Left Bracket Fifth Round Elimination continues with this match pairing Norman Rockwell (6-1, 64-24, .727) against Pablo Picasso (7-1, 69-28, .711). About which, I don't think there's much to say beyond: Norman Rockwell! Against Pablo Picasso! Norman Rockwell
1894 - 1978
American
Rockwell was a careful craftsman with an ability to represent detail realistically. The subjects of most of his illustrations were taken from everyday family and small-town life and were often treated with a touch of humour. Though loved by the public, Rockwell’s work was dismissed by most critics as lacking artistic merit and authentic social observation.
Pablo Picasso [was] one of the greatest and most-influential artists of the 20th century and the creator (with Georges Braque) of Cubism. The enormous body of Picasso’s work remains, and the legend lives on—a tribute to the vitality of the “disquieting” Spaniard with the “sombre…piercing” eyes who superstitiously believed that work would keep him alive. For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to and paralleled the whole development of modern art in the 20th century.
This Left Bracket Fifth Round match pairs J.M.W. Turner (5-1, 56-22, .718) against M.C. Escher (4-1, 46-23, .667). They are quite different! I wonder who will win more votes! Let's find out! J.M.W. Turner
1775 - 1850
British
He raised landscape painting to new heights of imagination and profundity. His colossal seas explode out of the frame and his skies envelop you in dizzying symphonies of emotion. He is at one and the same time a consummate observer of nature and a poet who paints from soul to soul.... All great art is complex and Turner’s does justice to the complexity of life.
The artist who created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century was never fully embraced by the art world. There is just one work by Maurits Cornelis Escher in all of Britain’s galleries and museums, and it was not until his 70th birthday that the first full retrospective exhibition took place in his native Netherlands. Escher was admired mainly by mathematicians and scientists, and found global fame only when he came to be considered a pioneer of psychedelic art by the hippy counterculture of the 1960s.
Here's the second half of the tiebreaker duo that started Tuesday to resolve the Caravaggio/Church tie and the Klimt/Hopper tie. Frederick Church
1826 - 1900
American
From the first, Church showed a remarkable talent for drawing and a strong inclination to paint in a crisp, tightly focused style. During the late 1840s and early 1850s Church experimented with a variety of subjects, ranging from recognizable views of American scenery, to highly charged scenes of natural drama, to imaginary creations based on biblical and literary sources.... Gradually, however, he began to specialize in ambitious works that combined carefully studied details from nature in idealized compositions that had a grandeur and seriousness beyond the usual efforts of his contemporaries.
By the late 1920s, Hopper developed his mature style, characterized by depictions of lonely urban and small town scenes in which there may be only a few silent, solitary figures. Often he shows only the drab architecture, devoid of human life. Hopper’s vision of the American scene was one of alienation and anxiety. His life and art were remarkably consistent: a very private person, he endowed the figures in his paintings with a similar sense of detachment. Hopper divided his time between a small apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village and trips to New England, continuing to synthesize and distill his observations of contemporary life into hauntingly familiar scenes.
