The World's Most Expensive Paintings : BBC

Art critic Alastair Sooke tracks down the ten most expensive paintings to sell at auction, and investigates the stories behind the astronomic prices art can reach. Gaining access to the glittering world of the super-rich, Sooke discovers why the planet's richest people want to spend their millions on art.

Featuring works by Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Klimt and Rubens, Sooke enters a world of secrecy and rivalry, passion and power. Highlights include a visit to the art-crammed home of millionaire author Lord Archer; a rare interview with the man at the heart of the sale of the most expensive old master of all time; privileged access to auctioneers Christie's; and a glimpse of the world of the Russian oligarchs.

These revelatory journeys allow Sooke to present an eye-opening view of the super wealthy, and their motivations as collectors of the world's great art treasures. 

 

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Treasures of the Louvre

Paris-based writer Andrew Hussey travels through the glorious art and surprising history of an extraordinary French institution to show that the story of the Louvre is the story of France. As well as exploring the masterpieces of painters such as Veronese, Rubens, David, Chardin, Gericault and Delacroix, he examines the changing face of the Louvre itself through its architecture and design. Medieval fortress, Renaissance palace, luxurious home to kings, emperors and more recently civil servants, today it attracts eight million visitors a year. The documentary also reflects the very latest transformation of the Louvre - the museum's recently-opened Islamic Gallery.

 

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The Life and Art Of Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, his works are marked by a frank eroticism.

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Mark Rothko - The Power Of Art

Mark Rothko (Latvian: Markus Rotkovičs, Russian: Марк Ро́тко; born Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич; Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. He is generally identified as an Abstract Expressionist, although he himself rejected this label and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter." With Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, he is one of the most famous postwar American artists.
 

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 1800s yielded a collection of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern and sometimes decadent life of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec – along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – is among the most well-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period. In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house, a new record was set when La blanchisseuse, an early painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million.

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The Power Of Art - Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was foremost a world-improver, who cared for the common man, working as a 'lay priest' among but got fired by the Dutch Protestant establishment at age 30, and only then turned to painting as a means of continuing his social strife for the poor, while depending on his brother, who became an art gallery-keeper in Paris, for his meager livelihood, as his works' dark themes and colors didn't sell in the colorful, light-focused age of impressionism, yet made his mark on it after a visit to Paris, without becoming fashionable till long after his death in a mental asylum.

 

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The Power of Art - Picasso

What makes Picasso's Guernica a masterpiece and Modern Art's most powerful anti-war statement of the 20th Century?




Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso's many styles and prolific work rate have marked him out as one of the most recognized artists of the twentieth century. Not limited to one medium he created sculptures, etchings and prints. His artistic career only began to boom once he moved to Paris in the early 1900s. His Blue Period, reflecting the colour and his mood at the time was followed by his Rose Period, work inspired by primitive art and then Cubism, which shocked the critics, but ultimately made his name.

Guernica (1937) was created during Picasso's Surrealist period and captures the horror of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. By the end of World War II, Picasso had become an internationally known artist and celebrity.

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Bernini - The Power Of Art

Born in Naples, Bernini was an exceptional talent from an early age and went on to dominate the art world of 17th century Rome. His work epitomised the Baroque style and his sculpture, church interiors and exteriors and town planning could be seen everywhere. He was also a painter, playwright, costume and theatre designer. 
 



Bernini worked under successive Popes; Pope Gregory XV made him a knight and Pope Urban VIII took him as his best friend. He was revered in his time until a jealous rage caused him to have the face of his mistress slashed after discovering her romance with his brother. His reputation fell further after his bell towers for the Cathedral of St Peter's started cracking in 1641. He redeemed himself and kick started his career again with arguably his most famous work, The Ecstasy of St Theresa, in 1652. 

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Biography Of Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro de Mariano di Vanni Filipepi is best known by his nickname, Sandro Botticelli, and by his works, which only long after his death were considered to be some of the greatest of the Renaissance, particularly by groups such as the Pre-Raphaelites.

Botticelli's life, for the most part, was personified by success, the height of which saw him paint some of the wall frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli is most fondly remembered for his works The Birth of Venus, Primavera and Venus and Mars.
Despite a considerable amount of fame and recognition, Botticelli's working career is blighted by its conclusion, which was undermined by the new artistic movement of the High Renaissance.

 

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Michelangelo's David

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 -- 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.




Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.[1] A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.[1] His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.

To produce one of the world's great masterpieces is impressive. To create three is truly astonishing - but this is exactly what Michelangelo did five hundred years ago. With his own hands he designed and created the most famous sculpture in the world - the David; the most awe-inspiring painting - the ceiling of the Sistine chapel; and one of the world's greatest buildings - the dome of St Peter's, the jewel in the crown of the Roman skyline.
In the year that the David celebrates its 500th anniversary, BBC ONE brings to life the story of one of the most gifted, and tempestuous, artists in history. From a traumatic childhood, Michelangelo rose to the heady heights of artistic genius as sculptor, painter, architect and poet.
His work is on such a scale, of such awesome power and breathtaking beauty, that for centuries people couldn't believe it was created by a mortal. Michelangelo's extraordinary life spanned almost 90 years from 1475 to 1564. He was a complex character: at times bad-tempered and paranoid, at others generous and affectionate.
His passion for art, for beauty and for God was his driving force throughout his life.

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Biography Of Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch,12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

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Katsushika Hokusai Biography

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a well-known Japanese artist. Originally born Tokitarō to a prominent mirror-maker in the Katsushika district of Edo, Japan. Katsushika Hokusai is thought to have learned art from his father. He began painting around the age of 6, and by the time he was 12 he was sent to work in a library and bookshop where many of the middle and upper class would go to appreciate wood block art and read stories. At the age of 14, he was taken in as an apprentice to learn the art of wood carving. When he was 18, he was accepted into the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō to learn the art of wood block prints.

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The Life And Art Of Raphael

 
Raphael, like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, is one of the most famous artists of Italy's High Renaissance and one of the greatest influences in the history of Western art. Immensely talented, he first studied with his father and then as an assistant to the great master Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino. Raphael (also known as Raffaello Sanzio) worked in Florence (1504) and earned a reputation as a productive and much-admired painter before going to Rome sometime after 1508. In Rome he was commissioned by Pope Julius II to create the large-scale fresco The School of Athens, as well as other decorative work at the Vatican. Raphael also took over as architect of St. Peter's after the death of Donato Bramante (1514), contributed ten tapestries to the Sistine Chapel and painted some of the most prized and reproduced holy pictures of the era, including The Sistine Madonna and Transfiguration. His work is often cited for its harmony and balance of composition, and his early death (on his 37th birthday) is considered by many experts to be one of the great tragedies of art history.

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Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner is perhaps the best-loved English Romantic artist. He became known as 'the painter of light', because of his increasing interest in brilliant colours as the main constituent in his landscapes and seascapes. His works include water colours, oils and engravings.




Turner was born near Covent Garden in London and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1789. His earliest works form part of the 18th-century topographical tradition. He was soon inspired by 17th-century Dutch artists such as Willem van der Velde, and by the Italianate landscapes of Claude and Richard Wilson.

He exhibited watercolours at the Royal Academy from 1790, and oils from 1796. In 1840 he met the critic John Ruskin, who became the great champion of his work.
Turner became interested in contemporary technology, as can be seen from 'The Fighting Temeraire' and 'Rain, Steam and Speed'. At the time his free, expressive treatment of these subjects was criticised, but it is now widely appreciated.

Turner bequeathed much of his work to the nation. The great majority of the paintings are now at Tate Britain.

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The Master Of Light - Johannes Vermeer

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (Dutch: [joˈɦɑnəs jɑn vərˈmeːr]; 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.




Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours and sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for lapis lazuli and Indian yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. "Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."

Recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death; he was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries.[6][7] In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing sixty-six pictures to him, although only thirty-four paintings are universally attributed to him today.[2] Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

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History Of Modern Art

History of Modern Art is a visual comprehensive overview of the modern art field. It traces the trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.

 

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The Art and Life of Roy Lichtenstein

The life of the great Pop Art painter Roy Lichtenstein, illustrated with his most famous artworks.
 


In the newest of Abrams’ award-winning line of picture book biographies of artists, Susan Goldman Rubin evocatively explores Roy Lichtenstein’s work and life and his groundbreaking influence on the art world. In Roy’s long career as a teacher, artist, and innovator, he changed the way that people thought about art and how artists thought about their subjects, challenging people to see familiar sights with new eyes.

Classically trained in painting and drawing, Roy found inspiration from cartoons, newspaper comics, and children’s books—images most people didn’t consider “serious” art. He also chose to paint, in meticulous detail, the building blocks of painting—a single brushstroke or the back of a canvas—drawing attention to the way that artists use these tools. Roy and the other Pop Artists, including Andy Warhol, broke down the rules about what makes proper subjects for fine art. In over a thousand paintings and numerous other works, Roy brought familiar images into new light and captured the imagination of the world.

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Top 10 Expensive Paintings In The World

TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE PAINTINGS IN THE WORLD .

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Treasures of the World - Theft of the Mona Lisa & Guernica: Testimony of War (1999)

Theft of the Mona Lisa:

On August 21st, 1911, someone stole the most famous painting in the world from the Louvre. In the investigation that followed, police combed every inch of the famous museum, and some rather unusual suspects were called into question. But the mystery of the lady's disappearance would remain unsolved for two years. As the story unfolds, so does a greater appreciation of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.

Guernica: Testimony of War:

Pablo Picasso was reluctant to mix art and politics. But in 1937, atrocities perpetrated by Franco on the small Basque village of Guernica during Spain's civil war changed all that. Picasso's Guernica is one of this century's most unsettling indictments of war. Revealing photographs of the work in progress lend insight into Picasso's creative process and his struggle between artistic merit and political imagery, as circumstances transform the stark canvas into a flag of freedom and democracy.

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THE MONA LISA - LEONARDO DA VINCI

Documentary on the Da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. 

Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is one of the most famous and most celebrated works of all time. The mastery of the painting lies in its subtle detail, including the faint smile, and Mona Lisa's distinctive gaze. The work is said to have been commissioned by a gentleman named Francesco del Giocondo, who hired Leonardo to paint a portrait of his wife, and this is why The Mona Lisa is sometimes referred to as La Gioconda. While this is a theory on the origination of the painting, scholars have disagreed throughout the ages about how factual this story really is.

Mona LisaThe Mona Lisa, aside from being one of the most recognized works in the history of art, is also one of the most widely reproduced works ever. Of course there are numerous Da Vinci posters available, many of which are of The Mona Lisa, available in different hues and a variety of sizes, there are also many other reproductions of the work. For instance, Andy Warhol used the Mona Lisa in the creation of one of his prints, and Botero reproduced his own version of The Mona Lisa, a cartoon-like oil painting. In 1954, Salvador Dali created a self-portrait of himself as Mona Lisa.

The use of The Mona Lisa does not end there; The Mona Lisa has been the inspiration behind countless novelty items including clothing, jewelry, houseware, as well as having been used in many modern day advertisements. La Gioconda has even been reproduced topless, and the Da Vinci poster has been turned into a mockery with the Mona Lisa in possession of marijuana, and even sporting hair curlers or braces.

The list goes on and on, and it is probably safe to assume that the Da Vinci posters and the extraordinary painting will continuously be tampered with to create a new Mona Lisa time and time again.

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