Video for Module 11

I watched videos for Matisse and Picasso. The second video that I watched was about the Mystical North for Spanish art. It's ideal how the world's famous cathedrals and buildings actually was influenced by art and great artists.

Drawing is painting with less materials according to Matisse. Paris was a great place for Matisse for his painting that is to say for his life was a man who needed to take risks. Matisse has two passions, the female node and fabrics the silks and velvets. For Matisse painting always meant, panic, struggle and fear. He used to try to deliberately instigate the struggle by setting up little visual tableaux. Matisse always had a model. He would be on the model, in the model and very inspired by models. It gives you a very particular vision of the model if you are so close. In fact it's a deformation almost like a fish eye vision. When you literally draw something from your lap, your vision is different from how it would be if you just took a few steps back from it. Matisse needs models because it serves to fix his attention and it has a relay action.

Picasso comes across this and makes fun of Matisse to provoke him. He was actually awarded Nobel Peace Prize. He doesn't travel or need tourism like Matisse. Picasso says "To me to paint a picture is to engage in a dramatic action in the course of which reality will be disengaged." He also says that dramatic action need solitude. Perhaps it happens at night as close as possible to the unconscious mind. Picasso does not use palettes or easels which is very interesting. He uses newspapers that are laid out on the floor. Lots of paintings from Picasso are objects that never existed. Picasso's inspiration comes from first and foremost life, women are the engine that drives him. Female mystery is the greatest subject.

After Goya finished the black paintings, his sight deteriorated to the point he could barely see. Within five years he was dead. He may have lit the fuse of modern art. It wasn't till t he start of 20th century that Spain became one of the power houses for modern art. Spanish modern art would be forced out of the friction between two opposites. This includes modern Atheism and ancient religion. Antoni Gaudi's style is organic and sinous and it was inspired by God's Natural World. Gaudi was a man who clung to Spain's Catholic past. He created the Cathedral in Barcelona. It is called Sagrada Familia. Gaudi saw himself as God's architect. It was God that he looked for inspiratio.