The Paintings of Franz Marc (1880-1916), German Expressionist, to Bach

YouTube ^

[mairdie]

Franz Marc was a German Expressionist whose early work has the more traditional French Impressionist feel. He specialized in animals, and his work runs from representational to almost totally abstract. During World War I he was assigned to painting camouflage for military bases. He was on a list of people of talent to be pulled from the front line when he was killed at the Battle of Verdun. The music is Bach. On saxophone.

[Migraine]

I wasn’t aware of this guy’s work...

I saw some Monet/Renoir stylings, some Van Gogh, Rousseau, Gaugin, Cézanne, then some proto Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Klee and Kandinski in his work. He seemed, no disrespect, to get less talented as the years went by.

[mairdie]

Your opinion can NEVER be disrepectful. Your opinion is always valuable. He was prominent in the school that was attempting abstraction. It was an intellectual choice to paint that way, but the early work shows that he had the ability to paint more traditionally. Just not the desire.

According to Wikipedia: "He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it."

I like best his work with animals in strong, non-linear, designs. I'm not much into pointy things. I find that I almost always like the balance he brings to a piece where, with some artists, I'm always wanting to crop them. I'm also into bright colors, so that appeals to me, too. He would lose me when he goes completely abstract except that, again, I find the balance of most pieces very pleasing.

In addition, his work strikes a very strong bell because some of his early plays with suggested line and shading are EXACTLY the way my mother was taught to draw. My early childhood was spent watching her do linoleum blocks that look amazingly like his wood blocks. But, again, such a wide range of styles that I float into some that push my buttons and then hurry through the ones that don't.

Mother's "Spring"

[FrdmLvr]

“ He seemed, no disrespect, to get less talented as the years went by.”

That’s Expressionism. It’s about the juxtaposition of color and the rejection of realism. They were influenced by the Fauves, or vise versa, don’t exactly remember. Matisse was a Fauvist. Expressionism grew out of Impressionist movement, iirc.

[FrdmLvr]

Very nice, mardie. Thank you. Your video?

[mairdie]

Yes. I make them all. I started making music videos back in 1984 and have almost a thousand by now. I was an art history/physics major at U of Chicago, so I’m fascinated creating a chronology of someone’s work to watch the style develop. It’s basically collecting images and sorting them by year. Then finding music that matches the mood and setting timeline markers to make sure that the music and images run out together. The next one will be a FR request - Remington.

And thank you for your very kind words. Please know that they’re appreciated.

[mairdie]

One of the pictures I DIDN’T include was his portrait of Rousseau. I also didn’t include his blue period Picasso lookalike. And I wasn’t that fond of the horses in the pasture image that sold at Sotheby’s for 24 million.

[lee martell]

I’d never heard of this artist until today. Quite prolific.
He didn’t live very long though, dying when only about 39 y/o. This artist reminds me of Renior, but with much more aggression in strokes, subtle tints of impastoed textures on top of fully hued underpaintings. An interesting approach.
He would have been a good sculptor as well. Notice how most his work is asymmetrical and well balanced in a two dimensional sense. The asymmetry is closer to the way things appear in real life.

Someone who came after him was and is one of my favorite poster artists of that time.
A Czech lithographer named Alphonse Maria Mucha; popular during the Art Nouveau period around the turn of the 20th Century. His knowledge of the human anatomy is stunning.
His sense of design as well.

[mairdie]

I LOVE his impressionistic paintings of his mother and father at the beginning of the video. That’s also his father, sick in bed. There’s so much love and respect in those paintings. The first image of Franz engraving was painted by his father, who seems to have taught the boy when quite young.

It’s always such a tragedy when people of talent - well, any people, actually - die young.

I intend to do Art Nouveau and Art Deco videos. I’ll be sure to look Mucha up. I’m not familiar with the name, though I might recognize the work when I see it.

Prolific will never be the same word to me after collecting for the Turner video!

[lee martell]

When you see Mucha’s most common work, I would bet a cold glass of Sangria that you will recognize a few of them.

The time you have focused on (late 19th, early 20th Cent.)
has always been one of my favorite eras of fine art to observe and contemplate.

[YogicCowboy]

OT:

The same Bach - devout Christian man, devoted husband and father, the incidental originator of Common Practice music via the extraordinary (97%) consistency of his 173 church chorales, the virtuoso organist of choice in his day - the same Bach who was just excised from depraved Disney’s film adulteration of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

We live in a communist age of reverse Bowdlerization.

[mairdie]

Museums were playgrounds when I was a child
Hanging my heart on jungle gym bars
Of Renoirs and Rodins and even Matisse
While mother explained the curve of the hip
Of the Buddahs and odalesques playing with me
As we swung from 12th century tapestry
Into the sky of Georgia O’Keefe
And back again laughing in such fine company.

It was here that she studied, my mother explained,
Your grandmother, long before grandpa appeared,
At the Institute’s classes of art and design
Of the lion and the curve and the stroke of the pen.
She studied with Taft, mother said with some pride
Though the master was gone long before I arrived
In my turn, now it’s yours, to take up the brush
For genetics will conquer in gentle ambush.

This wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear
Because I was a scientist cool-eyed and clear
From the tips of my fingers that typed at the keys of computers to firm-planted feet that walked near eyes of heaven that gazed at Albireo’s eyes blinking back blue and gold in a canvas of black,
Crying “I am no artist and I know no verse.”
Then I listened to silence that laughed in reverse.

[mairdie]

PING

[JDoutrider]

Me Like!

[mairdie]

Me Thank You!

[GnuThere]

Interesting video - I would have sworn I was looking at more than one artist!

[SamAdams76]

Good stuff. I added the rest of your videos to my library.

YouTube is a pretty amazing site by the way. Pretty much all my video content is obtained from there. I even saw Trump's speech last night on YouTube through the RSBN live feed.

Every minute, 300 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube! Not all of it quality but there is already enough quality content there to last one hundreds of lifetimes.

[nwrep]

Thank you and congratulations on another great paintings video.

I did not know about this artist. Towards the end it almost morphs into abstract art.

[mairdie]

I think there’s a couple things going on. Early on, he’s a student and copying other people. Later on, he’s part of an intellectual movement, so he’s experimenting and trying to be avante garde. But every now and then you see characteristics like faces that he makes more explicit later, and certain qualities that he obviously liked and repeats.

Also, he repeats the same theme in his new style. So he’ll keep redoing the horse’s rump in various styles, for example. What I find fascinating with these chronological studies is that you can see he has the technical skill and how he’s purposely moving away from realism.

[GnuThere]

Yes.