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Buying Paintings: Neoclassicism

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Between the 18th and 20th centuries, a few quite distinctive trends were absorbed into the category of Neoclassicism, and it during these times that the movement as a whole came to absorb the classical inspirations that created a revival of ideals.  These ideals, though standards from ages past, were defined by the artists synthesis of these elements into new works of art.  It does not recreate styles of art from scratch, but instead shows the artists control over a particular body of classical works.  By drawing from the classics of the past, Neoclassicism was paying tribute to eras of awareness that perhaps slipped away, but to regain some sense of these classical influences.

In Europe, neoclassicism began as a reaction against the Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desired return to the art of Romanesque and Renaissance classicism.  Each individual grouping of Neoclassicism, whether affecting architecture or the visual arts, has attempted to capture the ideas of times gone by to utilize them in forms of art that were considered modern at the time.  In neoclassicist painting in particular, the subject matter seems to hearken back to those classical ideas by reviving those Greek to Renaissance themes, and forcing them into peculiar constraints that would recreate the elements into new formats.

The Neoclassical style of artwork was heavily present during both the American and French Revolutions, and revival in the interest of classical thought in the style of ancient Greece and Rome, at times affecting a more Byzantine stance in some countries.  A counterbalance came in the form of the Romanticism movement, and it never replaced Neoclassicism so much as aided in the influencing of many artists throughout the 19th century and beyond.  When the architecture began to dominate the main aspects of neoclassicism, and has been found to be academically selective of the best Roman models guided with self-restraint.

At first, the style had been grafted with other popular European forms of architecture, and this style became quite pronounced as neo-classically inspired furnishings were popular for the time.  The style soon had international renown, and it was at this point that the architecture became strongly influenced by Roman designs after the discoveries at Pompeii, during excavations that took place at that time.  Though all these designs seem a bit absurd and overcomplicated nowadays, there was a flush of Greek inspired work in the forms of busts and vases after 1800, and this was called the Greek revival.

Continuing to be a force after the turn of the 19th century, even as Romanticism and Gothic styles took favor, but it seemed anti-modern to influential critical circles by the late 19th century.  In the mid-19th century, several European cities had grandiose examples of the neoclassical style of architecture, and even early American architecture reflected this movement in various national monuments, and some of those monuments were the Lincoln Memorial and the National Gallery in Washington D. C.  Soon, however, World War II would shatter those preconceptions for the world round.

Covertly, there were many modernists that chose to express a neoclassical influence with subtle tribute here and there, and even Picasso played around with reincorporating neoclassical motifs into his work at one time.  Even the Art Deco style was using these ideas on a very sly level of utilization, playing with classic Grecian lines and even breaking out in American culture through architecture and the dime by 1950, and became a strong ideology in the time between both World Wars.  This literary and very literal side of the movement rejected the romanticism of Dada, for example, for the restraint of religion and reactionary politics.

It can be a difficult bout to sort through all these items to find the ideal artwork that you would enjoy, and there many whose catalogs are extensive to say the least, making it quite an effort to glimpse through all of those works to find the pieces that you would enjoy the most.  Finding the particular classifications that art periods fall under, such as neoclassicism, can keep your interest guided by where you can find most amount of work that you can acquire.  Keep in mind, however, that many of these pieces are quite priceless to many collectors, and that buying a print of a particular famed work mat be more cost-effective for your budget.

Buying Paintings: Cubism

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What started out as a rather avant-garde art movement has become one of the greatest examples of artistic forms breaking that mold of convention, revolutionizing European painting and sculpture up to the present century, and was first developed between 1908 and 1912 during a collaboration between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso with influences from the works of Paul Cezanne and Tribal art.  Though the movement itself was not long-lived, it began an immense creative explosion that has had long lasting repercussions, and focused on the underlying concept that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously.

The movement had run its’ course by the end of World War I, and influenced similar ideal qualities in the Precisionism, Futurism, and Expressionistic movements.  In the paintings representative of Cubist artworks, objects are broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form, and the artist depicts the subject in a multitude of viewpoints instead of one particular perspective.  Surfaces seemingly intersecting at random angles to produce no real sense of depth, with background and object interpenetrating with one another, and creating the shallow space characteristic of Cubism.

French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term cubism, and it was after viewing a piece of artwork produced by Braque, the term was in wide use though the creators kept from using the term for quite some time.  The Cubist movement expanded from France during this time, and became such a popular movement so quickly that critics began referring to a Cubist school of artists influenced by Braque and Picasso, many of those artists to Cubism into different directions while the originators went through several distinct phases before 1920.

As Braque and Picasso worked to further to advance their concepts along, they went through a few distinct phases in Cubism, and which culminated in both Analytic and Synthetic Cubism.  With Analytic Cubism, a style was created that incorporated densely patterned near-monochrome surfaces of incomplete directional lines and modeled forms that play against each other, the first phases of which came before the full artistic swing of Cubism.  Some art historians have also pegged a smaller “Hermetic” phase within this Analytical state, and in which the work produced is characterized by being monochromatic and hard to decipher.

In the case with Synthetic Cubism, which began in 1912 as the second primary phase to Cubism, these works are composed of distinct superimposed parts.  These parts, painted or pasted on the canvas, were characterized by brighter colors.  Unlike the points of Analytical Cubism, which fragmented objects into composing parts, Synthetic Cubism attempted to bring many different objects to create new forms.  This phase of Cubism also contributed to creating the collage and papier colle, Picasso used collage complete a piece of work, and later influenced Braque to first incorporate papier colle into his work.

Similar to collage in practice, but very much a different style, papier colle consists of pasting materials to a canvas with the pasted shapes representing objects themselves.  Braque had previously used lettering, but the works of the two artists began to take this idea to new extremes at this point.  Letters that had previously hinted at objects became objects as well, newspaper scraps began the exercise, but from wood prints to advertisements were all elements incorporated later as well.  Using mixed media and other combinations of techniques to create new works, and Picasso began utilizing pointillism and dot patterns to suggest planes and space.

By the end of the movement, with help from Picasso and Braque, Cubism had influenced more than just visual art.  The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was inspired by Cubism in some examples of his music that reassembled pieces of rhythm from ragtime music with the melodies from his own country’s influence.  In literature, Cubism influenced poets and their poetry with elements parallel with Analytical and Synthetic Cubism, and this poetry frequently overlaps other movements such as Surrealism and Dadaism.

Buying Abstract Paintings

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Buying and collecting abstract painting can be a labor of love.  I love abstract paintings.  I think that my favorite medium is gouache.  I recently purchased a work from Oscar Bluemner.  The person I bought the abstract painting from had it in storage for over twenty years.  I am going to hang this piece in my office.

I found an oil abstract painting that was dated 1947 that was painted by Louis Bassi Siegriest.  I liked the composition, it felt oddly soothing.  The artist signed the back of the painting.  It was a little out of my price range, but I bought it anyway.

Trade Winds is the name of an abstract painting I bought from the artist Joanne Riddle while I was in Connecticut.  The piece was huge and I had to have it sent by freight to my home.  The blue in the painting was so vivid.  The whole composition was absolutely inspired.

I bought an abstract painting for my sister-in-law last year.  The artist of the piece was Leonardo Nierman and the medium he used was oil.  I bought the piece unframed and took my sister-in-law to framer to choose the frame.

I tried to buy an abstract painting from the mayor of our town.  I offered him two thousand dollars for the modernist abstract colorful figure.  The artist used red, white and blue and I wanted to acquire this for my stepmother.  She would have loved it, but the mayor was unwilling to part with it.

My mother has decorated her home in a style that she liked in Santa Fe.  I bought a large abstract painting for her from her favorite artist, Lou Monti.  She has seen his work in a number of homes and always raves about them.  She was so happy when she saw the painting I bought for her hanging on the wall of her living room.

I dated a guy once that had a signed abstract painting by Robert Gilberg on his wall.  I saw something different every time I saw it.  That painting had an attraction that I just can’t quite explain.  He was always buying art and changing out abstract paintings on his walls, but this particular piece always stayed.  I guess he was attracted to it as well.

The abstract painting that I bought for my older brother did not work in his apartment.  I ended up buying a painting that was a little too large for the room it was intended for.  The colors did not work in the only room that worked for its size.

I ended up selling that abstract painting the same place that I had bought it, on eBay!  I ended up making a profit on the abstract painting.  There was more information in my auction about the artist, Richard Diebenkorn, than there had been in the auction that I won.  I think the extra hour of research I spent made the abstract painting’s value increase.

I learned a long time ago that an abstract painting is worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for it.  I have friends that just cannot be convinced of this basic truth.  I think that if no one wants a particular abstract painting, then it is worth nothing.

My brother used the money from the sale of the unwanted abstract painting to find himself another abstract painting.  He ended up with an abstract collage that was made in the late 1930s.  I liked it when I saw it and it worked beautifully in his office.