Title
Interior with a Mother delousing her child's hair, known as 'A Mother's duty'
Year
c. 1658-60
Artist
Pieter de Hooch
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
52,5 x 61 cm
In a room with a boxbed, a mother and child are sitting happily together. The woman is absorbed by a rather prosaic task: delousing her child's hair. The delicate play of the light leads the viewer's attention from room to room. The light in the room is somewhat subdued whereas as the room at the back is sunny. A garden can be seen through the open door. A ray of light shines through the high window, lighting up the two figures. It also catches the edge of the child's chair and the copper bedpan. The sunlight reflects strongly in the door, causing the floor tiles and hair on the dog's chest to glisten.

An old woman is sitting quietly in her chair. On the table beside her is a book. She is wearing a kind of two-piece: a black dress and matching coat trimmed with fur, which is draped elegantly over the chair. In her hand is a handkerchief. This type of costume was fashionable around 1640 but the large ruff and the cap with wing flaps were out-of-date by this time. Nevertheless, the older generation tended to ignore the whims of fashion and continued to wear these garments.


Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680)

The artist Ferdinand Bol grew up in Dordrecht. He learned to paint either there or in Utrecht under the artist Abraham Bloemaert. Later Bol worked for a period at the studio of Rembrandts in Amsterdam, before setting up as an independent artist in 1642. Bol mainly produced portraits and history paintings. At first his work resembled Rembrandt's, but after 1650 he developed a more colourful and elegant style. Bol received numerous commissions, including for the Amsterdam town hall and the Admiralty. After 1669 and his second marriage to Anna van Arckel, Bol, now a wealthy man, hardly painted anymore. His self portrait of the late 1660s is one of his last works.



Title
Elisabeth Jacobsdr. Bas (1571-1649), widow of Jochem Hendricksz. Swartenhont

Year
c. 1640

Artist
Ferdinand Bol

Technique
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
118 x 91,5 cm

Francis Picabia
Conversation I, 1922

Man Ray
Marquise Casati 1922

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia
21 February – 26 May 2008



Duchamp set himself the challenge of making art works

that were not works of art, as traditionally understood.



He decided that an art work did not need to be either

visually appealing or even made by the artist. Accordingly,

he chose a number of ‘readymade’ objects, of no

aesthetic merit, and gave them the usual attributes of a

work of art: a title, a named author, a date of execution,

and a viewing public or owner. His Fountain – an ordinary

urinal laid on its back – was rejected from an exhibition

in 1917. This, and more importantly, the ensuing debate

about what constitutes a work of art, is now seen as

a turning point in the history of modernism.



Rather than readymades, Man Ray produced what he called

‘objects of my affection’: two or more elements combined

to create a new work. He also used his camera to record

transient or ephemeral items that caught his eye. Here it

was the photograph that was the work of art, rather than

the object itself.

Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia were at the cutting edge of art in the first half of the twentieth century, and made a lasting impression on modern and contemporary art. Duchamp invented the concept of the ‘readymade’: presenting an everyday object as an artwork, Man Ray pioneered avant-garde photographic and film techniques and Picabia’s use of kitsch, popular or low-brow imagery in his paintings undermined artistic conventions.



Their shared outlook on life and art, with a taste for jokes, irony and the erotic, forged a friendship that provided support and inspiration. At the heart of the Dada movement and moving in the same artistic circles, they discussed ideas and collaborated, echoing and responding to each other’s works. Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia explores their affinities and parallels, uncovering a shared approach to questioning the nature of art.

Wilhelmina of Prussia

Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia (1751-1820) was the wife of Stadholder William V. They were married in 1767 when Wilhelmina was sixteen and William nineteen. This portrait was painted twenty-two years later, in 1789 as a present to William V from their two oldest children, Louise and William Frederick. It is an unusual portrait in that the princess is not riding side-saddle (with both legs on one side of the horse), the usual pose for a woman. She is sitting astride the horse as a man would have done. The tower in the background is Jacob's church in The Hague.

Title Frederika Sophia Wilhelmina of Prussia (1751-1820). Equestrian portrait of the wife of Prince Willia
Year 1789
Artist Tethart Philipp Christian Haag
Technique Oil on canvas
Dimensions 86 x 69 cm

Leda, 1919

Otto Dix

In his foreword to the 1919 exhibition catalogue devoted to the group's prints Grohmann introduced Dix this way " Otto Dix appeared at Easter with brutal force, and all sorts of expectations were aroused. At the moment he is laughing heartily at himself, at art, and at us.
Let us leave him to it; something will surely occur to him."

Five paintings of 1919 serve to define Dix's Expressionist period.
Their titles Leda, schwangeres Weib ( Pregnant Women), Mondweib ( Moon Women), Auferstehung des Fleisches ( Resurrection of the Flesh), and Prometheus, a self portrait. The first four convey erotic messages of enormous vehemence with " something cosmic about them. " They were reproduced in Menschen.
Grohmann said, " the ultimate distillation of his memories, not analyses,
the delirium of life, the dancing bewitchment of color. You can turn his paintings upside down; they still work. That is how pure a representation of emotion his art is.
" Zehder takes up the description: " He swings the brush like an ax, and every stroke is a yell of color. The world to him is Chaos in the throes of giving birth."



vehemence
noun
the recruiters were talk to speak with unwavering vehemence passion, force, forcefulness, ardor, fervor, violence, urgency, strength, vigor, intensity, keenness, feeling, enthusiasm, zeal.



throes
plural noun
the throes of childbirth agony, pain, pangs, spasms, torment, suffering, torture; literary travail.
PHRASES
in the throes of we're in the throes of hurricane preparations in the middle of, in the process of, in the midst of, busy with, occupied with, taken up with/by, involved in, dealing with; struggling with, wrestling with, grappling with.



bewitch |biˈwi ch |
verb [ trans. ] (often be bewitched)
cast a spell on and gain control over (someone) by magic : his relatives were firmly convinced that he was bewitched.
• enchant and delight (someone) : they both were bewitched by the country and its culture | [as adj. ] ( bewitching) she was certainly a bewitching woman.
DERIVATIVES
bewitchingly |bəˈwɪtʃɪŋli| |biˈwɪtʃɪŋli| adverb
bewitchment noun
ORIGIN Middle English : from be- [thoroughly] + witch







MMaxi08

One of the most potent graphic cycles is the series of wood cut illustrations
by the Dresden Secession artist Constantin von Mitschke-Collande
for the Walter Georg Hartmann's allegorical book
Der Begeisterte Weg ( The Inspired Way; ) Haartmann
tells of a young soldier who experiences the beginnings of the Revolution,
the funeral of Liebknecht, and the outbreak of street violence, during which he was killed.
His spirit does not die; it wanders through revolutionary Germany, observing.
Mitschke-Collande focuses on the religious salvation promissed in hartmann's text.
He combines images from the Crucifixion and the Revelation of St. John
( for instance, the horsemen of the Apocalypse ) to intertwine Expressionists
religious imagery and a message about revolution.
The illustrations are a symbol of the political and spiritual awakening
of the second-generation Expressionists.
They reflect the crossroads that many artists felt they had reached.
Mitschke-Collande's style also reflects that eclecticism of the second generation.

MMaxi08

Constantin von Mitschke-Collande

Born 1884 Collande

Died 1956 Nuremberg

Education

Thechnische Hochschule, Munich, 1905-07
( architetural Studies )

Akademie, Dresden, 1907-10, 1912-13
Studied with Fernande Lèger and Maurice Denis, Paris