Getty Center Revisit

Thursday's Roaming through the Getty Galleries was enhanced by their free audio guide. I gained further insight into the visiting collections of Gustav Klimt's drawings, Herb Ritts' photos and Getty's European painters of the 19th Century.

A Henry Moore

Portrait of Albert Cahen d'Anvers, 1881, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919
Renoir used the deep colors of blue/purple with a touch of deep red, that I love about his paintings, to paint d'Anvers who was a composer best known for light opera. 

Paul Cezanne, 1839-1906, painted "Young Italian Woman at a Table"in about 1895-1900.  He used brold brushwork and a radical use of color to portray a somber, thoughtful mood.  He was considered by many to be the best painter of his day and inflluenced Picassso and Matisse. 

"Arri Matamoe" (The Royal End) was painted in 1892 by Paul Gauguin during his first trip to Tahiti.  I seems to represent the recent death of a Tahitian leader as well as the dying Tahitian culture by the presence of the French colony.  The description next to the painting states:  "Given that Gauguin wishfully identified himself as a 'savage' and a Polynesian native in his rejection of European society, it might also be understood as a symbolic self-portrait of the artist as a noble martyr."

Paul Gauguin carved this "Head with Horns" out of Sandalwood with traces of pigment on lace wood in about 1896.
 He mixed his own features with those of a Polynesian..an "uncorrupted" native.

Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in 1889 in the garden of the asylum at Saint=Remy, where he was being treated for mental illness.  He worked directly from life and nature and then enhanced nature.  An artist sees and hears and then enhances to sometimes a magical level.  True artists are bring a new level of awareness and being to life.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, English 1775-1851,l painted " Van Tromp, Going about to Please His Masters, Ships a Sea, Getting a Good Wetting" in 1844. Here again, the artist enhances nature and depicts a wild sea with an amazing sky...his signiture in all his paintings.

"Man with a Hoe" was painted by Jean-Francois Millet, 1814-1875 in about 1861.  "Millet wrote "In a rocky place a man, all worn out...tries to straighten himself for a moment and breathe.  The drama is surrounded by beauty."

"Starry Night" was painted in 1893 by Edvard Munch, Norwegian, 1863-1944.  The description states "Representing the Norwegian lake shore where Munch spent many summers, this mood, evocative composition blends a contemplative approach to landscape with a distinctly modern awareness of form and color."