If the painting shows a ballerina, you are looking at a work by Edgar Degas. No matter how funny it may sound, in a nutshell you can describe the work of almost every artist. Yes, it will be a kind of manual for dummies, but art is a complex thing, so we’ll start small. How to learn to understand painting - in the “Cultural Investigation” section.
Everything is not as difficult as it seems. For example, the Flemish painter Rubens was very fond of painting plump women. But in fact, he is not the only one - his contemporaries also liked ladies with bodies. At the beginning of the 17th century it was believed that volumetric forms- an indicator of physical health and inner greatness. Today, such “beauties” with appetizing curves would be sent to the gym.
Here's another example. If you see bizarre images that look like something out of a dream, rest assured that this is Salvador Dali. Some art critics call him a genius, others - a hack. Caricature artist Vladimir Melnikov explains: there are no difficulties in Dali’s technique, so his style can be easily copied.
“What is surrealism? Label whatever you want. Not a tiger, but another character flies, and not from a rifle, but from a cannon, and a small striped fly leads this procession. And there’s a blurry clock on the washing machine,” shared Vladimir Melnikov.
It turned out to be more difficult to copy the artist Marc Chagall. But it’s easy to draw a cartoon in his style. If you see figures hovering over a city, it’s definitely Chagall.
To ensure you don't get stuck in a world-class museum, here's another tip. If on the canvas you see muscular handsome men with ideal forms, then you know - this is Michelangelo. The artist glorified the beauty of the body both on canvas and in marble. His famous David, created in the early 16th century, for many years became the ideal of male beauty.
But another Italian, Caravaggio, saw the ideal of male beauty in a completely different way. His representatives of the stronger sex are very similar to women. He chose appropriate poses for his heroes.
The famous Dutchman Rembrandt did not think about the beauty of his heroes. The artist painted realistic paintings - the faces of the characters can be compared to flashes of light against the background of the surrounding darkness. Therefore, if the hero looks like a tramp, dimly lit street lamp, then rest assured - this is Rembrandt.
There is also a simple answer to the eternal question of how the impressionist Claude Monet differs from the impressionist Edouard. If you see blurry outlines of nature, this is Claude Monet, if you see people against the backdrop of nature, this is Edouard Manet.
“Claude Monet is an artist classified as impressionist; he painted mostly landscapes and water lilies. If you see realistic images painted with broad strokes, and at the same time it seems to you that the image is flat, this is Edouard Manet,” explained the art critic, senior researcher MMOMA Olga Turchina.
The style of the artist Hieronymus Bosch cannot be confused with anything. He lived in the 15th century in the Netherlands and is still one of the most mysterious painters. If everything is mixed up in the picture: people, animals, monsters, then this is Bosch.
Of course, any art critic will say that advice on how to distinguish artists at first glance is like a joke. To really understand the works of famous masters, you need to often go to museums and read more than one book.
For hundreds of years world culture gave us a countless number of brilliant painters. One problem is that it is very difficult to remember everyone, as well as many of their works. This will help you have at least some knowledge on this topic and navigate the world of art more freely: simple instructions. It will allow you not to get into trouble when conducting small talk.
1. If you see a dark background in the picture and all sorts of suffering on the faces, this is Titian.
2. If in the picture there are such butts and cellulite even on men, have no doubt - this is Rubens.
3. If the men in the painting resemble and may turn out to be women, this is Caravaggio.
4. If there are a lot of little people in the picture - Bruegel.
5. A lot of little people + little incomprehensible fantastic stuff - Bosch.
6. If you can easily add a couple of cupids to the picture without disturbing the composition, or they are already there in various configurations, this is Boucher.
7. Beautiful, everyone is naked and figures like bodybuilders - Michelangelo.
8. You see a ballerina - you say Degas. If you say Degas, you see a ballerina.
9. Contrasting, harsh and everyone has such skinny bearded faces - El Greco.
10. If everyone, even the aunts, looks like Putin, it’s Jan van Eyck.
11. Bright-bright, colorful-colorful - Van Gogh.
P.S.: Monet – spots, Manet – people! ©
I constantly run into problems search by photo or paintings. For example, this is a situation where clients want to order a portrait based on historical painting or reproduction of a painting. They have a file that they found on the Internet. They don’t know the title or the author, but they want to know. And they want to know what kind of painting is hanging in their house. It always happens that this file, found by clients, is of very poor quality - it is small in size or the file itself is simply bad. It is necessary to quickly establish the title and author in order, firstly, to educate the customer and yourself, and secondly, try to find a picture of at least average quality.
Real case. The customer wants to order installation into this picture. Replace this lady's face with the face of your friend. Then print it on canvas measuring 40cm by 50cm, frame it and give it as a gift. She should like it.
installation on a picture
The file he brought weighs 120 KB. In principle, not the worst case. They also printed pictures from worse pictures. At canvas prints all the pictures themselves are blurred and JPEG artifacts are not very noticeable. And if you clean it up, it will be great. But the client really wanted to know the author of the painting and the title. I want everything. To my shame, I had no idea who the artist was or who was depicted.
I had to use different photo search services.
1. http://www.tineye.com/ Excellent service. Convenient site. I used it before but this time I was disappointed.
Here is the result of a photo search: Or like this:
He found only 2 images. One is very bad, and even framed. The second is exactly the same file that the customer brought. All sizes and parameters were the same. But I clicked on the source links and found nothing. These are some kind of blogs and forums.
2. http://www.google.ru/imghp?hl=ru&tab=wi A relatively new service from Google. Never used it - never had to.
To enable photo search, click on the camera, a window for adding a file and links will open and click “Search”. Everything is elementary.
The pattern search result was great!
I also came across an excellent site on search for similar photos. It is very convenient when you can replace a picture with another, but very similar one. Before that, I only knew http://alipr.com, but it constantly returned such utter garbage with similar pictures that I gave up such searches. But I came across an excellent site for searching similar photos - http://gallerix.ru/roster/. The result is not very impressive, but much better than the first site. You can check it yourself.
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For many, remembering artists and their paintings seems like an impossible task. Over hundreds of years, history has written down the names of many artists whose names are well-known, unlike their paintings. How to remember the artist's personality and style? We have prepared brief description for those who want to understand fine arts:
If the paintings show people with big butts, you can be sure it's Rubbens
If people in beautiful clothes relax in nature - Watteau
If men look like curly-haired women with hairy eyes - This is Caravaggio
If a painting with a dark background shows a person with a beatific expression or a martyr - Titian
If the painting contains multi-figure compositions, many people, objects, Christian and surreal motifs - this is Bosch
If the painting contains multi-figure compositions and complex plots, but they look more realistic than Bosch’s paintings, rest assured that this is Bruegel.
If you see a portrait of a person against a dark background in dim, yellow light - Rembrandt
Biblical and mythological scenes depicting several plump cupids - Francois Boucher
Naked, pumped up bodies, perfect shapes - Michelangelo
Ballerinas are drawn, this is Degas
Contrasting, sharp image with gaunt and bearded faces - El Greco
If the painting shows a girl with a unibrow, this is Frida
Quick and light strokes, bright colors and depictions of nature – Monet
Light colors and rejoicing people – Renoir
Bright, colorful and rich - Van Gogh
Dark colors, black outlines and sad people - Manet
The background is like from the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, with a light blue fog. Madonna's wavy hair and aristocratic nose - Da Vinci
If the body depicted in the painting has an unusual shape - Picasso
Colored squares like an Excel document – Mondrian
And all because this issue has not lost its relevance to this day. The essence of this method was to remember several starting points. It was actually invented in order to pass an exam, but it worked so well that by using this trick one could be considered an intellectual connoisseur of painting.
And here is the story itself.
“A long time ago, in my first year, we studied art history. The subject itself is terribly interesting, but the teacher is crap that you wouldn’t find with a flashlight during the day. As far as I know, there is not a single student who likes him.
He gave lectures on Saturdays, from 8 in the morning until five minutes to five he stood at the door, and then locked it. That's all. Didn't make it before eight - a pass, and many passes - a great grief.
Now I'll tell you why. All year he showed us slides of paintings, sculptures, mosaics and other things, ranging from rock art and ending with Russian artists of the 80s. And he had all these slides in the form of postcards. Here's a pack.
And at the end of the year, as usual, there is an exam. First two questions, and then additional execution on an individual basis. Based on the number of your absences per year (!), he took postcards out of the stack.
Especially because everyone went to the retake already in a hurry. And so, in order to guess the authors, we in the group came up with a classification. And you know, in 97 cases out of a hundred it works! Still!"
Here's part of that classification:
