Art galleries of London

Speaking about art galleries of London we should first of all mention The national gallery, The national portrait gallery and The state gallery. I would like to tell you about National portrait gallery and about Tate gallery.

The national gallery houses one of the richest and most extensive collections of painting in the world. It stands to the north of the Trafalgar Square. the gallery was designed by William Wilkins and build in 1834-37. The collection covers all schools and periods of painting, but is a specially famous for it's examples of Rembrandt and Rubents. The British schools is only moderately represented as the national collections are shared with the Tate gallery. The National gallery was founded in 1824 when the government bought the collection of John Angerstein which included 38 paintings.

The Tate gallery houses the national collection of British painting from the 16-th century to the present day. It is also the national gallery for modern art, including painting and sculpture made in Britain, Europe, America and other countries. It was opened in 1897 as the national gallery of British art. It owes it's establishment to Suie Henritate who built the gallery and gave his own collection of 65 painting.

Painting

There are a lot of kinds of art. The example of classical art are the masterpieces of painting and sculpture which are admired by people at picture galleries and museums. Recently another kind of art has appeared. It is cold graffiti and it is favored by the young people mostly but some grownups like it too. At first graffiti was considered to be an example of anti-social behavior, the works of vandal. The first graffiti appeared on the walls of poor neighbor hoods and subway trains. Very often the graffiti slogans were unsightly and aggressive. Many people looks upon graffiti as the work of vandals that should be punishable by fines. Since those days graffiti has changed a lot. Nowadays it has a status of street art and you can get graffiti in unexpected places: for example on toys, on clothes. One of the graffiti lovers has his own web-site devote only to the world of graffiti. Today many companies realize the appeal of graffiti at advertising because it has energy and it became a symbol of survival.

Street Art

New Yorkers used to see the graffiti on the walls of poor neighbourhoods and subway trains as something menacing and an example of urban decay. The scrawled names and slogans were seen as unsightly and aggressive, the work of vandals seeking to express their identities or even make a political point. Up to the 1970s, most New Yorkers hated graffiti, considering it as an eyesore that was illegal and punishable by fines.

Since those days, graffiti has changed a lot and it is no longer found only in the subway and the poor ghetto areas of the city. Nowadays, it has the status of 'street art' and you get graffiti in places where you wouldn't expect to - in advertisements, on clothes, on toys, and even on the Wall Street Journal's official website! In the early 1980s, there was a real craze for graffiti art and the sophisticated Manhattan art world had displays of street art in its galleries. The trend was short-lived - until the arrival of hip-hop music in the late 80s.

In her book, Subway Art, Martha Cooper says "Graffiti came back with hip-hop music and people are now appreciating it for its style, which they couldn't back then, because they couldn't get beyond the vandalism thing." Hip-hop was originally black ghetto music, sung by young African Americans from the poor, run-down districts of American cities. When it suddenly got to the top of the American music charts, hip-hop culture was spread, bringing graffiti with it.

Today companies are starting to realise the appeal of graffiti in advertising. Kel Rodriguez, who used to spray New York subway trains, was the artist chosen to design the Wall Street Journal's website and it is obviously done in graffiti-style. "Some of that graffiti feeling, that energy, sort of got in there," Rodriguez explained. Many of this new wave of artists give lectures on developments in their art. Lee Quindnesis having a lot of success in Europe and feels that European galleries and museums are more open to his art form. "They want to support an artist as he develops," comments Quinones, who can get up to $10,000 for his paintings. Indeed, the Groninger Museum in Holland is one of the few museums in the world that displays and recognizes graffiti as an art form.

Another artist, Blade, has his own website devoted only to the world of graffiti. This website has a 'merchandise page' where Blade sells things with his own original designs all over the world - everything from baseball caps to yo-yos! Leonard McGurr, a street artist for 25 years, went from painting subway trains to designing and marketing graffiti-inspired clothes for young people. "Graffiti has been a story of survival," he says. "There's a way to benefit from your work without spoiling public property."

The Renaissance / Thomas More

The Renaissance or the revival of learning was the period then European culture was at it's high. It lasted from the 14'th century till 17'th century, and was coursed by complex economic situation and social conditions. The feudal system was been shuttled by the bourgeoisie, which was getting stronger and stronger. It was more profitable width=100% to unite under a single ruler. Absolute monarchy came into being. This lead to the forming of nations and the true sense of the world. New social and economic conditions called for the new ideology, because the catholic dogmas didn't correspond to the new trend of life. For this reason in many European countries the protestant religion spread up and national churches were established.

Instead of the blind face ordered by the catholic then appeared a new outlook which was called humanism. The time demanded positive rational knowledge and this demand was supplied: in astronomy by Copernicus, in philosophy by Tomas More, in geography by Columbus, Vaska de Gama and others. Leonardo de Vinci was force a new theory of art: "It was the greatest progressive revolution that mankind have so far experience, a time, which called for "Giants" and produced Giants in power and thought, passion and character in universality and language."

An example of a typical men of the Renaissance period was: the famous Englishmen sir Walter Raleigh, he was a soldier, sailor, explorer, pirate, colonizer, historian, philosopher and a poet. He was much interested in science and literature. He wrote works of geography and lead expedition to South America. He was an outstanding poet. His poems are full of profound wisdom, written with great elegance and salacity of style. He organized of "academy". Christopher Marlowe the greatest dramatist (before Shakespeare). But the most important of most this writer and one of the greatest men of this period was sir Thomas More.

Thomas More

He came into great favor and made a rapid carrier as a statesmen, at the same time writing works of a political, philosophical and historical character. His most famous book is "Utopia". "Utopia" - means "no place, no there". The work is writing in Latin and divided into two books. Thomas More was the first writer in Europe formulate communist principals as a bases of society.

The Tretyakov Gallery

The State Tretyakov Gallery is one of the world's greatest museums. The gallery consists entirely of Russian art. In 1856 Pavel Tretyakov, a 24-year-old Moscow merchant bought 2 paintings, the core of a collection that was to develop into a famous public art gallery. Those were the works by Khudyakov "An Accident with the Finnish Smugglers" and by Shilder "Temptation".

The rapidly expanding collection included the finest canvases by Russian artists of different generations: such outstanding masters as Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Vasily Perov, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Surikov and others.

An ardent admirer of Art, Tretyakov was on the look-out for young talents, whom he was always ready to encourage.

By the 1870s the collection already contained over 500 canvases which were kept in a special wing of the Tretyakov house in Lavrushensky Lane. In 1881 the museum was opened to the public. In 1892, 6 years before his death Tretyakov presented his collection to the city of Moscow. It consisted of about 2 000 paintings, drawings and sculptures. The donation included a collection of West European art left by Pavel Tretyakov's younger brother Sergei who had died not long before.

The now existing facade of the museum was built in 1901 :- 1902 according to a design, made by V.M. Vasnetsov. It has got original appearance and to this day remains one of Moscow's most attractive sights. At the beginning of the 1980s work began on the reconstruction of the premises of the gallery hi Lavrushensky Lane. The gallery was finally reopened to the public on the 5th of April 1994 It is one of the five best picture galleries in the world now.