The Pagan Sphinx: 2010-05-30

Friday, June 4, 2010

Adorable Ronaldo Comes Out on Marriage Equality

Cristiano Ronaldo

Quite a young god, isn't he? ;-)

Cristiano Ronaldo Voices Support for Marriage Equality in Portugal

Monday, May 31, 2010

Artist of the Week: Louis Anquetin

Louis Anquentin

1861-1932

Self-portrait

French painter. He came to Paris in 1882 and studied art at the Ateliers of Bonnat and Cormon, where he was a contemporary and friend of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. His early work shows the influence of Impressionism and of Edgar Degas. In 1887 Anquetin and Bernard devised an innovative method of painting using strong black contour lines and flat areas of colour; Anquetin aroused much comment when he showed his new paintings, including the striking Avenue de Clichy: Five O’Clock in the Evening (1887; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum) at the exhibition of Les XX in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1888. The new style, dubbed Cloisonnisme by the critic Edouard Dujardin (1861–1949), resulted from a study of stained glass, Japanese prints and other so-called ‘primitive’ sources; it was close to the Synthetist experiments of Paul Gauguin and was adopted briefly by van Gogh during his Arles period. Anquetin’s works were shown alongside Gauguin’s and Bernard’s at the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889, where they attracted considerable attention among younger artists.

The contemporary critic Edouard Dujardin praised Anquetin for inventing a style based on heavy outlines and flat areas of color, which resembled cloisonne enamels.

In 1882, he came to Paris and began studying art at Léon Bonnat's studio, where he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The two artists later moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon, where they befriended Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. wikipedia