Interiors And Exteriors

Interiors and Exteriors

The old landscapes and interiors of the renaissance and academic art periods got a new and refreshing look when artists like Signac and Braque started experimenting with colors and techniques. This exhibit goes to show you what these new kinds of interiors and landscapes transformed into. In this gallery there are four artist, Monet, Signac, Braque, and Matisse. They all have a unique way of painting and all bring something different to the exhibit. Each of these artists has two paintings, an interior and a landscape. These painting are a good representation of where painting has come from and the direction in which it's headed.

Before now the types of paintings have been very limited to certain categories and styles. Romanticism and Realism where the main styles of art in the early 1800's. Artists like Goya and DaVinci painted scenes of landscapes that were almost to perfect to be real places. These paintings often had to do with the themes of emotion and struggle, and many times had to do with religion. Realism sounds exactly like what it is. Artists tried to make their paintings as life like as possible and perfected using colors that would normally distort the painting into something not earthly. The invention of the camera made it possible to work from a reference for an extended period of time that before then would not be possible and helped give rise to this kind of painting.

Around the 1870's the impressionist movement arrived. Impressionist artists tried to capture the feelings and emotions of that moment of their paintings. One of the most famous Impressionists was Claude Monet. Actually the Impressionist movement was named after one of his paintings called Impression: Sunrise. The two paintings by him that are in the gallery are a good place to start looking.

His painting Waterloo Bridge is one of a series of paintings that he did. These series that he painted let him work with different kinds of light and the change of seasons. The brush strokes in this painting are short and quick creating an almost blurry sort of look and feel to it. The big smoke stacks and towers in the background are shrouded with mist and smoke behind the bridge. In this particular painting the colors are very muted especially around the bridge and water. But there is one thing that when close enough to see draws ones eye to it, as if there was nothing else in the painting.

The bright orange slash of paint almost directly in the middle of the painting is the real focus of the painting. And even though this is a painting of the Waterloo Bridge, the bridge is not the focus of the painting. The focus is the people on the bridge and that bright stroke of orange is most likely a bus crossing the bridge. But it shows that the people are the main part of this painting and even though the bridge and the smoke stacks and towers are in the background are much larger and more imposing.

Monet's painting After Dinner is a very different painting compared to his Waterloo Bridge. The shadows in the background make the painting heavy and tense. The right side of the painting is crowded with all three people on that side, especially with the man leaning on the mantle is in shadows.

But the painting is not all dark, the light hanging over the table is the only source of light in the room. This illuminates only the left side of the painting however, and even though the lamp is in the center of the painting it does not spread a lot of light around the room again adding to the heaviness of the room. But for as cold as this painting is it is also surprisingly warm. The table and lamp are painted in warm yellows and golds which is a sharp contrast compared to the shadows in the left side of the painting. Another example of warmth is the fireplace, and even though it is not lit, the bricks in the chimney are the only red part of the painting. Especially because the fireplace is surrounded by the white of the hearth brings your eyes to it. This painting has a unique blending that makes it cold and heavy while at the same time has warm undertones to it that you wouldn't expect to find when just quickly glancing at it.

George Braque is another French artist who actually developed his skills working for his father as an interior decorator. He moved to Paris where he became interested in fauvism after seeing some paintings by Matisse and Cezanne. Probably more known for his cubism Braque played with all sorts of bright colors in his fauvist painting Olive Trees, painted in 1907.

This painting however is not cubism, but a fauvist representation of two olive trees. With the bright reds and yellows he made the trees really stand out against the background. This also conveys the heat of the land in the way that the bright yellows and reds play on the ground. Compared to the red hot tree trunks and foreground, the green and purple canopies of the trees and the dark, almost black, blues of the water are strangely refreshing. They create a balance to the painting that would not be there if the painting were only bright colors like the foreground.

Another interesting note about this type of paintings is the almost complete lack of shading. There are no in betweens when two colors meet. For example, as your eye goes up the tree there are quick and sudden changes from yellow, to orange, to black, and back to orange. There is no such color in this painting that you would consider soft, they all are eye catching and bold. This is very different compared to his other painting Interior with Palette.

Braque's interior painting, is a huge painting, 55 by 77 inches. He goes in a completely new direction in this painting. Compared to his painting Olive Trees this painting is dark and more relaxed.

This interior painting, is again dark but is not heavy or somber like Monet's. The contrast between the creamy yellows and blacks is well balanced and one doesn't ever seem to dominate the other one. Even in the extremely black shadows Braque still has the white and tan lines that accent the wall and keep it from just being a black shadow that is covering up the room. The shadows in this room are interesting. Especially because there are no other shadows except for the ones the back wall. The transition from light to dark is almost instantaneous with no shades of grey in between. This is because he wanted to keep the high contrast and juxtaposition of the painting. It's not just the way that Braque plays with colors, the way that he distorts the shapes of the objects makes it an interesting painting to look at. The shape table for example makes it hard to see where the table ends because of the extreme angle of it. The palette with all of the paintbrushes looks as if