The Beatles in Art movements through the ages

Kolkata Traffic Police use a Poster depicting The Beatles famed Abbey Road Picture, to get pedestrians to stop jaywalking, in India.

The fab four known as The Beatles were the most influential British band of the last century. Though they lasted just one decade (as a group), from 1962 to 1970, their iconic status, shall never diminish. Here’s a look at various Beatle loving artists’ creations, using techniques derived from various art movements, that existed pre, during & post, The Beatles. (Also see my Beatle News #01 to #33 from March 2013 to February 2014). For this Blog-Post, I’ve incorporated my aesthetic knowledge with my love for this iconic 60’s Boy Band!!!!

RENAISSANCE ART
(Beginning in Italy, renaissance artistic styles date back to the 1200’s, a style that lasted till about mid-17th century)
Famous artists of this movement include, Paolo Uccello, Piero Della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi (the first woman to dare to become an artist, in that era, and thus condemned for it), Giovanni Bellini, Jan Van Eyck, Joos van Cleve, and many many others.

REALISM (a.k.a. NATURALISM)
(famous in the 1850’s, lasted a very short period of time)

The Beatles by Eduard Kazaryan – Kok Tobe Mountain in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Though Realism was a trend that was famous, during the 1850’s, the seeds of Realism, are present way back in the late 1700’s. If you see works like Francisco Goya’s Retrato de Martín Zapater from the 1790’s & The Family of Charles IV, from Year 1800, or Eugène Delacroix’s Portrait of Dr. François-Marie Desmaisons, from 1832-33, those are very realistic and somewhat dull, portraiture works of art.

Tom Murphy’s The Beatles in The Liverpool Art Cafe

Some famous artists that existed during this period, included, Gustave Courbet, Théodore Géricault, Honoré Daumier, Karl Bryullov, Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin and Rosa Bonheur, to name a few. Being a successful artist of the 19th century, Rosa Bonheur represented the New Woman (a feminist ideal that emerged in the 19th century, which in turn influenced feminism of the 20th Century).

MODERN ART (a.k.a. MODERNISM)
(Late 19th & early 20th Century)
Modern Art styles that existed within the last two centuries, happen to be my favourite, after the Renaissance period. Although, I do love the Romantics and the Realist, of the 18th Century too, yet not to the same extent as the Renaissance or the Modern. There’ve been various art movements within Modern Art, from Impressionists to Surrealist. Surrealism happens to be my favourite art movement, and Salvador Dalí, my all time favourite artist, ever since I discovered him (and his work), as a teenager in the 1990’s.

Impressionism/Post-Impressionism (two avant-garde art movement)  
(Prominent during 1870’s & 1880’s)

The Beatles (Abbey Road) watercolour by Fabrizio Cassetta

LeRoy Neiman The Beatles Painting

The Beatles watercolour by Fabrizio Cassetta

The Beatles by Paul Meijering

My favourite Impressionist artists include Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Camille Pissarro, Gustav Klimt, Édouard Manet, Amrita Sher-Gil, Cristóbal Rojas, Dragan Mihailovic, Alfred Munnings, Harold & Laura Knight, Florence Carter Wood, Isaak Brodsky, Eugène Delacroix, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, Paul Cadmus, etc etc…. When it comes to Impressionist/Post-Impressionist artists, majority of my favourite artists, as a collective, exist from this particular period.

The Beatles watercolour (Artist Unknown)

The Beatles watercolour (Artist Unknown)

Art Nouveau (an avant-garde art movement)  
(1890’s to 1910’s)

John Lennon of The Beatles (Artist Unknown)

Alphonse Mucha, Antoni Gaudí, Gustav Klimt, Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to name a few, were a part of the Art Nouveau movement.

The Beatles – Art Nouveau (Artist Unknown)

Expressionism (an avant-garde art movement)  
(Early 20th Century)

Curt McDowell’s nude Beatles

Gustave Moreau, Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud, Antoni Gaudí and Edvard Munch, were some of the famous Expressionist artists.

Ken White’s nude Beatles

Cubism (an avant-garde art movement)   
(Starting from the early 20th century, from 1910’s onwards)

Beatles Cubist (Artist Unknown)

Beatles Cubist (Artist Unknown)

The Beatles (Unknown Artist)

David Adickes’ The Beatles

The Beatles Monument (aprx 7000 pounds & 36 ft) in Houston, USA

The great Cubists include, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp, Juan Gris and Albert Gleizes, to name some. Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Jackson Pollack, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian, Sidney Nolan and M.F. Hussain, happen to be some other famous artists known for artworks involving distortion & abstract.

The Beatles (Artist Unknown)

Tom Whalen’s The Beatles

The Four Musicians (Beatles) – This is a direct copy of The Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso

Surrealism (an avant-garde art movement)   
(From the 1920’s onwards)

The Beatles (Artist Unknown)

Insects (Beatles) – beetles artwork (Artist Unknown)

Beatles Surreal (Artist Unknown)

The Beatles painting by Daniel Janda

The Yellow Submarine by Belius

Surrealism – with Dreamy, Psychological, Freudian (Sigmund Freud, not Lucian Freud) & Fantastical elements – happens to be my favourite art movement ever, especially from the modernist era. Not just in art, but also in literature & cinema. As is Magical realism. Salvador Dalí, happens to be my all time favourite artist ever. Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, René Magritte, Terry Gilliam and Giorgio de Chirico are some other influential surrealists.

The Beatles & Elvis Presley (Artist Unknown)

The Beatles by A.Pedicelli

Sam Van Olffen’s Beatles

The Beatles by David Ballinger

POST-MODERNISM
(The 1950’s, 60’,70’s & early 80’s)
The most popular art form during Post-modernist era, no doubt was Pop Art styles of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Martin Sharp, Richard Avedon, George Segal, Tom Wesselmann, Wayne Thiebaud et al. Other post modernists artists include Harold Stevenson, Duane Hanson, David Salle, Claes Oldenburg, Susan Rothenberg, Robert Moskowitz, Wes Wilson, Pablo Amaringo, Yoko Ono, David Vaughan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jörn Pfab and Brett Whiteley, to name some greats.

The Beatles sculpture by Jörn Pfab (1970) in Hamburg, Germany

David Wynne in 1964 with his sculpture of The Beatles

Terry McGunigle and Joe Forrest created the 8x16ft Mount Fab Four

Spirit of The Beatles by Kris Atkinson

The Beatles (Artist Unknown)

The Beatles by Hector Monroy

Pop Art (an avant-garde art movement)  
(from the mid-1950’s to the early 80’s)

Richard Avedon’s The Beatles
from 1967

Los Beatles (Artist Unknown)

With it’s psychedelic hues and acid painting techniques, Pop Art happens to be my favourite Post-Modernist medium.

Beatles – Beetles on Abbey-Road (Artist Unknown)

ART AFTER POST-MODERNISM (a.k.a. POST-POST-MODERNISM)
(Emerging towards the end of 1980’s decade, and into the 21st century)

The latest trends of art (from the late 80’s onwards), includes the deconstructive styles of Blobism (or Bloberism), an architectural movement, inspired by the 50’s, Sci-fi, B-movie, The Blob (1958), starring Steve McQueen, in his first leading role. Architect Frank Gehry happens to one of the most well known faces behind, the amoeba shaped building designs, known as, Bloberism.

The Beatles – Poultry chicken wire by Ivan Lovatt

Yet, one of the latest trends in art today, is the Re-use of Refuse, using all kinds of waste material, letting nothing go to waste, including bodily fluids.

The Beatles rubber soul by Darin Shock

The Beatles by Jeff Zuck

Artists involved with this Post-Post-Modernism movement include Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Bill Viola, Shilpa Gupta, Mathew Barney, Chris Ofili, Wang Guangyi, Yukinori Yanagi, Andres Serrano, The Chapman Brothers, Félix González-Torres, Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, Renée Cox, David Osagie, Alexander Kosolapov, Koya Abe, Maurice Heerdink, Ruben Ortiz-Torres, Elizabeth Peyton, David LaChapelle, Sebastian Horsley, Chris Dyer and Jenny Saville.

Nuwan Sen’s Art Sense
Nuwan Sen n’ The Beatles
Nuwan Sen’s Music Sense  

Break From Blogging

To my Fellow Bloggers, friends, family, and other visitors/followers/fans 🙂
I shall be taking a break from blogging, as I’ll be travelling around country for a month and half, on a work related research tour, with my new work mates. So adieu for now. I haven’t left you, keep checking, I shall be back soon.
With much love
Nuwan Sen (20th July 2014)
Art Picture: Detail/Close-up from my drawing titled ‘That Flandrin Youth in the digital age (Bed-In)’ from last year. The sketch is based on/inspired from Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin’s famed Jeune Homme nu assis au bord de la mer a.k.a. Young Male Nude Seated beside the Sea from 1835-1836, Singer/Songwriter/Peace Activist John Lennon’s famous ‘Bed-Ins for Peace’ from 1969, and me myself (of course I do not blog in the nude, Ha!!, though aesthetically speaking, I prefer to draw the human figure in the nude).
Nuwan Sen’s Art Sense

Gustave Moreau’s 187th Birth Anniversary

French Symbolist artist, Gustave Moreau, was born on 6th of April, 1826. Symbolism, was a 19th century art movement of by the French, Russians and the Belgians; more prominent in the latter half of the century.

 

Moreau, was lucky enough to be born into a very highly cultured couple with a great taste and respect for the arts. His father was an architect, who encouraged his son’s artistic talent, and his mother took care of her son’s delicate health for the rest of her life. Moreau never married and remained with his mother, until her death. In 1895, Moreau extended his home to create sufficient space for a massive studio to house all his works, so that it could end up being a museum after his death. Moreau died in 1898, after contracting stomach cancer an year earlier.

I wasn’t that familiar with Gustave Moreau’s work, until I went to live in Paris in 2008, but it was more than an year later that I finally got to know what his works were like up close and personal, when I visited the Gustave Moreau Museum in Sept 2009, just days before leaving Paris. Most of his works are biblical references and mythological images. Being a student with a background of Art, Literature (including the classics – Greek & Roman literature) and cinema; I fell in love with Moreau’s unique works. I spent practically an entire day studying his numerous works. The museum closes for lunch and re-opens, so I went in the morning, saw some of his works, went out had my lunch, and was standing outside his house before they re-opened. Moreau had done more than 8,000 paintings and over 13,000 drawings and watercolours in his lifetime, and most of his works are housed at the Musée Gustave Moreau. Not all his works are up on the wall, some are in cupboard forms that you open and each work is inside a glass that you have to keep opening till you reach the end. His works reminded me of another era, influences of the renaissance, neoclassicism, also some works had a feel for the impressionist; and as the 20th century French writer and poet, André Breton, famed for his Surrealist Manifesto’s, had thought of ‘Moreau as a precursor of Surrealism‘. Surrealism, happens to be my favourite modern art style, that began in the 1920’s, and Salvador Dalí, happens to be my favourite surrealist artist ever. 

In 1891, Gustave Moreau became a professor at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts, an institute I wish I could have been a part of. Most of his students were to be famed artists of the future. The likes of Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Jules Flandrin, Theodor Pallady and Léon Printemps; were all his students.

Gustave Moreau was a true artist, in the sense his works weren’t for sale. That’s one of the main reasons he wasn’t as famous as his peers. But Moreau was a genius, and since he wasn’t for sale, most of his works are all available for viewing, in one location, his house, i.e. Musée Gustave Moreau (Gustave Moreau Museum), in Paris. How many artist works are available to view within one location, not that many, and definitely not a collection like this.

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Couple of my Artworks derived from Moreau.

 

Nuwan Sen’s Art Sense, Nuwan Sen’s Artworks.

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin 204

Today is the 204th Birth Anniversary of 19th century French artist, Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin.

With Flandrin’s masterpiece ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’ (Seated Young Male Nude by the Sea) from 1836 (Above me – not behind) at the Louvre (May 2009)

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864)

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, born on 23rd of March, 1809, had an interest for the arts since his childhood. Yet he was forced into being a businessman by his parents. Still determined, in 1929, he went to Paris, and trained under the famed French Neoclassical painter, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867); who eventually ended up not just being his teacher but his friend as well. Although Flandrin’s works were nowhere as great as  Ingres’, and even though Flandrin is not famed for leaving behind a great bulk of masterpieces, he did manage to make a mark with his one great painting ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’ (Seated Young Male Nude  by the Sea) from 1836. Which I was lucky enough to come across, when I visited the Louvre for the 4th time (which was the last time I visited the Louvre) in May 2009.  

Unlike the renaissance era previously, when it comes to the neo-classical era of the 18th & 19th centuries, though they embody many a traits borrowed from the renaissance; there is a more photographic element to these newer paintings. Especially when it comes to human portraits and nudes.

That’s what’s most probably the best thing about ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’, it’s almost photographic, it could almost feel as if it’s an actual photograph of a male nude with a seaside backdrop and not a painting. It’s also famous, for the body’s somewhat 3D effect with the roundedness of flesh on the flawless’ skinned human form. The nude in the forefront is almost cut-off, and protruding outwards towards us, while contrasting to this, the backdrop is flat and blends in. It has also been compared to the renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci’s study of the human form from four centuries before, da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, from 1490.

In 1857, first President of the French Republic, Napoleon III, nephew of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, bought ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’, which is now housed at the Louvre, in Paris.

In 1853, Flandrin was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. A decade later, he started to get ill, and just two days before his 55th Birthday, he died of smallpox, on the 21st, of March 1864.  

The Flandrin Pose

Flandrin’s ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’,  due to it’s famous pose, is now more commonly known as The Flandrin Pose. And since the paintings advent to the public, The Flandrin Pose, has been re-created a zillion times till date. The most notable photography versions happen to be; Fred Holland Day’s (1864-1943), the first person in the U.S.A. to advocate that photography should be considered a fine art, version called Ebony & Ivory (from the late 19th Century, most probably 1897), which showcased a black male with a white statuette, taken inside a studio, Wilhelm von Gloeden’s (1856-1931) Caino (1902), who brought back the nude outside to a very rocky natural surrounding, and Karel Egermeier’s work for Paysage Olympique from 1924; to name a few. As time went by the image became more and more homoerotic, even though nothing sexual is implied in the original paining. The most controversial version most probably is photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s (1946-1989); some of whose work I came across at an exhibition in London, back in Jan-Feb 2005, I do not remember the name of the small gallery that housed the exhibition; Ajitto (1981). Ajitto, was, like most of Mapplethorpe’s works, almost bordering on pornography. The still is of a black male inside a studio, on top of a stool, with his huge genitals shown hanging loose below. It’s the only re-creation of The Flandrin Pose that showcase male genitalia, that I have come across. In the 21st century, there was Richard Taddei’s painting, Meditation (2003), an interestingly slightly abstract and distorted image, with slight pop art feel, this work feels like a postmodernist work from the 1960’s. More recently I came across a work titled Flandrin’s Skateboarder, a picture taken somewhere between 2009 and 2012, by an unnamed photographer. Which was an interesting take on the classic. Here the nude is seated atop a skateboard, kept on a bench on a terrace/roof top with a chilly industrial background with leafless trees afar. And the nude is wearing a woolly beanie on his head. A stark contrast to the sunny summer appearance of Flandrin’s original, ‘Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer’.

Nuwan Sen’s Art Sense

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