Mercedes Benz SLS AMG Black Series 2014, Alemanha

Mercedes Benz SLS AMG Black Series 2014, Alemanha

Fotografia

As one of just 132 examples built for the entire planet, this 2014 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series is one of the most exclusive cars ever to wear the three-pointed star, a claim amplified by the Fire Opal Red paint it shares with only four other examples worldwide. It is also one of the most complete. The first car developed from the ground up by Mercedes-AMG, the SLS GT became an instant classic by virtue of its flashy gullwing design and world-class performance worthy of the original 300SL that inspired it.
Nestled amidships in a brilliantly engineered spaceframe chassis, its naturally aspirated 6.2L V-8 engine and paddle-shifted 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission delivered a 197 MPH top speed, with ABS and driveline traction control always at the ready to counter the V-8’s power. The car’s incredible performance is balanced with such civilizing features as dual-zone automatic climate control, heated seats, COMAND voice activated navigation, an AM/FM stereo and SiriusXM satellite radio, Parktronic Parking assist, a rearview camera and blind spot assist. In totality the SLS AMG GT was the crown jewel of the Mercedes-Benz/AMG collaboration. Yet, the wizards at AMG had more to say on the matter, and the Black Series served as their ultimate statement. They shaved 154 pounds with increased use of carbon fiber and a titanium exhaust system, added downforce with a lower front splitter and optional rear wing, and raised output by 39 HP to 622 HP at a lofty 7,400 RPM.
Offered at just 2,326 miles, this one-of-five Fire Opal Red SLS AMG Black Series coupe also boasts the fully adjustable suspension, lightweight polished AMG forged aluminum wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires and huge carbon-ceramic disc brakes that fill out the Black Series specification. Trimmed in black Alcantara and leather with red accents, the cockpit focuses the driving experience with the AMG Performance steering wheel, snug-fitting heated bucket seats and tailored controls, inviting confidence at the upper limits that are its home turf. A battery tender, books, two key sets and a custom-fitted AMG car cover are also included.

 

Pessoas no Sol (People in the Sun) - Edward Hopper

 

Pessoas no Sol (People in the Sun) - Edward Hopper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, Estados Unidos
OST - 102x153 - 1960

In People in the Sun, five people sit on the terrace of a hotel gazing toward a line of distant mountains. Stark contrasts and cool light emphasize their static poses and deadpan expressions. The painting was initially inspired by sunbathers in Washington Square Park near the New York City apartment the artist shared with his wife, artist Josephine Nivison. The two toured the country together and spent most summers on Cape Cod. Hopper changed the locale here to a western setting, drawing on memories of tourist destinations he visited in the American West. The figures, crowded into the lower left quadrant, observe but remain apart from the natural setting. The abstracted environment veers between a real view and a movie set, as if Hopper were silently replaying a film about the discomfort of city dwellers confronting the vastness of the western landscape.
In Edward Hopper’s People in the Sun, five men and women sit on a terrace beneath a vast blue sky. Stark contrasts and cool light emphasize the eerie expressions, frozen poses, and formal attire of the visitors. Hopper distilled his memories of tourist destinations in the American West to create a scene that is strangely familiar but nowhere in particular. The precisely staggered deck chairs and bands of color indicating mountains, sky, and grass create an abstracted environment that veers between a real view and a stage set, as if Hopper were replaying a silent film of a family vacation. People in the Sun suggests a crowd of tourists who feel obliged to take in a famous scenic view, but do so with little pleasure. The canvas may reflect Hopper’s discomfort in the West, where he found himself unable to paint with his usual enthusiasm when confronted by the harsh light and monumental landscapes.

Manhã em Cape Cod, Estados Unidos (Cape Cod Morning) - Edward Hopper

 

Manhã em Cape Cod, Estados Unidos (Cape Cod Morning) - Edward Hopper

Cape Cod - Estados Unidos

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, Estados Unidos

OST - 86x102 - 1950

In Cape Cod Morning, a woman looks out a bay window, riveted by something beyond the pictorial space. She is framed by tall, dark shutters and the shaded façade of the oriel window. The brilliant sunlight on the side of the house contrasts with the blue sky, trees, and golden grass that fill the right half of the canvas. The painting tells no story; instead, the woman’s tense pose creates a sense of anxious anticipation, and the bifurcated image implies a dichotomy between her interior space and the world beyond.

O Mercado de Château-Thierry, França (Le Marché de Château-Thierry) - Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

 

O Mercado de Château-Thierry, França (Le Marché de Château-Thierry) - Léon-Augustin Lhermitte
Château-Thierry - França
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
OST - 53x67 - 1879


In 1888 Lhermitte made a series of illustrations for a book called La Vie Rustique, written by André Theuriet. In the introduction the author wrote: "We propose to trace the grand acts of the rustic drama: the soaring, the labour, the hay-making, the harvest, and the vintage; we wanted to describe the solitude of the farm, the business of the village life, the pleasures of Sunday, and the preoccupations of the weekdays [...]." In a few words this text indicates exactly the position of Léon Lhermitte in French art of the late 19th century. He did not belong to the vulgarised post-romantic movement of artists who supplied cliché images of rural life in Europe in an endless repetition of all too familiar themes. On the other hand, he was also not a member of the artistic avant-garde. He refused to be considered a naturaliste, a realist painter whose work could be associated with noisy revolutionaries such as Gustave Courbet.
In the year 1879 in which he painted The Market of Château-Thierry, Degas invited him to participate in the Impressionist show of that year, but Lhermitte refused. Vincent van Gogh wrote from The Hague to his brother Theo in Paris that he would love to see a Lhermitte. He said that Lhermitte's secret was nothing else but his profound knowledge of the human figure, but especially of the robust, severe workman type, and that he grasped his motives from the heart of the people. In another letter Van Gogh compared Lhermitte with Rembrandt because of his mastery and his excellent modelling. Lhermitte's works were exhibited at the Secession exhibitions in Munich with Liebermann and Von Uhde in Vienna; they were reproduced in outstanding magazines such as Ver Sacrum of which Joseph Hoffmann, Kolo Moser and Gustav Klimt were editors.
Lhermitte had a special predilection for market scenes; they occur frequently in his oeuvre. In 1876 he painted The Fish Market at Saint-Malo; in 1877 The Apple Market at Landerneau (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art), and in the same year The Market at Ploudalmézeau (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). In 1878 followed Fish Sellers at Saint-Malo (now in the Tweed Gallery, University of Minnesota, Duluth), and his most prestigious market scene was made for the new Hôtel de Ville in Paris, Les Halles (now in the dépôt d'Ivry of the Musée du Petit Palais). Around 1895, he also made drawings of the markets of Villeneauxe and Nuremberg. He repeated the theme of the market of Château-Thierry in some fusain drawings in which he showed the market square from different angles, sometimes even from a higher point of view. All these variations were made after the painting. His place was between Millet and The Hague School, between Jozef Israëls and Anton Mauve. In 1909 he participated in an exhibition in London, in the French Gallery together with Harpignies, Israëls and Jacob Maris. Edward Strange wrote on that occasion: "From the technical point of view, his great strength lies on his drawing-a matter of some importance in an age of paint."
Lhermitte gives a wonderful picture of every day life in the French countryside: a young lady supervises critically her purchase of vegetables in the company of her child, carried by a nurse and her cook, who carries a basket and a bucket for milk or cream. The cheese vendor on the right has some time to spare to chat with a woman selling cabbages; halfway through the square we discover another elegant lady with a parasol, and an old gentleman admiring a potted plant. He might well be the village notaire, or even the burgomaster. Lhermitte does not dazzle his audience with a bright virtuoso; he quietly observes his subject and he brings his keen observations together into a scene in which profound humanity prevails.

Flores do Povo (People's Flowers) - Richard Estes

 

Flores do Povo (People's Flowers) - Richard Estes
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
OST - 162x92 - 1971

Richard Estes describes himself as a realist painter although he is more often described as a Photorealist. In fact, he is regarded as one of the founders of the Photorealist movement which emerged in America in the late 1960s. His paintings, in reproduction at least, may remind us of photography, and Estes has always used the camera to collect and record information from which he can paint, but he has never been concerned with copying the appearance of a photograph. Unlike many Photorealists, Estes is not interested in making paintings which show how the camera records information. He avoids painting areas of photographic focus and blur. Photography enables him to capture a moment in all its complexities and has resulted in a remarkably intricate representation of refracted light. However, because a photograph is limited by mechanics of exposure, focus and a single fixed lens, Estes compensates by painting from an assemblage of many photographs. Taken by himself, on location, what Estes' paintings share with photography is an authenticity. As with photography, we regard Estes' paintings to be a truthful representation of reality. But, on examination, it is clear that the means by which Estes represents the world is very different from photography. Estes, for example, introduces directional mark making to reveal form, in contrast to the homogenous flatness of the photograph, and makes substantial alterations to the construction of illusionistic space. The truth in an Estes painting is very different from that of the truth of a photograph. Ultimately, it is authentic not to the reality of our world, but the world created by the individual painter. As a realist, Estes utilises the particularities of the world around him to extend and develop his own artistic vision, and in so doing, orientates himself within a long tradition of painters such as Vermeer, Bellotto, Eakins, Hopper and Sheeler, all of whom he admires.
People's Flowers is early, pivotal, well known and one of Richard Estes' very best and most important paintings. The clarity, colour, subject matter and composition indicate a totally mature and fully developed Estes, leader of the Photorealist Movement at a point in time when all but a few of the other artists were still struggling to perfect their visions and styles.
First, it is interesting to note that there are only five major Estes paintings with a vertical format (over four feet, or 125 cm, high). This was not a favoured format for the artist. However, the composition is innovative and flawlessly conceived. The concentric rectangles of the buildings and window frame bring the eye to the central focus point, the neon sign People' s Flowers. The line of trucks and the outdoor plants point to the sign as well. The sky in the reflection on the window also does the same thing. The descending width of the mirrored sign and the awning sign also bring the eye to the centre of the painting. The clarity of the reflection and the contrast of the primary-coloured red brick above the secondary-coloured green below are striking visual effects. Artists try forever to create this kind of eye-arresting imagery. It is the domain of the Photorealist, however, to discover and recognise this vision in the world around him, and then to capture it with the camera and recreate it with brush and paint.
You who view this painting can and will begin to realise how to "look" and "see" and will be aware of the world you exist in in a new way.

Viaduto Santa Ifigênia, 2021, São Paulo, Brasil

 

Viaduto Santa Ifigênia, 2021, São Paulo, Brasil 
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia

Nota do blog: Canta Raul Seixas!

Cena de Praia (Beach Scene) - Edward Henry Potthast

 

Cena de Praia (Beach Scene) - Edward Henry Potthast
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
Óleo sobre painel - 30x40 - Circa 1915


By 1915 Potthast began to portray the ocean beaches adjacent to New York City, a subject with which he is closely identified. His paintings, which are undated, bear titles of Coney Island, Manhattan, Brighton, Rockaway, and even Long Beach which indicates the extent of Potthast's excursions along the Long Island shore. While recent writers have linked Potthast's beach scenes with the painters surrounding Robert Henri, including William Glackens and Maurice Prendergast, his closest affinity is with the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla who painted brilliant colour-saturated scenes of the Valencian coast. He was certainly aware of, and probably attended, the sensational exhibition of Sorolla's work held at the Hispanic Society in New York City from February until March 1909. Of the over 350 paintings exhibited, almost half were light-filled canvases of the shore. More than one hundred and fifty thousand people visited the exhibition, often standing for long lines in the cold, and twenty thousand catalogues were sold. In 1918 an American critic tried to minimise the influence of the Spanish artist on Potthast, yet only succeeded in stressing their similarities, when he wrote that Potthast's "beach scenes, which have brought him deserved reputation, have the same colour and light and movement of life and air that made Sorolla famous, and while they are reminiscent in subject, and now and then in treatment of the great Spaniard, they are none the less spontaneous and individual."
Potthast's ocean-side scenes portray the middle and lower-middle classes, native-born Americans and the more recent immigrant arrivals, who shared in the ocean shore a common ground of pleasure. The sand and surf of the coast, as well as the newly created parks within New York City, allowed a release from the pressures of urban stress. By 1900 several hundred thousand visitors journeyed to Coney Island on Sunday afternoon. Potthast's paintings portray mostly woman and children for whom the steamer, railroad, electric trolley car, and finally the subway, made the beach more accessible. The man of the family, working five and a half or six days a week, seldom appears in Potthast's canvases, which were more likely painted during the less crowded weekdays which allowed the artist at least a modicum of privacy.
Although he often painted figures bathing in the sea, Potthast's earlier seaside paintings frequently show the indolent leisure of figures along the shore. "The opportunity to bathe in the Old Ocean is not the only attraction of the beach" noted a 1906 description of Coney Island, "Great crowds find rest and recreation in sitting on the sands and enjoying the cool breezes, as they gaze across the sea at passing vessels." In Beach Scene the anonymous faces are rendered with broad brushstrokes-Potthast's extraordinary manipulation of paint, it has been eloquently observed, creates "passages of liquid transparency and crusty light-charged impasto underlying a style which is essentially devoid of formula and rich in effects of crisp and telling immediacy." The gestures of the figures reveal an intimate observation of the social activities of the shores. A child with his bucket is digging in the sand, figures are playing cards, a young bather is drying her hair, groups of people are conversing, while in the distance is seen a balloon vendor, a favourite subject for Potthast. As a contemporary reviewer noted, "There are few clouds on Potthast's horizon and when they do move over his azure skies, they are creamy white or rose color. He is a painter of the 'joy of life, ' of 'summer and sun, ' and his art is distinctly inspiring."

Árvore Morta e Lado da Casa Lombard, Truro, Estados Unidos (Dead Tree and Side of Lombard House) - Edward Hopper

 

Árvore Morta e Lado da Casa Lombard, Truro, Estados Unidos (Dead Tree and Side of Lombard House) - Edward Hopper
Truro - Estados Unidos
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
Aquarela sobre papel - 50x71 - 1931

From 1930 onwards, when Hopper and his wife Jo began to spend their summers in South Truro, a village in Cape Cod, the local houses, lighthouses and luminous landscapes became a recurring theme in the artist’s paintings and watercolours. Dead Tree and Side of Lombard House, one of the multiple watercolours Hopper produced during his second summer there, shows a characteristic house in the area. It is the home of his friend Frank Lombard, which is also featured in a watercolour executed that summer from a different perspective. In the work in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza it is portrayed from the side in the shade, and the formalist treatment of the yellowish sandy earth and the geometry of the construction give the scene a certain abstract air. In his “Notes on Painting, ” the artist spoke of “the simplifications that I have attempted” in connection with works such as the present painting.
What makes this watercolour original and sets it apart from others on similar themes is the dead tree to the left of the building. Silhouetted against the luminous sky, its dark, twisted branches contrast with the straight, white mast in the centre of the composition. This image, unusual in the height of summer, infuses the atmosphere with an air of desolation and evidences Hopper’s skill at producing a work that is strange in appearance and content to illustrate such a simple, everyday theme. The presence of dead trees in earlier and later watercolours has generally been interpreted as a sign of the painter’s existential pessimism. Whatever the case, its skeleton adds a melancholy note to the solitary house and the silence of the place, a silence that can almost be heard when viewing this work.

Quarto de Hotel (Hotel Room) - Edward Hopper

 

Quarto de Hotel (Hotel Room) - Edward Hopper
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
OST - 152x165 - 1931


The loneliness of the modern city is a central theme in Hopper’s work. In this painting, a woman sits on the edge of a bed in an anonymous hotel room. It is night and she is tired. She has taken off her hat, dress and shoes, and—too exhausted to unpack—she is checking the time of her train the next day. The space is confined by the wall in the foreground and the chest of drawers on the right; while the long diagonal line of the bed directs our gaze to the background, where an open window turns the viewer into a voyeur on what is happening in the room. The female figure, sunk in her own thoughts, contrasts with the coldness of the room, whose sharp lines and bright, flat colours are heightened by strong artificial lighting from above.
Hotel Room is an evocative metaphor of solitude, one of Hopper’s favourite subjects. It is the first in a long series of oil paintings set in different hotels, undoubtedly inspired by the artist’s fascination with travelling. It was executed a year after Sunday Morning, another tribute to the alienation of modern man, which is hailed as Hopper’s first masterpiece and was the first of his paintings to be acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Following his first taste of success, Hopper tried his hand at using a large canvas in Hotel Room. The painting shows a semi-naked young woman inside a simple room in a modest hotel on a balmy night. Josephine Nivison, Jo, the artist’s wife from 1924, wrote in her diary that she posed for this painting in the Washington Square studio and also gave a description of the composition in the artist’s notebook alongside a sketch made by him. Perhaps she has just arrived and, before unpacking, has taken off her hat, dress and shoes and sits languidly on the edge of the bed, engrossed in her own thoughts with the introspection characteristic of Hopper’s female figures. She reads a yellowed paper, which we know from Jo’s exhaustive notes to be a train timetable.
The tranquil, melancholic appearance of the figure, which is rendered on a monumental scale, contrasts with the coldness of the stark, simple, depersonalised room. The space is constructed from a few vertical and horizontal lines, which delimit large planes of unitary colour that are interrupted by the marked diagonal of the bed. It is illuminated by an artificial source that is not seen but creates a powerful contrast of light and shadow, which Hopper accentuates in order to heighten the dramatic force of the scene.
The angle from which the figure is portrayed, causing her feet to fall outside the picture plane, and the upward perspective, recall certain compositions by Degas. By using a powerful diagonal, Hopper immediately directs our gaze from the girl to the background, where a half-open window, which provides the vanishing point of the composition, reveals the pitch blackness of the night. Gail Levin, the author of the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s oeuvre, points out that this image is borrowed directly from an illustration by Jean-Louis Forain in the magazine Les Maîtres Humoristes, which Hopper had brought back from Paris. In Forain’s drawing a woman in her underclothes, seated on the edge of a bed — also positioned diagonally — stares at her lover’s shoes.
As generally occurs when contemplating the works of this American painter, the painting incites the viewer to imagine the underlying story, to guess what comes before and after the instant immortalised in his painting. On account of these narrative connotations, the work could easily be a pictorial transcription of a story narrated by Hopper’s literary contemporaries (such as Hemingway, Dos Passos, e. e. cummings or Robert Frost), who told of people’s private lives using a plain and simple language without details and incidents. Similarly, the solitude of empty interiors with open windows, alluding to feelings of frustration, was common in romantic literature, of which Hopper was particularly fond. There are also precedents in the depictions of indoor settings in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, particularly the work of Vermeer of Delft, another artist who inevitably springs to mind when we view Hopper’s paintings. The open window furthermore causes an effect of inversion, whereby Hopper brings the viewer into his work, transforming him into a voyeur.

Garota na Máquina de Costura (Girl at Sewing Machine) - Edward Hopper

 

Garota na Máquina de Costura (Girl at Sewing Machine) - Edward Hopper
Museu Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madri, Espanha
OST - 48x46 - Circa 1921


Edward Hopper was among the painters who made the biggest contribution to the establishment of realism in America. However, it should be stressed that it was a realism that bore his own, personal stamp. Although Hopper aimed to achieve great objectivity, the emotive quality and powerful simplicity of his images also convey a critical attitude. Lloyd Goodrich summed up the stance of the painter as follows: “instead of subjectivity, a new kind of objectivity; instead of abstraction, a purely representational art; instead of international influences, an art based on American life.”
After working as a magazine illustrator for several years and travelling to Paris on various occasions, by the time he painted Girl at a Sewing Machine in 1921, Hopper had fully consolidated his style. In the centre of an urban domestic interior, a young woman with long hair that practically conceals her face is absorbed in working on a sewing machine by a window. The composition recalls similar indoor settings painted by seventeenth-century artists of the Dutch school, and also certain paintings by John Sloan, such as The Cot, which Hopper could have seen in the exhibition of The Eight in 1907. The present painting also bears a certain resemblance to the artist’s later works, especially the etching East Side Interior, executed in 1922.
As in most of Hopper’s indoor scenes, light is the salient feature of the painting. In this case the action takes place on a clear, sunny day and the rays powerfully penetrate the interior, projecting a reflection on the flesh coloured far wall, which helps create a geometrical effect that is heightened by the quadrangular shapes of the window frame. The light also causes the figure of the young woman in white to glisten in the dark interior. What might otherwise be a simple everyday scene is thus given a new dimension, and the solitary woman engrossed in her work becomes an embodiment of the alienation of the human being.