Art Appreciation

Post by **spooky girlfriend** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:08 am

I am starting this thread because Muggy felt bad about throwing all the art conversation into the "Elvis when you least expect him" thread.

Feel free to express all love of art here.

This is one of my all time favorites. It reminds me of my first year in college.

Who Shot Sam? · Post by **Who Shot Sam?** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:20 am

Renoir has always been a little too lush for my taste, but some of his paintings are just stunning. I was telling verena at our London meet-up that I used to live in a sixth-floor walk-up apartment directly across the street from the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre (on Rue Lepic), the location that was the setting for this one:

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:55 am

I've had a soft spot for Renoir ever since one of my friends in high school told me I looked like someone in one of his paintings...

Mike Boom · Post by **Mike Boom** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 12:38 pm

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 3:20 pm

I'm cutting and pasting this stuff from the other thread...

bambooneedle wrote:

I need look no further than my computer screen to see that Caravaggio didn't possess the same mastery of proportion, of composition, of colour, of creating believable scenes with congruent human expressions, with palpable emotion [as Velazquez]...

My point is that you don't make comparisons like this, they're ahistorical and meaningless. First, to say that Caravaggio "pumped out a bunch of religious paintings" implies that he had the same choices available to him as a later painter did; worse, it implies that he felt less true passion for religious scenes than Velazquez did for his genre paintings. Just because YOU hate contemporary organized religion you can't assume that someone doing religious paintings centuries ago was somehow selling out, that's just idiotic! For the record, Caravaggio potrayed both Biblical and Greek Mythological scenes (check out his portayal of Bacchus, VERY similar to one Velazquez did after going to Italy), and his steps towards making the subjects of both kinds of painting real people with real emotions were what paved the way for non-religious artists like Vermeer and Velazquez.

Caravaggio's mastery of proportion is magnificent, his compositions and color, ditto-- just entirely different. His 'Descent from the Cross' is one of the most studied and revered compositions in all of painting; that and other works have made more than a few scholars call him the Father of Modern Painting. We would never pick one "proper" aesthetic for music, so why do it with painting? Plus there is the historical factor. What you write is like-- no, not like, much dumber than--saying Buddy Holly sucks because his sound is so boring and muffled, and that the Strokes are better.

I don't begrudge anyone their personal taste (or I try not to anyway, though I don't always succeed) but what I can't bear is when people are proud of their ignorance and flaunt it like it's some sort of intellectual purity.

I'm not a Renoir fan at all, but I can see the skill, and I know his work affects a lot of people, and that it has a place in history because he did some things that no one had done before. I wouldn't just waltz on here and say "I've had a look; it sucks".

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 3:36 pm

PS, 'Guernica' is a masterpiece and it's one of my goals in life to see it in person. Is it in The Prado?

I had the pleasure, one year, to live near a small-ish but fantastic museum (the Musee Fabre, in Montpellier, France) that housed this painting by Courbet, which I adore:

This one's definitely an argument for MBA's way of thinking, that a computer screen (or more accurately, the camera that captured the image thereon) can't do the real thing justice.

And now I see that there was a travelling exhib exclusively with work from the Musee Fabre that came within 100 miles of me. Crap!!! Can't believe I missed it....

Mike Boom · Post by **Mike Boom** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 4:59 pm

"Now showcased at the Reina Sofía, Spain's national museum of modern art" - was in New York till 1981 apparently, when it was moved back to Spain on the centenary of Picasso's birth. It would be awesome to see.

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 5:09 pm

Mike Boom wrote:was in New York till 1981 apparently, when it was moved back to Spain on the centenary of Picasso's birth

Bravo! A proper trip to Spain has long been on my list. I spent ONE DAY in Barcelona about 25 years ago but that barely counts, even if I did see both the Picasso Museum and the Sagrada familia and eat some Paella in that brief time. I'd love to spend about a month in Spain and Portugal.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 5:41 pm

Picasso said it coudn't go to his homeland until democracy was restored. When I was first in Madrid 20 years ago it was in a rather ordinary annex to the Prado called El Casón del Buen Retiro, but when they opened the much bigger and more impressive Reina Sofia, it took up its new home. It's amazing to see it, and I loved the whole display of preparatory drawings in the original place, which I'm not entirely sure are on view at the new one, but I think it was spoiled by being reproduced on a wall at my school where I used to cue, appropriately enough, to go into Spanish classes, and there's a sense of over-familiarity for me that somehow reduced the power of it. If I was short of time in Madrid, I would definitely make the Prado a priority over the Reina Sofia for its awesome collection of Velazquez and Goya, and Bosch, and of course El Greco and so many other things.

Two things I've really enjoyed in recent years were solo shows at the National Gallery of Titian and then El Greco (portraits only). Both stunning. Titian had a work of four separate pieces reunited for the first time since they were first commissioned. El Greco had some superb faces which I hadn't seen before, one of which was of some eminent figure who was a deeply religious and good-hearted man which I think was one of the best portraits I can remember seeing. An incredible power to it, and a sense of a very special person being fully captured. Hey, I should check the details and post it, right? Will try...

verena · Post by **verena** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:40 pm

Oh not El Greco please, his paintings frighten me.

I like Titiano very much, for example the paintings with Venus, always the same beautiful face and venitian blond tresses. However, my favorite painting of Titiano could be described as frightening. It is called "Ecce Homo" (face of Jesus dying), in the Titiano room at the Prado. I searched for a reproduction like mad, but there was none, not even in the museum books. That happens to me regularly. The very thing I like in an exhibition or museum isn't reproduced. Usually I forget about it but not that one.

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 8:07 pm

mug,

That Courbet (with a bunch of others) was on display here at the Dallas Museum of Art this year. It was exquisite.

selfmademug · Post by **selfmademug** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 8:09 pm

Ahh, Verena, you see that is what the web is for!

This one?

Noise-- I am just kicking myself for having missed this exhibit! A chance to see a bunch of paintings I used to visit on a regular basis, without going to France. Arrgh! Well, I was too busy with life trauma anyway...

ReadyToHearTheWorst · Post by **ReadyToHearTheWorst** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 8:24 pm

I'm a sucker for Turner:

There's something stirring, sad and glorious about this one - the grand old warrior being towed by a steam tug to the breaker's yard.

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:45 pm

My favorite thing about that Courbet painting is the use of shadow. In the scene, the artist paints himself on the right, meeting his patrons and a dog on the road. The patrons are greeting the artist, who is more in the foreground and therefore looms larger. He stands more confidently, and he is fully in the light. The other two men appear to be standing in the shadow of a tree. The effect of all of this is that only the artist (and to some extent the dog) casts a shadow. The painting is quite large in real life, and this impression is unmistakable (at least to me) when looking at it in person. You have to admire that kind of naked hubris in an artist.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:16 am

miss buenos aires wrote:I've had a soft spot for Renoir ever since one of my friends in high school told me I looked like someone in one of his paintings...

Funny, someone once said the same thing to me. Well, it was Edward Munch, but otherwise, it was the same thing.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 9:18 am

bobster wrote:
miss buenos aires wrote:I've had a soft spot for Renoir ever since one of my friends in high school told me I looked like someone in one of his paintings...
Funny, someone once said the same thing to me. Well, it was Edward Munch, but otherwise, it was the same thing.

Oh, was it this one?

I'm just joshing!

Mike Boom · Post by **Mike Boom** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 10:50 am

The Punk Painter - Nevermind the Pollacks.

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 11:04 am

BWAP's Top Five Arts

1. Art Van de Lay
2. Art Pepper
3. Art(ie) Shaw
4. Art Deco
5. Art(imus) Gordon

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:13 pm

BWAP, obviously your list is pathetic and meaningless. Yasmina Reza's play "Art" blows all of your entries away. Duh.

verena · Post by **verena** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:55 pm

Bobster, was it you who stole the Munch most famous painting ("le cri") ?

scielle · Post by **scielle** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 2:43 pm

University of Amsterdam team ran an emotion recognition study on Mona Lisa. Apparently she "was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry".

The program, developed with researchers at the University of Illinois, US, draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average "neutral" expression.

The software uses this average expression as the standard for comparisons.

The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood.

Mona Lisa 'happy', computer finds

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 4:06 pm

I really like this 'Temptation of St Anthony' by Peter Howson - a Scottish artist who deals with working class masculinity and religion in a lot of his paintings.

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 4:32 pm

Crow, not familiar with this painter, but when I look at this painting I don't see working class masculinity. Instead I see Crumb, and also, assuming the short-haired lad with the red thong is a male (the face looks masculine), the work of a recently deceased american painter by the name of Paul Cadmus who during the Depression scandalized the government (who funded his work through the WPA) by doing a mural called "The Fleet is In" and endowing it with overtly homoerotic overtones in a style very much like this (if the lad is a masculine looking female, we can skip the Cadmus comparison and stick to Crumb).

Can I just say that this thread should be continued ad infinitum, since the images being posted are all quite beautiful in their disparate ways. Keep em coming!!

oily slick · Post by **oily slick** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 4:54 pm

fabulous idea BWAP!

oily's Top 5 Arts:

Art Carney
Art Blakey
Art Shamsky
Art Garfunkel
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 5:00 pm

You might be right alexv...though the St Anthony in the desert as a monastic goes that he's tempted by the phantoms of women by Lucifer - why not men as well in a modern interpretation.
I think this portrays his will and strength much better than any other version (though I do like Dali's a lot). Just look at his hands around that tiny cross.