Édouard Manet
Exactly on this day in 2012, DailyArt mobile apps were published in the AppStore and Google Play.
Back then DailyArt was gray, ugly, and cheap, and I was very naive. I thought that having the simple idea of sharing art history in small doses every day for free—so people would be able to be inspired and enlightened every day—would be something that people would love. I didn't have any research or any experience in business. I was only an art historian.
And guess what? Somehow everything worked. It's been five years now; we have grown to a team of eight people (excluding the Cat). Fifteen contributors are working on the text you're reading. We have been working with dozens of museums who are sharing their collections with us. Every month we are reaching nearly half a million people worldwide. We count on the financial support given by you, our readers, and thanks to it we are able to sustain ourselves and grow every month.
Dear DailyArt users, thank you for these five beautiful years. We would not be here without you. And I promise we will get better and better. You can read about us, our achievements, how to support us, and how heavily we want to thank you here, on our specially created website.
- Zuzanna & DailyArt Team
PS. iOS users, today only you can buy our premium feature for $0.99 :)
PS.2 We are still crowdfunding, if you want to support us with some money here is the link where you can find how to do it :)
And as our special week of five masterpieces for our 5th birthday continues, I want to share one of my favorite paintings. It shows both the glamour and beauty of the Paris social life, full of parties at bars, and the loneliness (or tiredness) of someone who is in the middle of all this mess.
The painting is rich in details that provide clues to social class and milieu. The woman at the bar is a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies-Bergère in the early 1880s. The place was a music hall where the upper middle class of Paris flocked for a wide array of spectacular entertainment, including ballet, cabaret, acrobatics, pantomime, operetta, and animal acts. Look to the upper-left corner of the painting and you'll notice a pair of green slippers at the ends of two pale legs, standing on a swing. These limbs belong to an acrobat performing for the wealthy guests of this extravagant bar.