Video Review

The Drawings of Michelangelo
I chose this video because Michelangelo was such an astonishing artist and I was curious to learn more about him. This video discussed the works of Michelangelo throughout his lifetime. His early commissioned statue, David, suggests his appreciation for classical sculpture. This was the first marble statue created since antiquity. Michelangelo began to master the creation of the twisted torso which is dominate in many of his works. Many of his personal drawings were discovered that he would not have wanted anyone to view, also demonstrated the idea of the twisted torso. Michelangelo had a love and passion for the male nude body and used the body to express unexplainable feelings and spirituality. In the most famous scene in his work in the Sistine Chapel, where God gives the spark of life to Adam, the body pose holds such theological meaning. The hands just barley touch and the bodies are done with such perfection as God and the first man of his creation. Later in his life, Michelangelo starts to face his own mortality and his conflicting feelings with his love for men and his Christian faith begin to take hold in his artwork. He finds a new way to represent the body. In his resurrection of Christ, he depicts Christ as having a broken body, such as one would expect after death. This is quite a transformation from his original perfection of the body. This is his "statement of what the male body can say of the human condition."
This adds a lot of depth to my understanding of Michelangelo from what I learned in the book. It helps me to understand the theological implications in his work and his passion of perfection. While the text does discuss a lot about Michelangelo, the video gives a better insight to his motivation, inspiration and commitment. The video was very interesting, providing many of his personal drawings and relationships that fueled his work.

Albrecht Durer: Image of a Master
I chose this video because I have never previously known about this artist before reading about him in the text. It seems he was very talented for his time. A drawing from when he was only 13 is shown, a portrait as many of his early works were. He was noted for enjoying drawing hands and his careful attention to the detail of aging in many of his portraits. Some of his works were about self inquiry, and he regarded himself highly as he used his own face in the creation of perfection. He was very inspired by Italian art, Venician to be exact. He was famous there for his work and was commission to make things as well. He eventually returned to Germany and set up a print shop, creating a series of woodcuts. Many of them were themes of punishment and destruction. The themes also tied into prevalent political and religious issues of his time and earlier in history. His keen portrayal of visual expression is what mounted his success. He shifted his work from wood prints to engraving on copper to better create shading difference of lightness and dark.
This video is very informative on the life of Durer and really explains how he became successful as an artist in this time period. It gives insight to his passion for Italian art and its footprint on his life. The information about his printmaking that was not explained in this chapter of the text gives understanding to the evolution of his work.

Velazquez
 This man was a painter who spent his life painting for King Philip IV. He painted the king with the eloquence in which he saw him. The king allowed him to live a life completely dedicated to art, and therefore he got to explore it totally and completely immerse himself. He did portraits of many people in the court and received his inspiration from artists before his time. He is viewed as an idealist, and creates his work using his 'mind's eye' to embody the sensation of the subject. Velazquez believed that the purpose of painting was not to recreate nature, but to guide the viewers' eye to see what the artist envisioned. He took a great interest in painting court jesters and capturing their humanity in a sympathetic manner. He found the beauty in these people that were looked at as freaks. It is said that all of his paintings not only capture the subject he is painting, but are also a reflection of himself. Velazquez did not use much color at all, rather his paintings were almost colorless. The few religious paintings that he did were done by commission. envisioned. I chose this video because I found it interesting to learn the life of an artist who spent a lifetime capturing the life of royalty and documenting such a prevalent part of society at the time. The book does not go into nearly as much detail about the artist's life as the video does. It does not speak of his inspiration, his life dedication, or the idealist perception. The movie also describes his talent in capturing court jesters in a loving way, casting a more human glance on the artist. This video is very insightful on the life of a true artist, one who actually lives to paint. It is interesting to learn of someone who has no other obligations other than artwork.


The Power of Art: Caravaggio
This artist is one that is purely eccentric and thuggish in his psycho violent ways. His life of violence and sin is reflected in his artwork. He is deemed the best artist to have lived up to his death due to the pure drama captured in his artwork. He is particularly skilled at taking a sacred event and creating sin within the scene. His invention of the use of lightness and dark up plays the drama in his work. Caravaggio not only left an impression in his artwork of violence, but in his life. His life was crime ridden, and eventually led to him as a fugitive on the run wanted for murder. He is pardoned long after, strongly due to his exceptional ability in art, but does not live to enjoy his freedom. One of his most famous and inspiring works was his commission to paint two scenes of the life of Saint Matthew in a church in Rome. These pieces captured to raw emotion and chaos different from any other rendering. The book does not describe the magnitude of this artist's extreme anguish in life which is what fueled his creativity and led to some of the most remarkable paintings of the time. This drama of this painter's life is really captured in this film which is why I continued to watch it. It was an interesting point of view how the artist's mind worked, due to his background, making his paintings so invoking.