Vincent van Gogh - Bedroom in Arles

Van Gogh was a Dutch Post-impressionist painter who had great influence on the twentieth century modern art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. First of all, I find this work very important because in some of the letters he wrote for his brother, he explains all his choices he made for this painting. In his writings, he examine all the process he went through and talks about deeply his purpose of distorting the perspective in order to get the feeling he wanted. He says "I had a new idea in my head and here is the sketch of it... This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination."
Van Gogh did not really care about the exact represantion of the room but he was looking for something different. He wanted to convey the feeling of rest to his audiences and in order to do that, he didn't care about the perspective or the exaggeration of the colors. He did not really aim for the photographically exact picture of nature. Van Gogh just wanted to express what he felt.
"And that is all - there is nothing in this room with closed shutters. The broad lines of furniture, again must express absolute rest. Portraits of the wall, and a mirror and a towell and some clothes..."
It is known that the door on the left served the guest room he held prepared for Gauguin.

Akhenaten shook the iron bars of the Egyptian style. He was the king in the period of "The New Kingdom" which was founded after the invasion of Egypt. He forced his religion reforms on his people. He considered and worshipped only one God "Aten"
Styles of art belonging to this period was different from other Egyptian art. His portrait, for exemple, show him as an ugly man, in a naturalistic way. Gombrich argues that he wanted the artists to portray him in all his human frailty or, perhaps, he was so convinced of his unique importance as a prophet that he insisted on a true likeness.
It was also a very important figure for scholars such as Freud for his book Moses and Monotheism.


Akhenaten here, with his wife Nefertiti and his children. It is also a question whether Nefertiti's beauty is idealism or portraiture. For the only time in the Egyptian royal art, Akhenaten's family are portrayed in naturalistic activities while they were showing affections to each other. This must have shocked the Egyptians of his day by their novelty says Gombrich.

Simplicity

Portrait Head - Found in Giza

This is something that I have found while I was doing some research about the Ancient Egypt. What attracts me in this sculpture is that the sculptor was only concerned with the essentials. In a way, he was trying to portray death or was trying to represent the idea of a death person after life. These sculptures were put in a tomb and this one was actually found in Giza. In this portrait every detail is left out. Gombrich says "The observation of nature, and the regularity of the whole, are so eveny balanced that they impress us as being lifelike and yet remote and enduring."

Alexander the Great & Lysippos

“Don’t you dare defend him!” shouted the King. “I summoned Aristotle here to educate him. I commissioned Lysippos to sculpt his image, I minted coins bearing his portrait. Do you understand what all that means? No, my child, the insult and the injury have been to great, too much…”
Lysippos was the personal sculpture of Alexander the Great chosen by his father, Phillip II of Macedon. He was considered one of the greatest sculptor of the classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic period.