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i really like fridas paintings...she was an incredible woman and painter...needless to say being impounded with a steel rod thru her body in a bus accident definitely influenced all her paintings....i don't think any stories or bios could do her life justice as she really lived..only her paintings truly tell the story
I couldn't agree more. To have been as you say 'impounded with a steel rod thru her body' whilst still a teenager and then to have gone on to produce some of the best surrealist works that were in truth the biography of her life... I saw her paintings at Tate Modern in London and in actuality, they were even more intense than I had imagined possible. And of course disturbing too. But that was her reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by littlewing53
This has been a really great thread! Thanks everyone for posting these fabulous images. Unfortunately, I could never figure out how to display an image myself, but I will suggest the works of Italian artist, Modigliani. I have always adored the eloquence, the simplicity and the note of sorrow in his portraits. One might say that Modigliani is to painting what Chopin is to music and Turgenev is to literature. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think he died very young as an emmigre in Paris. Well, as Nietzsche said, 'the gods love those who die young'.
Hi Werther
Re Modigliani I have a repro (of course) of "Woman with a Fan", approximation of the actual title. I love his style, the elongated faces and elegance of his subjects and the flatness of the space that they occupy. I have loved this site too. I hope we can continue on with more discussions and representations like this. Haven
I like Monet and Modigliani and yes Werther he died at 36.
I've seen the movie Modigliani with Andy Garcia and loved it.
But my favourite artist is Michelangelo and my strongest desire was to see one of his works live so to speak and two years ago i've been to Rome and i've seen PIETA in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City and it was just amazing.
As an artist selecting just a single favorite artist or single favorite painting is as much of an impossibility as selecting a single favorite book as a bibliophile (although I would almost certainly need to go with Shakespeare as the writer:D). As such I've decided to post something along the lines of my top ten (or a few more) with the full knowledge that this list would probably change if I were asked again on another day.
1. Michelangelo- The Sistine Cieling - This work would almost certainly remain at the top of my list at any time. To my mind Michelangelo is the greatest artist ever... bar none. If I were to search for a literary equivalent to his achievements I would almost need to think of something along the lines of a combination of Homer, Dante, and Milton. he is the greatest grand epic poet of art:
IMG]http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Sistinesmall.jpg[/IMG]
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...stjudgment.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...byan2small.jpg
I have have always found that any time I return to studying Michelangelo's work I find even something further to make me wonder and leave me in a state of awe and admiration.
2. Heironymus Bosch- The Garden of Earthly Delights- A good many of those works that I would think of as "favorites" are paintings that have such a degree of complexity that I find I can return to them again and again and never tire of them... never fail to discover something new. Bosh certainly lives up to this standard:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...rdensmall3.jpg
3. Botticelli- Primavera- Botticelli's great allegory of the arrival of spring certainly does not lack a complexity worthy of Bosch... in spite of it being far simpler upon first glance. The tapestry-like field of flowers, for example, illustrate some 100s of different species of flowers. The artist spent an entire year in rendering the obsessive detail of this painting. In spite of its laborious creation the work conveys a complete feeling of joy and lightness. The figures dance and float across this tapestry/frieze-like surface in an unabashed song to spring... rebirth... and love. I've never been able to look at the painting without thinking of Vivaldi and Petrarch and Spencer's Amoretti and Epithalimion.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../primavera.jpg
4. Pieter Breughel- The Blue Cloak (Netherlandish Proverbs)- Breughel is certainly a must among my favorite painters. With him the choice of the single representative work becomes difficult. I have always loved the painting of August (Autumn), and Hunters in the Snow from his series on the months. I'm also greatly enamored of The Fall of the Rebel Angels, the horrific Triumph of Death and Dulle Griet (Mad Meg)... however I'd probably need to go with the fabulous Netherlandish Proverbs. This great painting appears at first to be but a highly detailed painting by a master of observation of a Flemish village of the era:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...erbssmall1.jpg
Upon closer inspection, however, we discover that almost every figure in the image is actually a visual representation of a traditional Netherlandish proverb or folk saying:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...proverbsd3.jpg
"One has to crawl to make one's way through the world" and "He holds the whole world at the tip of his thumb"
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...proverbsd4.jpg
"He runs his head against a brick wall"
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...proverbsd2.jpg
"She holds fire in one hand and water in the other" (She runs hot and then cold)
continued...
5. Rembrandt- Lucretia, Hendrickje Bathing, Self-Portrait 1669- I have always imagined Rembrandt as the Shakespeare of art. While Michelangelo is the giant of epic heroic art, no artist has captured human emotions with such depth as Rembrandt. Where most artists paint figures, Rembrandt paints human beings... characters whom become as real as those created by Shakespeare or Dickens at his best. The painting, Lucretia, in the National Gallery of Art in washington is probably the single painting to have left the most profound emotional impact upon me... at least of those I have seen in person.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../lucretzia.jpg
Of course the artist's great Self Portrait or 1669 from the same museum is no less moving. One cannot help but feel the profound sorrows etched upon the face of this artist (the loss of his wife, his wealth and reputation, his only son...). All this says nothing of the brilliance of his handling of paint itself:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ild/sp1659.jpg
Of course Rembrandt was not all tragedy. His painting of his young lover/soon to be wife, Hendrickje wading in a stream is certainly one of the most loving of erotic images... erotic with absolutely nothing salacious about it.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...riversmall.jpg
6. Pieter Paul Rubens- Portrait of Susanna Fourment, The Judgment of Paris, Little Fur, The Garden of Love- Rubens is another master from who I could not choose a single painting. He is most well known as the master of epic-scaled heroic narrative paintings... images of the Crucifixion and Deposition... battle and hunting scenes... and narratives from classical mythology. His finest works, however, are almost invariably the more personal. Perhaps his greatest portrait is this depiction of his lovely sister-in-law, Helena Fourment. The painting is so sensual and full of life that commentators throughout history could not help but imagine an illicit affair existing between the sitter and the artist.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ourmentmed.jpg
Of course the artist didn't need to run to a sister-in-law to find his erotic pleasures... in his late 50s he would marry the 16-year old Helena Fourment, called by many the most beautiful woman in the Netherlands. Several years after the death of his first wife, Isabella Brandt, whom he had deeply loved, Rubens showed himself to be absolutely enthralled and enchanted by the young Helena. He would paint her again and again and again. His life-sized portrait of her dressed in only a fur wrap (inspired by his artistic idol, Titian) is perhaps the most erotically charged of these paintings:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...little_fur.jpg
Helena showed up not only in portraits, but she also became an actress of sorts... posing for various mythological paintings. In The Judgment of Paris, Helena has become the triumphant goddess of love, Venus, in the beauty competition set to spur on the Trojan War.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...t_of_paris.jpg
She also arrives with her consort... the artist himself... in the Garden of Love, a masterpiece of young lovers dressed in satins and lace engaged in flirtations in a courtly garden. This painting would become the very foundation of the entire Rococo... especially of the paintings of Watteau.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...en_Of_Love.jpg
Continued...
7. Pierre Bonnard- Perfume, The Toilette, Terrace, Landscape at Vernon- From Rubens I end in jumping to the 20th century. In spite of the fact that I have no doubt as to the absolute dominating presense of Picasso... his innovation... his amazing scale and breadth of output... still, for whatever reason, I have ever been absolutely enchanted by the work of Pierre Bonnard. Matisse himself upon seeing the great collection of Bonnard's work in the Phillip's collection in Washington admitted that Bonnard might just have been the greatest of them all. In spite of this, many critics have dismissed him as nothing more than a late Impressionist. I must admit that he is something of a "painter's painter"... he slowly grows upon you with exposure to his real paintings in person. Whether we are looking at one of his intimate scenes of his wife at her toilette (Perfume, The Toilette), a marvelous still-life, a scene of a family gathering, or one of his brilliant landscapes (The Terrace, Landscape at Vernon) the effect is always of the mundane transformed into the magical. Forms are fragmented or devoured by shimmering glittering light in a manner the reminds me always of one of those great Byzantine mosaics.:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ightmedium.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ettemedium.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../Bonnard02.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../Bonnard11.jpg
8. Vermeer- Pearl Necklace, Woman with Water Jug, Woman with Scales- If anyone is truly a painter's painter it is Vermeer. In spite of his small output (less than 40 small paintings) his stature is that of one of the giants. This is owed, unquestionably, to the fact that his paintings, seen in the flesh, are absolutely magical. His subject matter was nothing new for the time: intimate scenes of everyday life by the women whom he lived with. How they are painted, however, is breathtaking. Vermeer used only the finest of materials and built up his paintings in layers until they have an absolutely jewell-like appearance. The paint in many places appears to still be wet, so limpid does it appear. His color absolutely glows... as does his mastery of light (Thomas Kinkade, "master of light"?! Give me a break!!!:sick:) Vermeer shows us that the creation of the few small perfect works of art can be an important and as moving as the grand oeuvre or the epic scaled narrative masterpieces:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...kesguild/2.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...kesguild/4.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...kesguild/5.jpg
Continued...
8. Max Beckmann- Bird's Hell, Death, The Begining, Woman with Mandolin, Falling Man Beckmann is another among the Modernists whom may not have been one of the first picks of many others... but I have always found him to be incredibly powerful. With the passage of time his reputation has begun to grow greatly. Beckmann always struck me as something of a medieval or primitive artist among the moderns. In contrast to the elegance of many artists his work conveys something brutal. In spite of the brilliance of his color and the sensuality of his paint handling the works always convey something dark and menacing. The colors actually glow against the bituminous black of his outlines like the reds and blues of a medieval work of stained glass glows against the black leading. Bird's Hell is a brilliant image of the growing horrors of Nazi Germany seen as an almost Bosch-like fantasy. Death is an even more surreal fantasy with a monstrous choir and musicians turned topsy-turvey. The Falling Man... an image of man falling into a void... through the clouds... against the backdrop of burning buildings... has taken on an even more profound "meaning" post-9-11.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...sguild/128.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...sguild/131.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/141small.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...sguild/150.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...sguild/153.jpg
9. Titian- The Rape of Europa, Danae, Venus D'Urbino, Venus with Mirror- To my mind the greatest school of art ever was that of the Venetian "colorists". Wanting to paint large but unable to paint frescos in a city prone to flooding and extreme humidity... and equally wishing to paint slowly and with the brilliance of color possible in the new Flemish techniques of oil painting, the Venetians hit upon painting in oil on canvas. Artists such as the Bellini's, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Titian essentially pushed the abilities of oil painting to new levels establishing the techniques that are almost second-nature to the painter today. Starting rapidly with only a simple underdrawing they were able to slowly build up paintings over time with a combination of direct painting, scumbling, and transparent glazes until they had wove something with a magical surface and absolute brilliance of light and color. Titian was the greatest master of this school and realized the female nude as the perfect subject best suited to the sensuality and warmth possible in the new techniques. While the Florentine and Roman nudes seemed carved of stone, Titian's women were warm... made of flesh and blood... and bathed in the shimmering light of Italy:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ape-europa.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ae20titian.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2..._of_urbino.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...nus_mirror.jpg
Continued...
10. Degas- Bathers- In some ways Edgar Degas (along with Edouard Manet) was the last of the "old masters". Degas was trained in the "old master" atelier manner stressing drawing of the human body, sculptural form, composition, and narrative painting. He imagined himself as being the latest "history painter" in the footsteps of his great artistic predecessors, especially Raphael. Like his living hero, Ingres, however, he soon found himself unable... or unwilling to realize this goal. The history painting as he knew it was "dead"... an absurdity best left to such salon painters as Bougeureau. Instead, Degas sought out contemporary subjects where he might best discover the same movements of the human body which were the essential core of the history paintings. He thus turned to the race track, the ballet, the bars, and late in his career... to the female bather. Rather than staging his figures, Degas studied his subjects obsessively, capturing poses that conveyed tension, exhaustion, thought, etc... His images have an intimacy unseen yet in art... and yet for all the naturalism there is an absolute brilliance of composition and color. Often building upon rapidly executed drawings made from life, Degas turned more and more toward the use of pastel:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...baigneuse2.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/T03563_9.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ild/degas6.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...EdgarDegas.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...h_1884smal.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ild/degas2.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...Bath2small.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/dega7750.jpg
A very sincere thank you to stlukesguild for the determination to provide such amazing art work and explanation. Very beautiful pieces.
Two paintings by Dix, first one is about WW I, and the second one is clear enough; you can easily recognise Hitler.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a77...artriptych.jpg
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a77/ismetozkan/O.jpg
Gernica by Picasso, if you look careful you see a skull in the middle of painting, which symbolizes death in war.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a77...ernica1937.jpg
Arearea by Gauguin, i like the expressions on those two people's face.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a77...an/Arearea.jpg
And many works of Dali are my favorites because of his perfect technic and imagination, that's why i am not going to put one of his paintings.
I think Edvard Munch's Scream is absolutely insperational, the story that I see in it really means something to me.
I want to share painting with you. These are done by my sisters bestfriends dad.
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q...dpi320x240.jpg
to back myself up for copyright;
http://www.paulmaccormaic.com/RHA.html
One painter I like very much is Turner. I have chosen to study him this year in painting class. I love this painting, it's called 'Rain, Steam and Speed':
http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/d...eam_Speed1.jpg
Ok, so somehow I missed this one, my favourite painting is the Christ of Saint John on the cross by Dali. A pinting I remember fondly from seeing the original in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries & museum in Glasgow.
http://www.theglasgowstory.com/images/TGSE00477_m.jpg
I posted a few more of my favorites to a posting (What are the 20 Works of Art You Want to See Before You Die?) on my blog:
http://stlukesguild.wordpress.com/
I LOOOOOOVVVEEEEE art. I love making it and I love interpreting it! My favorite museums are art museums. take me to one and I'll squeal like crazy and will love you forever. I don't really have one favorite piece of art, and I'm too lazy/in too much of a hurry to post any now, but I might later. My favorite artists are Mark Mothersbaugh, (Western Fundamentalist, Eastern Fundamentalist) Andy Warhol, (self portrait and Flash: November 22, 1963, JFK Assassination, c.1968-I've seen both in person! I also LOVE that video of him eating a hamburger. "The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting." :D)) Roy Lichtenstein, (Whaam! and Cold Shoulder) Magritte (Cici n'est pa une pipe. On my binder it says "This is not a binder." :D No one ever gets it, though...:() Degas, (I'm quite fond of his ballerinas-I love how he makes them so deformed) Van Gogh, (that's a given-I have Starry Night in my room) Renoir, (Don't have a favorite of his, either. There's a few with him dancing with his wife and I like those.) Monet, (perty landscapes) Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, (Spring-that's in our front entrance) Jaques-Louis David, (painter of the Revolution-I adore that painting of Marat) and Jean Honore Frangonard (The Swing). I've also always loved portraits of royalty. Like that one portrait of Louis IV. :D Him and his man-tights. :p I also just recently another potential favorite of mine-scatch that-a now favorite of mine, Keyth Ryden: http://www.krkland.com/index.html So amazing! It's all the stuff I like: cartoony-pop art-surrealism. I also found this lady's art similar and interesting: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...6safe%3Dactive
I love that one! Gorgeous!Quote:
Originally Posted by GothMan
Degas pwns.Quote:
Originally Posted by kathycf
Quote:
Originally Posted by GothMan
MAGRITTE!!! I've never seen this one before! Amazing! I love surrealism.Quote:
Originally Posted by NickAdams
Whoah! I like those. Very disturbing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Turk
I also liked the one with the girl in the field, those medevial.renaissance ones stlukesguild posted, and the one with the very realistic-looking cathedral.
I LOVE ART!!!!!!!!!!!
Here's another one of my favourites
It is called "The magic circle"
http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u...c66b344f4a.jpg
I love Dali. See my signature for my fav of his works. It's called Metamorphosis of Narcissus
I agree, Dali's paintings are great.Quote:
Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*
I've heard of Dali-- Lovecraft got inspiraition from him sometimes.
What a wonderful thread Niamh! I only can recall one painting by Jack B. Yeats, it was at the beginning of an Irish art book, I think black and white, someone writing a letter! This is very cool!
I've only glanced at this page 7, I'm interested in looking at the rest of it...I just want to say to you all: You have superb taste in art!!! Beautiful..
Here's on by Van Gogh I like
http://www.latifm.com/artists/image/...e-de-nuit2.jpg
Thats my favourite Dali painting. :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*
And Nik, you really should look back over the pages. There are some really fantastic pieces of art posted...
I will.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Hi Manolia, I love this painting! I know I have seen it before somewhere. I love things about gyspies and this is how I perceive this, but also it makes me think of Eustashia from "Return of the Native", keeping a bonfire burning in the night on the heath.Quote:
Originally Posted by manolia
I agree with you Niamh, this is my favorite also, asside from 'Pieta', which is used as my Avatar. I need post it large in here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niamh
Hi there, kilted exile, thanks so much for posting this painting of Dali's. I knew it resided in Glasgow and was mortified when it had come to Philadephia, two years back, for the big Dali Exhibit, and I somehow:bawling: missed seeing it. By the time I went to the show, and I went twice, it had been sent back to Scotland! I was on the verge of tears. It was the one piece, I had prepared myself to see and missed out on. I will post 'Pieta' and the other Christ's crucifixion that Dali painted. Both are stunningly beautiful!Quote:
Ok, so somehow I missed this one, my favourite painting is the Christ of Saint John on the cross by Dali. A pinting I remember fondly from seeing the original in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries & museum in Glasgow.
I must say, I have not fully checked out this thread but there are so many great pieces in here. Sweets I love that Turner painting; Niamh, that baby picture is so adorable and clever; your sister's friend's dad truly has talent. I love it since I will soon become a grandmother. It is really sweet. StLukesguild, the Degas Bathers are lovely. NikoliI, my son had that Van Gogh print framed and hanging in his appartment. I think now it is on his stairway. I always loved it. The cafe seems so inviting, doesn't it?
Everyone, Good job on this interesting thread! Here I am an artist, and had not yet posted a thing. I have tons of artwork copied to disks, so shame on me:blush:. I must upload some soon, so I can post them and share the best ones with you.
This is my favorite.. It is Jean Baptiste Camile Corots Springtime of Life. It is shown at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
I'm quite fond of Bruce Conner, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Conner
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxLcZStUCus
I love that video. Guess where I got my muscle protein avatar?
Nobody even cared...
No matter how much art I see, The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso (From his blue period) is it for me. I saw it in an exhibit when I was 13 in Washington DC and ever since, it is my absoloute favorite.
http://content.answers.com/main/cont...st_Picasso.jpg
My favourite painting would have to be...
"The Nightmare"
By Fuseli
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Nightmare.JPG
I think it's so dramatic and haunting, yet beautiful :)
LadyW, this painting was used in a very strange film I saw the other night, called "Gothic" - an early Ken Russell adaptation, about the weekend when author Mary Shelley, came up with the idea for "Frankenstein". The film takes place the Gothic mansion/estate of Lord Byrons; Mary was accompanied her then betrothed, Percy Shelley and her half sister. Pretty much this film was a horror film and not very good; totally strange and weird; it was more a 'free-love feast', 'halucinatory drug fantasy trip' film....pretty funny, really. I picked up the DVD in a $1 bin way back. If anything it certainly was entertaining. Hate to admit I watched it.
So funny, I recognise this painting now from that film; but I do recall seeing it much earlier than that, in some of my art books. Interesting painting, isn't it?
What a shame for it sounded rather good in your descrption :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Janine
But for $1 dollar... I suppose you can't expect much huh? Typical.
Yes I think it's fascinating.Quote:
Originally Posted by Janine
I did a little research on the painting and discovered a few facts about it from:
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhib.../nightmare.htm
Hope you found this interesting :)Quote:
THE IMP OR ‘MARA’This creature may derive from ancient sculpture, but it also alludes to contemporary ideas about ‘savages’ and halfhuman simians. His features have been taken as resembling Fuseli’s own. The painter may have been inspired by folklore relating to the ‘Mara’ – spirits who visit in the night, causing bad dreams – or classical stories about ‘incubi’ – wicked imps who assault women sexually in their sleep. Fuseli’s contemporaries detected references to Shakespeare.
THE VICTIM
This voluptuous young woman has been connected with Anna Landolt, the object of Fuseli’s unrequited passion when he was in Zurich in 1779. Her provocative costume and pose suggests a queasy mixture of pain and sensual pleasure.
THE HORSE
Although the word ‘nightmare’ derives from ‘mara’ (imp) rather than ‘mare’ (horse), these terms are often mixed up. The prominent presence of the wild-looking animal in Fuseli’s painting compounds this confusion.
THE FURNITURE
The setting appears to be contemporary to the 1770s and 1780s, creating a sense of fashionable luxury. It is not clear what the pots and jars to the left contain. Perhaps cosmetics – reinforcing the feeling of decadence – or even laudanum, the mix of opium and alcohol that was widely used in the eighteenth century.
LadyW, well, I found it was worth viewing for only $1. Oddly entertaining, but some scenes were rather silly, others just plain disgusting. I did like the huge mansion they filmed it in. I wish someone else would do a better film on Byron. Maybe Johnny Depp could play the famous lord, he was quite handsome and multilayered/complex in personality, etc. I bet Tim Burton could do something with this film.Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyW
I did find this interesting. Thanks for posting it. This line could probably describe the film "suggests a queasy mixture of pain and sensual pleasure"!:lol:Quote:
Yes I think it's fascinating.
I did a little research on the painting and discovered a few facts about it from:
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhib.../nightmare.htm
Hope you found this interesting :)
Who's your favourite Artist .....
As an artist myself this is almost an impossible to choose a single favorite. Even the top ten would be difficult... but I'll try something along that line.
1. Michelangelo Buonarotti- What can one even begin to say about this artist? He stands as an almost mythic, superhuman figure having produced a body of work on such a grand and masterful scale as to rival the achievements of entire societies (the cathedral builders of Notre Dame or Chartres, the Pyramids of Egypt, etc...). By age 18 he had carved the Drunken Bacchus which could rival any work of sculpture created since the days of Rome and Greece. A few years later it is the Pieta where the artist magnificently pulls off a very difficult subject to portray without any sense of awkwardness... that of a full-grown male figure lying in the lap of a woman. Not only does he do this but in the process he creates one of the most moving and masterful works of sculpture ever:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...lo_pieta-1.jpg
And then he surpasses himself with the David... perhaps THE symbol of the Renaissance ideal of the thinking hero.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...uild/David.jpg
From here it is on to the Sistine, where in the course of 4 years (less than 2 and a half actually engaged on the project) this sculptor who had no real experience with fresco and who was reluctant to do the job, produced what is perhaps the single greatest painting ever:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...uild/18-16.jpg
I am always awed by the scene of God swooping through the heavens:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ghtanddark.jpg
… and the super-human Jonah who at one bursts forth from his too-restraining architectural setting and falls back stunned by the scenes of creation before him… both those of God… and of Michelangelo himself:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ld/jonah-1.jpg
…but especially by the glorious and stunningly beautiful Libyan Sybil whose body appears so natural and elegant (perhaps even more so considering she was based on a male model)… and yet is posed in what is obviously an impossible pose… her toe on her left foot facing directly toward us, her back turned away from us while she lays down her heavy tome at the same time as she daintily steps forth from her dais... thus conveying such a sense of motion...
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...an2small-1.jpg
And he did not stop there. The only real challenges to his paintings of the ceiling of the Sistine is his own Last Judgment:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...judgment-2.jpg
At this pint his figures attain such a superhuman grandeur that Michelangelo must truly be credited with having anticipated Mannerism... the movement which will immediately follow the Renaissance:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...stj_detail.jpg
All of this does not even take into account his achievements in architecture... which include the famous Dome of Saint Peter's in Rome:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...sguild/stp.jpg
...nor the fact that the artist also stands as an important figure in the realm of Italian poetry:
THE DOOM OF BEAUTY
by: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
HOICE soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see,
Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate,
What beauties heaven and nature can create,
The paragon of all their works to be!
Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety,
Have found a home, as from thy outward state
We clearly read, and are so rare and great
That they adorn none other like to thee!
Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul;
Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes
Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat.
What law, what destiny, what fell control,
What cruelty, or late or soon, denies
That death should spare perfection so complete?
CELESTIAL LOVE
O mortal thing enthralled these longing eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair face I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows of beauty shed around
This fair false world her wings to earth have bound:
Unto the Love of Loves aloft she flies.
Nay, things that suffer death, quench not the fire
Of deathless spirits; nor eternity
Serves sordid Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on earth, fairer in death on high.
English translation by John Addington Symonds (1840-1893).
to be continued...
2. Rembrandt van Rijn-
I have always imagined Rembrandt as something akin to Shakespeare. Within the realm of painting, Rembrandt invented the most human characters ever... as memorable as Hamlet, Puck, Lady MacBeth, etc... Where Michelangelo aspired to the superhuman... to the image of man created in the image of God... Rembrandt forever seeks out the beauty... the spirituality... the emotions in the earthbound and truly human. No other artist has ever matched his ability to create images of human beings who stare at us... through us... with such profound depth of feeling... so that we almost imagine that we know them... and can never forget them.
In an image like Hendrickje Wading one cannot help but sense this eroticism of the artist contemplating his lover in a manner that never approaches the lecherous, but is absolutely loving of this woman as she is... and never even attempts to idealize her:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...versmall-1.jpg
In the great Bathsheba the artist has again turned the entire notion of this Biblical tale as every other artist has ever portrayed upon end and into the most human and tragic of dramas. Bathsheba, whose unidealized body plainly shows the ravages of time is still lovingly portrayed... glowing with an almost internal light. Her sad eyes face down as she contemplates the letter from Kind David... caught in a drama of passions beyond her control:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...thsheba2sm.jpg
Lucretia is always the last painting I look at upon every visit to the National Gallery in Washington. The artist's masterful handling of "stuff"... materials... the glittering gold and jewels, the satins and other fabrics, the flesh itself... is without equal... and yet all of this but serves to further the human emotion. One cannot help but feel the pain etched in Lucretia's eyes as they well up with tears and tear into your very soul:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ucretzia-1.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/a000114b.jpg
No artist has ever looked at himself as unflinchingly and unsparingly as Rembrandt. In his final years, after having lost almost everything: his fame, his wealth, his home, his first wife, his only son... he looks back at us with with eyes that have known as much tragedy as those of Lucretia and Bathsheba:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/sp1659-1.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/a0001136.jpg
-To be continued...
3. Sir Peter Paul Rubens-
Rubens is another of those super-human artist whose achievements seemingly surpass that which is humanly possible. He produced literally thousands of paintings... most on a heroic scale, ran the most successful studio workshop in Europe, was an expert in art and antiquities, spoke several languages fluently, was entrusted by the French, Spanish, and English courts with diplomatic missions for which he was given multiple awards and raised to the level of an aristocrat (at an era when being a mere "pop star" would not have afforded such an honor). On top of all of this he was one of the most fluent and brilliant painters to have ever taken up the brush, merging the masterful drawing manner of the Florentine/Roman masters (Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael) with the brilliant color and sensuality of the Venetians (Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Giorgione) and the Flemish love of landscape.
The least of his paintings are but spectacular decorations displaying a mastery of drawing, movement, anatomy, brilliant color, and composition to rival any artist. These often employed the assistance of his formidable studio... which employed artists who were as masterful in their own right as Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Breughel, and Frans Snyders:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/03allego.jpg
Subjects that held a deeper personal connection for the artist, were often reserved solely for his own hand... and contain a far greater depth of feeling. As a deeply religious man the Crucifixion was a theme of profound import to him. To these he brought a brilliance that echoed the color of stained glass or Flemish primitives (such as Rogier van der Weyden) as well as a depth of feeling:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...eligismall.jpg
The landscape of his native land was a beloved subject long before the theme was accepted as a worthy subject matter in and of itself for art. His landscape paintings are among his most personal... and in the long run... his most influential, impacting the whole genre of landscape painting in Holland, France, and England during the rococo and Romantic eras:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/rubens27.jpg
Images of his family and friends, however, may rank among his greatest achievements. His portrait of his first wife, Isabella, is presented with all the nobility that Titian might have afforded to a Venetian noblewoman, and conveys the deep respect and tender feeling the artist had for her:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../20brantsm.jpg
His portrait of his sister-in-law, Suzanna Fourment (painted after Isabella's death), is so sensuous and loving that endless writers have suggested a probable love-affair:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...a_fourment.jpg
In his late 50s Rubens took a second wife, the stunningly beautiful 16-year old blonde, Helena, rejecting his friends suggestions that he should mary a lady of aristocratic rank. The artist was absolutely infatuated with Helena and painted her endlessly. Again he confronts Titian (his famous "liitle fur") with his life-scale portrait of his near naked wife, clothed only in a fur wrap:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...rcoatsmall.jpg
He would use Helena as a model for his lyrical, poetic mythological paintings, turning her into Venus in this magnificent rendering of The Judgment of Paris.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...f_parismed.jpg
Helena and Rubens would have several children together, and following the loss of one beloved child, the artist obsessively painted his wife an children producing images of a veritable "Garden of Love":
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ldrensmall.jpg
Indeed, one of his final paintings was an actual "Garden of Love" presenting young aristocratic lovers, including the artist and his young wife (standing) lounging in a bucolic garden landscape. This painting would almost single-handedly establish the model for such scenes by Rococo masters such as Watteau.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2..._Lovesmall.jpg
4. Pierre Bonnard-
While I will certainly be the first to admit that he was not the greatest artist of the 20th century (that honor must surely go to Picasso... or possibly Matisse), Pierre Bonnard has surely remained my own personal favorite. Historically Bonnard was often relegated to the rank of a latter-day Impressionist. Bonnard is surely far more than that. Like Vermeer, Morandi, or even the compoer, J.S. Bach, Bonnard is a painter whom at first look appears conservative... even behind the times... but with prolonged exposure reveals a profound original vision that surpasses the mere novelty of innovation. Bonnard stands as one of the greatest colorists of the 20th century... perhaps the best, as his only real rival to such a title, Matisse, admitted. His handling of paint is absolutely spectacular as the surfaces of the canvas (and those can only be rightfully experienced in person) dance with blobs, dabs, swirls, smears, and the faintest whispers of color. What is most spectacular, however, is Bonnard's ability to transform the most mundane subject matter into absolute magic. Like the Impressionists and the "little Dutch masters" before them, Bonnard is a master of the "intimate". His wife, his family, his friends, his house and his backyard are all he needs to create the most resplendent visionary paintings.
One of my absolute favorite paintings of all time must be Bonnard's "Bottle of Perfume". In this painting the artist's lover/later wife, Marthe stands before a window bathed in light as as brilliant as anything painted by J.M.W. Turner. The devours everything... fragments or shatters everything into shards of pure color... just like the spectacular Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ightmedium.jpg
Again and again the artist transforms the intimate world of his wife bathing into the most fabulous images of color and light:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ettemedium.jpg
His wife never ages in Bonnard's eyes. In her 60s she is as magnificent as ever, floating in her tub she could be a Byzantine queen encased in her porcelain sarcophagus dyed by the glittering hues of light bouncing off the surrounding mosaics.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...nudebathlg.jpg
Bonnard discovered the same sense of magic in all of his surroundings. A view of his patio with a few visiting relatives becomes a rainbow-hued scene of absolute magic:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ernonsmall.jpg
A young niece standing before the receding landscape and simple dwellings in the south of France becomes a lush tropical wonder-world... the young girl fanned by palm leaves like some poetic Renaissance vision of the Virgin Mary:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...onnard02sm.jpg
The mere landscape seen from his back porch explodes into a sultry garden that might illuminate an Arabian Nights or a book of Persian fairy tales...:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ard11small.jpg
... while even a mere collection of objects on the dining room table provide an explosion of heated colors:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../bonnard40.jpg
Still almost nothing prepares us for his view out of his studio window, painted during his final years. Here the brilliant yellows of the Mimosa explode into light... like the sun bursting through a stained-glass window or a blinding sunset as imagined by Turner:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../mimdsmall.jpg
5. William Blake-
I should state that from this point on the number has no correlation to where I imagine the artist falling in my personal pantheon. The first 4 are permanent fixtures in my mind. From here onward the order might (and probably would) change from day to day... depending upon my mood.
As an artist obsessed with books, William Blake would most certainly need to included among any list of my idols. I've already written an extended post upon Blake here in the "Poetry Redux" thread on the Poetry Forum:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=29869
I'll not go into such depth... but focus more exclusively upon his contributions as a visual artist. Blake has also been one of the most misunderstood and maligned of any major poet/artist. He is often portrayed as a half-mad genius/visionary who spoke to spirits, a political naif, a curmudgeon and "outsider", a self-taught artist and poet who had little knowledge or experience of the art of his predecessors or of his own time. Most of these stereotypes have little reality to them.
Blake attended virtually no formal school but was largely self-taught through his own voracious reading. He was exceptionally well-read and often of literature which was not part of the accepted canon of his time. Of course Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Ben Jonson, Spencer, and especially the Bible were more than familiar to him... but other sources of inspiration include Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, with whom he was friends and a political ally, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Plato, Plotinus, the Hermetica and the Bhagavad Gita, mythologies of the world from Egypt to Iceland to India to ancient Britain and even the Kabbalah.
Blake's talents as a visual artist, however, were recognized far earlier. He developed an early love of drawing by copying engravings of masters such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Dürer. In this he was was fully supported by his father. Unable to afford apprenticeship to a painting master, Blake was initially apprenticed to the fashionable William Ryland, engraver to King George. Blake however would request that his father find a more suitable match for his talents, declaring that Ryland had "the hanging look about him". (In fact Ryland would end on the scaffold some years later, convicted for forging currency.) Blake spent his apprentice years under James Basire. Basire's manner of working was rather out-dated stressing the linear contours and avoiding the more painterly affects that would allow for replication of paintings or the creation of more atmospheric elements. His manner, however, was perfectly suited to Blake's own personal preferences for the linear sculptural form. Basire's chief source of income was the result of commissioned engravings to be made of architectural and sculptural details of English churches and cathedrals. Through his apprenticeship to Basire, Blake was exposed to the stylistic abstractions of Romanesque and Gothic art which would have been largely dismissed by most artists of the time. Blake's own art was often criticized as being crude and amateurish... full of incompetent distortions of anatomy... but in reality its stylizations are clearly consciously thought out and rooted in the artist's love of the linear art of medieval sculpture (among other sources).
Blake entered the Royal Academy but immediately rebelled against the painterly masters then favored: Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, etc... and well as their British heirs, Gainsborough, Turner, Raeburn, Romney, etc... At a time when landscape and portraiture in oil paints reined supreme, Blake had the audacity to produce his own versions of the illuminated manuscript ala medieval artists...
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...inatedms-1.jpg
...books printed and watercolored which illustrated his own writings... or his own unique interpretations of the Bible, Milton, Dante, etc...
Among Blake's earlier works are his Songs of Innocence and Experience in which the short, lyrical poems are illustrated in a simple, almost child-like manner (It should come as no surprise that Blake's work has been mined for generations by children's book artists). Perhaps the most famous image and poem from these volumes is The Tyger :
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ld/Tygersm.jpg
The poem itself is a lyric I have long held in my memory like so many nursery rhymes and poems learned in my youth. Not unlike a nursery rhyme, it's hypnotic and chant-like... seeming oh so simple at first... but soon revealing far greater depths of thought... questions about the very nature of good and evil and creation. I'm always struck with chills as the poet finally confronts us with the ultimate question, "Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?", before returning once again to the beginning, "Tyger Tyger..." and leaving that question unanswered... but perhaps provoking a little spark in our minds.
Among one of Blake's most fascinating works is his Job.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2.../h2_blke_1.jpg
This work is built of a title page and 21 engraved illustrations. At first glimpse one might assume that Blake has merely illustrated the Biblical text of Job... but as is usual with Blake, nothing is as simple as it first appears. The usual orthodox interpretation of Job is that he represents an admirable figure of faith and patience... a good man who is tested by God by having all of his worldly belongings stripped from him, the loss of all of his family and loved ones, and his own body stricken with painful disease... and yet he does not lose his faith in God. Blake's Job is something of a critique of this interpretation. Utilizing images as well as inscribed quotes from the Book of Job and other Biblical texts, Blake presents the idea that Job does not begin as a man deeply faithful to God... but rather as a figure who is faithful only in appearance. He may do the right things... but for the wrong reasons. Blake suggests that the various trials that Job undergoes amount to a spiritual journey... from a false believer to a truly spiritual man. In what in perhaps the most powerful image, Illustration XI:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...-job-small.jpg
Blake presents a Job condemned to the fires of Hell. Devils reach out from the hell fires below in an attempt to drag him down. Still his hands are clutched in prayer as he looks up to the Hebrew God, Jehovah, hovering over him. Jehovah points to the tablets of the law which condemn Job while the lightning bolt of damnation leap around him. And yet... as Job glances down at Jehovah's cloven foot and at the serpent of materialism with which he is intertwined... he realizes that this immovable God of the law is one and the same with Satan. The inscription "I know that my redeemer liveth" suggests that Job has begun to imagine that there is a better God.
In the Book of Urizen Blake presents some of his most powerful visual images: muscular demi-urge figures in the process of creation of the universe:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/Urizensm.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...liam_Blake.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...-of-urizen.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...-of-urizen.jpg
continued...
Beyond his illuminated books, Blake produced endless volumes of larger watercolor paintings as designs for never realized books... books that perhaps would have demanded technical facilities beyond those possible at the time. These watercolors include some of Blake's most memorable images:
Scenes from Dante:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...eandVergil.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...Blasphemer.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...Infenrnosm.jpg
Marvelous imaginings of Milton's Paradise Lost:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...evethefall.jpg
Biblical narratives:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...-abelsmall.jpg
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...Judgment-1.jpg
This final image... a Last Judgment almost blends the iconography of the Last Judgment with Christ's Harrowing of Hell or a Fall of the Rebel Angels in a manner that is very much suggestive of some Asian paintings!
Blake's impact was slow to evolve... in art as well as in literature... but there are numerous obvious heirs. A group of young followers of Blake, including Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, who titled themselves "The Ancients" would produce a body of graphic works clearly inspired by their idol:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...almersmall.jpg
Samuel Palmer-Early Morning
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...uild/bride.jpg
Edward Calvert-The Bride
Even more important was the great British artist/writer/political figure, William Morris, whose masterwork, The Kelmscott Chaucer, designed by himself and Edward Burnes Jones, was deeply indebted to Blake:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...aucersmall.jpg
Perhaps most fascinating is the early 20th century figure of Adolf Wolfli, an artist confined to an asylum for most of his adult life, Wolfli produced a body of illustrated books, the central tome being a volume some 25,000 pages long, which tells the mythical story of Adolf Wolfli, later King Wolfli, later Emperor Wolfli, and finally Saint Wolfli. The tale is told in text, endless pictures, and even a musical score which utilizes a system of notation invented by the artist. There are endless similarities of style and vision in both artist's self-created universes... except that the latter artist is usually accepted as having been insane... a genius... but insane... which when looking at both his and Blake's achievements leads us to some difficult questions about what constitutes genius... and what constitutes insanity.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...2_copy1_lg.jpg
Hey, I seen that Blake guy's art!
...
^^;
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