Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist's tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children's games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born and it was there that he spent the first ten years of his life. Picasso's father was a painter and professor at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts. Picasso learnt from him the basics of formal academic art training. Then he studied at the Academy of Arts in Madrid but never finished his degree. Picasso, who was not yet eighteen, had reached the point of his greatest rebelliousness; he repudiated academia's anemic aesthetics along with realism's pedestrian prose and, quite naturally, joined those who called themselves modernists, the non-conformist artists and writers, those whom Sabartés called "the élite of Catalan thought" and who were grouped around the artists' café Els Quatre Gats. During 1899 and 1900 the only subjects Picasso deemed worthy of painting were those which reflected the "final truth"; the transience of human life and the inevitability of death. His early works, ranged under the name of "Blue Period" (1901-1904), consist in blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the death of his friend, Casagemas. Even though Picasso himself repeatedly insisted on the inner, subjective nature of the Blue Period, its genesis and, especially, the monochromatic blue were for many years explained as merely the results of various aesthetic influences...
La redécouverte de la légende est l'oeuvre de Bram Stoker. Son Dracula (1887) reste un mythe moderne, teinté de romantisme macabre. Créé à l'époque victorienne, il était éloigné de sa source d'inspiration ou du filon populaire (les « vrais vampires»). Stoker a choisi le nom de Dracula pour sa sonorité. Il n'était pas loin du patronyme du prince dont le père, Vlad Dracul, portait les armes de l'Ordre occidental du Dragon (drac : diable, en roumain).
Revu et corrigé depuis le début du siècle par le cinéma (Murnau, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Francis Ford Coppola) et aujourd'hui par la science-fiction et la bande dessinée, le mythe de Dracula a quelque chose en plus : il sublime deux tabous, le sang et le sexe.
L'histoire, la légende, le mythe sont trois raisons suffisantes pour en faire un ouvrage fascinant qui est richement illustré de documents rarissimes.
The eclectic art of which the Carracci family dreamed was realised by Rubens with the ease of genius. However, the problem was much more complicated for a man of the north, who wished to add to it a fusion of the Flemish and Latin spirits, of which the rather pedantic attempts of Romanism had illustrated the difficulties. He achieved it without losing anything of his overflowing personality, his questing imagination, and the enchanting discoveries of the greatest colourist known to painting. Rubens, the greatest master of Baroque painting's exuberance, took from the Italian Renaissance what could be of use to him, and then built upon it a style of his own. It is distinguished by a wonderful mastery of the human form and an amazing wealth of splendidly lighted colour. He was a man of much intellectual poise and was accustomed to court life, travelling from court to court, with pomp, as a trusted envoy. Rubens was one of those rare mortals who do real honour to humanity. He was handsome, good and generous, and he loved virtue. His laborious life was well ordered. The creator of so many delightful pagan feasts went each morning to mass before proceeding to his studio. He was the most illustrious type of happy and perfectly balanced genius, and combined in his personage passion and science, ardour and reflection. Rubens expressed drama as well as joy, since nothing human was foreign to him, and he could command at will the pathos of colour and expression which he required in his religious masterpieces. It might be said that he was as prolific in the representation of the joy and exuberance of life as Michelangelo was in the representation of passionate emotions.
Quel nom conviendrait mieux à cet art dont Émile Zola écrivait que «jamais auparavant des peintures ne lui avaient paru posséder une telle dignité. On peut presque entendre les voix intérieures de la terre et sentir les arbres bourgeonner». Plus qu'un art émotionnel, il s'agissait d'un art révolutionnaire qui rompait catégoriquement avec les règles rigides de l'art académique. Ainsi, les peintres purent se laisser enchanter par la lumière dansant sur les arbres, ou ses reflets dans l'eau. Expérimentée par Théodore Rousseau, la méthode allait être intensément développée par Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Manet ou encore Berthe Morisot, chacun à sa propre manière.
