Monday's painting class became a field trip to Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum (it's only five mins from where I live! :D) It is probably the most informative museum visit I have ever had. And the best part was that Karl got us in for free.
We started outside with Rodin's most famous piece Les Bourgeois de Calais. I never knew how animated this piece of artwork is until now. Moving on into the museum, we covered 14th - 17th century art, 18th - 19th century, and then finally to modern art. It was interested how some of the pieces in the modern art section were created by Karl's friends.
Take home: Every famous artist from Degas to Picasso, from Mondrian to Sargent, all went through lots of pain, either that or they were kicked out from convention to break out from what everyone else was doing. They took the risk. But before all of that happened, ALL of them understood the classical and traditional way of doing things... yes, even Mondrian. If you don't understand what's traditional, what are you going to break away from? Here's an example: We're all familiar with Picasso's style. But if we go way back, we'll see that he came from a traditional art background. Here is an image of his work when he was a student at 15 years old. Enough said.
