Round Six: Varo v. Benton

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Remedios Varo
1908 - 1963
Spanish; worked in Mexico

Her paintings are carefully drawn, making the astonishing stories or mystic legends especially convincing. Rejecting the male-dominated language of Surrealist doctrine, Varo often painted magnificent heroines busy with alchemical activities. A delicate figure may spin and weave tiny threads transforming them into musical instruments or fashion them into paintings of small birds. The settings are often medieval tower rooms equipped with occult laboratory devices. Figures wearing tattered garments may emerge from a forest of withered trees.... Varo borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create worlds that elude time and space.

- National Museum of Women in the Arts

• Finished First in Phase 1, Flight 3 of the Play-In Tournament with a voting score of .917.
• Finished First in Phase 2, Flight 1 of the Play-In Tournament with a voting score of .500.
• Beat André Beauneveu in Round 1.
• Defeated Katsushika Hokusai in Round 2.
• Thumped Dutch Master Pieter De Hooch in Round 3.
• Crushed Andō Hiroshige in a Round 4 11-1 blowout.
• Beat Edward Hopper in Round 5 by a two-vote swing. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Thomas Hart Benton
1889 - 1975
American

Throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, Benton, who left New York in 1935 and settled in Kansas City, Missouri, became closely associated with a movement known as Regionalism, which exalted rural America and tended to disregard contemporary abstract art.

- The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

• Finished First in Phase 1, Flight 10, with a voting score of .818.
• Tied for Second in Phase 2, Flight 2, with a voting score of .364.
• Survived the Phase 2 Tiebreaker.
• Beat John Robert Cozens easily in Round 1.
• Beat Richard Long easily in Round 2.
• Crushed Lorenzo Lotto in Round 3.
• Tied with Andy Goldsworthy in his first attempt at Round 4. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Defeated Wassily Kandinsky in a Fourth Round Tiebreaker by a single vote. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Beat Peter Severin Krøyer in Round 5 by a single vote. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Left Bracket Fifth Round: Bosch v. Balla!

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This Left Bracket Fifth Round match pairs Bosch (5-1, 52-32, .619) against Balla (4-1, 39-29, .573).  Balla has been knocked into the Left Brackets by Altdorfer, while Bosch arrives via a victory over Botticelli.  

With an outstanding record of 4-2, 52-31, .627, Botticelli ranks fifth among artists who have exited the Tournament, behind only Antonella da Messina, Fabritius, Fillipino Lippi, and Boccioni.  He knocks Picabia out of the "finishers' top ten."

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Hieronymus Bosch
c.1450 - 1516
Dutch

It is quite a feat that a Dutchman who painted 500 years ago remains one of the most notable apocalyptic painters of the world and one of art’s first visionary geniuses. Hieronymus Bosch is most celebrated for his detail-drenched and symbolic narrative renditions of the dance between heaven and hell through biblical-themed landscapes upon which play a revolving cast of fantastical, and often macabre humans, animals, monsters, and make-believe creatures. His paintings demonstrate our age-old tales of morality and the eventual fate of all sinners who succumb to the pleasures and perversity of the ego. These timeless stories, masterfully portrayed upon canvas in Bosch’s impeccably steady hand, continue to challenge interpretation as well as position the artist as one of the canon’s first original thinkers.

- The Art Story

• Trounced Paris Bordone in Round 1.
• Escaped upset by French installation guy Christian Boltanski in Round 2 by a single vote. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Held out against the English engraver-poet William Blake in Round 3.
• Lost to sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini in Round 4.
• Trounced Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the Left Bracket Fourth Round.
• Beat Sandro Botticelli in Left Bracket Fourth Round Elimination.

Note: the attribution of this quintessentially Boschian painting has recently been called into question.

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Giacomo Balla
1871-1958
Italian

On the stage of art history, when the spotlight shines on Futurism, Giacomo Balla is always left rather in the shadows. ....[But] Balla was instinctively a modernist and a futurist long before actually signing a pile of manifestos. He was an artist animated by an omnivorous curiosity that led him to take an interest in science and technology, photography, cinema and anything else that was invented. More than anyone else, it was Balla who was the visual drafter of the principles of the movement, the alchemist who transformed them into images of such explosive iconic power.

- Italica

• Defeated Hans Baldung in Round 1. 
• Edged by Balthus in Round 2 by a single vote.  YOUR VOTE COUNTS! 
• Got by John James Audubon in Round 3.
• Beat Basquiat quite soundly in Round 4.
• Fell hard to Albrecht Altdorfer in Round 5.

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Round Six: Altdorfer v. Bruegel

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Albrecht Altdorfer
c.1480-1538
German

"Albrecht Altdorfer’s Landscape with a Double Spruce marks the beginning of a long and harmonious marriage between the medium of etching and the subject of landscape." "The sheet demonstrates remarkable spontaneity and a freedom of draftsmanship that echoes that of the artist’s numerous landscape drawings. Altdorfer’s revolutionary landscapes galvanized a group of artists later known as the Danube School."

- The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

• Defeated Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema by a single vote in Round 1.
• Crushed American minimalist sculpter Carl Andre in Round 2.
• Spent a year and a half subduing Switzerland's Jacques-Laurent Agasse in Round 3.
• Edged Fra Angelico by a two-vote swing in Round 4.  YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Beat Giacomo Balla easily in Round 5.

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Pieter Bruegel (the Elder)
c.1525 - 1569
Dutch

A number of Bruegel’s paintings focus on the lives of Flemish commoners.... But while these works demonstrate the artist’s attentive eye for detail and attest to his direct observation of village settings, they are far from simple re-creations of everyday life. The powerful compositions, brilliantly organized and controlled, reflect a sophisticated artistic design.... Bruegel’s use of landscape also defies easy interpretation, and demonstrates perhaps the artist’s greatest innovation.... These panoramic compositions suggest an insightful and universal vision of the world — a vision that distinguishes all the work of their remarkable creator.

- The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

• Trounced his own son, Jan Bruegel the Elder, in Round 1.
• Won easily against living artist Daniel Buren in Round 2.
• Scorched respectable Victorian Ford Maddox Brown in Round 3.
• Made it past Botticelli in Round 4.
• Beat Gianlorenzo Bernini in Round 5 by a single vote. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!

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Left Bracket Fifth Round: Hammershoi v. Friedrich!

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This Left Bracket Fifth Round match pairs Wilhelm Hammershoi (7-1, 66-31, .680) against Caspar David Friedrich (4-1, 48-18, .727), who falls into the Left Bracket after a loss to Thomas Eakins.  Hammershoi comes off of a grudge match win over Franz Hals, who he had lost to in Round 2, way back in January 2014.  Hals finished at 4-2, 39-33, .542. 

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Wilhelm Hammershoi
1864 - 1916
Danish

Hammershøi was a leading light in Denmark at the dawn of the 20th century.  Only now are we beginning to appreciate the strange beauty and individuality of his vision.  What is so remarkable about Hammershøi's work is his confidence that merely looking at a simple figure would be artistically satisfying.  He shows a daring disregard for the support of narrative, color, and contemporary relevance.

- Sister Wendy's 1000 Masterpieces

• Crushed the late Richard Hamilton in Round 1.
• Lost to Old Master Frans Hals by a single vote in Round 2. YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Beat Hans Hartung in the Left Bracket Second Round by a safe margin.
• Beat Barbara Hepworth decisively in Left Bracket Second Round Elimination.
• Clobbered Francesco Guardi in the Left Bracket Third Round by another two-vote swing. 
  YOUR VOTE COUNTS!!!
• Defeated Jean-Baptiste Greuze in Left Bracket Third Round Elimination by a two-vote swing. YOUR VOTE REALLY COUNTS!!!
• Defeated Giotto in the Left Bracket Fourth Round by yet another two-vote swing. YOUR VOTE REALLY, REALLY COUNTS!!!
• Beat Frans Hals in their Left Bracket Fourth Round Elimination rematch.

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Caspar David Friedrich
1774 - 1840
German

Friedrich created a new kind of landscape painting; in his pictures landscape becomes a symbol of human feeling. The special trait of his approach to landscape is that the eye is pulled into the far distance, as the path here is lost in the farthest depths of the forest. This compositional peculiarity originates in the predominant sentiment of his period -- longing, aspiration toward the unknown and the illimitable. Nature for Friedrich is a mirror Held up to Man's soul, and it can become this because he himself has no doubts of the quintessential oneness of nature and man.

-- 20,000 Years of World Painting.

• Wrecked Dame Elisabeth Frink's hopes in Round 1.
• Unstrung Naum Gabo in Round 2.
• Crushed Jean-Honoré Fragonard in Round 3.
• Beat Artemisia Gentileschi in Round 4
• Fell to Thomas Eakins in Round 5.

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