Figure Pastel and Video: Mona Vana

Mona Vana. 2019. Pastel. 15" x 12". Casey Klahn. 

Henri Matisse Masterpiece Collection

812 Matisse Works

Learn From Masters video channel

Drawing Degas

Here is the trailer for my video featuring a large scale easel drawing. That longer video is available to my Patreon subscribers. It is a full start-to-finish of a 3 foot by 2 foot vine charcoal drawing where I respond to one of Degas' bather figurines.

As a result of seeing the Edgar Degas, A Passion for Perfection exhibit in Denver, I am on fire to adopt some of his techniques and moves. One thing I took away from his pastels was that I have been working too hard! What I mean is his shorthand for skin tones with pastels was earthshaking for me. 

Details of Edgar Degas pastels showing technique.

Your hand knows how to draw. Get out of the way and watch the magic.

Framing Your Own Pastels Video

Flowers Video

Enjoy this demo of my recent floral work, Flowers for February.

Please Have a Merry Christmas

Enjoy this season. The song O Holy Night, written by the French Maestro, Adolphe Adam, celebrates with proper glory the birth of Christ, The Savior. I wasn't moved to post a video with 2 old guys in tuxedos, but the children's choir was just the right touch. Well, I really do enjoy Pavarotti's pipes - he's a singer's singer, to my layman's mind. 

Best Wishes this holiday season, and Merry Christmas. 

Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo - O Holy Night / Cantique De Noel (Christmas-Vienna 1999).

Studio Tour

This video was made for Instagram, so I'm running to get it all in! I like Blogger much better, but when in Rome...

Is There Room in Your Heart?

I don't know it there's any room in your heart for awe. This video is a litmus test for you.   

Selling the Savior of the World

The Salvator Mundi.

"Discovering a new da Vinci is...like discovering a new planet," says Alistair Cooke.

Indeed it is. I have personally viewed two and a half of Leonardo's paintings, and The Gates Codex. They are, Ginevra de' Benci, in Washington DC, The Benois Madonna, and The Litta Madonna, in Russia. The latter is thought to be by a talented artist and student of da Vinci's. My own opinion is it lacks the requisite grace of a Leonardo. On the positive side, what I have seen of da Vinci's work convinces me that he was more than the Renaissance master of canonical proportions and style. He was truly an artist's artist. 

Going into what is a little bit of a soft market for art, the auction house Christie's expects a hundred million dollar sale of the painting of the world's most revered individual, by the world's most noted artist.

My previous posts on Leonardo da Vinci, which are a great reference source for art students: Spotlight on Leonardo.

Pastellist Interviews

The tireless Canadian artist, Gail Sibley, who blogs at How To Pastel, has collected 19 short interviews of pastel instructors who attended the pastel convention in New Mexico earlier in June of this year. It is a treasure trove. Pour a tall cup of something to enjoy, and do go through these at your leisure. By the way, I am down the dais at video number 14, but I will also post it from You Tube below.

IAPS Interviews, 2017

Merry Christmas

In the Bleak Midwinter

These Cello Advent dailies you may follow on your own at You Tube, from Kjell Magne Robak, who is a Norwegian Cellist. I post this one because it's traditional here at The Colorist to post In the Bleak Midwinter at Christmastime.

Enjoy.

Merry Christmas (Cello)

Book Love

They make these things called books.

MATISSE: Radical Invention 1913-1917

Barnes & Noble.

Intermezzo

Embed from Getty Images

Henri Matisse with Model Henriette Darricarrère, in Nice. 1927.

From Hilary Spurling, Smithsonian Magazine, 2005. Matisse and His Models. 

The same seems to have been true of the models for his odalisque paintings of the 1920s. The first of these odalisques—sprawling in “harem costumes” on improvised divans—was Antoinette Arnoud’s successor, Henriette Darricarrère, who was working as an extra when Matisse spotted her in the film studios in Nice. He liked her natural dignity, the graceful way her head sat on her neck and, above all, the fact that her body caught the light like a sculpture. A ballet dancer and musician, Henriette became part of the family in the seven years she worked for Matisse. His wife grew especially fond of her, and he himself taught her to paint.
Matisse said it was essential to start by finding the pose that made any new model feel most comfortable. Henriette’s specialty was discovered by accident after a carnival party attended by Matisse and his daughter, dressed respectively as an Arab potentate and a beauty from the harem. Marguerite Matisse, Lorette, even Antoinette Arnoud, all tried on turbans and embroidered Moroccan tops, but it was Henriette, always modest, even prim, in her street clothes, who wore the filmy blouses and low-slung pants without inhibition, becoming at once luxuriant, sensual and calmly authoritative.
The pictorial possibilities she opened up for Matisse were enhanced by her exceptional sensitivity and stamina. He saw the work they produced together as an increasingly complex orchestration of colored light and mass, culminating in his Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground, which was almost as incomprehensible in 1926 as the Blue Nude had been nearly 20 years earlier. The painting is a riot of exuberant trompe l’oeil wallpaper, flowers, fruit and patterned textiles, all pinned firmly in place by the pale upright figure of Henriette. She looked as impersonal and unyielding as a side of packaged butcher’s meat to Matisse’s friend, the painter Jules Flandrin, who was baffled and exhilarated in equal measure: “I can’t begin to convey the brilliantly successful contrast between the wallpaper flowers and the woman so skillfully mishandled,” he wrote to a friend. Soon after the completion of Decorative Figure, Henriette left to get married.

Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Background. 1925.

Matisse Month 

Many Works by Matisse - Worth a Look

Matisse Chapel and Tate Matisse Blog

Simple observations are often the kernel of genius. The rub is, they have to contain the truth. Henri Matisse had the genius of simplicity.

On the subject of simplicity, I keep coming back to what Françoise Gilot says (without wasting a word herself) about Henri Matisse and his work. She revered his objective of "...mounting the color to the extreme."

You can learn much by watching a master just drawing on the wall. Here is a short video of Matisse as he designed the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France.

For more resources on Matisse, on the subject of the chapel project and much more, I refer you to the Tate Modern blogs on Matisse.

Matisse Drawings

I'm always the last to know about these exhibits. This was in Brisbane in 2011.  Enjoy this short window into Henri Matisse's life practice of drawing.

Matisse Museum

The Musée Matisse.



This is funny. Anthony Peregrine of the UK Telegraph, writes this
"...word of warning: going to Nice solely for Matisse smacks of hair-shirted obsessiveness."

That'd be me. Can't do beaches or water sports. My shirt's too hairy, I guess. Hee hee.

I do plan on addressing the resistance to Matisse that many feel, which is like in kind to the resistance to Modern art, only more focused. Please return here for the Month of Matisse posts.