El Greco!! Best pre Van Gogh portrait artist. Rene Magritte Best post Van Gogh artist Van Gogh Best artist ever
His portraits of the Saints, most of which he never saw, are the single best reason to visit the churches of Spain. San Judas T is my personal favorite. It can be seen in the Church at Toledo.
Then what movement did Manet belong to? The nudist ? I dunno why I dislike cubism and I unfortunately do not have a clue of what you mean by synthetic and analytical (although I'm thinking it might have to do with the shapes or geometry or spatial). Probably the reason why I don't like cubism, rimmy, is that I enjoy looking at paintings that are pleasing to the eye (aesthetically beautiful) or look real like a photograph. Cubism has neither to me. I feel the same way with Jackson Pollock; I know it is art, but it seems silly to me that all he does is gets a big canvas and just throws buckets of paint on it (I may be wrong that he doesn't do it like that but I thought that I had read or seen that he did it like that).
I like M C Escher. THat is about it. Georgia O'keefe too. Actually, I really don't like O'keefe. I just picked her to sound intelligent. Her painters are okay. They are different because they are close up and stuff.
Manet is most commonly associated with the realists...although that is not entirely accurate either. He was his own man and was terribly revolutionary - far more cerebral than those fruity impressionists. Analytical: Picasso, "The Guitar Player" Rough definition: Initial cubist stage where objects were deconstructed into their components. In some cases, this was a means to depict different viewpoints simultaneously; in other works, it was used more as a method of visually laying out the FACTS of the object, rather than providing a limited mimetic representation. The aim of Analytical Cubism was to produce a conceptual image of an object, as opposed to a perceptual one. Synthetic: "Glass and Bottle of Suze" Def: Second stage - starts 1912 - color becomes more important, shapes more pronounced and decorative, stenciled lettering and actual newspaper is added. In other words, collage. Does that help? Can you see the difference? If you can successfully define beautiful then you are a greater mind than anyone in history. Pollock is a bit misunderstood in regards to mythology and practice (much was intentional). His drip paintings were also known as "action paintings" and had a great deal to do with improvisation (like jazz) and becoming a part pf the process. It is self-reflexive art - paintings are paintings - they can never be photographs, or actual items, they are limited by their two dimensionality: Magritte - "This is not a pipe." See? It is a painting of a pipe. Same thing. Thus, the act of painting becomes the subject (and he, tha artist, himself became part of the art). His action paintings are very much based upon Native American sand paintings, but he - of course - over mythologized the process.
Film (the type of film that gets called a movie, not a film), and Literature (the type of literature that gets called a book, not literature, if you can get my meaning).
Manet is a favorite. I particularly like this : http://www.nga.gov/feature/toreador/f_intro1a.htm and this : http://www.massart.edu/library_slides/csa_101-102/slide119.html And the flowers. Lovely, not-realism flowers. Also very fond of Marc Chagall. http://www.mfah.org/collection.asp?par1=9&par2=&par3=31&par4=23&lgc=4¤tPage=2 http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/chagall_marc.html esp the blue angels and chickens. Also, greek vase painting and sculpture. Not so much the roman. That spear-chucker is pretty cool. Art.com is a decent search site, too.
