Cafe Terrace at Night
Painted by Vincent Van Gogh, this painting shows an everyday setting in bright colors. A simple dinner at a cafe along a street is well-depicted in this simple painting.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
This painting by Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel shows man’ s indifference to the suffering of his fellowmen. It is a powerful theme shown in a rather simple way with Icarus, the Greek character suffering under water and people going on with their work.
School of Athens
Jackson Pollock – One: Number 31, 1950( 1950)
The art of Jackson Pollock is a modern mystery. How, from flinging paint on a canvas laid on the ground, did he create such beauty and inner structure? Like a solo by Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix, his freeform improvisations loop and lurch and yet achieve a profound unity. Pollock only held this together for a short period of brilliance. This painting is a cathedral of the mind.
Painted by Raphael, this painting contains pictures of famous philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle walking in the middle along with other philosophers on the sides. It is now located in the Vatican.
Chauvet cave paintings( c 30, 000 years ago)
Who painted these exquisitely lifelike portraits of animals? There was no such thing as writing in the ice age so nothing is known of the names, if they had names, of these early people. Cave artists may have been women; they may have been children. What is known is that Homo sapiens, our species of human, makes its mark with these paintings that are as beautiful and intelligent as anything created since.
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