The Best Artist & Architect Google Doodles Since 1998.

above Google Art Doodle by Laura Sweet

This is the first installment in a series of posts which will highlight various homepage versions of the Google logo since they began. Referred to as Google Doodles, I gathered my personal favorites since their inception in 1998 and will be sharing them with you over the next few weeks.

The Google Doodle during their beta phase in 1998:




First, a brief history.
The Google Doodle has come a long way since their first in August of 1998 when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

The very first Google Doodle:


The crudely drawn homepage doodle was hardly impressive. During the years following, namely 1998-2008, the homepage Google Doodles were very simple, and hardly blogworthy, iterations where in most cases one of the letters was replaced by an object or a small drawing was added to the logo.

The 2004 Leap Year Google Doodle was typical of the logos during 2002-2008:


Occasionally series of Doodles were created. Changing daily but honoring the same theme as in the case of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, The World Cup, Dilbert cartoons and a few other examples. But these, too, were largely unimpressive.

As the years passed, the Google Doodles became more inventive and more imaginative. Some were even interactive, some animated and some so intensely illustrated, it was hard to make out the word Google.

The Happy Holidays Google Doodle in 2010:


Today, in the first post of this ongoing series, are the best of the Google Doodles honoring artists, designers and architects since 1998. They are listed in alphabetical order by surname. Some ran in selected countries only, so you may not recognize all of them, but they are all worth a look.

The Best Google Doodles - Part I Artists, Architects and Designers

Karen Appel, Netherlands:

James Audubon, world renowned nature artist:

Arthur Boyd, Australian painter:

Constantin Brancusi, Romanian sculptor:

Mary Cassatt, American painter:

Paul Cezanne, French painter:

Marc Chagall, Russian-French painter and stained glass artist:

Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian painter, writer and inventor:

Will Eisner, American comic writer and artist:

M.C. Escher, Dutch illustrator and graphic designer:

Josef Frank, Austrian architect and artist:

Walter Gropius, German architect:

Hokusai, Japanese wood cut artist:

Robert Indiana (for Valentine's Day), American painter:

Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter:

Peder Severin Krøyer, Norwegian-Danish painter:

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect and designer:

Rene Magritte, Belgian painter:

Michelangelo, Italian sculptor and painter:

Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter:

Claude Monet, French Impressionist painter:

Alphonse Mucha, Czech Art Nouveau painter and artist:

Isamu Noguchi, Japanese-American sculptor, painter, architect and designer:

Taro Okamoto, Japanese painter and sculptor:

Nam June Paik, Korean video artist:

Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor:

Jackson Pollock, American painter:

Ilya Repin, Russian painter:

Norman Rockwell. American illustrator and painter:

Mimar Sinan, Turkish architect:

Wayne Thiebaud (for Google's 10th birthday), American painter:

Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter:

Diego Velasquez, Spanish Painter:

Andy Warhol, American artist:

Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect:

Zhang Daqian, Asian painter:


The Doodle team, which consists of Marissa Mayer, Dennis Hwang, Mike Dutton, Susie Sahim, and Jenifer Hom has created over 300 doodles for Google.com in the United States. In addition, over 700 have been designed internationally and submissions by guest doodlers, Google Doodle contest winners and the general public have also been produced.

Meet The Doodlers (video):


Want to take a whack at designing your own Google Doodle? Go ahead, you can submit your own to proposals@google.com

My next post on Google Doodles will feature the best of Inventions & Discoveries, don't miss it!

From Whistler to Warhol, Famous Artists Paint Their Mothers, Part One of Two.

In honor of Mother's Day this coming Sunday, I thought I'd share with you several portraits of the female forebearers of various respected and well-known painters. The portraits range from the 15th century to the present* - excluding paintings of The Madonna, arguably the most famous of all mothers.

Most artists, at one time or another, have painted a portrait of the woman from whose womb they sprang. Some are flattering, some are not and others are very personal or intimate -- yet all are an homage to the parent whose role we celebrate this Sunday, May 8th.

There are so many, I'm breaking this up into two posts. Today I am featuring paintings of artists' mothers prior to the 20th century and tomorrow I will be featuring Part Two, more recent homages to Mom by such artists as Hopper, Dali, Hockney, and Warhol.

A good place to start would be with the world's most well-known "Mother" artwork, that of by James McNeill Whistler, painted in 1871:

above: James McNeill Whistler, Whistler's Mother 1871, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The following portraits are presented in chronological order from the earliest to the most recent. While it's true that many of these artists painted multiple sittings of their mothers (e.g. Lautrec, Cassat, and Cezanne), I chose to share those I found to be the most compelling.

Albrecht Durer, portrait of Barbara Durere, the artist's mother, 1490:

Guido Reni, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1612:

Rembrandt, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1630:

Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait (sketch) of Lucy Lawrence, the Artist's mother, 1797:

Alfred Rethel, portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1836:

Camille Corot, Madame Corot, the Artist's Mother, Born Marie-Francoise Oberson, 1838:

Pierre Renoir, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1860:

Paul Cezanne, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1866-67:

Mary Cassat, the Artist's Mother reading Le Figaro, 1878:

Edouard Manet, Mother in the garden at Bellevue, 1880:
Georges Seurat, Aquatint of the artist's mother, 1883:

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Countess Adele Zoe de Toulouse Lautrec, The Artist's Mother, 1883:

Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, October, 1888:

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Aline Gauguin, 1890:

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1896:

Edvard Much, The Dead Mother (the artist's mother died when he was five from tuberculosis), 1899:

*You will note there are very few, if any, portraits artist's mothers in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries because so much art at that time was dominated by religious paintings and portraits commissioned by the wealthy.


PART TWO TOMORROW
Be sure to stop by tomorrow to see Part Two, 20th and 21st century artists like Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney's portraits of their mothers.