The Private Life of a Masterpiece The Private Life of a Masterpiece: Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century
Type
Audio/Visual
Authors
Category
Art, Documentary Film
[ Browse Items ]
Publication Year
2008
Publisher
Volume
Vol. 6
Duration
147 min.
Subject
Picasso, Pablo, -- 1881-1973. -- Demoiselles d'Avignon. Klimt, Gustav, -- 1862-1918. -- Kiss. Dalí, Salvador, -- 1904-1989. -- Christ of St. John of the Cross. Masterpiece, Artistic. Art -- History. Art and society. Art appreciation. Art criticism.
Tags
Series Name
Abstract
Episode 1: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Widely regarded as the beginning of modern art, Pablo Picasso's masterpiece is a startling image of five prostitutes in a brothel. Created when he was just 26, the famous work was the result of an intense rivalry between Picasso and Henri Matisse. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon shattered the image of the female form in painting. The contorted, angular bodies of the prostitutes in Picasso's work were a far cry from the curvaceous, sensuous nudes that had adorned galleries for centuries.
Episode 2: The Kiss
Klimt's Kiss is one of the iconic images of 20th-century art. Used in posters and postcards, it is his bestselling image. Klimt's pictures in all sell more posters and postcards than those of any other artist, including Van Gogh and Monet. The Kiss tells volumes about turn-of-the-century Vienna and its attitude to sex. The city of Freud was crawling with prostitutes but at the same time was conservative about sexual relations. Klimt was regarded as the most risqué and outrageous of all artists working in the city -- at least until he was outdone by his friend Egon Schiele. He portrayed women as sensually aware, in a marked departure from the classical tradition.
Episode 3: The Christ of St. John of the Cross
The first of two extraordinary Crucifixions painted by Dalí in the early 1950s. In it, he claimed that he had a "cosmic dream" in which he saw that the nucleus of the atom is no other than Christ himself. He found this confirmed by a drawing of the crucified Christ by St. John of the Cross, the 16th-century Spanish mystic, which Dalí interpreted as a triangle inside a circle. Working from this, he arrived at his extraordinary perspective, unique in art, in which Christ is seen from above, making an inverted triangle. All was set above a Dalí-esque landscape, complete with figure taken out of the Velázquez painting and another from a Le Nain drawing.
Widely regarded as the beginning of modern art, Pablo Picasso's masterpiece is a startling image of five prostitutes in a brothel. Created when he was just 26, the famous work was the result of an intense rivalry between Picasso and Henri Matisse. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon shattered the image of the female form in painting. The contorted, angular bodies of the prostitutes in Picasso's work were a far cry from the curvaceous, sensuous nudes that had adorned galleries for centuries.
Episode 2: The Kiss
Klimt's Kiss is one of the iconic images of 20th-century art. Used in posters and postcards, it is his bestselling image. Klimt's pictures in all sell more posters and postcards than those of any other artist, including Van Gogh and Monet. The Kiss tells volumes about turn-of-the-century Vienna and its attitude to sex. The city of Freud was crawling with prostitutes but at the same time was conservative about sexual relations. Klimt was regarded as the most risqué and outrageous of all artists working in the city -- at least until he was outdone by his friend Egon Schiele. He portrayed women as sensually aware, in a marked departure from the classical tradition.
Episode 3: The Christ of St. John of the Cross
The first of two extraordinary Crucifixions painted by Dalí in the early 1950s. In it, he claimed that he had a "cosmic dream" in which he saw that the nucleus of the atom is no other than Christ himself. He found this confirmed by a drawing of the crucified Christ by St. John of the Cross, the 16th-century Spanish mystic, which Dalí interpreted as a triangle inside a circle. Working from this, he arrived at his extraordinary perspective, unique in art, in which Christ is seen from above, making an inverted triangle. All was set above a Dalí-esque landscape, complete with figure taken out of the Velázquez painting and another from a Le Nain drawing.
Description
1 videodisc (ca. 147 min.) : sd., col. with b&w sequences ; 4 3/4 in. Each segment is aprox. 50 min.
Audio: English, Subtitles in English.
Audio: English, Subtitles in English.
Number of Copies
2
RELATED ITEMS
REVIEWS (1) -
Administrator
Episode 1, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, is an excellent introduction to Cubism and modernist concerns with the picture plane. Concise and engaging, it does a great job of breaking down the complexity of this image and its impact on western art for students of all levels.
8 years ago