I’m no art enthusiast.

But one genre I totally appreciate is Impressionism. 

Impression, Sunrise (French: Impression, soleil levant) is an 1872 painting by Claude Monet first shown at what would become known as the “Exhibition of the Impressionists” in Paris in April, 1874.

The painting is credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement.

Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet’s hometown.

… the term “Impressionism” was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of paintings from the Barbizon School. Both associated with the school, Daubigny and Manet had been known to use the term to describe their own works.

Apparently he painted this in one sitting. Giving us an impression of the moment.

Statues are stupid. I’d vote against paying for the installation of any.

Decorative urban art pieces are … better.

My friends have always mocked Calgary for being the WORST city of this size for urban art.

Of hundreds of pieces around the city of 1.35 million I can only recall a few I like.

In 2012 this sculpture was installed to celebrate First Nations of Treaty 7 and the Stampede.

Designed to look like a half teepee, the semi-circlular sculpture depicts historic iconography that represents the Kainai, Piikani, Siksika, Nakoda and Tsuut’ina.

Avenue Calgary

Personally, I’ve always admired the Family of Man outside the Calgary School Board offices downtown.

EVERYONE loves this funny art piece on the 8th Avenue Mall. It’s called The Conversation.

That’s it. There are NO MORE appealing urban sculptures. We are living proof that there is little culture in Cowgary.

I visited the Museu Coleção Berardo in Lisbon, one of the best collections of modern and contemporary art in the world.

As my brother said, anything that he could recreate given the materials, is NOT ART.

For example, Voice of Fire by Barnett Newman.

It’s 2 cans of paint, 2 rollers, canvas, and less than an hour.

Not art.

Here’s the instillation at the Berardo that appealed to me most.

It’s called Nespresso.

There are a couple of artists with potential, however.

Looking at some of his later work, you might guess Pablo Picasso was a over-rated bum. Drunk. Or mentally ill.

Fact is, he was a childhood prodigy. Brilliant from the start at age-13.

Here’s Science and Charity, oil on canvas, 1897. Picasso was age-15.

His abstract work came much later.

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

He’s best known for co-founding the Cubist movement.

He shocked the artistic world with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d’Avinyó, a street in Barcelona.

The shocking part was the angular and disjointed body shapes. The slightly menacing aspect.

This was new.

His best work, for me, is his anti-war painting exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Guernica (1937).

Picasso opened his morning newspaper on April 27th to find images of the destruction of Guernica. It had been bombed by the Nazis at the request of Francisco Franco.

All that said. Much of Picasso’s hundreds of pieces of sculpture, ceramics, drawings and paintings hold no appeal for me. He worked fast. Had fun. Loved to be contrary. And many of those experiments didn’t work.

I saw many of those failed experiments in the Picasso museum in his hometown Málaga, Spain.

Here’s one that did work. Bull’s Head.

One day, in a pile of objects all jumbled up together, I found an old bicycle seat right next to a rusty set of handlebars. In a flash, they joined together in my head. The idea of the Bull’s Head came to me before I had a chance to think. All I did was weld them together… 

Don’t be fooled. This man was one of the great artists.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.