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New York Program students and Erol Balkan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New York Program students and Erol Balkan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
NYC Program students explored their artistic sides with a guided tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March. Founded in 1870, the museum's millions of square feet contain exhibits from Asia, Egypt, the Americas, and every other corner of the world. In particular, the students' tour focused on the French artist Pierre Bonnard, whose unique use of color and perspective were quietly influential during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bonnard often spent decades revising the same painting. The tour guide explained a work depicting two of the artist's lovers riding in the same car, one who modeled for Bonnard's paintings and the other who would ultimately become his wife. He began the painting while both women were alive. By the time he finished it decades later, the model had taken her own life years before and his wife had recently passed.

Bonnard was also unique in his unusual and complex color palette, which Picasso thought of as "indecisive." Often he selected a color that would allow the people and animals to blend into their backgrounds. Additionally, he rejected conventions of perspective, painting tabletops in a manner that lets the viewer see everything sitting on the table. His distinct artistic contribution later influenced the abstract impressionist Mark Rothko, among others.

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Hamilton Program in New York

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