Manet

It's in some ways strange that the art style most commonly associated with Edouard Manet is impressionism; his pieces in no way highlight the color and transience that is so representative of that genre. At a time of hyper-realism, Manet broke free of traditional restraints and worked in flat colors, depicting unpopular and controversial subjects.
Compare his works to that of Monet, for instance. In many ways the forerunner of Impressionism, Monet lays claim to some of the most iconic images of the period. Many of them are displays of color, vibrant and beautifully executed. This man and many other painters of the period took their inspiration from the bold works of Edouard Manet that so defied convention.
However, while the Impressionists ultimately fell into their own new school of artistic interpretation, Manet remains in a category of his own.

Morris Louis

If you haven't seen Morris Louis's art in person, it's hard to comprehend just how vibrant and emotive his paintings can be. If anyone can be said to have mastered the art of color, it's Morris Louis. It isn't simply that he uses brilliant hues. The way that Louis lays one tone against another has a poetry that cannot fully be understood.

Peter Mallo

Peter Mallo is a contemporary abstract artist whose works cover a broad variety of media. As you can see from the above photos, each piece has a character of its own and though it may be difficult to determine any direct message, these works have a strong emotional impact on the viewer. Mallo's sculptural works can reach a large scale, with one series depicting what appeared to be many skeleton-like ships made of various materials.
I was unable to get any direct images of these ships except for on Mallo's homepage, which I'll link here for those of you who'd like to see further pieces.
There is an undeniably intimacy in each of these pieces, not only for the viewer but the apparent craft and time it must have taken to make each of these.

http://www.petermallo.com/index.html

Eadweard Muybridge

I never cease to be fascinated with early photography and the cultural concepts entailed therein. The time and effort required to take a single photograph in the 1800's as opposed to in our time had a clear impact on subject matter and composition. While in the modern era, anyone can take hundreds of photos of his or her cat behaving in an amusing way, the implications of a photo more than a century ago were far graver.
Enter Eadweard Muybridge. It is difficult to determine whether he was a photographer or a cinematographer. Muybridge's photos show sequences of action, which, when chained together show brief scenes, such as the galloping buffalo above. Muybridge's photos were revolutionary, and influenced such artists as Thomas Eakins and was the predicate for the development of the modern video camera. Below is an example of Eakins' photography that shows a strong correlation to Muybridge's experiments. However, while Muybridge used multiple cameras, Eakins accomplished this particular work with multiple exposures on a single negative.

Michelangelo's Pieta: A Comparison

Michelangelo's Pieta is probably one of the most iconic art figures of its era and for this reason it may seem an odd choice for the inception of this particular blog. I have several reasons, however, to justify the admittedly dubious decision, that can be summarized in two words: context and technique.
Like the Nativity and the Annunciation, the scene of Mary holding the corpse of her son in grief is an image frequently visited in Christian art. I can only imagine that for a Christian, the image is one of profound emotional impact regardless of the artist or composition. The artist's own profound sadness is often evident in these works as well. Compare, for example, the Rottgen Pieta to Michelangelo's Pieta.



The images are most certainly dissimilar in that Michelangelo's technique is by far more technically proficient, but both present the viewer with a compelling sense of the artist's pathos for the subject. While the Rottgen Pieta is crudely carved and of a much smaller scale, the carved face of Mary shows an agony that is immediately apparent to its audience.
Emotional implications aside, the technique of this particular work is mind-numbing. The two figures are so realistic as to appear as though the Virgin and Christ of the Christian myth have been caught for a moment in time and turned to stone. The folds of Mary's clothing are captured in astonishing detail and accuracy.
It seems apparent, upon examination, why Michelangelo's Pieta is known to nearly every schoolchild in the Western World.