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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir and artworks

  Natalia Brodskaya

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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841. In 1854, the boy’s parents took him from school and found a place for him in the Lévy brothers’ workshop, where he was to learn to paint porcelain. Renoir’s younger brother Edmond had this to say this about the move: “From what he drew in charcoal on the walls, they concluded that he had the ability for an artist’s profession. That was how our parents came to put him to learn the trade of porcelain painter.” One of the Lévys’ workers, Emile Laporte, painted in oils in his spare time. He suggested Renoir makes use of his canvases and paints. This offer resulted in the appearance of the first painting by the future impressionist. In 1862 Renoir passed the examinations and entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and, simultaneously, one of the independent studios, where instruction was given by Charles Gleyre, a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The second, perhaps even the first, great event of this period in Renoir’s life was his meeting, in Gleyre’s studio, with those who were to become his best friends for the rest of his days and who shared his ideas about art. Much later, when he was already a mature artist, Renoir had the opportunity to see works by Rembrandt in Holland, Velázquez, Goya and El Greco in Spain, and Raphael in Italy. However, Renoir lived and breathed ideas of a new kind of art. He always found his inspirations in the Louvre. “For me, in the Gleyre era, the Louvre was Delacroix,” he confessed to Jean. For Renoir, the First Impressionist Exhibition was the moment his vision of art and the artist was affirmed. This period in Renoir’s life was marked by one further significant event. In 1873 he moved to Montmartre, to the house at 35 Rue Saint-Georges, where he lived until 1884. Renoir remained loyal to Montmartre for the rest of his life. Here he found his “plein-air” subjects, his models and even his family. It was in the 1870s that Renoir acquired the friends who would stay with him for the remainder of his days. One of them was the art-dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who began to buy his paintings in 1872. In summer, Renoir continued to paint a great deal outdoors together with Monet. He would travel out to Argenteuil, where Monet rented a house for his family. Edouard Manet sometimes worked with them too. In 1877, at the Third Impressionist Exhibition, Renoir presented a panorama of over twenty paintings. They included landscapes created in Paris, on the Seine, outside the city and in Claude Monet’s garden; studies of women’s heads and bouquets of flowers; portraits of Sisley, the actress Jeanne Samary, the writer Alphonse Daudet and the politician Spuller; and also The Swing and The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette. Finally, in the 1880s Renoir hit a “winning streak”. He was commissioned by rich financiers, the owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre and Senator Goujon. His paintings were exhibited in London and Brussels, as well as at the Seventh International Exhibition held at Georges Petit’s in Paris in 1886. In a letter to Durand-Ruel, then in New York, Renoir wrote: “The Petit exhibition has opened and is not doing badly, so they say. After all, it’s so hard to judge about yourself. I think I have managed to take a step forward towards public respect. A small step, but even that is something.”

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  Boats on the Marne - Jean...

  Prakash Younger

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  Boats on the Marne offers an original interpretation of Jean Renoir's celebrated films of the 1930s, treating them as a coherent narrative of philosophical response to the social and political crises of the times. Grounded in a reinterpretation of the foundational film-philosopher André Bazin, and drawing on work from a range of disciplines (film studies, art history, comparative literature, political and cultural history), the book's coordinated consideration of Renoir's films, writings, and interviews demonstrates his obsession with the concept of romanticism. Renoir saw romanticism to be a defining feature of modernity, a hydra-headed malady which intimately shapes our personal lives, culture, and politics, blinding us and locking us into agonistic relationships and conflict. While mapping the popular manifestations of romanticism that Renoir engaged with at the time, this study restores the philosophic weight of his critique by tracing the phenomenon back to its roots in the work and influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who first articulated conceptions of human desire, identity, community, and history that remain pervasive today. Prakash Younger argues that Renoir's films of the 1930s articulate a multi-stranded narrative through which the director thinks about various aspects of romanticism and explores the liberating possibilities of an alternative paradigm illuminated by the thought of Plato, Montaigne, and the early Enlightenment. When placed in the context of the long and complex dialogue Renoir had with his audience over the course of the decade, masterpieces such as La Grande Illusion and La Règle du Jeu reveal his profound engagement with issues of political philosophy that are still very much with us today.

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  Whatever It Takes - Life Lessons...

  Stephen Stohn, Christopher Ward

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  This book will change the way you think about success.
  		 
  Producer of television’s iconic Degrassi franchise Stephen Stohn tells stories from behind the scenes and of making it in the music and television world in this star-studded, rock ’n’ roll trip through a Canadian show business explosion. Stohn, who has been at the heart of the entertainment industry for over forty years, shares a lifetime of experience and unique insights into how dreams are turned into reality.
  		 
  “Whatever It Takes” — both a mantra and Degrassi’s theme song — has been heard millions of times all over the world. It embodies a philosophy of struggle and self-belief leading to accomplishment, as well as the story of an exploring mind, an adventurous pursuit of experience, ringing failures, and the willingness to see things in a different way.

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  The Philosophy of Michael Mann

  Aeon J. Skoble, R. Barton...

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  A collection of essays exploring the philosophical themes and aesthetic vision behind blockbuster film including The Insider, Public Enemies,and more. 
   
  Known for his finely crafted crime thrillers, American filmmaker Michael Mann has long been regarded as a talented triple threat capable of moving effortlessly between television and feature films as a writer, director, and executive producer. His unique visual sense and thematic approach are evident in the Emmy Award-winning The Jericho Mile, the cult favorite The Keep, the American epic The Last of the Mohicans, and the Academy Award-nominated The Insider, as well as more recent works such as Ali, Miami Vice, and Public Enemies. 
   
  The Philosophy of Michael Mann provides a comprehensive account of the work of this highly accomplished filmmaker, exploring the director's recognizable visual style and the various on-screen and philosophical elements he has tested in his thirty-five-year career. The essays in this wide-ranging book will appeal to fans of the revolutionary filmmaker and to philosophical scholars interested in the themes and conflicts that drive his movies.

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  My Favorite Husband: Is There...

  Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Pugh,...

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  George's new secretary has a crush on him, and Liz's old love letters aren't of much help.

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  Passion for Compasses - Medieval...

  Klug Sonja Ulrike

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  How medieval architects drew cathedral building plans
  The architectural history of the Middle Ages is full of surprises. It is difficult for us to imagine today that relatively few construction plans have been found for the impressive churches and cathedrals of the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Where did most of the drawings go? Have the plans been destroyed in Europe or lost over time? Or were they not made at all? 
  Although hardly any architectural drawings exist, there were numerous compasses. What were they used for and how? Was it possible to design complex buildings such as churches and cathedrals without blueprints? 
  The author takes her readers on an exciting cultural and historical journey through time. 
  She looks at the spread of papyrus, parchment and paper and traces the ability to write and calculate in Europe. She also looks at the construction process in historical illustrations and draws comparisons with Arabic architecture. Last but not least, she shows what types of compasses existed and how the drawing skills of master builders developed up to the Renaissance. 
  The insights into the history of architecture lead to surprising findings: The architects of the Middle Ages thought and planned very differently than we imagine today.

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