The Course of Empire:

The Course of Empire:

 Destruction (1836), Thomas Cole

A founding father of the Hudson River School, English-born Thomas Cole is best known for his depictions of the American wilderness. Reflecting Americans’ concerns of the period that empire would inevitably lead to dissolution, Cole’s “Empire” series of five paintings charts the rise and fall of an imaginary civilization. In this, the fourth work in the cycle, a city burns and a bridge collapses under the weight of battling armies.—Anne Doran

Photograph: Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rogers Fund; 1956

painting

The persistence of memory

 The Persistence of Memory 

(1931)

Salvador Dalì,

Dalì described his meticulously rendered works as "hand-painted dream photographs," and certainly, the melted watches that make their appearance in this Surrealist masterpiece have become familiar symbols of that moment when reverie seems to uncannily invade the everyday. The coast of the artist's native Catalonia serves as the backdrop for this landscape of time, in which infinity and decay are held in equipoise. As for the odd rubbery creature in the center of the composition, it is the artist himself, or rather his profile, stretched and flattened like Silly Putty.

Irises

Irises 

(painting)

Artist Vincent van Gogh

Year May 1889                                                                          

Catalogue F608

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions 71 cm × 93 cm (28 in ×  36 5⁄8 in)

Location J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California

Irise

 is one of several paintings of irises by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, and one of a series of paintings he executed at the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in the last year before his death in 1890.

Van Gogh started painting Irises within a week of entering the asylum, in May 1889, working from nature in the hospital garden. There is a lack of the high tension which is seen in his later works. He called painting "the lightning conductor for my illness" because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint.

The painting was probably influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints like many of his works and those by other artists of the time. The similarities occur with strong outlines, unusual angles, including close-up views, and also flattish local colour (not modelled according to the fall of light).

He considered this painting a study which is probably why there are no known drawings for it,although Theo, Van Gogh's brother, thought better of it and quickly submitted it to the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in September 1889, together with Starry Night Over the Rhone. He wrote to Vincent of the exhibition: "strikes the eye from afar. The Irises are a beautiful study full of air and life.

Ownership history

The first owner was Julien "Père" Tanguy, a paint grinder and art dealer whose portrait van Gogh painted three times. In 1892 Tanguy sold Irises to art critic and anarchist Octave Mirbeau who was also one of Van Gogh's first supporters.[2] Mirbeau paid 300 francs for it.

In 1987, it became the most expensive painting ever sold, setting a record which stood for two and a half years.[3] Then it was sold for US$53.9 million to Alan Bond, but Bond did not have enough money to pay for it.[4] Irises was later re-sold in 1990 to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.[5] Irises is currently (as of 2012) tenth on the inflation-adjusted list of most expensive paintings ever sold and in 25th place if the effects of inflation are ignored.

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by the Italian painter, draftsman,

sculptor, architect, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, probably the world’s most-famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre, in Paris, where it remains an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The poplar panel shows evidence of warping and was stabilized in 1951 with the addition of an oak frame and in 1970 with four vertical braces. Dovetails also were added, to prevent the widening of a small crack visible near the centre of the upper edge of the painting. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination.

Mona Lisa Off The Wall

References in the visual arts have been complemented by musical examinations. La Giaconda’s personality and quirks were examined in a 1915 opera by Max von Schillings. Leonardo’s portrait is also the inspiration for the classic song “Mona Lisa” by American lyricist Ray Evans and songwriter Jay Harold Livingston:

It was famously recorded in 1950 by the jazz pianist and vocalist Nat King Cole and later by his daughter Natalie, as well as many others.

There have been films, notably Mona Lisa (1986), and several novels, including William Gibson’s cyberpunk Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) and Canadian novelist Rachel Wyatt’s Mona Lisa Smiled a Little (1999), linked to the painting. The Argentine writer Martín Caparrós’s novel Valfierno (2004) brings to life the man who masterminded the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

Both fine art and kitsch continue to refer to Leonardo’s portrait. Bath towels, tapestries, umbrellas, and many other household items bear her image, and that image is reproduced using everything from train tickets to rice plants. Five centuries after its creation, the Mona Lisa remains a touchstone for people around the world.