FurryBald: Painting

Browsing "Older Posts"

Browsing Category "Painting"

THE MOST EXPENSIVE 10 PAINTINGS IN THE WORLD

Friday, January 30, 2015 / No Comments

Do you like paintings? How much would you pay for a good painting, if you would have enough money? Here are the most expensive 10 paintings in the World.

#1 Card Players - $274 Million

Artist - Paul Cézanne, 1892/93. Sold by George Embiricos to State of Qatar in 2011

#2 No. 5, 1948 - $165.4 Million

Artist - Jackson Pollock, 1948. Sold by David Geffen to David Martinez in 2006

#3 Woman III - $162.4 Million

Artist - Willem de Kooning, 1953. Sold by David Geffen to Steven A. Cohen in 2006

#4 Le Rêve - $158.5 Million

Artist - Pablo Picasso, 1932. Sold by Steve Wynn to Steven A. Cohen in 2013

#5 Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I - $158.4 Million

Artist - Gustav Klimt, 1907. Sold by Maria Altmann to Ronald Lauder, Neue Galerie in 2006

#6 Portrait of Dr. Gachet - $152 Million

Artist - Vincent van Gogh, 1890. Sold by Siegfried Kramarsky Family to Ryoei Saito in 1990

#7 Three Studies of Lucian Freud - $145 Million

Artist - Francis Bacon, 1969. Sold by ? to Elaine Wynn in 2013

#8 Bal du moulin de la Galette - $143.9 Million

Artist - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876. Sold by Betsey Whitney to Ryoei Saito in 1990

#9 Garçon à la pipe - $131.1 Million

Artist - Pablo Picasso, 1905. Sold by Greentree foundation (Whitney family) to Barilla Group in 2004

#10 The Scream - $124.2 Million

Artist - Edvard Munch, 1895. Sold by Petter Olsen to Leon Black in 2012

What do you think?

SALVADOR DALI's MIND BLOWING WORLD - PART 3

Tuesday, January 20, 2015 / No Comments

Salvador Dali - Agent Provocateur of Modern Art
"Every morning, upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali."
Salvador Dali

#31 Galatea of the Spheres (1952)

The Galatea of the Spheres is a marvelous portrait of Dali's wife known as Gala.One of the most representative works from the nuclear mysticism period. It is the outcome of a Dalí impassioned by science and for the theories of the disintegration of the atom. Gala’s face is made up from a discontinuous, fragmented setting, densely populated by spheres, which on the axis of the canvas takes on a prodigious three-dimensional vision and perspective.[Source]

#32 The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952-1954)

Dali repeated his theme of the melting watches many times, most notably in the 1950’s with The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory. Whereas some interpretations of the first work claim that it represents Einstein’s theory of relativity, interpretations of this work state that it represents the newly emerging ideas of quantum mechanics and the coming of the digital age. Later in his career Dali also created many lithographs and sculptures with variants on the theme of soft watches.[Source]

#33 Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) - (1954)

Dali called this painting "Metaphysical, transcendent cubism, it is based entirely on the Treatise on Cubic Form by Juan de Herrera, Philip the 2nd's architect, builder of the Escorial Palace: it is a treatise inspired by Ars Magna of the Catalonian philosopher and alchemist Raymond Lulle. The cross is formed by an octahedral hypercube. The number nine is identifiable and becomes especially consubstantial with the body of Christ. The extremely noble figure of Gala is the perfect union of the develpment of the hypercubic octahedron on the human level of the cube. She is depicted in front of the Bay of Port Lligat. The most noble beings were painted by Velazques and Zurbaran; I only approach nobility while painting Gala, and noblity can only be insired by the human being."[source]

#34 Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954)

This painting documents Dali's interest in exaggerating the representation of the female form and the possibilities of an abstracted background. The main force within the painting is clearly its sexual allusion: the horned shapes hovering around the woman are overtly phallic, and the painting's title offers a direct clue about the aggressively sexual tone of the work.[source]

#35 The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955)

Dali called this painting “The first Holy Communion on Earth is conceived as a sacred rite of the greatest happiness for humanity. This rite is expressed with plastic means and not with literary ones. My ambition was to incorporate to Zurbarán’s mystical realism the experimental creativeness of modern painting in my desire to make it classic.”[source]

#36 Living Still Life (1956)

Dali painted this piece during a period that he called “Nuclear Mysticism.” Nuclear Mysticism is composed of different theories that try to show the relationships between quantum physics and the conscious mind.[source]

#37 Santiago el Grande (1957)

An atomic explosion bursting from the four petals of a jasmine flower – a symbol of purity and one of the artist’s favorite aromas (a personal reference amidst an iconography that is otherwise rooted in Spanish tradition) – raises the steed toward heaven. There are numerous other elements in the painting which reinforce the narratives of religiosity and nationalism.[source]

#38 The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958-1959)

This painting, his largest to that date, transforms the familiar story of Columbus’ voyage to the New World into an epic dream about discovery and identity. Originally titled “The Dream of Columbus,” the explorer, dressed in a flowing robe with his ship in the background, is painted at the moment he is about to step onto the New World. Dali presents this historic event as the dream of a young man surrounded by figures in the clouds.[source]

#39 The Ecumenical Council (1960)

Although titled The Ecumenical Council, this work depicts the coronation of Pope John XXIII. who convened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, or Vatican II. The Pope appealed to Dali because he sought to renew Catholicism’s beliefs and practices in relation to the modern world. Similarly, Dali sought to revitalize art by merging modern science with spirituality.[source]

#40 Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (1963)

This painting belongs to Dali's "Nuclear Mysticism" period. After World War II and more specifically the shock of Hiroshima and the atomic bomb as well as rapid developments in science and the discovery of DNA, many of Dali's paintings reveal Dali's fascination for science and mysticism and indeed his wife Gala.[source]

#41 La Gare de Perpignan (1965)

The painting shows the railway station of Perpignan, but with various intrinsic additions, which are examples of surrealistic techniques. A locomotive is seen as if it is coming out of nowhere, and there is a representation of the crucifixion of Christ along with other related aspects. These include the farmer’s fork which represents Christ’s bleeding wounds, a boat which represents the passage from life to death, and the distinction between the elements on the right and left. The left part is made up of positive elements, whereas the right section is composed of negative elements which signify sin and suffering.[source]

#42 Tuna Fishing (1966-1967)

This artwork depicts men acting violently toward large fish. As long golden daggers stab the aquatic creatures, the once pristine blue waters turn to a blood red. To Dali, the men and the fish they are killing personify the universe. It represents a specific and frantic, compressed space that the world can sometimes be.[source]

#43 The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968-1970)

A toreador is a bullfighter, one of the great heroes of Spanish culture. This work is arguably Dali’s most ambitious double image painting, but surprisingly, this monumental canvas has humble origins. When shopping for art supplies, Dali purchased a box of Venus-brand pencils. Staring at the Venus de Milo on the box, he glimpsed a face within the shadows. This simple experience led to one of Dali’s most complex paintings.[source]

#44 The Swallow's Tail (1983)

The Swallow’s Tail completed in the spring in 1983, the last in a series based of paintings based on catastrophe theory, and was Salvador Dali’s last painting. Catastrophe theory, based on the thinkings of Rene Thom, posited that there are seven equilibrium surfaces: fold, cusp, swallowtail, butterfly, hyperbolic umbilic, elliptic umbilic, and parabolic umbilic. Dali incorporated each one of these surfaces into his painting, alongside the gentle and elegant curves of the cello.[Source]

<==Part 1

<==Part 2

Which one is your favorite and why?

SALVADOR DALI's MIND BLOWING WORLD - PART 2

Monday, January 19, 2015 / No Comments

#16 The Burning Giraffe (1937)

This painting shows his personal struggle with the battle in his home country. Characteristic are the opened drawers in the blue female figure, which Dalí on a later date described as "Femme-coccyx" (tail bone woman). This phenomenon can be traced back to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical method, much admired by Dali.[source]

#17 Inventions of the Monsters (1937)

Dalí explained: "According to Nostradamus the apparition of monsters presages the outbreak of war. The canvas was painted in the Semmering mountains near Vienna a few months before the Anschluss [the 1938 political union of Austria and Germany] and has a prophetic character. Horse women equal maternal river monsters. Flaming giraffe equals masculine apocalyptic monster. Cat angel equals divine heterosexual monster. Hourglass equals metaphysical monster. Gala and Dalí equal sentimental monster. The little blue dog is not a true monster." [source]

#18 The Meditative Rose

The rose here is floating in space, a blossom without stem suspended over, and completely and utterly dwarfing, a dreary landscape. Two tiny figures are visible on the ground below it, indicating the rose's massive scale.[source]

#19 Visions of Eternity (1936-1937)

No doubt about it, this is doom and gloom at its finest. This painting is all about The Great Emptiness. We have a wanderer in the background, and a dark shadow figure who is quite literally coming apart at the seams.[source]

#20 Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)

At one glance the spectator sees a desolate beach; at another a face; at another a footed dish filled with pears; and again a profile of a dog. These images are fragmented further: the dog's collar becomes a bridge, his head a hill. The instability of appearances fascinated Dali who sought to evoke the world of the unconscious by creating these "multi-valent" images. The meticulously rendered objects and fragments make the metamorphoses and unexpected juxtapositions of the objects even more startling.[source]

#21 Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939)

The painting depicts the child star Shirley Temple as a sphinx. Shirley Temple's head, taken from a newspaper photograph, is superimposed on the body of a red lioness with breasts and white claws. On top of the head is a vampire bat. Surrounding the sphinx are a human skull and other bones, suggesting her latest kill. At the bottom of the painting is a trompe-l'œil label that reads: "Shirley!. at last in Technicolor." The painting has been described as a satire on the sexualization of child stars by Hollywood.[source]

#22 Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)

Perhaps no other example of double-imagery in Dali’s art is as perfected and well-known as that in “Slave Market.” In the center of the canvas you’ll see an archway, under which several people appear. Two women, side by side and dressed in black and white outfits, become integral to the sudden appearance of the bust of Voltaire. Each of the women’s heads becomes an eye of Voltaire, while the front of their garments forms his nose, cheeks and chin. The distant space seen through the archway becomes Voltaire’s head.[source]

#23 The Face of War (1940)

The 3 year long Second Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 dashing the hopes of the fledgling republic which became a repressive fascist dictatorship. World War Two commenced simultaneously giving the entire globe the appearance of war. Dali's painting the Face of War represents his feelings of war - endlessly repeating death and decay.[source]

#24 Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)

While working on this painting, Dali jotted down the following list of words which help summarize the period of change: “Parachute, paranaissance, protection, cupola, placenta, Catholicism, egg, earthly distortion, biological ellipse.”[source]

#25 Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. (1944)

Dream purportedly depicts Gala, Dalí’s wife, in the midst of a dream. The bee and pomegranate of the title hover below Gala’s body. The fish, tigers, and rifle all seem poised to attack her, but they clearly stand as symbols of unconscious desires.[Source]

#26 Basket of Bread (1945)

Dali saying “Stop everything! I want to step out of my surrealism mode, and my Nuclear-Mysticism mode, and remind the world that I could just as well have been famous for being a leading exponent of Realism, instead of Surrealism!”[source]

#27 The Apotheosis of Homer (1945)

Platzner hypothesizes that Dali "reduces Homer to a broken bit of statuary, a relic, while the solid temple of the muse itself melts"... The "ethereal horse," which may be Pegasus, casting off riders attempting to reach the stars again signals myth's cessation as a legitimate method of contemplating humanity's existence and signals the changing state of not only art, but also thought and reasoning as well.[source]

#28 The Elephants (1948)

Dali’s elephants have skinny, fragile, long legs. They symbolise men shackled to the earth by gravity but always reaching for the higher. Because of that the legs get longer and longer but the feet stay attached to the ground.[Source]

#29 Leda Atomica (1949)

Dali himself described “Leda Atomica” as a picture created “in accordance with the modern ‘nothing touches’ theory of intra – atomic Physics”. “Leda does not touch the swan; Leda does not touch the pedestal; the pedestal does not touch the base; the base does not touch the sea; the sea does not touch the shore. . . .”[source]

#30 Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)

Although it is a depiction of the crucifixion, it is devoid of nails, blood, and a crown of thorns, because, according to Dali, he was convinced by a dream that these features would mar his depiction of Christ. Also in a dream, the importance of depicting Christ in the extreme angle evident in the painting was revealed to him.[source]

<==Part 1 Part3==>

Which one is your favorite and why?

SALVADOR DALI's MIND BLOWING WORLD - PART 1

Sunday, January 18, 2015 / No Comments

#1 Landscape Near Figueras (1910)

This is one of the earliest known works by Dalí, having been painted when he was about six years old. At the beginning of Dalí's career, his primary influence was from the Impressionist movement.[source]

#2Vilabertran (1913)

This is among Dalí's earliest works, having been painted when he was about nine years old. It is a landscape painting from Vilabertran as Dalí often drew in his early period.[source]

#3 Cabaret Scene (1922)

This was a unique cubist experiment that came between Dalí's early impressionist work and the classic surrealist technique he would later develop.[source]

#4 The Basket of Bread (1926)

The Basket of Bread was created when Dali was 22, during his last months at art school in Madrid. He created this work as a test for himself – to prove his technical skill as a painter by demonstrating his ability to create the intense realism achieved by his artistic role models, particularly Jan Vermeer.[source]

#5 Apparatus and Hand (1927)

This is an oil on panel which is a clear example of the Surrealistic style, for which Dalí was very famous for. This is basically a depiction of a geometric shape made of triangles and cones, out of which one can see a red hand coming out from the top part. Around this shape one can see a number of nude women and torsos on a light blue background. On the left one can see a donkey on its hind legs with several flies on him. This is regarded as an indication that ultimately even the apparatus is bound to degrade and decompose in time, just like any other creature.[source]

#6 The Great Masturbator (1929)

The center of the painting has a distorted human face in profile looking downwards, based on the shape of a natural rock formation at Cap de Creus along the sea-shore of Catalonia.[source]

#7 The First Days of Spring (1929)

Dali says, “I spent the whole day seated before my easel, my eyes staring fixedly, trying to ‘see,’ like a medium…the images that would spring up in my imagination.” Few paintings demonstrate the hallucinatory results better than The First Days of Spring. Painted just a few months prior to his joining the Surrealist movement, it presents many of the Freudian symbols and irrational details that characterize his Surrealist period.[source]

#8The Lugubrious Game (1929)

In this painting he is overwhelmed with content that may not always fall upon the same subject matter. Not to say that within his paintings the subject matter is always related. Dali has joined a community which ultimatley sacrafices some of his isolation as an artist and as a person.[source]

#9 Illumined Pleasures (1929)

The imagery, realized through a combination of painting and collage, refers to personal and universal dreams and anxieties. Dalí's own disembodied head appears in the middle box, while an allegory of castration anxiety plays out below.[source]

#10 The Persistence of Memory (La persistencia de la memoria-1931)

Although it was conjectured that the soft melting watches were the result of Dali’s interpretation of the theory of relativity, Dali himself state that their inspiration was camembert cheese melting under the sun. The sequence of melting clocks in a disjointed landscape is the depiction of a dream that Dali had experienced, the figure in the middle of the painting being the face of the dreamer himself.[source]

#11 The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table (1934)

It makes reference to The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer, a famous seventeenth-century work in which a painter, thought to be a self-portrait of Vermeer, is depicted with his back to us, in distinctive costume. It is one of a number of paintings expressive of Dalí's enormous admiration for Vermeer.[source]

#12 Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936)

Dali painted this work prior to General Franco's invasion, yet it predicts the violence, anxiety, and doom many Spaniards felt during Franco's later rule. Soft Construction with Boiled Beans is a fine example of a Dali composition that simultaneously expresses his sexual obsessions as well as his political outrage.[source]

#13 Morphological Echo (1934-1936)

It depicts a seemingly minimal architectural setting with several surrealist images in its finer details. In the distance is a wall housing a bell resembling the figure of a woman in bundled skirts. In the distance towards the center is a strangely eroded rock form. The most significant element of this image is a small figure in the lower right of a woman running with a large hoop. In the shadow cast by the figure, her arms appear to merge into a circle around her head. The shadow cast by the figures head takes on the appearance of the hub of a wheel.[source]

#14 Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)

The swans and the twisted trees are reflected in the lake as elephants. Dali called this technique paranoiac-critical, where hallucination and reality seem to merge.[source]

#15 Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)

Narcissus was a youth of great beauty who loved only himself and broke the hearts of many lovers. The gods punished him by letting him see his own reflection in a pool. He fell in love with it, but discovered he could not embrace it and died of frustration. Relenting, the gods immortalised him as the narcissus (daffodil) flower.[source]

Part 2==>

Part 3==>

Which one is your favorite and why?

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )