Colleagues, great luck: I recently bought a book by Bella Aronovna Erengross "According to the laws of beauty", published in 1961, at a second-hand bookseller's street. The book is written for teenagers, but I assure you - the book is far from childish. This book is from the category of those books that give the correct "entry point" into a new subject area. Written very simply and clearly. I allowed myself minor reductions in the text. Let's learn to understand painting, graphics, sculpture. The book will be published on our site in parts.

About the author

Bella Aronovna Erengross - Rector, Professor of the Russian University of Youth Culture "Culture on the Threshold of the Third Millennium", laureate of the USSR State Prize, author of numerous books on art for youth.

From the author

Art will teach you to see and understand nature, people, and will tell you fascinatingly about life. Listen to how the Spanish writer Cervantes, the author of the famous novel "Don Quixote", speaks about this ability of art: a good book makes it. " It is not only a book that leads you to "foreign countries", but also a picture, a film, a play, and music.

We say "art", but you know well that art is called fiction and cinema, and theater, and painting, sculpture, and graphics, and music, etc. Each of them has its own characteristics, its own distinctive features ... In order to better understand each art, to feel it better and get more pleasure from its perception, one must learn to understand its features, its language.

This book deals only with the fine art - about painting, about graphics, about sculpture. Have you seen works of fine art - paintings, drawings, sculptures?

“I saw it,” you say, without thinking about HOW you saw.

You came to an art gallery. He walked slowly through the halls, paused at some canvases and sculptures. I thought to myself: "Well, yes, this one is famous, where Ivan the Terrible is killing his son ... Interesting ..." And he went on. So in an hour you walked around many halls, and although few attracted your attention, you will later say: "I was in an art gallery I saw pictures."

And when you come across unknown works or authors, then the matter is even easier. There are still no paintings recognized by mankind, tested by time and experts. And, having seen such an exhibition, you will say: "Yes, I was, I saw it. But nothing special. So-so."

No,. You did not see! You just looked at paintings, sculptures, drawings. I watched it, but I haven't seen it yet.

Do you know that behind every canvas, every work of the artist there is a huge work, intense searches, the joy of finds and the bitterness of failure? Do you know that the artist and poet Taras Shevchenko, who was sent to the army and exiled to the steppe, almost went crazy with joy when his friends sent him paints with which he could work again? And the artist Pavel Andreevich Fedotov? He worked to the point of exhaustion, applied compresses to his eyes at night so that they could rest, but considered himself happy because he could see and paint. Fedotov spent a whole year only to paint a chest of drawers made of mahogany, and on a small painting "The Widow", where there is only one female figure, he worked for two years. Two years! During this time you graduated from two classes, went to the camp in the summer, did a lot of different things. And he? And for two years he was writing all the time from morning to night, watching, reworking and writing again.

Yes, unless Fedotov! And Rembrandt? And Michelangelo? Any of the people who gave their life to art could, together with the talented, early dead landscape painter F. A. Vasiliev, say: "I paint every picture not with paints, but with sweat and blood."

Do you know that I. N. Kramskoy and I. K. Aivazovsky died with a brush in their hands, and V. I. Surikov dreamed of such a death? What is there! Every true artist lives by his creativity, gives his work all his thoughts, all his heart, all his time. So does the selfless work of the artist deserve that you look at his works, his paintings, in which he put his living soul, and at the same time said indifferently: "Very nice. How well written the dress! It's real, I even want to touch it." Or something else like that.

No! The art in which the artist puts all the best that nature has given him - such art cannot be looked at with indifferent eyes. He must be able to see, feel, understand. And this must be learned. Let's go through the halls of exhibitions and art galleries. We will carefully look at paintings, drawings, sculptures. We will try to find out what the author wanted to convey to us, why he did it this way and not otherwise. Let's walk together through the streets of the city; there are also many works of fine art. But let's not rush.

So, let's begin!

What color is the fog?

And here we are in the hall, where paintings, graphics and sculptures are placed. On the walls there are paintings painted on canvas, pencil drawings, and in the corners and in the center of the hall there are voluminous works made of solid materials and depicting people, and sometimes animals. These are sculptures. Paintings, drawings, sculptures are different types of fine art.

And yet all these different types of art have a lot in common: they depict various objects, events, phenomena of life, are perceived by sight. And we see a lot. On the street - houses and other buildings, buses, trolleybuses, trams; leaving the city - a forest and a river, highways and flowering or fruit-strewn trees; in the room - tables, chairs, books, wardrobes and various things. And everywhere on the street, outside the city and at home - we see people. They work, relax, talk or are just in a hurry.
This whole world around us can be depicted on a plane and in space. The arts that convey visible phenomena of life on a plane and in space are called pictorial.

But after all, we see various events and phenomena of life in the cinema and in the theater, we learn about them from literature. How do they differ from those shown to us by fine art?

In literature, cinema and theater, all events take place in action and develop in time. For example, in a movie, the image changes all the time. You can see the whole life of a person from the moment of his birth to death. But, if the device suddenly deteriorates and the image stops moving, you will soon get tired of looking at the screen. A person, as it were, ceases to be alive, he freezes in a motionless, and sometimes an absurd pose, and if this is nature, then all the time looking at the clouds and flowers will become simply boring.

And the picture can depict some natural phenomenon, or even just fruits or a vase of flowers put on the table. And although there is nothing on the canvas except fruit or a bouquet of flowers. people look at the picture with pleasure and find something interesting for themselves in this image.

Unlike other types of art, where development takes place over time, fine art can show only one moment in a person's life or in a state of nature. This is its main feature, but this is also its complexity.

But how, in one moment captured in the picture, it is possible to depict an eternally moving and changing life, nature and people so that this moment tells a lot?
After all, it is more interesting to learn everything about a person or at least some of the most important episodes from his life. And here there are no episodes and no life story. Just one moment is depicted, but if in a stopped motion picture a person seems lifeless, if the incompleteness of his movements causes laughter, then here ...

Look at the image of a person, nature, at a scene from life, and you will see that human movement is natural, nature is not frozen, not dead, and at the same time, man AND nature are similar and at the same time not similar to real ones. When an artist depicts a person, he seeks to find such a state that is most characteristic of a given person, when all his creative powers are most fully revealed. Then, having seen only one such moment of life displayed in a work of fine art, we will be able to find out from it what kind of person he is and what he does. The strength and peculiarity of fine art is that it immediately brings to the minds and hearts of its viewers what will be told in the book on many pages, in cinema - in thousands of film frames.

Here is a small picture in front of us. The main event, which is depicted here, is immediately clear.

A bright, sun-drenched room. A man has just entered it. He's dressed strangely. Tired, deeply sunken eyes look inquiringly. In the turn of the head, in all his appearance, there is some kind of uncertainty. He hesitated. Nobody expected him, and his arrival is a surprise. This can be seen from the way all the people in the room reacted to his appearance. An elderly woman in black rose from her chair. The maid, who let the stranger in, is full of bewilderment and fright. An old woman looks out curiously from the front. The woman sitting at the piano is confused and delighted. The girl looks at him sullenly, seriously and sternly. It is quite obvious that she does not know him or does not remember him. And boy! Look with what delight he looks at the newcomer. He recognized him. glad. Another moment, and with a cry of delight, he will rush to him.

The artist portrayed everything in such a way that no explanation is needed: it is quite clear that unexpectedly the head of his family returned to his family after a long absence. The picture is called: "They Did Not Expect", and it was written by Ilya Efimovich Repin. And, although we understood everything at a glance, let's take a closer look.

The man who entered the room returned from exile. This is evidenced not only by his clothes, but by his exhausted face and deeply sunken eyes. It is true that he changed a lot, even if his relatives did not immediately recognize him. The woman sitting at the piano, the exile's wife, seems weak and sickly. Her look expresses joy and some confusion. The artist placed the figure of the mother with his back to the viewer. One has only to see this stooped back, as it immediately becomes clear that not only old age, but also jure and difficulties bent it.

So, gradually examining each character, you can learn and notice a lot more. From this, the content of the picture becomes deeper, fuller. The state of mind of everyone, conveyed through facial expressions, posture, movements, gestures, is felt more subtle. Everything is so truthful, vital, convincing that it seems as if the depicted is taking place before our eyes. And we are involuntary, invisible witnesses of what happened.

It is very, very difficult to paint a picture with such extreme simplicity and persuasiveness. The artist must choose a moment in which the character of each of the characters would be manifested especially fully. Imagine that he chose not this moment, but another. Everyone already recognized the alien. The son ran up faster than the others and hung on his father's neck. The mother came on one side, the wife on the other. Here the girl is probably still shy and perplexed, but the maid continues to stand at the door. Or maybe she is no longer: she realized that her own man had come, and left so as not to interfere. If everything were so, would we understand what happened? Why is the boy happy, why does the girl look sullenly, and why the mother and wife hurry to the newcomer?

Or the artist would depict an even later moment: the stranger washed his face, changed his clothes and, with his family, talks about something he has experienced. Again, everything would not be as clear as it is now. We would have thought that the whole point is precisely in an interesting story that everyone is listening to so carefully. Is it possible to recognize in such a plot the complex drama experienced by the family? Of course not. This is why the choice of the moment that will be depicted in the picture is so extremely important. Sometimes they even say: "The moment is found - there is a picture, not found - no". Do you think finding this moment is easy? No. It’s very difficult.

Here is Repin, for example, how much he fought over this. And not only him. Every artist. This is the skill of the artist, that he knows how to choose such a moment, such an event that makes it possible to better see the characters of people, their essence. Moreover, the artist depicts this event in such a way that the viewer can easily imagine what happened before the depicted moment, what will happen next. And then. that we so easily and simply understood and perceived, lashed the artist with tremendous stress and labor. How well it was necessary to know the people he writes, the environment in which they live, in order to reproduce all this on canvas! And how much time and work it took to find suitable people, depicting whom it was best to reveal the main idea of ​​the work!

But the idea of ​​the work is revealed not only by the person, but also by any detail in the picture. The artist Pavel Andreevich Fedotov has a small-sized painting "The Courtship of a Major". You certainly know her.

One of Fedotov's friends tells how the artist collected material for this painting: "When finishing" Matchmaking "Fedotov, first of all, needed a sample of a room that would fit the subject of the painting. Only the walls were good there, but things did not get along with them; the furnishings were good there, but the rooms were too light and large ... Once, passing near some Russian tavern, the artist noticed through the windows of the main room a chandelier with smoked glass. He went into the tavern and with indescribable pleasure found what he had been looking for for so long: the walls smeared with dark brown paint, paintings of the most naive decoration, the ceiling decorated with painted "puketamn", yellowed doors - all this perfectly agreed with the ideal that had been worn for so many days in Fedotov's imagination ".
Fedotov himself talks about working on his painting the following: “When I needed a type of merchant for my 'major', I often walked around Gostiny and Apraksin Dvor, looking closely at the faces of the merchants, listening to their talk and studying their grips; the same goal, but for a long time I could not find what I wanted.
Finally, one day at the Anichkov Bridge, I met the realization of my ideal, and not a single lucky man, who was assigned the most pleasant rendezvous on Nevsky, could be more delighted with his beauty, as I was delighted with my red beard and thick belly.
I accompanied my find home, then found a chance to get to know him, dragged after him for a whole year, studied his character, received permission to copy a portrait from my venerable aunt (although he considered it a sin and a bad omen) and then only introduced it into his painting ...
For a whole year I studied one face, and what did the others cost me! "

This is how an artist works on a painting. So she chooses, studies each of her characters. But in life the artist will write not one, but many pictures. And their themes will be different, and people and everything will be different. And so that the pictures are truthful, convincing, so that the viewer assimilates and understands the main thing, how much you need to know, understand, study! From all life circumstances, the artist chooses the most characteristic ones. After all, showing not random, but typical characters and placing them not in random, but in typical circumstances, the artist in his works reveals the truth of life. In life, the artist saw plots, found prototypes for his heroes, life gave him content for his paintings. He looks in "both eyes", but this is not enough. He is always trying not only in memory, but also on paper to record what he saw.

Take an interest somehow, take the albums of Fedotov's artists. Surikov. Repin, Serov. How many similar and dissimilar, identical and different sketches, drawings are in them!
Fedotov, for example, has a sheet "How People Sit", which depicts the most varied movements that a person makes when he sits on a chair. Such albums - notebooks - every artist has. If a writer writes down in words his observations, the most memorable expressions, characteristic words, then the artist does all this, reproducing figures, postures, gestures, movements. Or maybe you have ever seen an artist at a meeting or at an evening with other people? If not. take a closer look and you will always recognize him. Here he is listening to a report, but suddenly his hand reached for the paper, a pencil quickly ran over it. You look - he made a shot from the speaker or from one of his neighbors. In one, he noticed an interesting manner of emphasizing with a gesture especially important parts of his speech, in another. as he reaches for a glass of water. Gestures, turns, movements, features of facial expressions - all this is depicted by the artist. What for? Maybe none of these observations will then be included in future work exactly in this form, but constant sketches develop observation and are themselves a consequence of observation. And then, all this is the material that the artist needs for further work. If he sketches the speaker hundreds of times, then they will be useful to him when he creates a work on this topic. From numerous observations, he will form one whole, which will give him the opportunity to truthfully and convincingly portray a person speaking on the podium. Of course, then the artist will check his impressions more than once, but life observations are necessary for him.
But it also happens that none of the sketches made will go directly into his work. All the same - the artist's work does not pass without a trace for him. He will be able to more freely convey everything that has been seen and reproduced many times. And, besides, the observations themselves suggest to the artist both the theme and the plot.

An artist lives in a certain society. He has his own views on life, on people, on human relations, his views on good and bad, beautiful and ugly, his own taste, just like other people. This is a view of the world - a worldview. The artist passes by something without noticing, but something attracts him, interests, excites and captures his imagination. But the artist's creation of a work is not at all as easy as it might seem at first sight. I thought and decided: "I'll write about it." No, when an idea is born, the artist has not only the event (plot) that he wants to convey, but also the means by which he thinks to express his idea: the main arrangement of the figures and the main color ratios. It would seem that now everything - go to the workshop, sit down and write! But this is still a long way off. Based on the observations made, the artist draws up the first, preliminary sketch of his future work - sketch... Then he collects material and conducts observations directly for this work, looking for people and the environment that he needs for the picture. For example, if events take place in a room, then the corresponding room, if on the street, then you need to find and write this place directly from nature. Yes, not just copy it, but give it an image at a certain time of the year, at a certain time of the day and under a certain lighting. It depends on how everything depicted will look and what feelings and thoughts will evoke in future viewers. For this, the artist writes, draws and sculpts, directly looking at nature and man, that is, from nature.

Small preparatory work written directly from life is called sketches In each sketch, the artist solves one specific and necessary task for a given work: he finds a certain movement of a person, an arrangement of figures or objects necessary for a painting, a certain state of nature, and only when his future work has clearly formed in the artist's imagination, when all the necessary preparatory material has been collected, he begins to work directly on it. And even then not immediately. After all, before starting work, each person should think over and check again.

Here the worker received the material from which he must make a part, a machine and a tool. But he will not immediately start processing the part. He looks at what and where to remove, what to leave, with what tools to do one job, with what other. And the tool will be positioned like this. so that the more needed was at his fingertips, and the less needed was at a distance.
The architect does the same. Before starting construction, he first makes a draft of the house, in which he outlines the general view, the arrangement of rooms, floors, stairs.
The writer draws up a plan for his future work. The artist, too, before moving on to the final work, draws up a plan for the work, but writes it not in words, but completely depicts it on canvas or paper. To do this, he first outlines a general plan: what should be in the center and depicted in large, what is on the one hand, what on the other, what should first of all pay attention to and where the gaze should go next. All elements of the work are arranged not by chance, but in accordance with the main idea that the artist wants to express in his work.

The general structure of the work and the combination of all the elements in it, which makes it possible to express the ideological intent with the greatest completeness, is called composition(from the Latin word composition - composition).

The striving for the greatest expressiveness sometimes gives rise to new versions of the picture. So, working on the painting "They Didn't Expect", IE Repin went through several options. At first it was conceived as a sudden return of a female student.

The students at that time were the most progressive and even revolutionary-minded girls. Often, against the will of their parents, they left home to get an education. Therefore, the arrival of a student at her home could be an event that provided material for the work. Repin even wrote this version of the picture. But then, while working on the picture, the artist changed it, deepening the content. And it is no longer a student who comes home, but a revolutionary returning from exile. New details appeared in the picture - an elegant maid who let the exile in, who with her whole appearance further emphasizes how unusual the arrival of such a person into this house is. In the final version, the character of each character, the attitude to the exiled Suali are extremely clear, and the picture acquired a completely different meaning.

And how many times the artist works on each image, how many times he remakes, changes! For a long time, Repin did not succeed in being a revolutionary. The artist could not find his pose, or rather the movement, was dissatisfied with himself, suffered, altered and even talked about quitting work on the painting. Repin strove to ensure that the revolutionary in his picture was a hero and at the same time a simple, ordinary person. In his pose, he wanted to show some indecision - will they somehow accept it? - and immediately flashed joy that the family accepted him.
Just think, because such complex feelings - the joy of returning and indecision because of how his vague feeling instantly appeared - understood, accepted, glad, it is even more difficult to portray. So Repin fought over this for four whole years.
And even after the picture was finished and shown to the audience, he repeatedly returned to the image of a revolutionary and added it. This is how artists work on almost every image of a painting.

And sometimes it happens. The artist works for a long time on a figure, and then it turns out that it is superfluous, and ... he removes it from the canvas, because figures or objects that say nothing can distract the audience's attention from the main thing. For example, in the painting "They Didn't Expect" Repin removed the figure of an old man entering from the balcony on the left. And how much work was spent to write it!

Let's see another picture. This is also a very famous work written by Vasily Ivanovich Surikov - "Menshikov in Berezovo".

Who is Menshikov, you remember from history. The artist portrayed the companion and friend of Peter I in exile, where he ended up after the death of Peter. Menshikov sits in a dark, cold hut, surrounded by his children. The youngest daughter is reading. But no one listens to her. Everyone thinks about his own. Menshikov, sullen, concentrated, was gone from his memories. He relives the past. Outwardly, he is calm, but he has not come to terms with his fate. An imperious, proud posture, a hand clenched into a fist betrays the force that is raging in him. He, like a huge heavy lump, rises above the rest. The eldest daughter perched at his feet. Thin, chilly wrapped in a fur coat, she looks with a fixed gaze and ... sees nothing. Such an unseeing look occurs in a deeply thoughtful person. Menshikov's son also does not notice his surroundings, does not hear the voice of his younger sister. His fingers mechanically brush the wax off the candlestick. Light springs sparingly from the frozen window, the low ceiling seems to press on them.

Even if you do not even know who these people are and what happened to them, you cannot remain calm while looking at the picture. And again, as in Repin's "They Didn't Expect", the more you look, the more you notice, the more you open, you begin to see what you didn't pay attention to at first. Closely, almost touching each other, the Menshikov family sits, but how lonely each of them is! How far apart they are. Everyone thinks about their own. And how their clothes contradict them, the ikura of a bear on the floor and an expensive tablecloth in a wretched, unheated hut!

Look at both sisters. The eldest, pale, with loose, and perhaps unkempt hair, wrapped herself in a fur coat. The youngest is neatly combed, dressed smartly. You will notice this and you will understand: the elder no longer believes in anything, does not hope for anything, and her sister has not yet lost her former habits of luxury. The more you look into the picture, the more you will see in it, and the meaning of what is happening will become even deeper. But no matter how much we look, our gaze all the time returns to Menshikov, and from here it goes to the fragile figure of the eldest daughter clinging to him, from them - to the son, the youngest daughter and again to him, to Menshikov. And this is no coincidence. The artist deliberately builds his work in such a way that the viewer's gaze moves from one figure to another, from one object to another. The ability to write a work in such a way that the viewer first gets a general impression of the picture, and then proceeds to examine the details that would help him to reveal the content deeper, is one of the foundations of compositional mastery.

How is this achieved?

Maybe the main character is the artist writes larger or brings him closer to the viewer? If there were such a simple rule, then all the paintings would be very similar to each other. And it would not be interesting to watch them. But still there is some reason that makes the viewer pay attention to the main thing in the picture, and from him to go to the particulars.
Of course, the artist places the figures in the picture so that some are immediately noticeable, while others seem to fade into the background. In order for the main thing to remain in the field of view all the time, there is one rule: there should be nothing superfluous in the picture, nothing accidental. The artist introduces various details into the picture, not simply because he wanted to fit them into the picture, but in order to further reveal the idea of ​​the work with their help. Otherwise, all these details would distract the viewer from the main thing. But this does not happen in good works. A real artist does not introduce anything accidental into the picture, and if during work he introduced something not very significant, then he will definitely remove it.

Of course, in every work there is not only the main, but also the secondary. After all, the people depicted in the picture do not live in an empty place, but in a certain environment, and everything that happens between them happens at home, on the street, in the field, in the forest, at work. And the artist shows an environment that helps to understand people and their relationships even better.
Let us recall again the painting by Repin "They Did Not Expect". On the walls of the room we see portraits of Nekrasov and Shevchenko. Both poets were singers and protectors of the people. This means that in the room where their portraits hang, people live who love and respect the common people. Imagine that instead of these portraits there would be just images of some unfamiliar people, then that certainty that helped us to better understand the meaning would immediately disappear.

Look at the maid. She is still holding on to the door handle. Do you think by chance? No. This gesture further emphasizes her fear and bewilderment: she slightly opened the door, but did not open it and timidly let a stranger into the room. And the schoolboy? His neck is thin, thin, his clothes are a little too big, bought for growth. Doesn't this indicate the paucity of family funds? You made sure that the artist introduces into the picture only such details that help to understand the meaning. And no matter how good some detail, detail is in itself, but if it does not contribute to a deeper understanding of the content, it only harms the work.But the artist not only leaves the necessary details in his picture, but arranges everything in it like that, so that the main thing is noticeable, so that the secondary does not come out ahead, but helps to understand the main thing, so that the details do not violate the integrity of perception. And the size of the picture is not even random, whether it is built vertically or extended in breadth.

Each picture has not only a certain size, strict composition, but also painted with paints, painted.

Painting therefore got its name, which means painting, that is, the image on the plane of various objects with the help of color.
The fact that the image is given with the help of color is an essential distinguishing feature of painting. For the perception of a painting, color is very important, but it is important not only in painting.

Imagine that there are many people in front of you at a fairly large distance. Who will you pay attention to first of all? Of course, for someone who is brightly dressed, especially if the colors alternate with each other: black with white, red with blue, etc. And imagine that everyone is dressed the same, like athletes in a parade, then you will notice not each person separately, but the column as a whole. These same laws, only, of course, in a more complex combination, are applied by the artist.

In Repin's painting "They Did Not Expect", first the gaze stops at the mother, because she is dressed in black and her large figure in black is especially noticeable against the background of the light walls of the room.
In Surikov's painting, Menshikov's graying head stands out against the background of a gloomy hut and its dirty walls. Surikov's entire painting is built on sharp color contrasts. The light spots of the window, faces, books, the skins of a polar bear stand out against the background of the dark tones of the wall and the fur coat of the eldest daughter.

This means that the artist builds the composition not only on the consistent development of the plot, but also on the contrast of color spots. And all this together reveals the content.
Imagine that the artist would arrange all the figures in the picture by accident, make them the same size and wear equally bright clothes. Then the viewer's gaze would restlessly run from one figure to another, not knowing where to stop. Everything would be equally attractive, and the meaning of the work would not become obvious to us.
In order to reveal the idea of ​​his work, the artist places not only figures and objects, but also color spots in the picture very thoughtfully, in accordance with the idea of ​​the work.

When all this is taken into account, collected, when everything is placed, finally fell into place, then the work becomes surprisingly integral, and it seems that everything should be so and cannot be otherwise. And now it is no longer possible to remove anything from the work and add nothing to it, so as not to change its meaning.
And we, the audience, will come up, look, stand for ten to fifteen minutes, and until then everything will seem good and simple to us, that we will not even have an idea of ​​how much work, thought, excitement and feelings the artist put into his brainchild. And the surest sign that a work is perfect is that we do not notice how it is made. We look, enjoy, the picture pleases the eye, wakes up thoughts, makes something feel and think about something. We see and notice the content, paying little attention to the execution. And, if so, then the artist's goal has been achieved.

But if something in the picture did not work out, we would suddenly begin to pay attention to some details, or we would not understand what is depicted, what the artist wanted to say. Or people would simply watch, admire, but ... not at all what should be admired.
You've probably heard the audience, standing near the picture, say: "Oh, how lovely! Look how wonderfully this button is written: you just want to touch it. And the dress? Well, just real." Or, returning home, they advise friends and neighbors to see the picture, but they praise the work for the performance in it of some detail, some trifle.
Or maybe you yourself sometimes looked at pictures like that and talked about them like that?

Well, there are two reasons: either the artist failed to convey the main thing and the details obscured the essence from you, or you do not know how to look at pictures. Rather, both.
Remember "Menshikov in Berezovo". With what unsurpassed skill are painted a velvet coat trimmed with white fur, a brocade skirt, a lamp in the corner, a frosty window! Any piece of the picture. whether it is a person's face or clothing, the furnishings of the hut - everything is written with the utmost perfection.
But no one would ever think to say: "Go to the Tretyakov Gallery, see how Menshikov's daughter's brocade skirt is painted!" You can put it differently: "Look at Surikov's painting. What a strong personality Menshikov is - just a lion in a cage! What a tragedy a man has experienced!"
Do we not admire the way this picture is painted? Of course, we admire. Approaching it not for the first time, sometimes we consider for a long time how subtly everything is done, we are surprised that near the paints seem to be mixed quite by chance, motley incomprehensible strokes, but. one has only to move away, the same paints in the same picture seem to fall into place and no longer seem to be paints or strokes, but accurately convey the color of different objects.

How does the artist achieve such expressiveness and persuasiveness of his works?
We have already said that in his work he arranges people and objects so that the details are subordinate to the main thing. But they also noted that in life and in a painting, we are struck by what stands out in brightness, in color. And the artist also takes this feature into account when composing the picture.
Observations and searches, and the choice of the heroes of the future work, and the selection of the environment in which they will act, and the subordination of the entire work to the ideological concept - all this is inherent in every type of art, including the fine arts.

Further we will talk about sculpture and graphics, and you will see that the main difference between painting and these types of fine art is that the artist creates a painting with color. With color, he achieves the fact that each object in the picture is similar to its prototype in reality.
The artist takes the most ordinary paints from a tube and. positioning them on the canvas in a certain way achieves the fact that the face and hands of a person have a flesh color, the tree looks like a tree, and each fabric will look heavy or light, transparent or shiny.

But how is it that an artist achieves such an extraordinary result with ordinary oil paints, that is, drawn up on vegetable oils, with which everyone can paint? There are many of the most subtle techniques, methods, laws, but we will only talk about the most basic ones.
We can say that the artist mixes paints in such a way that they acquire that special color that is inherent in the depicted object. Then the paint from the tube ceases to be just blue or white, but becomes the color of white snow or blue sky.

You will probably be surprised and think:
"What's wrong with that? And why do you need to mix paints? White is white, blue is blue, blue is blue."
It turns out that this is not the case. The blue sky is one thing, and the blue dress is quite another. White snow, white fur cap, white doctor's coat, white clouds and many other natural phenomena and white willow objects are all different.
And not because the snow is fluffy, and the robe is smooth, that is, not only because of the quality of the material itself, but also in color.

Observe how white cups look on a white tablecloth. Or a child's white fur coat in the snow. And you can't help but notice that there are many shades of white alone. A white fur coat in the snow may seem somewhat darker than snow, but at home, among other coats, it seems unusually white.
And so is the snow: in the morning it is one color, in the afternoon it will be different, in the evening it will be the third. And not because it gets dirty during the day, but because in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening there will be different lighting and from this it will seem different in color.
And so each item has its own color, but at different times of the day. under different lighting, depending on what color the objects surround it, its color will seem different.
Therefore, in order to write just a piece of white canvas, it is not enough to take white paint and paint the image of the fabric with it. There will be paint, but there will be no color.
"So what is needed," we ask again, "for paint to become a color in an artist's painting?"
It is necessary that the paint is combined with others that are in the picture, because each painted object gives the other some kind of shade.
It is necessary that the colors in the picture are combined like this. so that all together create a picturesque whole.

Take any piece of the painting and separate it from the rest of it. What happened?
Black has ceased to be black, but has become as if gray. And the white became somehow dull, dirty and not at all like that wonderful white dress, which it seemed when we looked at the whole picture as a whole.
Now open the rest of the picture, and everything will fall into place again: white has become white, black - black.

Finding the unity of color relationships means starting to turn paint into color. This combination of different colors in the picture, forming a single visual impression, has its own special name. It's called color(from the Latin word color - color).

The artist must precisely define, find the color of the object, show how it will look depending on the lighting.
And you also need to take into account that if one part of the subject is illuminated, and the other is not. then they will seem different, although their color is the same.
Since the artist creates his work with the help of color, not only artistic qualities, but also the truthfulness of the work largely depend on the correct reproduction of colors, on the ability to find their correspondence and relationship.

Everything that we have just talked about can be traced to any piece of painting and those that you and I considered. But let's see other pictures as well. See what is this?

A man in a black leather jacket and a sailor striped vest, with his hands folded behind his back, stands calmly, legs wide apart. Near him is a girl in a sheepskin coat. These are the underground workers who worked in the rear of the whites. They were caught and interrogated. The picture is called that. "Interrogation of the Communists", and was written by the famous Soviet painter BV Ioganson.
The sailor and the girl do not just stand, but confront a group of White Guards interrogating them. An old man is interrogated by a general and two young
officer.

Now let's take a closer look at the interrogated.
The man keeps calm, the girl restrains her excitement. She clenched her hands (this is what people do when they want to calm their inner tremors so that no one will notice her) and slightly narrowed her eyes.
And the white ones?
The general is almost invisible because of the chair in which he sits, only the back of his head and crimson neck are visible.
A young officer in a Circassian coat, with a stack in his hand, looks viciously. The third, an officer with smoothly parted hair, is examining a piece of paper.
It is not known what angered them so much — whether the communists were silent or the sailor’s harsh response. And it’s not that important. Another thing is important: the communists are stronger than these people. They held out, held out.
And, although it is felt that the officers enraged by their steadfastness can shoot them, you know that strength and truth are on the side of the communists. They are so calm because they are confident in themselves, in the rightness of their cause. And we cannot but admire them and their feat.

You and I saw what was written on the painting "Interrogation of the Communists", we talked about its content.
Now let's see how the artist painted his picture, by what pictorial means he conveyed its content, and we will dwell on this in more detail, because you and I need to learn to understand the peculiarities of painting and, in particular, to understand even better what color is and what role it plays in a piece of painting.
Our focus is on the communists because the light from above illuminates their faces and figures with the greatest intensity. The light falls on a group of officers not so sharply, they seem to be in the shadows, and therefore you notice them later.
Everything that is not directly related to this clash of two forces. is given by the artist only enough to define the subject, but not to hold the viewer's attention on it. Barely noticeable is the window with the blue snow visible behind it from the evening illumination, the walls of the room are lightly painted.

The figures of the communists are especially expressive due to their contrast with their surroundings. Remember we said that contrast is an important means of expressing a composition. But there we touched only one side of contrast - color contrast. Now let's add to what has been said that the contrast can be psychological as well. for example in this picture.
The whole setting is contrasting here for these unusual people in it, who seem to be strangers here. This contrast helps to even more strongly sense the sharp struggle that the artist reproduced. A carpet on the floor, bright uniforms of officers, armchairs with good upholstery on the one hand, and coarse windings, a leather jacket and a sailor's vest, a simple sheepskin coat and a plain girl's hat on the other; the well-fed, well-groomed faces of the officers and the simple noble faces of the interrogated - all this is opposed to one another.

The tension of the situation is also emphasized by the color contrasts of red, blue, yellow and black.
With the help of color, the artist conveys lighting, the shape of objects, material, and no matter how bright the colors with which the picture is painted, they are consistent with each other, connected, make up a unity.
If it were not for this, each figure in the picture would be perceived separately, the picture would be variegated and it would be very difficult to look at it.

And in the painting "They Didn't Expect", about which you already know, completely different colors: light blue wallpaper, lilac dress of the maid, soft color of the upholstery of the armchairs. With such colors, there could be no variegation. but. if the artist made everything a little less blue, lilac, etc., colorlessness, whiteness, as the artists say, would inevitably arise. And there would not have been that joyful, light feeling that Repin's painting gives rise to.

A little more, a little less - and it would be bad, but when it is just right, it is good.
This is a very fine line, and it is no coincidence that they say that painting "holds on just a little."
If with the help of color the artist conveys the color of the object, its shape, the material from which it is made, then the color makes the picture whole and not only reveals to the viewer all the colorful wealth of the world, but also contributes to the expression of the content. And how important it is to find the right color for the solution of the picture, for the disclosure of the idea, let us trace the work of BV Ioganson on "Interrogation of the Communists".

When the idea of ​​the picture was clear (a comparison of irreconcilable class forces), a plot was found (interrogation of the communists by the White Guards), the situation was clarified (the manufacturer's house) and even its details (the floors were painted, there was a carpet on them, icons in the corner, frosty day, the windows were frosty ), the artist began to look for the pictorial solution itself.
In one of the sketches, he tried to give a scene in daylight. It turned out, according to him, something funny: "a frozen window, the sun is shining through it", sunbeams run along the walls and floor.
Was such lighting capable of expressing all the severity of the moment that should have been in the picture? Of course not.
And the artist in another sketch depicted this scene at night, with evening lighting. It turned out more tense, more dramatic. At the same time, the composition of the picture was clarified. All this together - lighting and a different arrangement of the figures - gave a different meaning: the communists, although they are tied up, seem to be advancing on the White Guards.
The figure of a sailor, dressed in black, and a girl in yellow are clearly visible on the red carpet in a bright beam of light. The lighting makes both figures appear sharply defined.

BV Johanson's painting is painted in red-brown tones, in "hot color", as the artist would say. And it was necessary to create the tension needed in the picture.
As you can see, it does not matter at all for the meaning of the picture when to depict what is happening, day or night, in light or dark colors.
The artist not only conveys what he has seen, not only gives his assessment of the events, but also by the very manner of writing contributes to the disclosure of the meaning of the depicted.

So color and especially coloring contribute to the disclosure of the content of a painting, the expression of an idea. Coloring creates a mood, helps to convey joy or sadness, a feeling of spaciousness, the breadth of nature and much more, and this has a great semantic meaning in the picture.

Some artists even believe that the coloristic feeling, that is, the ability to see and combine the beauty of color relations, is the most important quality of the artist.
"There is color - there is an artist, there is no color - there is no artist," Surikov said.
We can say that color is the artist's color vision of the world. After all, when conceiving a new work, he finds not only the event that he wants to depict, but also those color relations that can express this picturesquely.
And the artist, being able to see, guess and convey the colors that make up a given color, finds flavor.
Sometimes the artist will feel it right away, sometimes he looks for it for a long time. And to find color means to do a lot to solve the image.
But it would be wrong if you decided that a joyful event should be painted with bright, light colors, and a tragic event with dark, gloomy colors. No. If it was known in advance what paint can be used to express what mood, then everything would be simple. If you want to express joy, write red, grief - black. And, although really red is associated with the holiday, and black - with mourning, in painting everything is much more complicated.

We said that Johanson's painting "Interrogation of the Communists" was painted in brown-red tones, in "hot colors", and this color helps to reveal the drama depicted by the artist.
But here's another picture, the color of which can also be defined by the word "hot". Of course, it is not quite the same as in Interrogation of the Communists, but here too, brown and red, hot tones prevail. This is "Dinner of Tractor Drivers" by A. A. Plastov.

Summer evening. The hour when the sun, before disappearing behind the horizon, illuminates the earth with its last orange-red rays. These rays flood the earth lying in large thick layers and stretching to the very horizon and the people in the foreground. Tractor driver in a red T-shirt and a quilted jacket thrown over it. Kneeling, he cuts the loaf in large chunks. A girl in a white scarf and a white robe pours milk into a bowl. The young man, apparently the assistant to the tractor driver, lies on the ground and looks at the milk pouring from the can.
There is no big, detailed narrative here. The artist showed very little, but said a lot about these people.

It can be seen that this is suffering when time is especially precious. The tractor driver only interrupted his work for a minute and here, without turning off the tractor engine, he is going to have a quick meal and get down to business again. He has working, hard-working hands, his face is overgrown with stiff stubble, his hair, which has not been cut for a long time, is knocked out from under his cap. Now he has no time to monitor his appearance. But there is beauty in him. This is the beauty of the person himself, a worker who forgets about himself at work. The harsh and courageous image of the tractor driver is further emphasized by the delicate appearance of the girl.
This whole group - a tractor driver, a boy and a girl - gives the impression of integrity and poetry. Both nature, which seems especially impressive in the bright evening light, and the color of the picture, participate in the creation of the poetic image of the tractorist.

Imagine that the artist would paint the same group not on a hot summer deck, not in the evening, but on a gloomy day or when the sun had already gone down. This feeling of labor intensity would disappear.
And here - the rays of the sun directly fall on the tractor driver and his assistant, and this illumination casts harsh colors and shadows on their faces and figures.
The girl is lit differently from the tractor drivers; she is facing them. and the sun illuminates her back, so soft, light shadows fall on her face, not so sharp, and this enhances the impression of the softness of this image and emphasizes the contrast even more sharply: tractor drivers and a girl scorched by the sun and wind.
A large cold shadow falls from the tractor, covering the girl's head, her hand holding a can and a bowl of milk. From this white color, kerchiefs, white dressing gown and milk acquire different shades. The milk seems thick and cold, because the rays still fall on the headscarf, but no longer on the milk, and therefore its white color is colder, and the white color of the headscarf is warmer.

But, speaking about the picture, we used unknown, and perhaps incomprehensible words to you. We said, "a white kerchief is warmer than white milk." But usually the concept of heat is applied to that which has a temperature. And they say about the colors - bright or dull, or simply call the color: red, blue, blue.
But the artist still distinguishes between warm colors: yellow, orange, red, brown, and cold: blue, blue, green, purple.
Now you understand why you can say: "the picture is painted in a cold tone or in a hot color."

Books have been shaping, reflecting and accompanying human civilization for many millennia. They are already 4.5 thousand years old. A printed book (in the modern sense of the word) itself has become an object of art since its inception (from about 1440; in Russia - somewhat later - in the second half of the 16th century).

Sandro Botticelli. "Madonna of the Book"

Giuseppe Arcimboldo. "Librarian"

The relationship of a person with a book has always been an example of sincerity, trust and need for each other. Collecting material on the topic, we were amazed by the variety of types (from icon painting to decorative and applied art) and genres that reflected the book and the reader (this is a portrait, pictorial and sculptural, and still life, and computer graphics). In them, art, as it were, confesses its love for the Book - an amazing creation and, at the same time, the source of human intelligence. For some artists, she is the main character and semantic center (in the genre of still life). But basically a book in the hands of a person is a way to reveal his inner world, to emphasize his state of mind and beauty.

More than 570 monuments of art about books and reading from antiquity to modern times have been collected and commented on in the well-known work of the West German book scholar Z. Taubert "Bibliopola". These are the works of Giorgione, Titian, A. Bronzino, D. Velazquez, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, C. Corot and many other titans of the 15th-18th centuries. In the 19th century, this is a favorite theme of the Impressionists: O. Renoir and C. Monet, Van Gogh and E. Manet, A. Toulouse-Lautrec and B. Morisot. Works of Russian masters of the classical era - O.A. Kiprensky, V.A. Tropinina, I.N. Kramskoy, I.E. Repin, V.I. Surikova, M.A. Vrubel, V.A. Serova, N.N. Ge, and such artists of the last century as M.V. Nesterov, I.E. Grabar, N.P. Ulyanov, A.A. Deinek and others, show us how widely the book has spread in Russia, how its reader has changed.

It is impossible to tell about everyone. We have chosen what, in our opinion, may surprise a contemporary in the display of a “reading person” in art. A talented work with its specific details can tell the attentive eye more than multivolume historical publications. And then the images themselves acquire the strength and authenticity of documents. But first of all, we are interested in how, with the help of a book, the character of the person reading is revealed, and through him - the character of the era. The first books appear on the icons of masters in the hands of saints, this, of course, is the Holy Scripture. Then - on the ceremonial portraits of medieval nobles. Books are very expensive and speak not only about the wealth of their owners, but also about their involvement in the intellectual elite of their time.

The portrait of Lucrezia Panchatica belongs to the best works of Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) and one of the most beautiful female images in world painting. The portrait was created as a pair to the portrait of Lucrezia's husband - the ambassador of the Florentine duke to the French court Bartolomeo Panchatica. In Paris, the couple fell under the influence of the Huguenots. After returning to Florence, they had to go through the court of the Inquisition. However, later the Duke's mercy was returned to them. The creation of a masterpiece belongs to this period. All "court" portraits of Bronzino are distinguished by the Olympic detachment from everyday life and her prose. Before us is the image of a beautiful young aristocrat. Proud posture. Calm confidence in their own irresistibility and the right hand - on the "Book of Hours of Our Lady", which is recognized by the prayer dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Filigree written dense and expensive satin, expensive jewelry emphasize ivory skin and crystal eyes. On a gold chain with enamel (possibly donated by Bartolomeo on the occasion of an engagement or wedding) the inscription: "Love has no end."

In the Italian art of the Renaissance, a painter, director of festive performances, decorator, representative of Mannerism Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) stands out, absolutely fantastic for his time. Arcimboldo was an artist endowed with inexhaustible imagination and universal erudition. The most famous of his works are the so-called “compound heads” from the series The Seasons (1562-1563) and The Four Elements (1569). Unusually original and striking in its uniqueness, and often also in portrait resemblance, his works are composed entirely of magnificent fruits, vegetables, flowers, crustaceans, fish, pearls, musical instruments, books, etc. For example, the drawing "Cook" is composed of kitchen items. The faces are stylized; the effect of shape and light and shade in space is created by a very skillful arrangement of elements. Before you is his "Librarian", a man-book. Why not a collage processed in Photoshop? The now forgotten artist was proclaimed in the 20th century the forerunner of surrealism, and the painting "The Librarian" was called "the triumph of abstract art in the 16th century."

Jean-Honore Fragonard. "Girl reading"

Over the next centuries, the book became more accessible, secular literature developed, the face of the reader changed. In 1769, the Parisian artist Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) conceived a unique series of canvases of the same size, the so-called "fantastic figures". Most of them do not have real prototypes and are created in an incredibly short time, about an hour. This is his "Girl Reading". In place of the face of the reading girl, the French artist first painted a man's head. Perhaps a woman's face is also not a portrait from life and therefore can be considered as one of the "fantastic figures". But the natural posture of a girl absorbed in reading (a love story, poetry?) Makes her lively and warm, which made it possible for the French art critic Theophile Tore to write about her in 1844: “Charms the fresh face of a young girl, with delicate, like a peach, skin. She is dressed in a light, lemon-yellow dress that generously reflects light reflections ... The heroine of the picture sits, leaning back on a purple pillow, on which deep purple shadows fall. The portrait is striking in its depth and vitality. "

In the works of artists of the XIX century, the book appears more and more often. A simple peasant and a secular lady, an aristocrat and a philistine are drawn to books. The book is included as a central figure in genre and historical canvases: "Menshikov in Berezovo"

V. Surikov, "Breakfast of an aristocrat" by P. Fedotov, "In the bookstore" by V. Vasnetsov and many others.

The Impressionists have a lot of paintings about the reader and the book. A book in the hands of a man in nature is their favorite theme: by Claude Monet (In the Meadow, The Artist's Family in the Garden, In the Woods of Giverny, The Reader); by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (Désiré Dio), by Gustave Caybott (The Orange Tree). The book as part of family life was widely reflected in O. Renoir. Characters of his paintings are read at breakfast ("Breakfast in Berneval"), one book for two is read by friends ("Reading girls"), he has "A girl reading a book", "A woman reading" and especially many charming reading children.

The list of names and interesting works of the Impressionists goes on. However, this is a topic for a voluminous monograph that is awaiting its author. And we cannot ignore the outstanding predecessor of the Impressionists, the French painter, master of landscape and portrait Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875). As a landscape painter, K. Corot had a great influence on the work of the Impressionists with his magnificent transmission of the light-air environment, richness of color and ability to create an unforgettable impression of the landscape as a whole. Corot loved to include figured compositions in his landscapes. A total of 323 paintings with figures are known. Usually his friends and relatives posed for the artist. Just like landscapes, Koro's figured compositions have their own specific mood. Often these are images of pretty girls, simple-minded and sincere, attracting with the purity and charm of youth, poetry, immersed in reading or dreams. These are "The Reading Muse" and "The Girl Learning", "The Forest at Fontainebleau" and "The Reading Girl in a Red Jacket". The portrait "Interrupted Reading" depicts one of these models just at the moment of deep thought, which must have been inspired by reading. In her appearance, beauty and femininity are combined with intelligence. The everyday characterization of the character is very uncomplicated, a modest light brown color scheme with shades of pink, a subtle color scheme exactly correspond to the mood of lyrical contemplation and the delicate appearance of a dream woman, an ideal spiritually close to the author.

V. Surikov. "Menshikov in Berezovo"

V. Vasnetsov. "In the bookstore"

Claude Monet. "In the meadow"

In Russia, in the 19th century, books and reading begin to play a significant role in society, and the rapidly developing portrait painting in all its diversity reflects this theme. One of the best Russian portrait painters, ideologist and organizer of the "Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions" (1870), author of such a world-famous masterpiece as "Christ in the Desert", I.N. Kramskoy (1837-1887), being an exemplary family man, creates many portraits of people dear to him, especially his wife. Sofya Nikolaevna was a great friend, a reliable assistant in Kramskoy's affairs. He showed her his works first, her opinion was very important to him. The artist depicted his wife reading in the garden, illuminated by the dusk sun. This is a chamber, intimate portrait, imbued with love and subtle lyricism. The combination of warm golden and cool lilac-pink tones of a silk dress and a satin shawl creates a surprisingly light appearance of Sofya Nikolaevna, endowed with a special aristocratic sophistication and warmth. Looking at the calm posture of the reader, we understand that it was in the family that the artist saw the fortress where you can take a break from the incessant (and not always successful) battles for new art, we feel his respect, love and tenderness.

I.N. Kramskoy left as a legacy to descendants images of his most famous contemporaries with a book in their hands. Suffice it to recall his works such as “N.A. Nekrasov in the period of the last songs "," Portrait of A.S. Suvorin ". But long before him, a theme arose in world painting, which can be conventionally designated as a "portrait of a thinker", ie. a person who creates new knowledge with the help of a book (be it a philosopher, writer or artist). The book becomes a symbolic element in their image, an indispensable detail. "Portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam" by G. Holbein, sketch by G. Courbet "Reading Baudelaire", "Portrait of Emile Zola" and "Portrait of the Poet Stephen Mallarmé" by E. Manet, "Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy on vacation in the forest" and "Portrait of D.I. Mendeleev in the mantle of a professor at the University of Edinburgh ”I.Ye. Repin, “Portrait of N.N. Ge "N.A. Yaroshenko, “Portrait of a physiologist I.P. Pavlova "M.V. Nesterova and many, many others.

It is impossible not to talk about the “Portrait of the philosopher V.S. Solovyov "(1885) I.N. Kramskoy. The Russian philosopher, theologian, poet, publicist, literary critic Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) stood at the origins of the "spiritual revival" of Russia in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. Kramskoy managed to see and emphasize the originality of his personality. The artist sits him in a high massive armchair, crowned with wooden carvings, and, as it were, separates his model from the everyday prose of life, intensifying the moment of the philosopher's detachment, his immersion in his thoughts and thoughts. The portrait radiates nobility, intelligence, humanity. This is by far one of the finest representatives of the human breed. No wonder his contemporaries noticed his resemblance to Christ ("Christ in the wilderness"), and today one young blogger compared him to Athos. The scientist regularly came to the artist's sessions and patiently sat until the end. It was interesting for him to observe the miracle of artistic creativity, and the portrait retained the interested expression of the great philosopher's attentive eyes. A sigh of regret is involuntarily escaped that such beautiful faces cannot be seen not only in a crowd of passers-by, but also among the most high-browed intellectuals.

I.N. Kramskoy. "Portrait of the wife of Sophia Nikolaevna"

G. Courbet. "Reading Baudelaire"

ON. Yaroshenko. “Portrait of N.N. Ge "

A very special and extensive section of the topic is children reading. Children dissolve in the book, immerse themselves in a fictional world, where there is a lot of beauty, heroic, mysterious, at the same time remaining natural. This is what attracts artists, from the paintings of F. Hals and Rembrandt (17th century) to the Impressionists, avant-garde art, socialist realism and postmodernism. Let us dwell on what is difficult to pass by - a portrait of Natasha's daughter by M. Nesterov (1862-1942). Attention is drawn to the seriousness and dignity of the charming little model, the striking spirituality of her image. In the portrait of her eleven-year-old daughter, the author was able to convey the main thing that will become decisive in her character in the future: nobility, spiritual purity, an inquisitive mind and an active attitude to life. An exquisite combination of golden and blue, shaded with neutral green, creates the subtlest harmony of a special, wonderful world no longer a child, but not yet an adult woman. “And the girl in Mikhail Nesterov’s painting“ Natasha on a Garden Bench ”looks very modern. She could well fit into our time ", - a comment in LiveJournal.

So far, we have talked about paintings painted in the classical realistic manner. But it is difficult to expect that after almost a century (XX century!) Art itself and the attitude towards it will not change, when reality has changed so dramatically. Artist Yosef Ostrovsky (1935-1993) did not like stylistic definitions of his work: “I am an artist. Not a "realist" and not a "modernist". Just an artist. This is the only way I am free and can express my philosophy on the canvas ”. He was unlike anyone else and was unusually talented. At the age of 15 he was admitted to the Odessa State Art Academy, at the age of 20 he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. His works, based on childhood memories of the life of a Jewish town, bring light and warmth to the viewer. They are about the simple and the eternal. He painted the faces of old people who passed away centuries ago, and today we see that their wisdom and kindness did not go away with them.

So "The Man with the Book" immediately attracts the eye with its naivety and purity. The gray-bearded old man looks at the book in fascination, as if it were a miracle. But this is so! J. Ostrovsky created his own world, complex, joyful and sad - the world of a philosopher and storyteller. The artist proved that in Odessa, dear to him, there existed not only formally refined, but also warm, humanized painting. His canvases are full of inner light, and the most famous of them are in museums and private collections in Israel, Russia, the USA and other countries.

The artist discussed below is Rob Gonsalves, born in Toronto, Canada in 1959. Having studied the technique of perspectives and the basics of architecture, he began to paint his first paintings at the age of 12. As an adult, he worked as an architect, painted theatrical scenery and continued to paint. After a successful performance at an exhibition in 1990, Gonsalves devoted himself entirely to painting. Some art critics attribute his work to surrealism, considering him a follower of S. Dali. But it is not so. Rather, his style can be called "magic realism", when he brings his extraordinary fantasy into real scenes.

His painting is an attempt to show that the impossible is possible, that the secret of something else is hidden behind everyday reality - wise and bright. Whether the artist succeeds in this is up to the connoisseurs and lovers of painting, but something special and attractive in his works cannot be overlooked. In the painting "People and Books" we see readers of different ages choosing books. Everyone finds the one they need, opens it and gets into their own, not like the others, unusually interesting and even somewhat magical world. Bright, unexpected, amazing, pleasing with their unusualness, the artist's works are popular at home and in the United States. His paintings have been exhibited at the largest and most prestigious contemporary art exhibitions on the continent. Many prominent people, well-known corporations, embassies, collect the work of Gonsalves.

On the site "Planet of People" http://www.planeta-l.ru/catalog1 you can get acquainted with his paintings. From the comment of Rob Gonsalves, a visitor to the virtual exhibition: "I like this elusiveness of images passing from one to another, a connection subtly conveyed by the artist's hand and his imagination, the overflow of different worlds into each other."

This is how contemporary art sees its readers.

And what did the ingenious Chinese sculptor mean when he created the chimpanzee “thinker” in the famous monkey park? Perhaps, what if a person of the “High-Tech generation” uses the book, like this monkey or like our ancestors of the beginning of the last century, who suggested “throwing the classics off the ship of modernity,” human civilization will cease to exist? Everything in the world is connected, an ecological catastrophe will be supplemented by an intellectual catastrophe and evolution will return to its beginning, will the circle be closed? We hope that this is just a very witty and visual warning: guys, there is enough room for everyone in the world of reason. And an e-book, which is rapidly developing and takes on interesting forms, and such a close and dear friend of ours, bound with paper pages. The reader, of course, will change, and his image in art will also change. We believe that this will be a man and he will be better than us.

Natalia Gorbunova,

head sector of the PNU Scientific Library.

Lyudmila Kononova,

leading librarian of the National Library of Togu

Photo

Alexander Grigoriev-Savrasov 2015-11-20 at 01:11

Many people think that visual art is the easiest of all existing arts to perceive, but this is far from the case. Lack of labor, as, for example, when reading or long-term contemplation of theatrical action, is deceptive.

As a rule, on the run, we form our opinion about the picture we saw, deciding in a split second whether we like it or not. I have already written that art and intellectual activity in general are far from salted fish, which may not be to someone's taste.

First of all, we want to change the world without changing anything in ourselves. Salt the fish, and brand the picture with the habitual "I love - I do not like" and run on.

How many have thought that this simplicity is not simple, and one glance is not enough to determine the value of this or that picture.

A painting is, first of all, a plane on which an imitation of a real or conventional plot is shown, and should one focus only on the illusory nature of what is depicted?

Backfill question: should you eat a painted fish? Was this the goal the author pursued, did he try to deceive us by creating the illusion of reality?

Many people think that the creative process is just creation, that is, imitation of the real world. But destruction is also creativity, and Picasso's cubism is the best example of this. Destroying the form, he creates, his images are inimitable, the world he created is unique.

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, Picasso.

Is it so easy to understand the paintings as it seems at first glance, and is fine art accessible to everyone who interferes with flies with cutlets, and paintings with fish?

Unlike cinema, theater and other forms of art, a painting does not exist in time, that is, we do not need to follow the action to understand what is happening. The image on the canvas is static. In simple words, the picture does not move, we see only the moment stopped by the author, which we assess momentarily, without going into details.

To get an impression of the film, you need to watch it for two whole hours, and the picture is worthy of one glance. A fairly large percentage of viewers judge all the fine arts just like that.

Isn't that how we run through the halls of the museum? Pictures like slides flicker before our eyes, merging into one film strip, and as a result - a mess of dozens of images that we will not remember tomorrow.

Ideally, the museum should be visited every time for one picture, it is itself a whole film, a theatrical performance, if you like. She deserves that you devote more than one moment to her.

If we talk about the classical understanding of fine art, then the picture has time and action, which it depicts, its plot develops sequentially.

The picture, I repeat, in its classical sense (we are not talking about contemporary art now) has an entrance to the composition and the movement set by the author. The viewer does not just contemplate the plot, but moves along the image as the author intended.

The picture has both the past and the future, we can easily imagine this based on what the artist captured. Of course, all this will become possible if we stop treating the visual arts as the easiest to perceive.

The ancient Greeks judged the skill of the artist by how he could deceive the viewer with the realism of the depicted. In the story told by the writer Pliny the Elder (1st century AD), birds confuse the depicted grapes with the real one.

Are we going to admire a similar story today? Someone, of course, will be among those who confuse fish with a painting and make judgments about certain works on the run, but I'm sure not all are like that.

Take me for example, why go far? I am not convinced by the realistically depicted grapes, I am not a bird, this is not enough for me. To admire the photographic quality of a picture in the twenty-first century is, to say the least, strange.

It's not enough for me that the plot depicted is identical to the original. I want to see, and above all, to feel what the author was experiencing. I want to keep track of how he thinks, how he communicates with the audience, what techniques he uses, technical and compositional.

I also have my own preferences, since I am a painter - this is coloring, color. This is what fascinates me. I emphasize that it is the color, not the paint, since many do not see any difference. It should be noted that painting is a play of shades, and not a plane painted with colors.

I am amazed and delighted by the color-breathing surface of the works of my favorite artists, I can spend hours looking at the texture on the canvases exuding lightness and freshness of painting.

I see in modern painting a pure genre, freed from ideological and servile meanings. For me, painting is independent, and sometimes color alone is enough for me to understand, feel, empathize with the author.

Of course, I did not come to this right away, this is due to the years of creative search and the constantly acquired knowledge. I wrote that we are all self-taught, it cannot be otherwise. It is difficult for me to imagine that it is possible at some point to complete the training and say that I have enough knowledge.

It is in my knowledge that the unwillingness to be deceived lies, I do not expect the identity of the depicted artist from the artist, his individuality, his creative language, his honesty are important to me. These qualities cannot be repeated by any technical device. They are the ones that are unique and interesting to the prepared viewer, who is close, first of all, to fresh solutions, and not to hackneyed cliches.

Let's return to the question we raised - how to understand the picture? The very first thing is to stop, give her a little more time than usual. After experiencing emotionally the first impression, ask yourself the question, what tasks did the author set for himself and did he achieve them?

If the picture is narrative, historical, conceptual, you should know the subtext.

In addition to understanding the plot, the principles of artistic vision, for example, how the author manipulates a spot on a plane, would be very helpful to you.

With knowledge, you would see the world in a different way, and the works you knew before would be rediscovered to you.

Summing up, I will say that a work of art does not exist without a spectator, to understand a picture means to participate together with the author in its creation. Of course, I am not saying that you should pick up your brushes and correct or add something. No, to participate means to accept assistance in the associative array proposed by the author, to read images, to see the unity of design, etc.

Be attentive to the picture. In a hurry, you may not see the main thing... Appetite comes with eating, and the passion for fine art grows as you open up new horizons where the fog of misunderstanding used to be a wall.

I wish you all creative success and would like to remind you that there is a subscription form on the blog in the upper right corner. I recommend subscribing, you will be aware of blog updates.

Reading and book in the visual arts is a fairly popular topic. Over the years, it fairly faithfully and clearly reflected the changes that were taking place in society. Life was changing, values ​​were being reassessed, and at the same time the attitude of a person to a book changed. Having selected an illustrative series of more than 100 works, we, as it seems to us, have recreated a fairly complete picture, whose title is in the title of this article. The image of the book as a companion of man in art appeared many centuries ago. Here we can mention the painting by Rembrandt van Rijn "The Reading Titus" (c. 1656-1657), the work of Jean-Honore Fragonard "The Reading Girl" (c. 1769), created almost a hundred years later, and so on. The study of this period is not very interesting: the book at that time was quite rare, and available to very few. But the dynamic development of society over the past 100 years has caused such interesting transformations of a person's interest in books and reading that we decided to pay attention to this particular period. In the middle of the 19th century in Russia, whose population was largely illiterate, the book was the lot of people almost exclusively from high society. The desire to learn to read and write from the representatives of the lower classes was very great. In N. Selivanovich's painting, we see, apparently, an illiterate soldier to whom a boy reads an interesting book. Vasnetsov's canvas depicts a street bookstore. Poorly dressed people crowding around her show a genuine interest in print, but are forced to look only at the pictures. At the same time, people from the upper world regarded the book as one of the highest values. IN Kramskoy painted a portrait of his wife, Sophia Nikolaevna (c. 1866), reading in the garden against the background of the evening sky. Philosophers (portrait of Vs. S. Soloviev by I. N. Kramskoy, 1885), scientists (portrait of D. I. Mendeleev by I. E. Repin, 1885), writers (portrait of L. N. Tolstoy Repin, 1891), art workers - the portrait of L.N.Benois, created by L.S. Bakst in 1898, composers (the portrait of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, painted by V.A. Serov in 1898). The book was read in the family, both at home and in nature. As an example, we can cite the already mentioned open-air portrait of Leo Tolstoy, lying with a book in a shady forest. The influence of impressionism, which came from Europe, aroused among artists an interest in depicting reading in the open air, which made it possible to most vividly convey a colored light-air environment. Among these works are the works of K. Korovin "In a boat" (1888), "Portrait of A.Ya.Simonovich" created a year later by V.A.Serov. The Symbolists also paid tribute to the book in their work. The most striking example is the famous "Lady in Blue" (1897-1900) by KASomov. The end of the 19th century brought the most striking and significant changes to the portrait genre, closely linking it with plein air. If earlier models posed for the artist sitting in home chairs against the background of bookshelves, now the action of the picture has been transferred to nature. Often the book was just an attribute of the production - the portrait of M.E. Troyanova by A.Ya. Golovin (1916). Sometimes it was used humorously - “Favorite poet. An Open Letter ”by LS Bakst (1902). But at the same time MV Nesterov painted an absolutely amazingly beautiful painting "Natasha Nesterova on a garden bench" (1914). In the last third of the 19th century, a large number of beautiful works were created by the French impressionists, in which book and reading played a very significant role. Despite the fact that our excursion is primarily devoted to Russia, it would be unfair to pass by such a striking phenomenon in world painting, which had an undoubted impact on the development of art in Russia. The book, as a part of family life, was included in a large number of his works by P.O. Renoir. Characters in his paintings read a book at breakfast (Breakfast at Berneval), girlfriends (Reading Girls), lovers (Solitude), young children (Jane and Genevieve Cailibott, Children at Vargemont) read it. Edouard Manet uses reading a book as a way to please a girl ("Reading"), she is a companion of a lawyer ("Portrait of a Lawyer Jules de Juy"), a poet ("Portrait of the Poet Stephen Mallarmé"), the book is read at the station while waiting for a train (" Railway"). Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Gustave Caybott loved to depict reading in the garden (Desiree Dio, Orange Tree, respectively). But back to Russia. Here, after the revolution, the book began to play a completely different role than before. Of course, for those who retained in their souls attachment to old traditions, it remained the same value - "Portrait of K.B. Kustodiev" by BM Kustodiev (1922), "Winter on the Terrace" by G.S. Vereisky (1922), "Portrait of MA Kuzmin" by NA Radlov (1925). At the same time, such paintings as "The Workers' Faculty Is Coming" by BV Johanson (1928) appeared. The majority of young people vehemently denied the importance of the cultural values ​​accumulated before the revolution. The country has taken a great interest in sports, the cult of a healthy body. The most popular art educational institution in those years, VKHUTEMAS, was focused primarily on training personnel for a growing industry, educating, first of all, technologists, not creators. It is not surprising that you hardly find books in the paintings of the 1920s. And only by the mid-1930s, the time of the struggle against formalism and the victory of the AHRR, did the book return to painting. VN Yakovlev painted a portrait of the People's Artist of the USSR MM Klimov (1935), II Grabar - "Portrait of KI Chukovsky" (1935). Beginning in the second half of the 1940s, the book takes up its former positions again. It is in the hands of the writer L.M. Leonov (artist V.G. Tsyplakov, 1949), K.S. Stanislavsky (painter N.P. Ulyanov, 1947), as a great value a girl from Soviet Kyrgyzstan (artist S.A. Chuikov, 1948). It is read in the summer in the garden (artist S.P. Balzamov, 1953), on a bench by the river (artist A.I. Laktionov, 1951-1954), it is held in the hands of the artist's daughter A.M. Gerasimova (1951) and the artist's wife A.N. Samokhvalov (1957). At the same time, some repetition of motives and techniques attracts attention. The book is still popular in the 1960s. The girl who reads in Yuri Pimenov's painting cannot fail to attract the attention of a young man. The picture is called "The Beginning of Love". Books are read by students ("Spring. Students" by G.K. Shcherbakov, 1966), the famous graphic artist and teacher V.A. Favorsky (painting by D.D. Zhilinsky, 1962). A book at home, on vacation and in the intervals between work remains a value for the artists of the sixties, among whom V.E. Popkov stands out - the paintings "Mother and Son", 1970, "Summer", 1968, "The Brigade is Resting", 1965. In the 1980s and 1990s, the book gradually loses its spiritual meaning. She again turns into a familiar attribute. And only the book, published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, continues to inspire the brush masters. It is becoming a good style to depict an old book in still lifes ("The Kerosene Lamp and Old Books" by SN Andriyaka, "The Old Book" by IM Chevereva). A book in a shabby leather cover in the painting by IASoldatenkov "Uncle Petya" reminds of the past years. Historical still lifes of N. Smirnov (

In almost every significant work of art, there is a mystery, a "double bottom" or a secret story that you want to reveal.

Music on the buttocks

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1500-1510.

Fragment of a part of a triptych

The debate about the meanings and hidden meanings of the Dutch artist's most famous work has not subsided since its inception. On the right wing of the triptych entitled "Musical Hell" are depicted sinners who are tortured in the underworld with the help of musical instruments. One of them has notes imprinted on the buttocks. Oklahoma Christian University student Amelia Hamrick, who studied painting, put 16th-century notation into a modern twist and recorded "a 500-year-old song from hell out of hell."

Mona Lisa nude

The famous "La Gioconda" exists in two versions: the nude version is called "Monna Vanna", it was painted by the little-known artist Salai, who was a student and model of the great Leonardo da Vinci. Many art critics are sure that he was the model for Leonardo's paintings "John the Baptist" and "Bacchus". There are also versions that dressed in a woman's dress, Salai served as the image of Mona Lisa herself.

Old Fisherman

In 1902, the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Chontvari painted the painting "The Old Fisherman". It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the picture, but Tivadar laid in it a subtext that was never revealed during the artist's life.

Few had the idea to put a mirror to the middle of the picture. In every person there can be both God (duplicated the right shoulder of the Old Man) and the Devil (duplicated the left shoulder of the old man).

Was there a whale?

Hendrik van Antonissen "Scene on the Shore".

It would seem like an ordinary landscape. Boats, people on the shore and the deserted sea. And only an X-ray study showed that people gathered on the shore for a reason - in the original, they examined the carcass of a whale washed ashore.

However, the artist decided that no one would want to look at the dead whale and rewrote the picture.

Two "Breakfasts on the Grass"

Edouard Manet, Breakfast on the Grass, 1863.

Claude Monet, Breakfast on the Grass, 1865.

The artists Edouard Manet and Claude Monet are sometimes confused - after all, they were both French, lived at the same time and worked in the style of impressionism. Even the name of one of the most famous paintings by Manet "Breakfast on the Grass" Monet borrowed and wrote his "Breakfast on the Grass".

Doubles on "The Last Supper"

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498.

When Leonardo da Vinci wrote The Last Supper, he emphasized two figures: Christ and Judas. He was looking for models for them for a very long time. Finally, he managed to find a model for the image of Christ among young singers. It was not possible to find a model for Judas Leonardo for three years. But one day he came across a drunkard on the street who was lying in a gutter. It was a young man who had grown old by unrestrained drunkenness. Leonardo invited him to a tavern, where he immediately began to write Judas from him. When the drunkard regained consciousness, he told the artist that he had already posed for him once. It was several years ago, when he sang in the church choir, Leonardo wrote Christ from him.

"Night Watch" or "Day Watch"?

Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642.

One of the most famous paintings by Rembrandt "Performance of the rifle company of Captain Frans Banning Kok and Lieutenant Willem van Ruutenbürg" hung in different rooms for about two hundred years and was discovered by art critics only in the 19th century. Since the figures seemed to appear against a dark background, it was called "Night Watch", and under this name it entered the treasury of world art.

And only during the restoration, carried out in 1947, it was discovered that in the hall the painting had managed to become covered with a layer of soot, which distorted its color. After clearing out the original painting, it was finally revealed that the scene presented by Rembrandt actually takes place during the day. The position of the shadow from Captain Kok's left hand indicates that the action lasts no more than 14 hours.

Inverted boat

Henri Matisse, The Boat, 1937.

The New York Museum of Modern Art in 1961 exhibited a painting by Henri Matisse "The Boat". Only after 47 days did someone notice that the painting was hanging upside down. The canvas depicts 10 purple lines and two blue sails on a white background. The artist painted two sails for a reason, the second sail is a reflection of the first on the surface of the water.
In order not to be mistaken in how the picture should hang, you need to pay attention to the details. The larger sail should be at the top of the painting, and the peak of the painting should be towards the top right corner.

Deception in self-portrait

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Pipe, 1889.

There are legends that van Gogh allegedly cut off his own ear. Now the most reliable version is that van Gogh's ear was damaged in a small scuffle with the participation of another artist - Paul Gauguin.

The self-portrait is interesting in that it reflects reality in a distorted form: the artist is depicted with a bandaged right ear, because he used a mirror during his work. In fact, the left ear was affected.

Stranger bears

Ivan Shishkin, "Morning in the Pine Forest", 1889.

The famous painting belongs not only to Shishkin's brush. Many artists, who were friends with each other, often resorted to "the help of a friend", and Ivan Ivanovich, who painted landscapes all his life, feared that touching bears would not turn out as he needed. Therefore, Shishkin turned to the familiar animal painter Konstantin Savitsky.

Savitsky painted some of the best bears in the history of Russian painting, and Tretyakov ordered to wash his name off the canvas, since everything in the picture "from concept to execution, everything speaks about the manner of painting, about the creative method peculiar to Shishkin."

The innocent story of "Gothic"

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930.

Grant Wood's work is considered one of the strangest and most depressing in the history of American painting. The painting with the gloomy father and daughter is replete with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrogradeness of the people depicted.
In fact, the artist did not intend to depict any horrors: during a trip to the state of Iowa, he noticed a small house in the Gothic style and decided to depict those people who, in his opinion, would ideally fit as inhabitants. Grant's sister and his dentist are immortalized in the form of characters that the people of Iowa took offense at.

Revenge of Salvador Dali

The painting "Figure at the Window" was painted in 1925, when Dali was 21 years old. Then Gala had not yet entered the artist's life, and his sister Ana Maria was his muse. The relationship between brother and sister soured when he wrote on one of the paintings "sometimes I spit on a portrait of my own mother, and it gives me pleasure." Ana Maria could not forgive such shocking.

In her 1949 book, Salvador Dali through the Eyes of a Sister, she writes about her brother without any praise. The book infuriated El Salvador. For another ten years after that, he angrily remembered her at every opportunity. And so, in 1954, the painting "A young virgin, indulging in the sin of Sodom with the help of the horns of her own chastity" appears. The woman's pose, her curls, the landscape outside the window and the color scheme of the picture clearly echo the "Figure at the Window". There is a version that Dali took revenge on his sister for her book in this way.

Two-faced Danae

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Danae, 1636-1647.

Many secrets of one of the most famous paintings by Rembrandt were revealed only in the 60s of the twentieth century, when the canvas was illuminated with X-rays. For example, the shooting showed that in the early version the face of the princess, who had a love affair with Zeus, looked like the face of Saskia, the wife of the painter, who died in 1642. In the final version of the picture, it began to resemble the face of Gertier Dierks, Rembrandt's mistress, with whom the artist lived after the death of his wife.

Van Gogh's yellow bedroom

Vincent Van Gogh, The Bedroom at Arles, 1888 - 1889.

In May 1888, Van Gogh acquired a small workshop in Arles, in the south of France, where he fled from Parisian artists and critics who did not understand him. In one of the four rooms, Vincent is setting up a bedroom. In October, everything is ready, and he decides to paint "Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles". For the artist, the color and coziness of the room were very important: everything should have suggested the idea of ​​rest. At the same time, the picture is sustained in alarming yellow tones.

Researchers of Van Gogh's work explain this by the fact that the artist took foxglove, a remedy for epilepsy, which causes serious changes in the patient's perception of color: the entire surrounding reality is painted in green-yellow tones.

Toothless perfection

Leonardo da Vinci, "Portrait of Madame Lisa del Giocondo", 1503-1519.

The generally accepted opinion is that Mona Lisa is perfection and her smile is beautiful in its mystery. However, the American art critic (and part-time dentist) Joseph Borkowski believes that, judging by the expression on her face, the heroine has lost a lot of teeth. Examining enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski also found scars around her mouth. “She smiles so much precisely because of what happened to her,” the expert said. "Her expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth."

Major on face control

Pavel Fedotov, The Major's Matchmaking, 1848.

The public, who first saw the painting "The Major's Matchmaking", laughed heartily: the artist Fedotov filled it with ironic details that were understandable to viewers of that time. For example, the major is clearly not familiar with the rules of noble etiquette: he appeared without the required bouquets for the bride and her mother. And the bride herself was discharged by her merchant parents into an evening ball gown, although it was day outside (all the lamps in the room were extinguished). The girl clearly tried on a low-cut dress for the first time, she is embarrassed and tries to run away to her room.

Why is Freedom naked

Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix, Liberty on the Barricades, 1830.

According to art critic Etienne Julie, Delacroix painted the face of a woman from the famous Parisian revolutionary - washerwoman Anna-Charlotte, who came to the barricades after the death of her brother at the hands of royal soldiers and killed nine guardsmen. The artist depicted her with bare breasts. According to his plan, this is a symbol of fearlessness and selflessness, as well as the triumph of democracy: a naked chest shows that Freedom, like a commoner, does not wear a corset.

Non-square square

Kazimir Malevich, "Black Suprematist Square", 1915.

In fact, the "Black Square" is not at all black and not at all square: none of the sides of the quadrangle is parallel to any of its other sides, and not one of the sides of the square frame that frames the picture. And the dark color is the result of mixing different colors, among which there was no black. It is believed that this was not the author's negligence, but a principled position, the desire to create a dynamic, mobile form.

Specialists of the Tretyakov Gallery discovered the author's inscription on the famous painting by Malevich. The inscription reads: "Battle of the Negroes in the Dark Cave." This phrase refers to the title of the playful picture of the French journalist, writer and artist Alphonse Allais "Battle of the Negroes in a Dark Cave in the Deep of Night", which was a completely black rectangle.

Melodrama of the Austrian Mona Lisa

Gustav Klimt, "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", 1907.

One of Klimt's most significant paintings depicts the wife of the Austrian sugar magnate Ferdinad Bloch-Bauer. All Vienna discussed the tumultuous romance between Adele and the famous artist. The wounded husband wanted to take revenge on his lovers, but chose a very unusual way: he decided to order Klimt a portrait of Adele and force him to make hundreds of sketches until the artist starts to turn away from her.

Bloch-Bauer wanted the work to last several years, and the model could see how Klimt's feelings fade away. He made a generous offer to the artist, which he could not refuse, and everything turned out according to the scenario of a deceived husband: the work was completed in 4 years, the lovers had long cooled to each other. Adele Bloch-Bauer never found out that her husband was aware of her relationship with Klimt.

The painting that brought Gauguin back to life

Paul Gauguin, Where We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going ?, 1897-1898.

The most famous painting by Gauguin has one peculiarity: it is "read" not from left to right, but from right to left, like Kabbalistic texts that the artist was interested in. It is in this order that the allegory of a person's spiritual and physical life unfolds: from the birth of the soul (a sleeping child in the lower right corner) to the inevitability of the hour of death (a bird with a lizard in its claws in the lower left corner).

The painting was painted by Gauguin in Tahiti, where the artist fled civilization several times. But this time life on the island did not work out: total poverty led him to depression. Having finished the canvas, which was to become his spiritual testament, Gauguin took a box of arsenic and went to the mountains to die. However, he miscalculated the dose and the suicide failed. The next morning, rocking, he wandered to his hut and fell asleep, and when he woke up, he felt a forgotten thirst for life. And in 1898 his affairs went uphill, and a brighter period began in his work.

112 proverbs in one picture

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dutch Proverbs, 1559

Pieter Bruegel Sr. depicted a land inhabited by literal images of Dutch proverbs of those days. There are approximately 112 recognizable idioms in the painting. Some of them are used to this day, such as: "swim against the tide", "bang your head against the wall", "armed to the teeth" and "a big fish eats a small one."

Other proverbs reflect human stupidity.

Subjectivity of art

Paul Gauguin, Breton Village in the Snow, 1894

Gauguin's painting "Breton Village in the Snow" was sold after the death of the author for only seven francs and, moreover, under the name "Niagara Falls". The person conducting the auction accidentally hung the painting upside down, seeing a waterfall in it.

Hidden picture

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901

In 2008, infrared light showed another image hidden under the Blue Room - a portrait of a man dressed in a suit with a bow tie and resting his head on his arm. “As soon as Picasso had a new idea, he took up a brush and embodied it. But he didn’t have the opportunity to buy a new canvas every time his muse visited him, ”art critic Patricia Favero explains the possible reason for this.

Inaccessible Moroccans

Zinaida Serebryakova, "Naked", 1928

Once Zinaida Serebryakova received a tempting offer - to go on a creative journey to depict the nude figures of oriental maidens. But it turned out that it was simply impossible to find models in those places. Zinaida's translator came to the rescue - he brought his sisters and bride to her. No one before and after that managed to capture the closed oriental women naked.

Spontaneous insight

Valentin Serov, "Portrait of Nicholas II in a Jacket", 1900

For a long time Serov could not paint a portrait of the tsar. When the artist gave up completely, he apologized to Nikolai. Nikolai got a little upset, sat down at the table, stretching out his arms in front of him ... And then the artist dawned - here he is an image! A simple military man in an officer's jacket with clear and sad eyes. This portrait is considered the finest depiction of the last emperor.

Deuce again

© Fedor Reshetnikov

The famous painting "Deuce Again" is just the second part of the artistic trilogy.

The first part is “Arrived for Vacation”. A clearly wealthy family, winter holidays, a joyful excellent student.

The second part is "Deuce again". A poor family from a working-class suburbs, the height of the school year, a dejected, stunned, again grabbed a deuce. In the upper left corner you can see the picture "Arrived for Vacation".

The third part is "Re-examination". A country house, summer, everyone is walking, one malicious ignoramus, who has failed the annual exam, is forced to sit within four walls and cram. In the upper left corner you can see the painting "Deuce again".

How masterpieces are born

Joseph Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844

In 1842 Mrs. Simon was traveling by train in England. Suddenly a heavy downpour began. The elderly gentleman sitting opposite her got up, opened the window, stuck his head out and stared like that for ten minutes. Unable to contain her curiosity, the woman also opened the window and began to look ahead. A year later, she discovered the painting "Rain, Steam and Speed" at an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and was able to recognize in it the same episode on the train.

Anatomy lesson from Michelangelo

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, 1511

A couple of American neuroanatomy experts believe Michelangelo actually left some anatomical illustrations in one of his most famous works. They believe that there is a huge brain on the right side of the picture. Surprisingly, even complex components such as the cerebellum, optic nerves and pituitary gland can be found. And the eye-catching green ribbon perfectly matches the location of the vertebral artery.

The Last Supper by Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, Cafe Terrace at Night, 1888

Researcher Jared Baxter believes that the dedication to Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is encrypted on Van Gogh's painting Terrace Café at Night. In the center of the picture is a waiter with long hair and a white tunic resembling Christ's clothes, and around him there are exactly 12 café visitors. Baxter also draws attention to the cross located right behind the back of the waiter in white.

Dali's image of memory

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931

It is no secret that the thoughts that visited Dali during the creation of his masterpieces were always in the form of very realistic images, which the artist then transferred to the canvas. So, according to the author himself, the painting "The Persistence of Memory" was painted as a result of associations that arose at the sight of processed cheese.

What Munch Screams About

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893.

Munch talked about his idea of ​​one of the most mysterious paintings in world painting: "I was walking along the path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red, I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned against the fence - I looked at blood and flames over the bluish-black fjord and the city - my friends went further, and I stood trembling with excitement, feeling an endless cry piercing nature. " But what kind of sunset could scare the artist so?

There is a version that the idea of ​​"Scream" was born in Munch in 1883, when several powerful eruptions of the Krakatoa volcano took place - so powerful that they changed the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere by one degree. An abundant amount of dust and ash spread across the globe, even reaching Norway. For several evenings in a row, the sunsets looked as if the apocalypse was about to come - one of them became the source of inspiration for the artist.

Writer among the people

Alexander Ivanov, "The Appearance of Christ to the People", 1837-1857.

Dozens of sitters posed for Alexander Ivanov for his main picture. One of them is known no less than the artist himself. In the background, among the travelers and Roman horsemen, who have not yet heard the sermon of John the Baptist, you can see a character in a korchin tunic. Ivanov wrote it from Nikolai Gogol. The writer closely communicated with the artist in Italy, in particular on religious issues, and gave him advice in the process of painting the picture. Gogol believed that Ivanov "has long since died for the whole world, except for his work."

Michelangelo's gout

Raphael Santi, School of Athens, 1511.

Creating the famous fresco "The School of Athens", Raphael immortalized his friends and acquaintances in the images of ancient Greek philosophers. One of them was Michelangelo Buonarotti "in the role of" Heraclitus. For several centuries, the fresco kept the secrets of Michelangelo's personal life, and modern researchers have suggested that the artist's strangely angular knee indicates the presence of joint disease.

This is likely given the lifestyle and working conditions of Renaissance artists and Michelangelo's chronic workaholism.

Arnolfini's mirror

Jan van Eyck, "Portrait of the Arnolfini Couple", 1434

In the mirror behind the Arnolfini couple, you can see the reflection of two more people in the room. Most likely, these are witnesses present at the conclusion of the contract. One of them is van Eyck, as evidenced by the Latin inscription, placed, contrary to tradition, above the mirror in the center of the composition: "Jan van Eyck was here." This is how contracts were usually sealed.

How lack turned into talent

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Self-portrait at the age of 63, 1669.

Researcher Margaret Livingston studied all of Rembrandt's self-portraits and found that the artist suffered from squint: in the images his eyes look in different directions, which is not observed in the portraits of other people by the master. The disease led to the fact that the artist was better able to perceive reality in two dimensions than people with normal vision. This phenomenon is called "stereo blindness" - the inability to see the world in 3D. But since the painter has to work with a two-dimensional image, this very shortcoming of Rembrandt could be one of the explanations for his phenomenal talent.

Sinless Venus

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1482-1486.

Before the appearance of "The Birth of Venus", the image of a naked female body in painting symbolized only the idea of ​​original sin. Sandro Botticelli was the first European painter to find nothing sinful in him. Moreover, art critics are sure that the pagan goddess of love symbolizes a Christian image on the fresco: her appearance is an allegory of the rebirth of a soul that has undergone the rite of baptism.

Lute player or lute player?

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Lute Player, 1596.

For a long time, the painting was exhibited at the Hermitage under the title "The Lute Player". Only at the beginning of the twentieth century, art critics agreed that the canvas still depicts a young man (probably, his familiar artist Mario Minniti posed for Caravaggio): on the notes in front of the musician, you can see the recording of the bass part of madrigal Jacob Arcadelt "You know that I love you" ... A woman could hardly make such a choice - it's just hard for her throat. In addition, the lute, like the violin at the very edge of the picture, was considered a male instrument in the era of Caravaggio.