And these are Japanese Ukiyo-E paintings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sixSBDp5VoU

FAMOUS ARTISTS OF THE LAST THOUSAND YEARS

     ITALIAN ART THROUGH THE CENTURIES: A five-minute video cannot begin to do justice to the great works of art produced in Italy over the past thousand years, but this one tries. Many of the individual Italian artists also have videos of their own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mesuDqbwdsM

     MARC CHAGALL: His talent lay in depicting a fantasy world – and you couldn’t blame the man for living in fantasy. Chagall was a Jewish artist who grew up in Russia at a time when there was much persecution of the Jews. He eventually moved to France, then had to flee Paris when the Nazis invaded. The amazing thing is that the world of art he created is filled with love, not hate. His paintings depict, over and over, his romance with his lifelong sweetheart and wife, Bella. The video below begins with a photo of his elfin face. He looks exactly the way a creator of fantasies should look, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9sdxTmvB6Q

     And here’s another one of Chagall, set to the music of Berlioz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yai2b9PfthU

     EL GRECO: What a magnificent video! It is too short, but there’s always “Replay.” And of course you can also hold the view of any painting by clicking a second time on the “play” symbol.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dhj93Qq1fVM

     IT’S HOPPER, NOT HOOPER: Someone spelled his name wrong on the video, but they’ve produced an excellent sample of EDWARD HOPPER’s painting, showing the United States of the 1920s through early 50s. His talent lay in depicting American life as it actually was. As I watched the video, I kept muttering, to Hopper, “You nailed it. You nailed that one. You nailed that one too.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGcXtjYf9tg&NR=1

     MANET IS GREAT: In a New Yorker cartoon, one plump dowager says to the other, as they stand before museum paintings by Manet and Monet, “One is supposed to be better than the other, but I can never remember which one.” I’ve always had the same problem. I prefer MANET, on the whole, and you can view some of his works by clicking below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQiD8Wfl7lk

     BUT THEN THERE’S THOSE WATER LILIES: This video is of nothing but MONET’s water lilies, and they are magnificent, especially enlarged to take up the whole computer screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNRTo7fHuK8

     ALPHONSE MUCHA: The Czechoslovakian artist MUCHA painted at the end of the Impressionist era, and, with his use of sinuous natural curves, became one of the mainstays of the new Art Nouveau movement. Eventually his art went out of style, but the Nazis still thought enough of his importance that, after the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he was one of the first people they arrested. He returned home from a session with the Gestapo and died shortly thereafter, on July 14, 1939.

     For a display of his art created in happier days, click on:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OWvrIvs7LKY

     GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: She had a love affair with the arid landscape of New Mexico and, in seeming contradiction, with garden flowers. Both are here transformed into something exciting and sensuous. A glorious combination of art and music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59grkW5-6eY

     VAN GOGH: Many people consider Vincent Van Gogh to be their favorite artist. If he’s a favorite of yours, you should like these two videos. (And be assured that you can choose from many more like them on YouTube.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkvLq0TYiwI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XemweIAvi8Q&NR=1

     VERMEER: He’s the Dutch artist most people love best. I see “the girl with the pearl earring” twice in this video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xwRsYGL6LEg