Post your daily favourite painting/artist for sharing or discussion

[cacian]

there may be one favourite and there many that you just can't chose so why not post it to share with others and discuss

I start (not sure how to post pictures without to clean on the link to show)

[Dreamwoven]

Van Gough, impressionist Dutch painter

[cacian]

Van Gough, impressionist Dutch painter

do you have one painting in mind you could post here?

[Dreamwoven]

Sunflowers.

[free]

https://uploads6.wikiart.org/images/....jpg!Large.jpg


"The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali

What do you think, why did Dali give this title to his painting?

[tailor STATELY]

Just a thought:

Waddell Creek / The Persistence of Memory

I see a seascape memory in my mind's eye, one
of many, as I study Dali's painting including
limp watches... the memory is timeless in that
it persists as a fugue, in the musical sense -
all the rough edges gone, relaxed, fond. I can
feel the sea breeze and remember a loved one
with whom I shared these moments of serenity -
salt spray and lapping shores - a time beyond
time: transcendent, yes, transcending reality
and time that will always persist in my heart

7/12/2023

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[free]

Thanks, tailor. This is a beautiful impression of the painting's viewer.
The most impressive symbols on this painting are the watches. seeming out of order in such a way to insinuate that time does not exist.
Following this way of perception, what does memory have to do with it?
I do not know if I am being clearly understood... Just speculating...

[tailor STATELY]

For me the the memory trigger is the seascape/landscape that is almost out of place in the painting and also not complete in its depiction... persisting but not with clarity, time being the theme major albeit surrealistic... if that makes sense.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor

[Danik 2016]

Beautiful text l love Dali !I remember the limp watches, but not the landscape.For me memory is related to time: an unruly chamber for keeping the past.

[free]

Dali was under the influence of Freud and Jung, so, I see the painting as some kind of the artist's psychological message to his observers... maybe he had some surrealistic happening in his mind which was not surreal or product of fantasy to him, but very real. Hmmmm.... nevertheless, interesting combination of painted objects and its title. Being a person from the world of words (literature) it intrigues me.

[hellsapoppin]

I love art and have spent many hours in museums enjoying great works of art. None better (IMHO) than Asher Durand's "Thanatopsis":








The word Thanatopsis literally means 'a study of death'. However, one can readily see (especially if you view it at the Museum) that is it an affirmation of life.



Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant


To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that hourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolv'd to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to th' insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
, With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre.--The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The vernal woods--rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and pour'd round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning--and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lost thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregan, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings--yet--the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.--
So shalt thou rest--and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living--and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh,
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age cut off,--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
1814

Bryant first wrote this poem when he was about 17, after reading the British "graveyard poets" (e.g. Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and Robert Blair, "The Grave")and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. In particular, there are parallels to Wordsworth's Lucy poems, especially "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal":

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.



The Hudson School: life affirmation.

[hellsapoppin]

The Hudson River School was America’s first true artistic fraternity. Its name was coined to identify a group of New York City-based landscape painters that emerged about 1850 under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and flourished until about the time of the Centennial. Because of the inspiration exerted by his work, Cole is usually regarded as the “father” or “founder” of the school, though he himself played no special organizational or fostering role except that he was the teacher of Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Along with Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Church was the most successful painter of the school until its decline. After Cole’s death in 1848, his older contemporary Asher B. Durand (1796–1886) became the acknowledged leader of the New York landscape painters; in 1845, he rose to the presidency of the National Academy of Design, the reigning art institution of the period, and, in 1855–56, published a series of “Letters on Landscape Painting” which codified the standard of idealized naturalism that marked the school’s production. The New York landscape painters were not only stylistically but socially coherent. Most belonged to the National Academy, were members of the same clubs, especially the Century, and, by 1858, many of them even worked at the same address ...



https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hurs/hd_hurs.htm



Those who love beauty and Nature will be very fond of this important art movement.


Example:







How I wish I could be there, now.

[hellsapoppin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Ra...te_Brotherhood


The brotherhood's early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations:

✔️ to have genuine ideas to express;
✔️ to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
✔️ to sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote; and
✔️ most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues

The principles were deliberately non dogmatic, since the brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and methods of depiction. Influenced by Romanticism, the members thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism which stress the independent observation of nature. In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two directions. The realists were led by Hunt and Millais, while the medievalists were led by Rossetti and his followers, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and Impressionism.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp-focus techniques on a white canvas.





I enjoyed so much of their great work over my many years and believe that the following work illustrates these ideals:





~ John Everett Millais’ ‘The Blind Girl’ (1856)



Two impoverished girls sit helplessly by the side of a road. Modern industrial society has forgotten them. Their clothes are tattered. Like Medieval mummers they play musical instruments to entertain patrons in order to raise pennies for sustenance. In the background is Nature with all its beauty and a pastoral setting. That while elites prosper in this society the impoverished barely survive. Thus, the Industrial Revolution has enabled elites to garner much wealth, but it has caused the poor to get even poorer. Just prior to this generation of artists and writers, there had been a Romanticism movement in art, literature, and classical music. The Pre-Raphaelite movement sought to debunk that mythical idealism. I believe they succeeded in doing so through this great painting and in many others like it. This is one of many reasons why I enjoyed this movement so much.

[free]

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/...cyBWL._AC_.jpg

"Drunken Silenus Supported by Satyrs", ca 1620. Anthony van Dyck. Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London, England. Poster Print (18 x 24).

Don't ask me why do I like this painting because I don't know. Original gives a completely differenet impression, it seems alive there.