing the direction of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s when she began pouring cans of paint directly onto unsized, unstretched canvas. Madame Matisse is an example of how acrylic paint improved Frankenthaler's technique. The water-based paint helped intensify color stains and control the halo effect that oil paint produced." (From website of SUNY Albany, Art Museum Link)

Although I do not really care for much of Frankenthaler's work, I do like this piece very much. (I judge all art work in the same way -- by the feeling it evokes in me.)

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp

Nude Descending a Staircase
(No. 2)
Marcel Duchamp
American, born in France
1887-1968
1912 Oil on canvas


This painting created a sensation when it was exhibited in New York in February 1913 at the historic Armory Show of contemporary art, where perplexed Americans saw it as representing all the tricks they felt European artists were playing at their expense. The picture's outrageousness surely lay in its seemingly mechanical portrayal of a subject at once so sensual and time-honored. The Nude's destiny as a symbol also stemmed from its remarkable aggregation of avant-garde concerns: the birth of cinema; the Cubists' fracturing of form; the Futurists' depiction of movement; the chromophotography of Etienne-Jules Marey, Eadweard Muybridge, and Thomas Eakins; and the redefinitions of time and space by scientists and philosophers. The painting was bought directly from the Armory Show for three hundred dollars by a San Francisco dealer. Marcel Duchamp's great collector-friend Walter Arensberg was able to buy the work in 1927, eleven years after Duchamp had obligingly made him a hand-colored, actual-size photographic copy. Today both the copy and the original, together with a preparatory study, are owned by the Museum. (Description taken from the website of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Nude)

This painting was not intended to depict the Madonna, but that is the image that comes to my mind when I look at it. It is my favorite painting of all time. I have a copy hanging in my home, and I feel a sense of reverence when I look at it, as I do every day.

Toulouse-Lautrec, April 18, 2005

Today I visited an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art -- "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre". It was a wonderful exhibit. Toulouse-Lautrec posters are happy posters; their purpose was advertising. Their intent was to convey happiness and joy, and they were incredibly successful. It is too bad that Toulouse-Lautrec died at the age of 36; he could have done so much more if he had lived to be an old man, as Picasso did. Here is the link to the exhibition: Toulouse Lautrec
If you love Paris, and love the Montmartre area of Paris, you will love this happy exhibit.