All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time. — Otto Dix
All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.
2 SQUARE PRINTS BY BOB KESSEL
Selections of 2 square prints from various art series by contemporary artist Bob Kessel.
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ART OVER DECOR SERIES Chairs by Bob Kessel
ARTWORKS ASSEMBLE! SERIES Big Chin Chin by Bob Kessel
INTERIORS SERIES Fenetre Apple Powerbook by Bob Kessel
BIJIN SERIES Blossoms by Bob Kessel
GOING FOR BRUCKE SERIES Zwei Frauen by Bob Kessel
ART HISTORY SERIES Bric a Braque by Bob Kessel
TAHITI SERIES Gauguin Tahitians by Bob Kessel
AMERICAN ICONS SERIES JFK Profiles in Chiaroscuro by Bob Kessel
KLIMT VERKLEMPT SERIES Klimtomaniac by Bob Kessel
SHOW ME THE MONET SERIES Petitailly by Bob Kessel
MYTHOLOGY SERIES Judgement of Paris by Bob Kessel
PAPER CUTS SERIES Matisse meets Ditko by Bob Kessel
ART HISTORY SERIES Oslo O Sole Mio by Bob Kessel
PAINTERS PAINTING SERIES Artist at work by Bob Kessel
ODALISQUES SERIES Striped cover by Bob Kessel
THE NUDE SERIES Venus after Rubens by Bob Kessel
SUPER ART SERIES Action #1 by Bob Kessel
FUJI TWICE SERIES Blue Fujis by Bob Kessel
BIBLE PAINTINGS SERIES Expulsion by Bob Kessel
BON BONNARD SERIES Le Bain by Bob Kessel
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN by Bob Kessel
Presidents’ Day or George Washington’s Birthday, is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. To celebrate, I am posting the print WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN and its variations from the Bob Kessel art series AMERICAN ICONS.
Bob Kessel’s art series “AMERICAN ICONS” features pictures of American presidents and historical figures like “WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN” shown above. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN (GREEN LINE) by Bob Kessel
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN (RED LINE) by Bob Kessel
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN (BLUE LINE) by Bob Kessel
MEULES paintings by Bob Kessel after Claude Monet
“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life—the light and the air which vary continually.” - Claude Monet
“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life—the light and the air which vary continually.”
- Claude Monet
Bob Kessel’s art series “2 FOR THE MONET” features pictures based on Monet’s paintings like in the picture “MEULES” shown above. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.
PETITAILLY and POPLARS prints based on the works of Claude Monet by Bob Kessel
In the 1890s, Monet painted groups of huge canvases, some as large as 6 by 14 feet. He painted the same subject from the same angle at different times of day to discover how the changes in the quality of the light would change the shapes, mood and images of the chosen subject. In his journals, Monet recorded his method for working on the haystacks: he took multiple canvases to the field and worked for no longer than ten or fifteen minutes on each painting. As the angle of the sun changed, the colors and shadows changed, and Monet sought to paint exactly what he saw.
Claude Monet painted a series of paintings of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament, during his stay in London. The paintings have all the same size and viewpoint, Monet’s window at St Thomas’ Hospital overlooking the Thames. They are however painted at different times of the day and at different weather circumstances.
Monet produced numerous Haystack paintings. His earlier landscapes had included haystacks in an ancillary manner. Monet had also produced five paintings with haystacks as the primary subject during the 1888 harvest.
This series is one of Monet’s earliest that relied on thematic repetition to illustrate nuances in perception across natural variation such as times of day, seasons, and types of weather. For Monet, the concept of producing and exhibiting a series of paintings related by subject and vantage point began in 1889, with at least ten paintings done at the Valley of the Creuse, and subsequently shown at the Galerie Georges Petit. This interest in the serial motif would continue for the rest of his career.
Although the mundane subject was constant throughout this series, the underlying theme may be seen as the transience of light. This concept enabled him to use repetition to show nuances of perception as seasons, time of day, and weather changes. The constant subject provided the basis from which comparisons could be made in changes of light across this nuanced series. The first paintings in the series were started in late September or early October 1890, and he continued producing these paintings for about seven months. These paintings made Monet the first painter to paint such a large quantity of pictures of the same subject matter differentiated by light, weather, atmosphere and perspective.
Beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, Monet focused on Haystacks and a number of other subjects (other series included the Mornings on the Seine, Poplars, Rouen Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, and the Water Lilies, among others).
PETITAILLY
by Bob Kessel
after Claude Monet
MEULES
HAYSTACKS IN FIELD
HAYSTACK
BRUSH STACKS
GRAINSTACKS A
GRAINSTACKS B
GRAINSTACKS C
POPLARS
MANNEPORTE
CUSTOMES
PARLIMENT
PARLIMENT 2
GIVERNY POND
See more Monet inspired prints by Bob Kessel by clicking here.
If you don’t climb mount Fuji once in your life, you are a fool. If you climb it twice, you are a fool. - Old Japanese Proverb
- Old Japanese Proverb
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Bob Kessel’s new art series “FUJI TWICE” features pictures of Mount Fuji, Japan. These pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for pricing and availability.
FUJI FOG by Bob Kessel
FUJI SQUIGGLE by Bob Kessel
FUJI LIGHTNING by Bob Kessel
FUJI PINK by Bob Kessel
FUJI BLUE by Bob Kessel
FUJI YELLOW by Bob Kessel
FUJI WHITE by Bob Kessel
FUJI RED by Bob Kessel
FUJI LD by Bob Kessel
FUJI HILLS by Bob Kessel
FUJI WHITE FOG by Bob Kessel
FUJI BROWN by Bob Kessel
FUJISAN by Bob Kessel
FISH RED STUDIO by Bob Kessel
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Bob Kessel has created an art series based on Henri Matisse. The pictures are available as signed and numbered limited edition fine art prints. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.
influenced by the works of the post-Impressionists Paul Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by Japanese art, Matisse made color a crucial element of his paintings. Matisse said, “In modern art, it is indubitably to Cézanne that I owe the most.” By studying Cézanne’s fragmented planes — which stretched the idea of the still life to a forced contemplation of color surfaces themselves — Matisse was able to reconstruct his own philosophy of the still life.
Matisse’s career can be divided into several periods that changed stylistically, but his underlying aim always remained the same: to discover “the essential character of things” and to produce an art “of balance, purity, and serenity,” as he himself put it. The changing studio environments seemed always to have had a significant effect on the style of his work.
In these first years of struggle Matisse set his revolutionary artistic agenda. He disregarded perspective, abolished shadows, repudiating the academic distinction between line and color. He was attempting to overturn a way of seeing evolved and accepted by the Western world for centuries by substituting a conscious subjectivity in the place of the traditional illusion of objectivity .
When Fauvist works were first exhibited Salon d’Automne in Paris they created a scandal. Eyewitness accounts tell of laughter emanating from room VII where they were displayed. Gertrud Stein, one of Matisse’s most important future supporters, reported that people scratched at the canvases in derision. “A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public” was the reaction by the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the historic phrase “Donatello au milieu des fauves!” (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. Derain himself later called the Fauves’ color “sticks of dynamite.” The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, a portrait of Madame Matisse.
Due to the recurrent incidence of nude women and intensely sensual interpretation many observers have assumed that as a man Matisse must have been a hedonist. On the contrary, historic examination demonstrates that in reality, he was rather a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns. While Picasso recompensed himself, as he went along, with gratifications of intellectual and erotic play Matisse did not. In an age of ideologies, Matisse dodged all ideas except perhaps one: that art is life by other means.
Matisse’s uninhibited celebration of women is often believed to have initiated from Cézanne’s painting Three Bathers (1882) (which he had acquired for himself along with a Van Gogh and a Gauguin). However, Matisse depicts women as nurturing, welcoming, and unlike the forbidding, massive clay-like presence of those of Paul Cezanne.
Matisse continued to evolve in unexpected directions even though never became an abstract painter (though some of his most adventurous works, such as the View of Notre Dame of 1914 or the Yellow Curtain of 1916 come close). His motifs were always recognizable, and the tension between the subject and the formal aspects of the painting was a central concept of his artistic ideal.
