At Your Fingertips: David Hockney's iPad Art

Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad and how he uses those new technologies to create art (such as the example above). In a new exhibition titled Fleurs fraiches (“fresh flowers”) at La Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, France, Hockney displays these new works together for the first time. It’s fascinating to watch such an established artist venture forth in a yet-to-be-established medium, lending it the “street cred” that it so sorely needs to combat critics who still cling to the old media as the only “true” art. Working directly with his fingers on the interfaces of his devices, Hockney brings art not only from his fingertips, but also puts it just a fingertip away for the viewer. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "At Your Fingertips."

Monster Mash: Picasso Meets Degas at the Clark

Growing up, I spent many a rainy or wintry Saturday afternoon watching classic old horror films such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. It always seemed that one monster inevitably ran into another. Modern museum blockbuster exhibitions often have the same feel as they try to pit one monster talent versus another in their galleries. For example, in 2003, the MoMA’s Matisse Picasso squared off the two modern heavyweights so closely even the “versus” was superfluous. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s current show Late Renoir could easily be retitled Renoir Meets Matisse or Renoir Vs. Picasso. Pablo Picasso enters the art history ring again in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute’s Picasso Looks at Degas, the first exhibition to pair those two artists and study the latter’s influence on the former. This monster mash of influence and difference illuminates both artists in a fresh way that’s downright scary. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Monster Mash."

[Image: The Blue Room (The Tub), 1901, by Pablo Picasso. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 61.6 cm. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1927 (1554). © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]

[Many thanks to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of the catalogue to Picasso Looks at Degas, which runs through September 12, 2010.]

A Father’s Tale: Renoir, Coleridge, and Fatherhood

Walking through the Late Renoir exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently, I couldn’t help but be struck by the power of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintings of his three sons—Pierre, Jean, and Claude. Renoir didn’t begin having children until he reached his fifties, but he doted on them and loved to paint them again and again, recording their childhood for all eternity. On this Father’s Day, I feel an affinity with Renoir and wonder at the love that appears in such works as 1895’s Gabrielle and Jean (shown). Here is a true father’s tale. Please come over to at Picture This at Big Think to read more of "A Father's Tale."



[Image: Gabrielle and Jean, 1895. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919). Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 21 1/4 inches. Framed: 34 1/8 x 38 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art.]

Late Bloomer: “Late Renoir” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

“I think I’m beginning to know something about painting,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir said on the day he died as he turned away from a still life he’d been working on and handed his brushes to his assistant. Although wracked by the ravages of rheumatoid arthritis, Renoir painted prolifically to the end of his life in 1919. Late Renoir, an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, examines the last three decades of Renoir’s oeuvre and demonstrates just how much the master had learned near life’s close. In those final years, surrounded by his growing family, Renoir bloomed into a deeper, more thoughtful, more joyous artist who reveled in the beauty of painting and escaped the pain of age into the joy of ageless art. “The pain subsides,” Renoir responded to questions concerning his painting with arthritis, “but the beauty remains.” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Late Bloomer."

[Image: The Vineyards at Cagnes, 1908. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919). Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 21 3/4 inches. Framed: 27 3/8 x 31 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Colonel and Mrs. E. W. Garbisch.]

[Many thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for providing me with press materials and the catalogue for Late Renoir.]