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MIA: Paintings (Bot)

MIA: Paintings (Bot)

@miapaintings.bsky.social

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Sharing artworks from the Minneapolis Institute of Art's Paintings department. Not associated with the Minneapolis Art Institute. Automated thanks to @andreitr.bsky.social and @botfrens.bsky.social

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MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 5h

Dining Room in the Country https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1240/

Interior of the house
In 1912, Pierre Bonnard bought a country house called Ma Roulotte ("My Caravan") at Vernonnet, a small town on the Seine. This painting shows the dining room there, with cats perching on the chairs and Marthe de Méligny, the artist's wife, leaning on the windowsill. Bonnard, who considered himself "the last of the Impressionists," emphasized the expressive qualities of bright colors and loose brushstrokes in this picture. He united the interior with the exterior through the open window and door, and linked the forms by bathing them in related hues. Unlike the Impressionists, however, Bonnard painted entirely from memory. And like the Symbolists, he wanted his works to reflect his subjective response to the subject.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 7h

Portrait of a Woman https://collections.artsmia.org/art/10595/

Portrait of a Woman

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 9h

Wooded Hillside with a Vista https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1575/

Landscape with figures.
Jan Both was born in Utrecht, a city south of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He studied painting in Rome between 1638 and 1641, and was heavily influenced by Claude Lorrain, a French painter who moved to Rome a couple decades before Both and spent most of his working life there. The golden sunsets for which Claude was especially celebrated are recalled in this work, painted by Both long after his return to Utrecht.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 12h

Boy with Butterfly Net https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1162/

Visiting Italy in 1907, Henri Matisse was deeply impressed by the frescoes of Giotto, the 14th-century artist who ushered in the Italian Renaissance. Matisse especially liked Giotto's simplified volumes and restricted primary colors. In response to his Italian experiences, Matisse set about making his paintings more dramatic and monumental. Here, he created a spare landscape composed of flat areas of land and sky with a single grand figure. The model is Allan Stein, nephew of Leo and Gertrude Stein who were important patrons of Matisse. His casual summer clothing and butterfly net suggest a slice of contemporary life. But the figure also seems to inhabit a mythic, timeless realm, and his stiff pose recalls ancient Greek sculptures of athletes and gods. The large scale of the painting reinforces this sense of elevation and magnifies its daring simplicity.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 13h

Château d’Ornans https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1934/

The country around his native town of Ornans, in eastern France, inspired most of Gustave Courbet's paintings. Like his contemporaries who worked near Barbizon, Courbet revitalized the landscape tradition with views of distinctive regional features observed at first hand. The town of Ornans appears in the valley below.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 1d

Untitled https://collections.artsmia.org/art/67499/

abstract image; white ground with multicolored streaks and irregular shapes; wavy, irregular lines of thick green pigment over swirled colors

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 1d

Mom/Mountain https://collections.artsmia.org/art/125341/

black and white image: distant view of a woman standing in a small clearing of brush and trees on a mountain looking to L; distant hazy hilltops at L; overcast sky

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 1d

Woman in an Armchair https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1517/

Having invented Cubism with Georges Braque around 1907, Pablo Picasso spent the next sixty-five years playing with his creation. He explored ways art could free itself from slavishly describing reality while still evoking it. Here, the amoeba-like body of the woman is intentionally distorted; her head, torso, and limbs are exaggerated and deformed almost beyond recognition. The jumble of patterns, and the strong lines of the wainscoting and floor, convey an unsettling tension that is at odds with the placid, gray-and-white profiles that float like cast shadows upon the surface. Through such a juxtaposition of tension and calm, the artist depicted the several faces of emotion that form the reality of human existence. However, like many other images of women created during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Woman in an Armchair is also a reflection of the artist's reality—a deteriorating marriage with his first wife, Olga Khokhlova.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 1d

Fire-Ice-Water-Tent https://collections.artsmia.org/art/127140/

abstract image of flames bursting from waving blue and green lines resembling water; triangular crystalline structure UC; waving gray lines resembling plumes of smoke around upper edges

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 2d

Indian Painter https://collections.artsmia.org/art/10512/

Genre. Native American. Indian.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 2d

Soleil rouge maritime https://collections.artsmia.org/art/61506/

blue "sky"; black "ground"; high horizon line; red open circle at top center encompassing ground and sky; turquoise wavy line on bottom of red circle; blue and green wavy lines on ground, with turquoise line near bottom of green band; painted on both sides of glass

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 2d

Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Maria Borghese https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1588/

Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Maria Borghese
This inquisitive-looking cardinal, with his intelligent gaze, plump waistline, fashionable goatee and moustache, and large ear, is Pietro Maria Borghese (1599–1642), grandnephew of Pope Paul V. The elaborate silver inkwell carries his family’s coat of arms, an eagle over a dragon. When Paul V died, Pietro Maria moved to Rome and was made a cardinal at age twenty-five by Pope Urban VIII, a member of the Barberini family. Pietro da Cortona was a favorite of the Barberinis, great patrons of the arts who commissioned Poussin’s Death of Germanicus, also in this gallery. Cortona was famous for his magnificent frescoes and oil paintings in the High Baroque style. This rare portrait is one of just a handful he executed over his long, prolific career.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 2d

The Union of Love and Friendship https://collections.artsmia.org/art/10593/

Love and Friendship (personification and symbolic representations)
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was known for his allegorical paintings. The winged youth holding a torch is probably Love, portrayed as the Roman god Cupid, and the female figure would then represent Friendship. The theme is most likely the union of these two ideals, indicated by their embrace. Prud'hon's inventive allegories often remain enigmatic, however, and other interpretations are possible. The rosy-skinned female figure may personify the art of painting and her pale companion the art of sculpture. Or the two may be Cupid and Psyche, whose love affair is recounted in antique Roman literature.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 2d

Night's Overture https://collections.artsmia.org/art/48/

Landscape.
In 1905, Arthur Davies took a trip west to Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California, where the experience of a new landscape affected his approach to painting. In <I>Night's Overture</I>, painted shortly after this revelatory journey, Davies is less concerned with a factual representation of nature, instead choosing to evoke a particular mood. The silhouette of the trees against the light sky and the repetition of curving motifs form patterns, resulting in a dreamlike setting, and emphasizes the meditative - even spiritual - quality of the landscape.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 3d

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple https://collections.artsmia.org/art/278/

Religion: NT. Purification of the temple. Christ driving the money-changers from the temple with a whip.
Christ’s expulsion of the money changers who were desecrating the temple in Jerusalem was a favorite theme in Counter-Reformation art. To Catholics, it symbolized purification of the church through internal reforms and the expulsion of Protestant heretics. Known for his uniquely Mannerist style, El Greco used jarring lines, confused space, and illogical lighting in this composition, contributing to the atmosphere of anger and disruption. In 1577 El Greco settled permanently in Spain. A native of Crete, he became known as “El Greco” (the Greek), but here his full signature appears in Greek letters on the step below Christ. In the lower-right corner, El Greco portrayed the four artists he regarded as the giants of the Renaissance: Titian, Michelangelo, Giulio Clovio (a miniaturist and manuscript illuminator), and Raphael.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 3d

Reply to Red https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1514/

A self-taught artist, Yves Tanguy joined the Surrealist movement in his mid-twenties, associating himself with fellow artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. Born in France, Yves settled in the United States in 1939 and came to marry the American Surrealist painter, Kay Sage, the subsequent year. Tanguy favored imaginative complexities of line and color, creating enigmatic, dreamlike forms often executed with photographic clarity. Aesthetically, his work can be compared to that of Dali or Joan Miro, however his major formative influence was Giorgio de Chirico.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 3d

Convulsionists of Tangier https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1978/

Eugène Delacroix was the acknowledged master of the French Romantic school. In 1832, he traveled to North Africa with the French ambassador, Count de Mornay, who was to negotiate a treaty of friendship with the sultan of Morocco. One day in Tangier, the two hid in an attic and through the cracks of a shuttered window witnessed the frenzy of the Aïssaouas, a fanatical Muslim sect. The turmoil of that event is conveyed in this vividly colored and vigorously brushed depiction of the fanatics hurling themselves down the street. Of the pictures resulting from the Moroccan experiences, this remains one of Delacroix's most arresting. This painting once belonged to James J. Hill (1838-1916), the Minnesota railroad magnate whose collection of European paintings forms the basis of the Institute's nineteenth-century holdings.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 3d

Shepherd Boy Pointing at Tobias and the Angel https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1401/

Boy seated in front under a tree with a yoke, buckets, and a jug, pointing to Tobias and the Angel walking on the right.
The shepherd boy, resting with his bucket, milk can, and yoke, guides our eye to travelers in the distance. They are Tobias and the archangel Raphael, whose tale is told in some versions of the Christian Bible. Tobias, a young Jewish man, was sent off by his blind father to recover the family fortune. Accompanying him on his trek were his dog and a guide—the archangel Raphael in disguise. Though we can see Raphael’s true identity, Tobias does not learn it until later. The story concludes with renewed fortune, restored eyesight, and a happy marriage for Tobias. In the 1500s and early 1600s, Dutch artists frequently combined scenes of everyday life with biblical subjects, often placing the Bible stories in the background. Bloemaert has left the meaning of this image open. Possibly the shepherd is indicating that people on a devout journey through life have a protector.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 3d

Billboard https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1330/

Abstraction.
As a second generation Abstract Expressionist, Hartigan alternates between abstraction and figuration. The abstraction gives her work a powerful emotional and visual experience while the naturalistic subject matter serves as her inspiration. Hartigan describes her subjects as real, but not realistic. Hartigan repeatedly drew from American advertising in her work because of its common imagery, two-dimensional structure, and bold stylistic simplifications. She began Billboard by arranging images from Life magazine into a collage, which she then used as her model. Here, we glimpse a smiling face above a tube of Ipana toothpaste, the neck of a wine bottle poised over a glass, a mold of lime Jell-O surrounded by fruit, and the keys of a piano. Of this melange of commercial and mechanical imagery she remarked, "I have found my subject, it concerns that which is vulgar and vital in American life, and possibilities of its transcendence into the beautiful."

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 4d

Autumn in the Adirondacks https://collections.artsmia.org/art/128396/

landscape with lake in foreground with brown mountains on opposite shore; tall snow-covered mountain peaks in background with low clouds; trees and bushes, including one bush with red leaves, at left
Cloud cover and lake work together in this painting to suggest the misty atmosphere of a Fall day following a passing storm. Alexander Wyant favored these atmospheric scenes and made them in such a way as to allow the viewer to feel what it must have been like to experience this moment in the Adirondack Mountains. Wyant often painted in this location – Lake Placid in New York – and favored autumn for its range of colors and dramatic changes in the landscape. Whiteface Mountain emerges in the distance through the slowly moving clouds.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 4d

Black Place I https://collections.artsmia.org/art/119128/

abstract landscape-like imagery; grey, black, and dark pink rolling forms with scalloped cloud-like shapes in foreground
Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most admired American Modernist painters of the 1900s, drew inspiration from the landscape of the American Southwest. Among her favorite places to paint was a site she called “the Black Place,” in the Bisti Badlands in Navajo country, a barren stretch of weathered hills that O’Keeffe said looked like “a mile of elephants” from a distance.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 4d

Berdie in the Garden https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1942/

Portrait.
Larry Rivers’ mother-in-law, Bertha “Berdie” Burger, was his favorite model until she died in 1957. Rivers said of Berdie, “She was a devoted creature. Berdie is the closest thing I’ve ever known to a saint. … She had all the signs of even being a little dense, but like saints are thought to be, she had no ego. She seemed to just be glad to be around and happy to be alive.” Berdie in the Garden is just one of the many paintings that Rivers made of Berdie sitting in the garden of the house in Southhampton, New York. Conservation of this picture was made possible by a generous contribution from Al and Dena Naylor and Patty Canney through the Art Champions program.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 4d

Portrait of a Burgomaster https://collections.artsmia.org/art/537/

Portrait.
He wears his wealth on his sleeves. The lace on his vest front and cuffs, handmade from precious threads of gold and silver, are the most expensive element of his lavish ensemble. Such finery fuelled controversy in Holland, where Protestant preachers lauded frugality, because it used scarce resources for the sake of vanity. This man, who may have been a city leader (burgomaster), made some concession to modesty with his black suit. But he clearly had a flair for fashion.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 4d

Rainy Evening on Hennepin Avenue https://collections.artsmia.org/art/303/

Landscape
A rainy night in Paris, or something closer to home' Robert Koehler’s familiarity with French Impressionism is evident from the loose brushwork and soft, misty forms. Prominent in the picture are the artist’s wife, Marie, and their son, Edwin, along with the family dog. The building in the background is the Minneapolis Public Library (since demolished), which stood at 10th Street and Hennepin Avenue from 1889 until 1961. In 1893 Robert Koehler became the director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

MIA: Paintings (Bot) @miapaintings.bsky.social · 5d

Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan https://collections.artsmia.org/art/802/

Landscape. Chestnut trees. Impressionism.
This painting represents an avenue on the grounds of Paul Cézanne's family estate in southern France in Aix-en-Provence. In this view, he carefully recorded the color and light of the wintry scene, with its tracery of bare branches against the sky. To create an ordered pictorial design, he selected this particular view, emphasizing its rigorous horizontal and vertical structures. In depicting the chestnut trees, he employed multiple viewpoints; this collapses depth, meshing the two parallel rows of trees into a web that seems to exist in one plane. This characteristic innovation produced a rhythmic synthesis of form in both two and three dimensions.