How Pavel Tretyakov competed with the emperor
Before the revolution, patronage of the arts was considered not only charitable, but also beneficial for the donor himself, and the point here was not taxes at all. According to…

Continue reading →

premium
Why does music influence our emotions so much
In an article from the series “Ask, Answer,” designed to quench reader’s curiosity, BBC Future journalist explores the impact of music on people's emotional state. “Why does music have a…

Continue reading →

VARIETIES OF FIGURATIVE PAINTING
In the XVII century, a thematic or story picture was attributed to the high genre (grand genre) and called the genre. The high genre included: allegorical, battle, epic, household, historical,…

Continue reading →

composite

Incorrigible stubborn: brilliant impressionist with a heavy character

Claude Monet is known as one of the founders of impressionism. The artist could magically convey on canvas the impressions of what he saw. Considering his paintings, full of appeasement, it is difficult to imagine that the master who wrote them had a terrible character. Claude Monet was known as an incredible stubborn, ready to take extreme measures, if only to insist on his own.
1. Monet did not want to sell paintings to everyone
The 1860s and 70s were financially difficult for the artist. He barely made ends meet. When the debts grew to incredible sizes, the creditors, not knowing what to remove from the poor artist, demanded his paintings. Monet decided to take a radical step, but did not concede – he simply burned his paintings. Continue reading

Little-known facts about the dark side of the brilliant artist Caravaggio

He was one of the great masters of baroque, and his difficult life in many respects determined his creation, which today is admired throughout the world. And Caravaggio himself believed that painting is not only a matter of reflecting reality, but also turning it into something more: “You must not only look at my paintings, but also feel them.”

The artist was known to contemporaries not only for his works, but also for his controversial nature, and in his life there were many stories – both tragic and anecdotal.

1. Real name
His real name was Michelangelo Merisi, but he was better known as “El Caravaggio” (in honor of the small town in Lombardy, where his family came from). Continue reading

Creativity for the Mentally Ill: A Book That Changed History

Sometimes you can hear such a statement that in order to create a masterpiece, you must be either a genius or a madman. Tarragon – the hero of the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Becket, said that “we are all born crazy. And some of them remain … “Yes, and where is the line that separates genius from madness? In 1922, a German psychiatrist published a book in which he showed the work of the mentally ill, and this book made a splash among both the psychiatric society and artists.

The fact that some very talented, and even brilliant people suffered from various mental disorders is not news. So, it is known that Gogol suffered from manic-depressive psychosis, and Leo Tolstoy often had bouts of depression that alternated with numerous phobias. Maxim Gorky was prone to vagrancy and pyromania, and some experts insist that Lermontov suffered from a form of schizophrenia that he inherited from his mother. Continue reading

5 masterpieces of painting, which depict much more than the audience sees
Considering the masterpieces of world painting, few people think that behind an idyllic landscape a portrait of a person can be hidden, and behind a drawn wave - a huge…

...

19th Century Girl Albums
The young ladies of the 19th century were not so different from the modern ones: they also needed attention, recognition, evidence of sympathy from friends and, of course, a cordial…

...

Ciphers, signs and self-portraits: How artists of the past signed their paintings
Not every masterpiece of painting contains the signature of the artist. There were reasons for this, both at the dawn of the Renaissance and in the modern era; they are…

...