The most famous and expensive works of fine art/paintings in the world

mona lisa

mona lisaThe Mona Lisa – painted by Leonardo da Vinci – could be worth anything from seven hundred million dollars up to a billion dollars

Number 5 – artist Jackson Pollock – it’s thought to have been sold for a 140 million dollars.  It’s an example of Pollock’s approach to fine art painting in as much as he treated all areas of the canvas equally.

Woman III – by Willem de Kooning – one of six numbered “Women paintings” and sold privately for $237 million.

Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer – painted by Gustav Klint and sold for 135 million dollars

Garçon à la pipe – by Pablo Picasso – $104,200,000 – although the work “Nude, Green and Bust” by the same artist was also sold at $106.5 million in 2010 and “Dora Maar au Chat” for $95,200,000

Eight Elvisses – a work by Andy Warhol – this was sold at a private sale in 2009 for a hundred million dollars

Triptych – was painted by Francis Bacon – and was sold in 2008 for $86.3 million dollars

Portrait of Dr. Gachet – 82.5 million dollars was the price paid for this work from Vincent Van Gogh with the Doctor in question revealing a melancholy disposition.  Perhaps he would have cheered up years later at the painting fetching such a price!

False Start – Jasper Johns was the artist and this painting was sold for $80 million.  This made it the most expensive painting to be sold by a living artist.

Le Moulin de la Galette – $78,100,000 for this painting by Pierre-August Renoir.  This was the second most lucrative work of fine art ever sold at the time of its sale, back in 1990.

Massacre of the Innocents – painted by Peter Paul Rubens, sold back in 2002 for

$76,700,000

Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier – the painter was Paul Cézanne and it sold in New York for $60,500,000 to one of America’s wealthiest families

Irises – painted by Vincent Van Gogh … it sold for $ 54,000,000 in 1987, then later it was sold again to the Getty Museum

Tate Modern … what’s this museum really all about?

Tate Modern

Tate ModernOpened in the millennium year, Tate Modern in north Southwark, London, has an extraordinary reputation for daring to be absurd, challenging and sometimes plain ridiculous.  At any rate it can in no way be called dull or boring. The word “absurd” is classified as “out of harmony with reason or propriety”, “incongruous” or “illogical”: all sentiments in which Tate Modern excels.

Since its inception, forty-five million visitors have passed through the entrance to the extraordinary Turbine Hall. It’s hard to believe that before Tate Modern opened London was the only one of Europe’s major cities not to have a world-class museum of modern art.  It has been an unmitigated success and has succeeded in luring in the British public more than ever before to a Fine Art Museum.

It opened with landmark exhibitions covering the 20th-century giants: Matisse/Picasso, Warhol, Hopper and Rothko.  It is in its remit though, to constantly re-vitalise and refresh.  On a visit there, if you have the appropriate smart phone, you can download an “App” which will help you find your way around.  There are guided tours for two or more and you can even bring your own sketch pad and copy the fine modern art or sculptures on display.   

If you prefer a lecture or talk, they are easy to book, and you can join various workshops which offer an amazing array of possibilities.  You might be tempted by “Poetry from Art”, “Life drawing workshops”, “Sensing Art” or “Choreography: Experiencing Space, Time and Ideas”. 

Collections on display cover Chromatic structures, material gestures, states of flux, energy and process, photographic typologies and poetry and dream.  Still confused?  You can hire a small computer on which you can see videos and images as you walk through the galleries.  This is a “First” for Tate Modern – the first UK museum to trial such a system, in 2002.

Extraordinary contributions in recent years include The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei..

Made up of millions of life-sized porcelain sunflower seeds which look like seed husks, they are all in fact individually crafted.  The public were originally invited to take their shoes off and walk over this extraordinary large bed of seeds, until “Health and Safety” issues put a stop to it.

Finally, a recent addition is a work from Gabriel Orozco, from Mexico.  His sculptures, art and photographs catch the beauty of fleeting moments crafted from everyday artifacts like newspaper or phone books.  He adds an element of futility to games, for example, with an extended chess board filled with an army of horses.

Soon though something even more extraordinary will be occurring on the Tate Modern site.  More space is required because the Museum has become a victim of its own success.   This new development, soon be completed, will undoubtedly redefine the concept of “Museum” for the twenty first century.

What is a visual Artist?

Visual arts a created for an audience to observe and look at them, the visual arts field is contrasted with performing arts which are performed in front of an audience. Two dimensional and three dimensional arts are included in visual arts, this includes drawing, graphic design, painting, decorative arts, photography, sculpture and printmaking. Shortly put a visual artist makes visual art.

A visual artist could specialize with any of the visual arts named above and work in many different ways for example a painter could work with one type of pain or a mixture such as acrylics, oil paints and watercolours. A photographer could choose to specialize in just black and white photography or both and work with highly edited shoots using computer photo-editing software programs. Sculptor artists might choose to work with wood, marble, granite, clay or stone or they might choose to just specialize with the one. A drawer might choose to specialize in pencil, charcoal, pastels, crayon, felt markers and pen and ink. Some visual artists like to mix things up and use bits of all the visual arts, this is known as mixed medium.

Visual artists can go to art school through college or university art departments. The degree achieved at the end will most likely be a fine arts degree. Whilst studying its most likely that art history and art theory will be taught as well as a variety of medium before the student will choose a chosen art form to specialize in.

There are many different types of jobs on offer that a visual artist may do apart from or aside just the job of making art. A visual artist, who draws, takes photographs, makes prints or paints could work in the illustration field. A lot of visual artists become teachers, either in schools, colleges or universities. Other artists may get jobs in museums or become art critics.

The Arts The Painters And The Controversies.

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