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The Art of Louis Sabattier I: 1897 – 1904
The trained history painter Louis Sabattier was one of the most interesting press illustrators of the late 19th century. None of the numerous accredited special artists managed to catch the tense atmosphere of the spectacular trials against Alfred Dreyfus and Émilé Zola in a comparable subtle way. Many of his soft focussed photo-paintings for the […]
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Jan Vegter´s art of processing memory. A biographical sketch.
Jan Vegter was born March 29, 1927, in Voorburg (The Netherlands). He died there in 2009. Almost his entire life he lived in this small town near The Hague. Jan got his education as an artist at the Royal Academy at The Hague from 1945 till 1950. One of his teachers was Willem Rozendaal (1899 […]
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Algerian Guerrilla War I : Auguste Raffet & Horace Vernet – Pictures of Dynamized Masses and the Art of Reconstruction
Pictorial Reports from the Algerian Guerrilla War I The occupation of Algeria was initiated by Charles X in June 1830 with the capture of Algiers, just a few weeks before the collapse of the Bourbon Restoration regime. At first, the bourgeois July Monarchy under Louis-Philippe had a bit of a hard time warming to this […]
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Retraite De Constantine / Prise De Constantine
“Retraite de Constantine” was one of the most widespread examples of Auguste Raffet´s series of annual lithography albums. It was published in spring of 1837 by Gilhaut Freres and gives an account of the first failed attempts at conquering the Algerian fortress. The ignominious retreat of the French army in November 1836 was mainly blamed […]
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“… The World Was Becoming Numerical.” Informational Graphics and Art in Dierk Schmidt´s “Die Teilung der Erde”
Informational Graphics and Art in Dierk Schmidt’s “Die Teilung der Erde” The essay is part of the comprehensive project documentation “Dierk Schmidt: The Division of the Earth – Tableaux on the Legal Synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference.” Edited by Lotte Arndt, Clemens Krümmel, Dierk Schmidt, Hemma Schmutz, Diethelm Stoller, Ulf Wuggenig, Cologne 2010. Dierk […]
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Alexandre Cabanel – Die Tradition der Biestigkeit (Ausstellungsbesprechung)
Not translated: Cabanel, der Name klingt nach Parfüm und wird auch so beworben. Immerhin hat der Maler dahinter den Modezaren Christian Lacroix angelockt, der nun wiederum Besucher ins Kölner Wallraf-Richartz- Museum locken soll. Lacroix hat man dort nicht nur die Möglichkeit eingeräumt, sein künstlerisches Idol in Kachtelteppich und saucige Fototapete einzukleiden sondern auch noch zum […]
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Isidore Pils: History Painter and “Realist Reporter”
11 January, 1871. Snow covers the bunker installations of Bastion 69, southwest of Paris. Several soldiers are on guard with shouldered rifles and fixed bayonets. An icy wind is blowing over the defence walls. One waits, time seems to stand still, as if it were frozen. One person among the guards is not a soldier, […]
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Images of War, War of images. The Invention of Pictorial Reportage in the course of the Crimean War. ar of images. The Invention of Pictorial Reportage in the course of the Crimean War
Ill. 1 War is atrocious, and the horror of war has proven to be the most tenacious constant in human history. Empirically seen, we are in a constant state of war. Among other things, this fact presents problems to those responsible, to those who must make war – despite the known horrific results – publicly […]
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Menzel’s lurking about!
The more clearly and distinctly, more realistically things find themselves depicted, the more com-plex the play of perceptions and questions becomes. It is precisely the simple, the banality of the everyday become image that on closer inspection begins to drift off into the drama of the Symbolic or to founder in pure doubling … > […]
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Menzel and Chodowiecki – “Unreigned” drawing
When he found himself obliged to the “Verein Berliner Künstler” due to a generosity bestowed upon him, Menzel decided to gladden his colleagues with a representative gift that was meant to recommend to them his own artistic program as a path to take. He painted the posthumous, life-sized portrait of the Berlin artist and miniaturist […]