Rembrandt's Life

Rembrandt is an extraordinary Dutch painter, etcher and draftsman of the 1600s. He is most well known for his chiaroscuro, his brush work and the way in which he connected with the human soul. His life, however, was not a happy one.

Rembrandt's full name is Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn. He was born on July 15, 1606 in Leiden, the Netherlands and was the son of a miller. His dad wanted him to have a real, learned profession but Rembrandt left the University of Leiden after becoming bored to study art. He began studying under a local teacher but soon left and studied in Amsterdam where he mastered all his lessons in only six months! Rembrandt was greatly influenced by Caravaggio.

At the age of only 22, Rembrandt moved back to Leiden and began to get his own students. One of his pupils was the famous artist Gerrit Dou. In 1631 he returned to Amsterdam where he became the most popular portrait painter in Holland. He received numerous commissions for portraits and paintings of religious matters. Rembrandt met Saskia van Uylenburgh and married her in 1634. She was a cousin of a very successful art dealer and she helped him to meet wealthy patrons who commissioned many paintings from him. He used her as a model in many of his paintings. Some of his works during this time were the Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts and The Blinding Samson.

During this time, Rembrandt's paintings are mostly focused on strong lighting effects. He also became famous for his landscapes and etchings. Rembrandt painted between fifty and sixty self portraits during his lifetime!

Rembrandt's private life, however, was very unfortunate. He had four children with Saskia but only one, Titus, survived infancy. Saskia died in 1642 at the age of only 30. In 1649, Hendrickje Stoffels, his housekeeper, became his common-law wife and was also a model for many of his paintings. Even though Rembrandt was very successful as an artist, art dealer and teacher, he enjoyed living very lavishly and had to declare bankruptcy in 1656. He even had to auction off his whole art collection and his house to pay for his debts.

His unfortunate life, however, didn't affect his art. He painted many great paintings during this time, such as The Jewish Bride, Bathsheba, The Syndics of the Cloth Guild, Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph and a self portrait. His new love, Hendrickje, died in 1663 and his son Titus died in 1668. Titus was only 27 years old. Eleven months after Titus died, on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt himself died in Amsterdam.

Rembrandt is a master of art. He did more than 600 paintings and over 2,000 etchings and drawings! The works contain numerous different kinds of subject matters such as landscapes, portraits, nudes, genre scenes, animals and birds, religious subjects, mythological figures and self portraits. Most artists specialize in only certain types of subject matters. Rembrandt has a special talent of showing the true character of people in his works. He also uses a very mysterious, beautiful light and very thick brushwork. He is one of the most well known artists of all time!

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Arts

Edouard Manet's Life

Edouard Manet was a revolutionary painter. His work changed art forever and inspired the impressionistic style of painting. His art is so inspirational that it even influences today's art!

Manet is a French painter that was born in Paris on January 23, 1832. He was the son of a government official. His uncle gave him his first drawing lessons. Manet studied at the Rollin College and met his lifelong best friend Antonin there. Manet's father wanted him to study law but he didn't want to so he went to sea instead. He was trained as a sea cadet but failed his naval examinations and switched to painting.

He first studied art in Paris under Thomas Couture, the French painter and soon after visited Italy, Germany and the Netherlands to study the art in these places. While traveling around, several artists greatly influenced him. These artists were the Dutch painter Frans Hals, the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, the French painter Courbet and the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez.

Manet started paining genre paintings, which are paintings that depict everyday life, such as street urchins and old beggars. He developed a very bold brush technique in which he painted realistic subject matter. All of his paintings are very realistic.

In 1861 he submitted The Spanish Singer to the Salon and won an honorable mention for it. However, in 1863 he submitted The Picnic to the Salon and it was rejected. This became a scandal and was an outrage to the public. The Salon wouldn't accept it because of the subject matter. In the painting, there was a woman at a picnic naked with two men.

Manet's painting, Olympia, created even more of an outrage. The public was furious with the style and subject matter of the painting. The painting depicted a naked prostitute waiting for her customer. Today, this is one of Manet's most famous paintings and is admired.

On October 28, 1863, Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff. She was a musician that had been hired by Manet's father to give Edouard and his brother piano lessons. Edouard and Suzanne had a ten year relationship before they were finally married in 1863. During their ten year relationship, Suzanne gave birth to a son, Leon Koella. The father is most certainly Manet, but Leon was presented to other people as Suzanne's younger brother. Manet painted Leon in several of his paintings, including Luncheon in the Studio.

Manet frequently was seen in the company of the Impressionist group and was considered by them to be their leader. However, he did not want to join the group and his work is not known as impressionistic. Impressionists use lighter colors and focus on the effects of light. They are mostly interested in showing their impressions of different scenes.

Manet was the first painter to abandon traditional lighting and treatment of space in his works. He wanted people to see the true reality of a painting which is that a painting is just a painting, a flat, two dimensional surface. It shouldn't be an illusion of something else.

Manet did not get recognition until much later in his life. After that, everyone wanted his paintings. In 1882 he submitted one of his best pictures to the Salon, The Bar at the Folies-Bergere. This painting allowed him to be accepted into the Legion of Honor. Manet died on April 30, 1883 in Paris after a long illness. He painted 420 oil paintings and many other pastels and watercolors.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Arts

Japanese Manga vs American Comics

What are the primary differences between Japanese Manga (Comics) and American Comics?

There is a big difference in art styles between Manga, which is more stylized (exaggerated) and American comics, which tend to be more "realistic". There are also quite a few serious differences between the two types of comics. Some of the differences, just to mention a few of them are the cost, creation, diverse audience and genres, presentation and even size.

The creation of Manga as well as its presentation is quite different than American Comics. Manga is printed in black-and-white format while American comics are the majority of the time in full color. Also, when you look at a graphic novel or Manga you will notice a difference in the size. Manga is frequently smaller than traditional American comic books, usually digest-size and roughly half to one-third the size of American comics. But where the American comics are generally thin like a small magazine, running about 32 pages, Manga comic books are thick and can be hundreds of pages in length!

In page count, Manga is quite similar to graphic novels, which are often just collections of the ongoing American comics. But unlike American graphic novels, which are usually just a collection of monthly comics in a single unified story or story arc, Manga books are often apart of an even bigger story and a complete Manga storyline can run thousands of pages.

Another difference between traditional American comics is that mainstream American comics are often created in a sort of assembly-line fashion. They have a writer (story), a penciler (initial sketch), inker (uses a pen to ink over the sketch), letterer (adds dialog) and a colorist (colors the inked sketch). Most Manga books are done by a single creator, who combines all those chores (except coloring).

Also Manga story lines usually move at a much quicker pace. Due to the high page count, one reads a Manga book at an accelerated pace. Manga books almost always have fewer panels and less dialogue (rambling) per page than American comic books. The price for Manga is also more than the average comic book and a bit more than a standard paperback novel, the small size of Manga and black-and-white printing rather than full color keeps the cost down. The lack color is made up when you consider the story development that it'll have with the amount of pages it has.

In Japan, Manga is not viewed as just for kids unlike the American stereotype. There pretty much is a Manga for everyone. With that being stated there are three main genres in Japanese Manga: Shonen Manga (boy's comics), Shojo Manga (girl's comics) and Hentai (adult comics).

Shonen Manga is pretty much comics that are primarily action and/or adventure geared. If you'd like to view some examples of that genre, I'd recommend "Bleach" and/or "Full Metal Alchemist". Shojo Manga is for the opposite sex; they are often about relationships and/or love interests. Please note that even though a particular genre is geared towards a certain audience it's not limited to just that audience (unless otherwise stated). Finally Hentai Manga, I won't delve much into this since it is primarily for adults and NOT suitable for children (just to be safe in case a child is reading this). Anyways, Hentai Manga is sometimes sexually explicit and/or adult-themed. In other words, do not purchase this for your child.

Next time someone asks you what the difference is between Manga and [American] comics, you can surprise them with your knowledge.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Fraud

The Art of Faking Art

It would seem that all art is not truth. Three fake Mona Lisas have been made and sold. The Tate Gallery in London discovered that their archives were tampered with and false documents inserted to "prove" fake works. Just recently, Italian police uncovered more than ten million dollar's worth of fake art sales. Even more disturbing was a former director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art declaring that almost half of the paintings sold on the market are forgeries or semi-forgeries. It seems that fake art has made its own supply and demand and art experts are raking handsome fees for "fakebusting" services.

Vermeer once remarked that as long as there is art, there would be forgeries. The ugly truth that collectors and museums must face is that copying and forging art are inseparable. Even Greeks and Romans produced reproductions so well that today, it is difficult to separate original Greco-Roman work from their copies. Although many people forge art for money and profit, some people also view art forgery as a twisted complement to the original artist.

There have been many famous forgers throughout history, but none as famous as Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, whose reproduction of Vermeer's Disciples at Emmaus fooled even senior art experts. He proceeded to reproduce and profit from his Vermeer copies to he tune of more than $5 million dollar and only went bankrupt because he confessed to making the forgeries later in his life.

Forging art nowadays has become a relatively easy endeavor, in part due to the evolving techniques of the forgers and in part due to the new technology they use to artificially "age" a painting. Forgers learn the original artist's style and match the color pigments he used on his canvasses. Then they create the work using the original artist's brush stroke patterns. Art forgery has even gone as far as inventing new artists with corresponding fake biographies to sell a whole line of artwork. Some art forgery circles have even adopted sophisticated fraud modus operandi that involved inserting professional-looking catalogues and documents into museum archives like the Tate, where ironically, experts go to authenticate art.

Fakebusters, on the other hand, rely on forensic science and police investigators to determine the authenticity of an art piece. They analyze fractions of fingerprints or palm prints that forgers leave on the painting surface, then scan the work with x-rays and UV light (black light) to determine the use of modern fluorescent paint. They analyze the composition of the paint used by the artist by using chromatography, after which a color "fingerprint" of the artist can clearly come through. The process is usually long and slow.

Despite the abundance of fakes on the art market, most buyers do not show any signs of slowing down. This persistent demand has even opened a niche for painters selling "legal" fakes. Customers who patronize these honestly forged paintings are the type who would want to spend a thousand dollars for a painting that looks like the original rather than spend millions on a piece that might turn out fake in future. Forging painters claim that there are many big-name collectors and celebrities who knowingly buy fakes now. What seems to be the most interesting is how well the whole system of fake art survived the crackdowns and how the art business has tolerated the massive amount of frauds that has infiltrated museums and private collections all over the world. A Christie's art specialist calls it "a very, very clever, even artful scheme".

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Fraud

Leonardo Da Vinci's Life

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most well known artists today. He was not only an artist though; he was also a scientist and an inventor. His Mona Lisa is probably the most recognized painting ever! Leonardo had a very interesting, busy life.

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy which is just outside of Florence. He was an illegitimate son of Ser Piero, a 25 year old notary and Caterina, a peasant girl. Shortly after Leonardo's birth, his father took custody of him. Caterina moved to a nearby town and married another man. Both Leonardo's mother and father continued having children, just not with each other. He ended up having seventeen half brothers and sisters.

While Leonardo was growing up, he was able to read many scholarly texts that his family and friends owned. The city of Vinci also had a very long painting tradition that he was exposed to. At the age of fifteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to Andrea del Verrochio in Florence. He painted many works of art during this period. One of his most popular works during this time was when he painted an angel in Verrochio's "Baptism of Christ". Leonardo's angel was so much better than Verrochio's works that Verrochio resolved to never paint again.

In 1477, Leonardo left the Verrochio workshop and got a place for himself. In 1482, he went into the service of the Duke of Milan. He even abandoned his first commission in Florence, "The Adoration of the Magi", to do this. Leonardo stayed in Milan for seventeen years. During this time he made many artistic and scientific achievements. The Duke had Leonardo paint and sculpt a lot but he also had him design buildings, weapons and machinery. In addition, Leonardo produced many studies on lots of topics, such as flying machines, nature, geometry, municipal construction, mechanics and architecture.

Leonardo was interested in so many different things that he often failed to finish what he started. Many of his paintings are left unfinished. During the seventeen years that he worked for the Duke, he actually only completed six works. Two of the most famous ones are "The Last Supper" and "The Virgin on the Rocks".

Starting in 1490, Leonardo began to write down his studies in illustrated notebooks. His work all falls into the category of four different themes: architecture, painting, human anatomy and the elements of mechanics. Today, these notebooks are very valuable. Bill Gates actually paid thirty million dollars for the Codex Leicester!

After 1499, the Duke fell from power and Leonardo no longer worked for him. Over the next sixteen years, he worked for many different people and traveled all throughout Italy. During this time, he painted the "Battle of Anghiari" and even designed a bridge in Constantinople.

In 1503, Leonardo started working on the very popular "Mona Lisa". From 1513 to 1516, he worked in Rome and did many projects for the Pope. In 1516, he was even offered the title of Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect of the King.

Even though Leonardo suffered from paralysis of his right hand, he could still draw and teach. He also still produced many studies of various topics. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519 in France. There is a legend that the king was at his side when he died and cradled his head in his arms.

Leonardo was an extraordinary Renaissance artist. He was a brilliant man who deserves the recognition he gets. It is amazing that he knew so much about so many different topics!

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Arts

Magic - Is There Such A Thing?

If you ask most people this question, you'll probably get an answer something like, "What, are you crazy?" or just a plain simple "No". And most people hearing either of these two answers would almost agree 100%. But does that mean there is no such thing as magic?

That kind of depends on what your definition of magic is. No, we're not going to play a game of double talk here. We're going to show a side of "magic" that most people don't regard as magic but as something else.

That side is referred to as metaphysical science. Of course there will be people who will insist that metaphysical science is nothing more than bunk in itself, but just as we have no proof that a living god either exists or doesn't exist, we really have no proof that metaphysical science has any validity or not.

For those who are not quite sure what metaphysical science is, it's the science of unknown things such as ghosts, UFOs, etc. In other words, just about anything that we don't have a definite answer for. Magic may or may not fall into the realm of metaphysical science depending on your personal beliefs. Certainly, a person who believes in the existence of ghosts and UFOs, has more of a chance in believing in magic than someone who only believes what he sees with his own two eyes.

For those of us who are totally grounded in reality, magic is a trick. For example, pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat is accomplished by showing the false bottom of the hat. The rabbit is underneath this false bottom. At least that's what most people think. Other people think the rabbit is actually slipped into the hat from the magician's sleeve or some loading device. The point is, there is some trick involved that is no more magic than shooting Superman on TV and having bullets bounce off of him. It's all trick photography. And yet, there are those of use who truly do believe in magic. We see tricks that are so amazing that we can't possibly imagine them being tricks. In our minds the only logical explanation for pulling off such feats is that real magic, in some form, must exist and each magician is tuned into a different element of the magical world. That explains why most magicians specialize in certain areas.

Certainly if you were a child and went to a magic store to buy some tricks, once you brought them home and practiced them, you could see very clearly that these were indeed tricks and that there was no magic involved. An example would be the magical linking rings where one ring has a slit in it and that's how the rings link. No magic, just a specially made ring.

But this fact doesn't mean that metaphysical science is bunk. It doesn't mean that ghosts or spirits don't exist. It doesn't mean that there aren't creatures from other planets. And it certainly doesn't mean that somewhere in this world there isn't one person who truly has magical powers.

Magic. Is there such a thing?

We may never know.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Magic