Welcome to the Friday Afternoon Challenge! Today, “Did you say something?”
What is the “back story” behind these works of art/architecture, as implied in the “questions” they pose?
And again, folks, we seriously do not cheat here...
1.
“Ayudar! Mi ‘piel’ se cae!”
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2.
"Il semble que bon vieux temps!"
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3.
“Nee, ik ben de beste!
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4.
“Che cosa è questo ‘chowdah’?”
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5.
"Puis-je être entre Tilla et les iris?
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6.
“Ma, c’est ma maison!”
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I am tempted to translate #4 as "this bowl of chowder is not what I ordered." (Just for fun.)
Is #3 Van Gogh?
#5 translates to "I think I consumed too many mushrooms." 
Cubist.
So I went to the Phillips site to learn more and find images of the works included.
And, realizing that this would make a fine inclusion in the Challenge, I was ready in advance... 
There was a slide show, but the controls were a bit dodgy on an iPhone, so I have up.
You know when the Challenge is.
Plan ahea
d
You win the chowdah for this one, lol!
An Italian Treasure, Stolen and Recovered
Another visiting masterpiece has arrived as part of the 2013 Year of Italian Culture. Piero della Francesca’s 15th-century tempera and oil on panel, the Senigallia Madonna (1470s) is normally on view in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in the Ducal Palace of Urbino. This exceptional work by one of the masters of the Renaissance was one of three stolen paintings recovered in 1975 by Italy’s famed Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Command (CCHPC), specializing in protection of Italy’s cultural heritage on a national and international level. Don’t miss this magnificent loan by a fascinating artist.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/visiting-masterpiece-piero-della-francesca%E2%80%99s-senigallia-madonna
...the guy at left in the space helmet might have given it away.
Both French Impressionism, by my take.
I don't know about #2, but somebody suggested Gauguin.
#6 was guessed as Matisse, which I had as Gauguin originally. It does look like Matisse. (I am not very well educated in this stuff.)
Come on people, let's wrap this up. My curiosity is boiling over here, and all I have is an iPhone.
Image: View of a modern gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago with Matisse’s Bathers by a River. Photograph by Paul Warchol.
October 6, 2013 to February 16, 2014
One hundred years ago, the Art Institute of Chicago presented one of the most legendary displays of art ever held in America—the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known today as the Armory Show, after its first venue, the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York City. The exhibition brought to the United States of 1913 a dizzying array of brand-new art from Europe, joined with the newest trends in painting and sculpture by native-born artists—1300 works by some 300 artists in total.
As it had in New York and would in Boston, the Armory Show aroused both the interest and scorn of collectors and the public. Paintings by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp challenged accepted ideas of “true art” and threatened to upset the balance of American taste. In Chicago, only a few of the works in the show stayed behind, but the city had been afforded a glimpse of what was to come in the 20th century. Part of that future would involve the Art Institute of Chicago becoming one of the greatest collections of modern European art in the world.
Nearly 100 of the Art Institute’s most outstanding masterpieces will be on view at the Kimbell in The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago. This exhibition—a loan show of unprecedented depth and quality—will allow residents of and visitors to another American city to appreciate Chicago’s stupendous modern collection for the first time. Following upon the success of the Kimbell’s 2008 exhibition of Impressionist masterworks from the Art Institute, The Age of Picasso and Matisse will tell the story of European art in the first half of the 20th century through the holdings of one of the world’s best encyclopedic museums.
Picasso and Matisse, the artists whose names figure in the exhibition’s title, were the towering geniuses of art in Europe from the first decade of the century until Matisse’s death in the 1950s. They were both friends and rivals, often (and simplistically) juxtaposed as the great organizer of forms—Picasso—and the great manipulator of colors—Matisse. Their paintings and sculpture will be found throughout the exhibition.
...
https://www.kimbellart.org/exhibition/age-picasso-and-matisse-modern-masters-art-institute-chicago
Your Challenges are more than fun games. I know I can't be the only art dunce who is learning a lot of fascinating stuff from your games. (In school we had to take either Music Appreciation or Art Appreciation, and I went with the first. )
Your passion seems to be infectious--in a good way. 
one of dozens of masterpieces to be vulnerable to a sale. "The Window" was the first by Matisse to enter an American art museum collection.
