The Art of Portrait

February 27, 2012
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When John Singer Sar­gent was young, he was a stu­dent in stu­dio of Carolus-Duran, a por­trait painter then cel­eb­rated in Paris. Car­olus didn’t care much about strict aca­demic approach to paint­ing then highly appre­ci­ated, but he was more of a free-spirited indi­vidual. He showed some pecu­liar inde­pend­ence, which his best stu­dents also adop­ted. His painting […]

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Watercolour sketches from the life of John Singer Sargent

February 25, 2012
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one. On Fri­day, 26 May 1874, John and his father went to Carolus-Duran’s stu­dio in the Boulevard Mont Parnasse. When they arrived, Carolus-Duran was mak­ing his rounds, cri­ti­cising his stu­dents’ work. He then turned to assess the new candidate’s work. The stud­ies were shown one after another, the land­scape pen­cil sketches, museum copy­work, and the […]

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Stone Poetry

February 9, 2012
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A poet, dram­at­ist, and divine sculptor, Bern­ini could do stone the­at­rical work like no one else. In his ‘The Rape of Proserpine’ Bern­ini does some­thing unex­pec­ted and turns the clas­sical storytelling, and the very sculp­ture, into some­thing entirely new. Only he could think of con­vey­ing the unequal struggle by hav­ing Pluto’s paw-like fin­gers dig deep […]

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Slave ship

December 26, 2011
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‘Turner was mad,’ the King George V recalled. ‘My Grand­mother always said so’. In May 1840, when Queen Vic­toria opened the 72nd exhib­i­tion of the Royal Academy, it was unlikely that she would have made a bee-line for the four Turn­ers exhib­ited there. There was a paint­ing, prom­in­ently hung, about which the crit­ics agreed single-mindedly, in scorn: Turner’s ‘Slave Ship — Slavers Throw­ing Over­board the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Com­ing On’.

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Masterpieces of Art — ‘Gassed’, by John Singer Sargent

December 10, 2011
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The paint­ing named ‘Gassed’ is one of the greatest achieve­ments in the his­tory of art. It is a large paint­ing, 2.3m x 6.1m. Painted in 1918 by John Singer Sar­gent. People love John Singer Sar­gent for his por­traits and immense skill, but serene por­traits he could do in his sleep. To me this is where best of art is born, when an artists does some­thing bey­ond the enter­tain­ment of the senses.

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Realism in Visual Art

December 10, 2011
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What is Real­ist visual art indeed? In books it is described as visual arts in a style that depicts “the actu­al­ity of what the eyes can see”. So it may mean the rep­res­ent­a­tion of sub­jects with visual mimesis or life­like­ness. But is there any­thing else to it and how Real­ism authen­tic­ate to mod­ern com­pre­hen­sion of the world and to what con­sti­tutes our ‘reality’?

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Coming of the Femme Fatale

December 6, 2011
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The term ‘femme fatale’ emerged in the middle of the 19th cen­tury, when pat­ri­archal atti­tudes to women began to shift as a dir­ect out­come of the growth of the middle class. Greater prosper­ity, brought about by the open­ing up of trade and the adop­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies, also saw women begin­ning to advoc­ate for access to higher edu­ca­tion, mar­ried women’s prosper­ity rights, equal status in sexual mores and, ulti­mately, the vote.

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Why Watercolour?

July 21, 2011
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Why water­col­our? Well, the art of paint­ing can be more excit­ing than the fin­ished work—and there’s a lot more to water­col­our than merely paint­ing. Ask many of the count­less ded­ic­ated water­col­our­ists around the world why they paint in this par­tic­u­lar medium and you’ll prob­ably receive a whole range of answers.

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Engines of Creation: Working in Twos

June 15, 2011
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Paint­ing, or any cre­ativ­ity, is an emo­tional and intel­lec­tual quest, the test of skill, vis­ion and patience. It may become a pain — a daunt­ing, seem­ingly aim­less exer­cise. Often­times, when halfway through the work, we may lose faith in our means and aban­don the piece because we think it does not work. What is the best way to help ourselves then? How to avoid artist’s block?

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Perception

June 14, 2011
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In a com­mon­place envir­on­ment at an inap­pro­pri­ate hour, do we per­ceive beauty? Do we stop to appre­ci­ate it? Do we recog­nise the tal­ent in an unex­pec­ted con­text? A fam­ous pub­lic exper­i­ment says we don’t and we see some­thing else. Sim­il­arly, we see pre-recorded images of real­ity in every­day life. We don’t see what we see; we see what we remem­ber and want to see.

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