Technique: Pencil on paper
Showing posts with label Mikhail Vrubel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mikhail Vrubel. Show all posts
12/26/15
Mikhail Vrubel, Salieri pours poison into a Mozart's glass (Сальери всыпает яд в бокал Моцарта)
Technique: Pencil on paper
3/29/13
Mikhail Vrubel, The Swan Princess
Date: 1900
Technique: Oil on canvas, 142 x 83 cm
1/15/13
Mikhail Vrubel, Demon and Angel with Tamara's Soul (Демон и ангел с душой Тамары)
Date: 1891
Technique: Watercolour on paper
5/31/11
Mikhail Vrubel, The Demon and Tamara
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Date: 1890-91
Technique: Watercolor and whitening on paper, 66.5 x 50 cm
Inspired by Lermontov's poem "The Demon," Vrubel's Demon series was his crowning achievement.
Lermontov's epic poem opens with The Demon, a fallen angel, flying among the clouds of the Caucasus sky. Soon the condemned Demon sees the beautiful princess Tamara, and, in an attempt to avoid his lonely fate, decides to seduce her. Upon finding out that she is engaged to be married, The Demon becomes torn between his love for Tamara and his own destructive nature. In a desperate but deliberate following of his heart, he wishes death upon the young man and pursues a mourning Tamara into the walls of a convent. At last, she consents to the Demon's love and in an passionate embrace, perishes in his arms. In the end, the lonely and desolate Demon tearfully watches an angel carry Tamara's soul to heaven, leaving the Demon in the lonely state from where he began.
Vrubel chose to emphasize the spiritual love and unavailing circumstances that surround Tamara demise, rather than the Demon's evil nature. In "The Demon and Tamara," the androgynous Demon and tearful Tamara embrace each other in a less sexual and more spiritual manner. The outward beauty of Vrubel's characters seems to overcome the terrible predestined fate that is about to follow. The human and heavenly nature of their love is portrayed in the lover's emotional glances and the shining stars above.
Source 1
Source 2
3/31/11
2/26/11
Mikhail Vrubel, Flying Demon
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Date: 1899
Technique: Oil on canvas,158 x 430.5 cm
The Demon is a central theme of Vrubel's work. The artist returned it throughout his career, embodying the image in painting, drawing and sculpture. The image of the Demon first entered the artist's mind during the Kiev period, when he was sketching murals for the Vladimir Cathedral (1884-1889). As he pondered the challenges of monumental painting, Vrubel studied Byzantine mosaics and frescoes. In a time of a deep crisis in faith and religious searching, thinking about the spiritual ideal, the artist did not find it in the image of Christ, although he did make some attempts. The era of Art Nouveau and Symbolism made beauty an absolute, a higher truth. Vrubel created the image of the "Light" Demon, attempting to deviate from the Christian interpretation of his hero as the personification of darkness, but he did not accept old traditions or contemporary interpretations of European Symbolism. He said: "The Demon is misunderstood; he is confused with the devil… But Demon is Greek for ‘Soul." Having passed a complex path of rethinking literary prototypes (Hamlet and Ophelia, 1884, State Russian Museum; Hamlet and Ophelia, 1888, State Tretyakov Gallery; polyptych on the theme of Goethe's Faust, 1896, State Tretyakov Gallery; Head of the Demon, State Tretyakov Gallery) the artist departed from them.
2/25/11
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