Product: Romantics & Realists: Delacroix [VHS]
Rating: 3.0
Before Impressionism
I'm so used to hearing about the Impressionists that I almost forgot that many artists painted in schools before them. If you want to brush up on the Romantic school, then this is for you.So many documentaries want to portray their subjects as being one of a kind. This work seemed to say that Delacroix was influenced by countless persons (Reuben, Constable, Byron, Jericho, etc.). Again, many Anglophones were known Francophiles (Oscar Wilde, Josephine Baker, James Baldwin), but this is the first example I've heard of a French Anglophile. (Perhaps, Delacroix's life can tell us what Sarkozy's leadership will be like.) North Africa seemed to play as great a role in Delacroix's work as Polynesia played in Gaughin's.This work lacked cheesy reenactments. Instead, it would show blurry movements of hands and objects. It showed modern cities, rather than paintings of the cities from the 1800s. This is a British production, full of British academics. One interviewee has thick, linear eyebrows that almost look painted on. His eyebrows were like Neil Tennant's and Chris Lowe's during their "Nightlife" album.The narrator emphasized that Delacroix's work was seen as colorful, but many of the paintings looked drab. I wonder if there's a way to touch them up and prevent the blanching. His paintings were seen as realistic and yet he paints many dead bodies with no blood in sight.Like Grant Wood and Ludwig Beethoven, Eugene Delacroix may have had a cleft chin.