Art Blog - Art In History

Having written about the "Little Dutch Masters", it is a natural step to move on to Vermeer. He was certainly one of their number - in fact, if you were to judge by the dimensions of his works he could be the littlest of them all - but he is also too great to be lumped among them. He also had a primary specialty - light filled interiors with figures - but also produced exquisite works in other genres, like the "Street in Delft" above. All with a sensitivity to ambient light never equalled before or since. He is, of course, the center of a huge controversy, because of the strong evidence that he used a camera obscura to view his subjects and perhaps to project them on the surface… Continue reading… 5 comments

In my last post I explored the conquest of the description of solid form and deep space in European painting. That was a glorious ride of 400 years in Western art, and is still a major option and a powerful tool in art up to the present. However, one of the most significant shifts in the 19th century, leading to what we think of as modern art, was away from the use of the surface as a window into an illusionistc space, back to the recognition of its intrinsic aesthetic values. This was a return to what had been the norm in two-dimensional art in all cultures before the great discoveries of the Renaissance… Continue reading… 2 comments