yeah, sorry: thanks for the help nonetheless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
I think my mind has combined Classens' painting with Bosch's Garden into some weird, I've got to stop absorbing too much art at the same time, mess.
Printable View
yeah, sorry: thanks for the help nonetheless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
I think my mind has combined Classens' painting with Bosch's Garden into some weird, I've got to stop absorbing too much art at the same time, mess.
Now that my thoughts are on Moses, I'm recalling the sculpture of Moses with horns by Michelangelo at San Pietro in Vincoli Rome.
The year I graduated from Art School I moved to New York where I worked for a while as a "demo-man" (tearing out conduit and pipes out of a building being renovated and turned into artist's work-live studio apartments. The head demo-man... a towering man at least 6 foot 6 in height with a full flowing beard worthy of an Old Testament prophet looked like Michelangelo's Moses to an astonishing... I should say a disconcerting extent... especially as I'd never met another individual who swore as consistently... and with such bravura... as he did. His most eloquent and passionate use of profanity was reserved for his partner, a little black man from the islands (the Bahamas or there about) named Griff. "Moses" got his comeuppance one night when after getting paid we all ended up in a bar where Griff and he engaged in a competition downing shots of rum... the loser to pay. In spite of his admirable height and heft, rum was like mother's milk to little Griff who ended up drinking "Moses" under the table... where he literally passed out and spent the rest of the evening.
Hey Luke, how come you don't post pics of your art anymore?
Considering that I have been painting nudes for some time, I've somewhat shied away from posting these considering the wrong ideas some have concerning nudity in art. I can't say I ever got much response when I did post my work here one way or the other, on the other hand... I have recently been showing a number of the works at a local gallery and university art department.
I really enjoyed this. Like a mini short story. :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
LOL! Nudity is beautiful but you have a such a bad taste of artists who perverted nudity.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
But I understand considering your age……:brow:
I love when someone completely insults someone else and then adds an emoticon as if to say, "hey, I was just kidding," when everyone knows they weren'tQuote:
Originally Posted by ftil
I have "bad taste" in artistic nudity I take to mean that I actually like a number of Modern and even Contemporary artists who have employed the nude. Perverts such as:
Gustav Klimt (Click small images for full-sized image):
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8282/7...3dba77cf_n.jpg
Amedeo Modigliani:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8173/8...65cd6dc0_n.jpg
Henri Matisse:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8034/8...d4066252_n.jpg
Pierre Bonnard:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8453/8...c9edb898_n.jpg
Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski):
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8319/8...5b12d49a_n.jpg
Pablo Picasso:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8176/8...33b9dff1_n.jpg
Max Beckmann:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8315/8...62d94346_n.jpg
Romare Bearden:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8039/8...d64db61f_n.jpg
George Tooker:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8320/8...40cdfdf3_n.jpg
Peter Blake:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8453/8...f47427e2_n.jpg
Niel Welliver:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8038/8...5357c9e8_m.jpg
William Beckman:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8309/8...f7ecf930_n.jpg
and undoubtedly the worst of all is that degenerate, Lucian Freud:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8315/8...343b4d57_m.jpg
Of course, I suspect that what ftil means by "perverted nudity" is any use of nudity that suggests the least erotic or sexual content... as if there was none of this in the masterpieces of nude art created by the old masters:
Michelangelo:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8038/8...f7a6a78d_n.jpg
Titian:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8316/8...91162e74_n.jpg
Veronese:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/8...a519b6ca_n.jpg
Peter Paul Rubens:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8318/8...db287a0f_n.jpg
Boucher:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8175/8...3bc3d487_n.jpg
Eugene Delacroix:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8453/8...a11c86b2_n.jpg
Anders Zorn:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8310/8...f65a52ac_n.jpg
Rodin:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8174/8...39685e05_n.jpg
and Degas:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8461/8...92a9d253_n.jpg
Of course I am in full agreement with the great art historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, who suggested:
"... the human body is rich in associations, and when it is turned into art, these associations are not entirely lost. It is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things we wish to do with ourselves; and first of all we wish to perpetuate ourselves... it is necessary to labor the obvious and say that no nude, however abstract, should fail to rouse in the spectator, some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow, and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature, that our judgment of what is known as "pure form" is inevitably influenced by it; and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art, is that these insticts cannot lie hidden... but are dragged into the foreground, where they risk upsetting the unity of responses from which a work of art derives its independent life. Even so, the amount of erotic content a work of art can hold... is very high. The temple sculptures of tenth-century India are an undisguised exaltation of physical desire, yet they are great works of art..."
But perhaps ftil is too old to remember any of this.:D
I didn't expect such a fast response. :brow: You have a short memory as we had several discussions where I expressed my thoughts about ugliness of art you have chosen.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Hmm.....where did I expressed my disapproval of great masters you posted?Quote:
Of course, I suspect that what ftil means by "perverted nudity" is any use of nudity that suggests the least erotic or sexual content... as if there was none of this in the masterpieces of nude art created by the old masters:
Poor attempt to turn everything upside down. :eek: I was talking about ugly art.
LOL! After reading his words I wouldn't waste my time to read more….You too much depend what others say to defend yourself.Quote:
Of course I am in full agreement with the great art historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, who suggested:
But perhaps ftil is too old to remember any of this.:D
Sadly, you still don’t understand my point…after many months and many discussions. :mad2:
You have posted again a few painters........Let's look at beauty of art of your favorites. :reddevil:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...itarlesson.jpg
Balthus, Guitar Lesson, 1934,
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3370/...e837fa400f.jpg
Balthus
or another your favorite........:biggrin5:
http://www.egon-schiele.net/A-woman-nude-body.jpg
Egon Schiele, A woman nude body
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Masturbation-2.jpg
Egon Schiele, Masturbation 2
I think you need to use more emoticons, ftil. They really enhance your point!
mm.....where did I expressed my disapproval of great masters you posted? Poor attempt to turn everything upside down. I was talking about ugly art.
Somehow I don't think I'd want you defining what art is or is not "ugly". Certainly there is art that is "ugly"... and yet aesthetically "beautiful"... that which was later referred to as the "sublime":
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8320/8...d341be1c_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8042/8...f4d0dece_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8173/8...47f05939_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8172/8...448022e3_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/8...3ff68a53_m.jpg
More toward our own time, that which was once deemed "sublime" often became known under the name "expressionism". The themes were often the same: an art which explores horror, pain, angst, ugliness... the most intense of human emotions. Or perhaps you notion of art is that it should only explore that which is pretty and fluffy?
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8173/8...750605ef_m.jpg
A painting such as Edvard Munch's Madonna is not pretty... but it is an aesthetically powerful work that explores the artist's own fears of sexuality and its links with Tuberculosis and venereal diseases that were rampant in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Neither does Egon Schiele offer a candy-coated view of the world. As might be expected of a Viennese artist, he was well acquainted with many of the ideas related to sexuality and angst that were circulating among Viennese artists and intellectuals. He was also cognizant of the hypocritical nature of the view of sex among the Viennese middle-class who expected men to be sexually experienced... through prostitutes or their servants, while demanding that women remain ever virginal. The very idea that women might have sexual desires was considered outrageous and blasphemous.
Schiele offered a view of women as femme-fatales and vampires... seductive... and yet dangerous and reeking of death.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8455/8...9b463fb4_m.jpg
In a painting like Death and the Maiden, Schiele explores an old Germanic theme linking death and beauty... death and sex. The subject was one employed by Franz Schubert in both one of his best known lieder... and a late string quartet... composed as he was aware of his own impending early demise... due to syphilis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoZJkkWX8Yw
Yes... Schiele could offer a view of sexuality that was disturbing... angst-laden... dangerous... such as the images you posted. But he could also offer a view of sexuality that was turbulent and passionate:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8179/8...51ae5f28_m.jpg
His works could even be quite sensitive and touching... when portraying his own beloved wife:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8179/8...0d0b3f5e_m.jpg
Balthus was considered by many to have been one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century. Early in his career he was associated with the Surrealists, and like them, he sought to outrage the bourgeois sensibilities. A good many of his earlier paintings were blatantly blasphemous and pornographic. The painting you posted above, The Guitar Lesson, succeeded on both levels. The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8457/8...7915f8d9_m.jpg
If you knew your art history as well as you think you do, you would know that Balthus later repudiated these early juvenile attempts to shock. When the director of MoMA, Alfred Barr, mentioned that he wished to display Balthus' painting, The Street... but could not... due to a certain overtly sexual detail, Balthus offered to repaint the offending passage, and Barr accepted his offer:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8460/8...5a059d1e_m.jpg
Balthus is most known and admired for his classically constructed compositions, his marvelous handling of color and paint, and the fresco-like surfaces of his canvases. The most admired paintings by Balthus look like this:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8169/8...469d4ded_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8170/8...8d6fd1dd_m.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8460/8...9aab6a78_m.jpg
The second painting by Balthus that you posted above, The Chamber, is certainly one of his finer... and best known works. As with many of his paintings, it deals with the anxieties of adolescence... the period of transition from innocent childhood... to knowing adulthood... and all that entails. In The Chamber, a golem-like figure throws back the curtains exposing an adolescent girl lost in her dreams... perhaps of a nascent erotic nature. In many other paintings of the period, he presents adolescent girls as clearly far more knowing that their male counterparts. In this game, it is clearly the girl... seated like a queen on her throne... as opposed to the boy... uncomfortably balanced on his stool... who holds the winning cards:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8459/8...2c15d4ba_m.jpg
After reading his words I wouldn't waste my time to read more….You too much depend what others say to defend yourself.
Oh please... this from the woman who continually sites a bunch of psycho-babble writers in attempting to interpret art.
Thanks for good laughter. You know very well that I am not an art teacher and I don’t have any desire to become as such. I would stop loving art. :lol: I don’t deepened on art scholars as you do. But I love art and beauty and I love art scholars who have brilliant mind and rich soul that appreciate beauty.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
You need to show me where I said it. LOL!Quote:
Oh please... this from the woman who continually sites a bunch of psycho-babble writers in attempting to interpret art.
I never interpret art and I said it several times......but you ignore it as usual. It is you who made assumptions about artist’s intentions.......and I am sure that you believe that it is true.
Second, it was you who tried to support your argument about sexuality in Hindu temple by bringing Freud. Hey, you may benefit if you study what projection means…you may get rid of your bad habit of projecting your issues upon others.
Finally, you know very well that I choose teachers and scholars from whom I want to learn. You have quoted Sir Kenneth Clark twice in this thread. It sounds that he is an ultimate authority for you to follow. As I said after reading his few words, I wouldn't waste my time. :p
StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?
I was quite intrigued what you wrote about “Guitar Lesson” as a sexual parody and I did search what others have to say about it.Quote:
Originally posted by stlukesguild
The painting you posted above, The Guitar Lesson, succeeded on both levels. The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon:
The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.
I wouldn't agree with last paragraph. From psychological point of view, an adult man who is preoccupied with his own childish memories and erotic fantasies indicates mental and emotional immaturity. I would argue that each of us has a hidden room for perversity that is room for pedophilia. Finally, since the author said that Balthus never has given any explanation why he did what he did.....we can only make assumptions. Therefore, the image is worth more than thousands of words.Quote:
The most controversial of his works is the painting titled “The Guitar Lesson” (see fig.1) which was one of his first five works he exposed in the Gallery Pierre in Paris in 1934 during his first solo exposition. The painting scandalized the public and the French media showed no mercy. He was generally accused of being obsessed with sexual perversity. One of the strongest statements came from Gaston Poulin[6] who named the artist a fanatic nymphomaniac. Furthermore, he described his style as naïve and crude portraying Balthus as the cruelest painter than Goya and Rouault. This particular painting is rarely shown and at the present it is in the hands of a privet collector. Whenever it was exposed, even the first time, it was presented mostly in separate rooms covered with the curtains just for “special” public to see. For forty years Balthus did not wanted this painting to be exposed or printed because as he himself explained from fear of the public misunderstanding of his controversial piece. The close examination of this particular artwork might vaguely respond why would people be offended to such degree by this image. Certainly, it would not be exaggeration to say that this image represents the zenith of his provocative artistic perversity.
Many artists are trying to surround themselves with the mist of mystery in order to attract the public interest in their creative efforts[7] and Balthus was a master of it. He never gives any explanation why he does what he does. That is why so much curiosity surrounds him. To criticize his artwork by the imagery would be too easy and unfortunately many critics do it. Before judging his paintings positively or negatively one needs to focus on deeper study of his artwork because in Balthus case each element of the image tells a story, understanding of which depends on how far we are prepared intellectually to dissect the hidden meanings. “The Guitar Lesson” depicts the moment of sadistic violence executed on the innocent female child by her guitar teacher. The child is lying on the teacher’s knees in the position of Pieta[8] suggesting the death Jesus reincarnated in the girl’s denuded figure. The naked body of the child is smoothly transferred symbolically into the erotic guitar on which the teacher is playing the sadistic notes of erotic education. It looks like the child is forced to play hesitantly with the partially denuded sensually erected breast of the teacher. Looking at the Balthus study sketches done for this painting, it becomes clear that he wanted to paint himself as a teacher but probably he realized that such scene would not be acceptable for any public display. It would be too personal and too revealing of his somehow overloaded with sexual fantasies mind. That is why he decided to replace himself with a woman. It probably appeared to Balthus safer to depict lesbian sodomy rather than to use the mixed genders. However, he could not refuse himself the pleasure to portray at least his face in the corps of the woman teacher. Comparing the teacher’s facial futures with the Heathcliff face from “The Cathy’s Toilet,” (see. fig.2) artwork where Balthus portrayed himself as a Heathcliff and his future wife[9] as a Cathy, the two principal characters of his favor book“Wuthering Heights,” the resemblance of the two faces is unquestionable. Furthermore, his sketches (see fig. 3) for the artwork clearly confirm that. The teacher’s right hand is squeezing the girl’s hair lock as the guitar neck and with her left hand she is pulling the imaginary strings in the child’s pubic area. The almost feinted girl gives impression of being entirely submitted to her teacher’s erotic game. Her face projects evident signs of the total subjection to the sadistic sexual sodomy of her innocence. The child’s right hand partly reposing on the floor is touching the guitar neck lying on the parquet forming a triangle suggesting the pubic area. The instrument noise hole is symbolizing the loss of innocence by the girl. The colors[10] of the child’s clothing are also symbols of the transition from the state of innocence to the state of impurity of experienced sexual pleasures. The vertical lines on the wallpaper suggest the cage of immorality to which each female child will eventually be subjected. The green color of the lines symbolizes the freshness of the girl’s femininity. The piano situated on the left side of the painting suggests much more elaborated erotic initiation in the near future when the girl would be a woman.[11] It is really fascinating artwork executed with simplicity and sincere adoration of innocent purity of the childish femininity. This painting is mentioned in many publications as a legendary probably because of its provocative content. Balthus will never again be so open to expose his explicit interiority to the exterior world. This artwork forces us to recognize that we all have a room for provocative drastic perversity and only by pure hypocritical social attitude some of us find paintings like this drastically shocking.
After his questionable experiences with “The Guitar Lesson” painting Balthus elaborated his provocative attitude by painting the adoration of childish femininity using rather poetic eroticism.
Most scholars recognized the particularity of the subjects of his artistic quest and also his artistic greatness and individuality, while others see rather just the obsessive pedophiliac character and mediocrity of it. His artwork is certainly controversial according to the contemporary social fragility towards such delicate issues as a depiction of the sexual innocence of the children, especially young girls.
Balthus was one of those artists whose persona had extremely rich inner world filled up with elaborated perverse fantasy.
Through his art he was trying to prolong the memories of his own childhood and all his childish erotic fantasies. Balthus knew that each of us has hidden room of perversity locked in our minds against any intrusion of the socio-hypocritical order and with his art he would nourish the hunger of these rooms with his provocative imagery. At the end, art is at its best when it provokes our senses.
http://pijet.com/2008/06/16/the-ador...uss-paintings/
StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?
That reproduction... the best available on the net (good reproductions of contemporary work is often difficult to find due to issues of copyright and the desire of galleries to maintain control over images by artists they represent) is undoubtedly not the finest. I have seen the particular painting... a portrait of the artist's wife... several times in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. The painting is rendered in an exquisitely polished manner. It is at once "painterly"... and yet the sense of detail and the polished surface are stunning. I am reminded of Ingres. The color is equally exquisite. The background... which appears as little more than a muddy brown in the reproduction, in real life reveals layers of color. One especially notices the subtle mauve or lavender beneath the surface color... which contrasts the warm flesh tones beautifully.
I just read every page of this thread with fascination.
Stlukes, is there a particular book/books that you'd recommend to a art newbie who wants a pretty solid overview of art history, the major players, movements, etc?
I'd more than appreciate suggestions from anyone else as well.
~
W a r n i n g
Please do not personalise your comment
and
discuss the topics at hand rather than each other.
~
Stlukesguild,Quote:
Originally Posted by ftil
I am quite curious about the painting mentioned in the article I posted. There is no title. Have you seen it, and if so, do know where I can find it? It would be interesting to see it considering the fact that Balthus had no objection to show “Guitar lesson”.
There are a number of highly respected Art History tomes commonly employed in college/university Art History surveys. Jansen's is one of the finest:
http://www.amazon.com/Jansons-Histor...rds=art+jansen
http://www.amazon.com/History-Art-H-...history+abrams
Perhaps the finest sources I have are the "coffee-table" books published by Konemann. These focus upon a single art historical period or city, are lavishly illustrated, and the text is clear and quite in-depth. Among these you might look at:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...rL._AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.gif
Seriously, you can gain a solid art historical education just through Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Mesopotamia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_and...ure_of_Assyria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_ancient_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Kingdom_of_Egypt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycladic_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Greece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeian_Styles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_sculpture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_portraiture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_architecture
Using the links... you could conceivably garner a grasp of the whole of Western Art History by starting here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_art_history
But a well-constructed text like Jansen's is probably the best route... after a basic art history survey course.
The article you posted refers to Balthus The Guitar Player, which you already posted above.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8029/8...1e514d05_m.jpg
The painting was particularly disturbing not only because of the sexual nature of the imagery as well as the age of the participants... but also due to the style of Balthus painting... which was rooted in children's book illustrations... as well as the blatant blasphemous nature of the work. You'll notice how the woman's hand... fondling the girl... is a clear echo/parody of the saint strumming the rays of Christ's halo in Enguerrand Quarton's Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon... a painting that Balthus would have known from the Louvre.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8457/8...7915f8d9_m.jpg
Balthus at the time was very much under the influence of the Surrealists. Surrealism made many references to subconscious sexual desires and rejected any notion of editing or repressing the expression of these desires... however offensive or "perverse". Similar themes of the sexuality of children were explored by Andre Breton, Georges Bataille (see his infamous Story of the Eye) as well as by Balthus own brother, the writer Pierre Klossowski. Perhaps most infamous were the works of the artist, Hans Bellmer, much of whose work (drawings, prints, photographs, and dolls) verges on the pornographic.
Much of the sex-obsessed work of the Surrealists comes off (with the passage of time) as juvenile, and many of the strongest artists who worked within the Surrealist vein were those outside of the group proper: Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, etc... Balthus himself eventually moved on from his youthful obsessions with perversity and shock... probably due in part to a coming of age brought about by the realities of WWII and his first marriage. His later works were primarily formalist and classicist in nature... influenced by early Italian painting as a result of his tenure as the director of the French Academy in Rome, and later by Japanese art, brought about by his experiences as a cultural diplomat to Japan instigated by the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, where Balthus met his second wife-to-be, Setsuko Ideta.
Well, it is your interpretation and very different from Andre Puet, painter and writer, the author of the article I posted. It seems that he is quite knowledgeable about Balthus as he listed in bibliography 25 books written about Balthus. Even though I don’t agree with everything what he wrote in terms of his interpretation of mental and emotional states of Balthus and his motives to paint Guitar lesson, I agree with his overall evaluation of that painting.
BTW, do you know the name of his painting that was presented mostly in separate rooms covered with the curtains just for “special” public to see.
My curiosity is quite high. :lol:
I'm not exactly thrilled by that realistic style either. It seems like everyone who works in realism makes that same boring painting. An unidealized man or woman stands or sits against a blank background with maybe one or two other squares of color to liven and contrast the composition.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
"Oh, the wall behind them isn't really blank? It's layered and textured? Bull****! I don't care about your stupid painterly effect if it's boring to look at. Learn to draw a landscape like Da Vinci put behind his Mona Lisa. Or draw the freaking body in motion instead of your models locked in frozen poses.
"Well Rembrandt did it that way." "You ain't Rembrandt." Besides Rembrandt would throw all kinds of detail and individual character into people's clothing, skin, and hair. They were always in costumes with cool plays of light and shading. He was theatrical. Titian's Man with the Blue Sleeve works like it does because of the expressive nature of his subject, the handsome costume, and the intricate detail of said costume. It's not because people love single toned blank walls.
The artists I'm criticizing should try something more like what Ghirlandaio did with his An Old Man and His Grandson or what Piero della Francesca achieved with his Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and His Wife Battista Sforza. That way if your model is uninteresting you might catch the attention of a viewer by some other detail.
Well, it is your interpretation...
What interpretation? I simply offered you some basic art historical background on Balthus. The only opinion I expressed was that of the assessment of the merits of Surrealism.
...very different from Andre Puet, painter and writer, the author of the article I posted. It seems that he is quite knowledgeable about Balthus as he listed in bibliography 25 books written about Balthus.
According to his website, Andre Pijet is primarily an illustrator. His efforts as a writer seem limited to the essays he has posted on his web site. By that standard, you and I are just as much "writers" as Pijet... although I do have a number of published essays. His citation of some 25 books for a brief essay seems like a bit of overkill... although I have employed as in depth of a bibliography when writing for a college courses. Of course it doesn't mean one has read the whole book. Having said that, I wouldn't begin to suggest that I am an "expert" on Balthus. I am actually far more familiar with his paintings than I am with his biography.
Even though I don’t agree with everything what he wrote in terms of his interpretation of mental and emotional states of Balthus and his motives to paint Guitar lesson...
Well any such interpretation of the mental and emotional states of the artist is but speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Well, I read his article with a pleasure and I am glad that I found it. You are entitled to your opinion but don’t expect that others will accept it without questioning or verifying if it is true or not. I certainly have done it as it was such a discrepancy between what I saw on Balthus’s and Schiele’s paintings and your interpretation.
It is not a good argument to undermine his work. His article stands on its own that everybody can see it.
BTW, you are a master of avoidance....:lol:Anyway, I sent him an e-mial, asking where I can find the painting. I am eager to read a few books about Balthus. I really want to see his “heights of artistic perversion” as well as who was lucky to be chosen to see his paintings.
Well, it has nothing to do with interpretation or speculation provided that you can read feelings behind paintings. Later, I may elaborate a bit about it regarding Schiele’s art.Quote:
Well any such interpretation of the mental and emotional states of the artist is but speculation.
"Boring" speaks more of the viewer than of the art work... and we all know that your bias in art is toward the literary narrative, the theatricality, and the complex. But visual art is first and foremost VISUAL. It is about the "stupid" visual elements of color, line, texture, value, etc... and how these are organized before anything else.
Learn to draw a landscape like Da Vinci put behind his Mona Lisa. Or draw the freaking body in motion instead of your models locked in frozen poses."Well Rembrandt did it that way." "You ain't Rembrandt."
Yes... all art must be about the narrative... people running about or acting out some grandiose drama. The simple still-life can't be great art...
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/.../th_goblet.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...uard_Manet.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...th_Morandi.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...esl-apples.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...ersimmonss.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...th_0047-vi.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...Ohio/th_18.jpg
But then you are confronted with Rembrandt's or Vermeer's or Raphael's static portraits and all you can come up with is "Well you ain't Rembrandt"... because you really don't know what makes Rembrandt work... because it involves a sensitivity to the visual elements... the artist's touch... the colors and textures... and not to something that can be easily put into words... something narrative.
Besides Rembrandt would throw all kinds of detail and individual character into people's clothing, skin, and hair. They were always in costumes with cool plays of light and shading. He was theatrical. Titian's Man with the Blue Sleeve works like it does because of the expressive nature of his subject, the handsome costume, and the intricate detail of said costume. It's not because people love single toned blank walls.
And do you honestly believe that Rembrandt's or Vermeer's paintings are so admired because of the details... the cool costumes... the staged lighting? No other artists of the era were doing the same thing just as well? And do you honestly imagine that complexity is inherently an attribute... that simplicity
cannot result in a great work of art?
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...h_weyden44.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/..._raphael54.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...th_22pearl.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...et_cellist.jpg
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/.../th_berthe.jpg
The artists I'm criticizing should try something more like what Ghirlandaio did with his An Old Man and His Grandson or what Piero della Francesca achieved with his Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and His Wife Battista Sforza. That way if your model is uninteresting you might catch the attention of a viewer by some other detail.
In a way, if you are dealing with an attractive model... or an overly "unique" model, there is a danger in the art becoming secondary to the subject. In other words... the viewer is seduced/intrigued by the subject... but not necessarily by what the artist has done with the subject.
Thank you for still life. Nice change. Simple and beautiful. I like Jean-Baptiste Chardin.
A few more of his paintings.
http://www.jean-baptiste-simeon-char...ss,-c.1759.jpg
Jean-Baptiste Chardin, Still Life with a Basket of Peaches, White and Black Grapes with Cooler and Wineglass.
http://www.jean-baptiste-simeon-char...chen-Table.jpg
Jean-Baptiste Chardin, The Kitchen Table
Or, Paul Cézanne
http://www.allpaintings.org/d/78230-...on+a+Sheet.jpg
Paul Cézanne, Apples on a Sheet
http://www.allpaintings.org/d/139893...+newspaper.jpg
Juan Gris, Still Life with Guitar, book and newspaper
Still Life' and Andre Derain
http://data6.blog.de/media/237/47582...f36452a_m.jpeg
Or, Balthus.........
http://www.tendreams.org/balthus/b02...01937%201a.jpg
I've yet to come across a still life that does much for me, unless it has something cool in it like skulls or something.
Take away his little pictures and he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Are you even trying now? Look how flimsy your arguments are! They are just a series of ad hominem and reductio ad absurdum. You can't pretend I didn't make valid points just by omitting them in your response. If you don't refute them, then they stand as proved.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
1.Da Vinci and Piero della Francesca did a nice job with those landscapes in the back of their famous portraits. It would be nice to see more like that.
2.William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?
3.Beckman is just one of a dozen painters making that same painting today, and that lack of originality on his part is more boring than the picture itself.
I'm way out of my league on this one. I'm just gonna enjoy the show. :lurk5:
You have brought strong points. I agree with you. Anyway, I don't want to interfere but I want to post paintings you have mention in your posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ontefeltro.jpg
Piero della Francesca, Federico da Montefeltro.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...con_nipote.jpg
Domenico Ghirlandaio, An Old Man and his Grandson.
http://www.wga.hu/detail/t/tiziano/10/21/01bluesl.jpg
Titian, Man with the Blue Sleeve
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._retouched.jpg
Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Milkmaid.jpg
Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid
http://www.raphaelsanzio.org/La-Donna-Velata-1516.jpg
Raphael, La Donna Velata
And William Beckman :lol:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8309/8...f7ecf930_n.jpg
William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?
Your hypothesis is based on what? A crappy online reproduction? You've never seen a William Beckman in person... and I doubt you've even seen a Vermeer in person... but you are making your assessments of the painting merits from second-hand knowledge.
Certainly I will agree that there are dozens of realist painters of equal merit. Lucian Freud was far better, and Will Cotton is no less good... albeit his approach owes less to Ingres or Neo-Classicism and more to the light touch and playfulness of the Rococo. However, I have seen a good dozen of Beckman's paintings in real life... in his New York Gallery as well as in a couple of museums. His paint handling is absolutely stunning. No... the work doesn't exhibit the fluidity of the Baroque... or even of a painter like Sargent... it is far closer to the Neo-Classicism of William Bailey. Unfortunately you critical assessment of contemporary... and even modern art is as useless as your assessment of modern and contemporary literature... for the simple reason that you are biased against it as a whole... and only admire that which pastiches the work of the old masters.
But then, Mortal... you have ftil on your side with her brilliant grasp of art... and her mastery of emoticons... so you might just have the upper hand.
Ah, I thought it may be that. I've seen paintings that seem unimpressive in the catalogue but look amazing when you see them in the gallery.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Interesting that it's a portrait of his wife. One of the problems I had with this painting is that the face and figure were so individualized - like someone you'd bump into in the supermarket, but without her clothes on. A bit disconcerting! :alien:
ftil... since you obviously find my taste in Modern and Contemporary art so laughable, I think we'd all be pleased to see your idea of what constitutes some of the finest paintings by living artists.
Interesting that it's a portrait of his wife. One of the problems I had with this painting is that the face and figure were so individualized - like someone you'd bump into in the supermarket, but without her clothes on. A bit disconcerting!
Actually... that was quite the feeling that I initially got upon seeing that painting in person. I had just finished art school... and in many ways this painting... and the nude by Lucian Freud in the same gallery left me absolutely disconcerted. Coming out of years of study of Modernism and Post-Modernism, these paintings didn't look at all like what we had been taught art was like. But I kept coming back... and looking again. Later I found myself thinking how the experience was not unlike the sort of disconcerted... and even outraged responses that Courbet had faced. Quite honestly, my own taste leans away from this sort of realism, and toward something more stylized... abstracted... "artful". But I still found the work quite powerful.
I have an early morning class and then I'm off to the studio, but later tomorrow I'll try to dig up some reproductions of work by a number of artists active over the past few decades... regardless of subject matter or style... whose work I quite like.
Hehehe…..have you missed Scheherazade’s post about not making personal comments? It was on a previous page.Quote:
Originally posted by stlukesguild
But then, Mortal... you have ftil on your side with her brilliant grasp of art... and her mastery of emoticons... so you might just have the upper hand.
You can do better than that….. :reddevil:
Let’s go back to Egon Schiele.
Quote:
Originally posted by stlukesguild
Neither does Egon Schiele offer a candy-coated view of the world. As might be expected of a Viennese artist, he was well acquainted with many of the ideas related to sexuality and angst that were circulating among Viennese artists and intellectuals. He was also cognizant of the hypocritical nature of the view of sex among the Viennese middle-class who expected men to be sexually experienced... through prostitutes or their servants, while demanding that women remain ever virginal. The very idea that women might have sexual desires was considered outrageous and blasphemous.
Schiele offered a view of women as femme-fatales and vampires... seductive... and yet dangerous and reeking of death.
Yes... Schiele could offer a view of sexuality that was disturbing... angst-laden... dangerous... such as the images you posted. But he could also offer a view of sexuality that was turbulent and passionate.
Let's look at his art and his life.
The new York Times:The Wider, Not Wilder, Egon Schiele
By KEN JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/ar...pagewanted=all
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Black-ha...high-skirt.jpgQuote:
The Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) had only two urgent interests: himself and his sexual fantasies. Out of such limited preoccupations and by means of a preternatural gift for drawing and graphic design, he created artworks that still burn with narcissistic yearning, erotic desire, bohemian dissent and existential anxiety.
Black-haired girl with high skirt
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Woman-Wi...-Stockings.jpgQuote:
Was Schiele a pornographer? In some sense he surely was making art with the purpose of provoking sexual arousal - in addition to shocking the bourgeoisie - and there were people who purchased his work with that purpose in mind, so the answer is yes. (There is also enough evidence to get him charged, if not convicted, as a pedophile by today's standards.) But there have been few pornographers who drew as well as he did. At his best, Schiele was in Toulouse-Lautrec's league as a draftsman. His ways with composition, line and color and his responsiveness to paper were nothing short of exquisite.
Then there was the issue of Schiele's personal life: his interest in underage girls who often modeled for him, and his arrest and 24-day imprisonment in 1912 on charges - eventually dropped - of abducting and molesting a 13-year-old girl. The catalog is circumspect about Schiele's personal life, but the myth of his transgressive predilections remains intact.
Woman With Blue Stockings
Quote:
Unlike Toulouse-Lautrec, however, Schiele takes little interest in women as people. Women for Schiele are almost always archetypal; in portraits they have severe, masklike faces; in full-figure drawings they are interchangeable objects of desire. There is a certain pathos to his depiction of women, as there is in his portrayal of himself. The body may be a source of ecstatic pleasure, but it can also be an affliction to be endured - see, for example, the studies of nude pregnant women made in a maternity hospital. There is often something overripe in his female figures, as though the body were a barometer of moral degeneration.
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Lying-woman.jpg
Lying woman
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Reclinin...-stockings.jpg
Reclining nude with black stockings
Quote:
In self-portraits Schiele glamorizes himself, exaggerating his soulful eyes, his lithe and skinny body, his long, prehensile fingers, his high forehead and his mass of standing-up hair. He grimaces and gestures dramatically; in some cases - haloed as he is by touches of white gouache, so that he seems to radiate electric energy - he looks positively satanic. He never looks very healthy. He has the emaciated, fiercely hungry look of a spirit starved by the industrial brutality of modernity.
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Self-Por...Tongefass).jpg
Self-Portrait with Black Earthenware Vessel
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Self-por...nding-1910.jpg
Self-portrait standing
In writing about Schiele, scholars and critics dwell on how syphilis killed his father, which he had contracted from a prostitute during his honeymoon and had fatally passed the disease on to four of his children. An older sister died, probably of the disease, when Egon was three, and his father finally succumbed in 1904, when the artist was fourteen.
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Sitting-male-act-2.jpg
Sitting male act 2
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Two-Fema...he-Friends.jpgQuote:
During his late adolescence Schiele's emotions were directed into an intense relationship with his younger sister, Gerti, which was not without its incestuous implications.
"In 1909 he left the Academy, after completing his third year. He found a flat and a studio and set up on his own. At this time he showed a strong interest in pubescent children, especially young girls, who were often the subjects of his drawings.
Already a superb draughtsman, Schiele made many drawings from these willing models, some of which were extremely erotic. He seems to have made part of his income by supplying collectors of pornography, who abounded in Vienna at that time.
In 1911 Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Wally Neuzil, who was to live with him for a while and serve as the model for some of his best paintings. Little is known of her, save that she had previously modelled for Klimt, and had perhaps been one of the older painter's mistresses.
They then moved to the equally small town of Neulengbach, half an hour from Vienna by train. just as it had been in Vienna, Schiele's studio became a gathering place for all the delinquent children of the neighbourhood. His way of life inevitably aroused animosity, and in April 1912 he was arrested.
"Schiele's narcissism, exhibitionism and persecution-mania can all be found united in the poster he produced for his first one-man exhibition in Vienna, held at the Galerie Arnot at the very beginning Of 1915, in which he portrayed himself as St Sebastian.
From Edward Lucie-Smith, "Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists"
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/schiele.html
Two Female Nudes One Reclining One Kneeling Aka The Friends
http://www.egon-schiele.net/Pair-of-...ach-other).jpg
Pair of Women (Women embracing each other)
Well, his father died from syphilis.Quote:
Originally posted by stlukesguild
In a painting like Death and the Maiden, Schiele explores an old Germanic theme linking death and beauty... death and sex. The subject was one employed by Franz Schubert in both one of his best known lieder... and a late string quartet... composed as he was aware of his own impending early demise... due to syphilis.
Sunday Times art critic and specialist in German Expressionism, Frank Whitford remarked:
Quote:
Schiele was obsessed with his own image like no other 20th century artist. It’s true to say that a great many 20th century artists, particularly in the German-speaking countries, were concerned with the self-portrait, with the Self, but none of them really can be compared with Schiele, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a narcissist...
Schiele was not only fascinated by sex, indeed obsessed by it, he was also fascinated and obsessed by death, probably in equal measure.
Schiele’s painting was the latest in the long line of images linking sex and death. The theme of Death and the Maiden, coupling a beautiful girl with a skeletal figure, had been recurring in north European paintings for 500 years.
It goes back as far as the 16th century, south German, Hans Baldung Grien. You see it over and over again, you see a skeleton embracing a nubile young woman, gorgeous tight skin, touching her often in a very suggestive way.
I see your ridiculous quibble and raise. If you in fact saw all these paintings at a museum, as you claim, then you were either standing too close or to far away to fully appreciate them. If you saw them at every range then the lighting was wrong. If the lighting was perfect the frame was lousy. If the frame was fine, the gallery director put it between two other paintings which made it look funny. If they were all by the same artist, then it wasn't in the correct series. If they were all by the same series then they weren't in a proper phase of restoration and you should go back because they all look completely different now.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
You and your seeing everything in person business. Bah! As if this painting looks like this online
http://i47.tinypic.com/m7amxh.jpg
and this
http://i50.tinypic.com/10pbwck.jpg
in real life. And before you fire a barrage of different looking Mona Lisa reproductions at me; let's just agree that for the purposes of internet debating there are many fine reproductions out there of famous artworks and a reproduction is often sufficient to get everybody on the same page.
I don't care if ftil is an expert or how many emoticons she uses. I don't think we see eye to eye on everything any more than you and I do but if someone makes a point and they are right they are just right. I know a few smart well educated self-declared experts who get a hold of a bad idea and there is no shaking them. They are really good at defending their erroneous beliefs and justifying it to themselves or others. You have to look at the argument and the chain of reasoning. Though, of course things can be true and still have faulty reasoning, but let's not go too deep into that.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Besides that, I get the impression much of the time that we agree on more than we disagree about and you just like to be a contrarian. You argue both sides of an issue because you are good at it, it keeps you sharp, and you can't stand anyone looking smarter than you. I mean if you really thought that subjects were value neutral you wouldn't paint so many female nudes. All those guys who you say draw ugly things so that all the credit for any success goes to their skills are handicapping themselves. There are good subjects and bad subjects, and if you don't like saying so from a narrative point of view, how about from a visual one? Some shapes look better, some colors look better. Art is a sensory experience and our biology craves things. Nothing is neutral. If a painter wants to paint a solid yellow square that's fine, but it doesn't have the same effect as a man of equal talent drawing a figure. You could paint with mud and urine if you want a challenge, but oils on canvas are just better materials. How can you champion standards on one hand and then have no standards for subjects in art? How can a blank wall be equal in your eyes to rivers, trees, castles?
Besides, a lot of those new age theories you throw around to explain why your picture of broccoli is better than any Madonna and child are usually convoluted up in your head type things produced by people over thinking their craft. There might be something to your "painterly" mumbo jumbo, but I bet a lot of it is just stuff you do so that other professionals know that you can do it and don't laugh at you, not something that genuinely adds to the work. Some of that stuff is just getting graded on the difficulty of execution which is a technical 10 but a visual 4. Picasso could dash off a quick sketch of a bull fight and it might be better than something Daumier worked over for a month layering and repainting.
I see your ridiculous quibble and raise. If you in fact saw all these paintings at a museum, as you claim, then you were either standing too close or to far away to fully appreciate them. If you saw them at every range then the lighting was wrong. If the lighting was perfect the frame was lousy. If the frame was fine, the gallery director put it between two other paintings which made it look funny. If they were all by the same artist, then it wasn't in the correct series. If they were all by the same series then they weren't in a proper phase of restoration and you should go back because they all look completely different now.
You and your seeing everything in person business.
That is the most pathetic argument. The fact that you really cannot discern the vast difference between a work of art in reproduction... and a work of art seen in reality... or have never had the experience... pretty much illustrates the limitations of your visual acumen.
I cannot begin to count the number of paintings... and other works of art... that changed greatly in my esteem as a result of having seen the works in person. Attending an exhibition of Seurat's works I found myself absolutely enthralled with his drawings... that had such a richness and subtly that never came across in any of the reproductions I had seen. The richness and transparency of the colors in Vermeer is wholly lost in reproduction.
I can offer up a single example: Matisse's Music is one of a pair of mural-sized paintings created for the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. The other being the famous Dance:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8172/8...f84caff7_n.jpg
Looking online, one finds a slew of reproductions of Music... which all look quite different in terms of color and value (of course Mortal doesn't grasp the concept that it is these visual elements that are key to a work of visual art).:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8182/8...59ff9252_n.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8321/8...215ef950_n.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8038/8...45c074bf_n.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8319/8...3ae7fa63_n.jpg
The painting is currently housed in the Hermitage in Russia. I was lucky enough to see it some years back as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At the time I wasn't a great fan of Matisse... but I had missed a couple of stellar art exhibitions by artists I wasn't enthralled with at the time... but who I later came to love... and I swore not to miss out on such again.
Looking at the reproductions, one cannot be certain which color scheme is closest to the original... and for Matisse, color is paramount. The reproductions are also limited... as most photographic reproductions are... in that they only convey that which a viewer might see from a distance... but they wholly fail to suggest the actual look of the actual surface... the paint as built up in layers which can be "read" in a painting in real life. One of the criticisms leveled at contemporary painting is that it is all about image... that the artist's lack a sensitivity to the painting as an actual, physical object. This is a result of the fact that the vast majority of art students attend art school or college art departments far from any museums, and their entire concept of painting is based upon what they see in reproductions... in books, slides, and on the internet. Sounds like someone we know.
Contrary to Mortal's belief... based, undoubtedly, on his vast experience of having seen art in person... the experience of the art object in reality can be vastly different from what one gets from reproductions. There is relationship between the physical scale of the work of art and our own being. The experience of seeing Vermeer's precious, jewel-like canvases from inches away or standing dwarfed by the vast scale of Rubens' or Veronese's epic, mural scale canvases in which the figures are life-sized or larger... in which brush strokes that look like the most delicate little marks in the 3X5" reproduction are seen to actually be broad sweeping strokes... these are essential to the experience of painting.
The first museum exhibition I attended was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC featuring dual retrospectives of Titian and Van Dyck. The Titian exhibition was largely limited to minor works... except for the last painting. In a room by itself stood The Flaying of Marsyas.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8176/8...cb13bc94_n.jpg
The painting was a late work by the artist. The loose, bravura brushwork won't be seen again until Rembrandt... and Impressionism. This may be the result of it having been left unfinished, although Titian's works became increasingly "expressionistic" as he grew older. The painting in some 7 feet square and absolutely glows... or rather "smolders". None of the reproductions I have seen have even hinted at the glow... the richness... the burgundies and blood reds in the shadows that reinforce the theme of the martyrdom of the artist. I was so stunned by this painting... housed in an obscure collection where I will likely never again see it (Kroměříž Archdiocesan Museum)... that I spent nearly an hour before the work.
Let’s go back to Egon Schiele.
I'm waiting for your idea of what constitutes great art by living artists... not rather useless attempt to undermine Schiele... or another artist whose work has now been in the museums and the art history books for nearly a century.
Useless attempt…....in your opinion. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I usually don’t waste my time looking at artists whose art is ugly and disturbing but I am glad that I was inspired here to do so.
Let’s connect the dots. If we want to make changes in society, we need to bring a few morally corrupted and perverted artists. We need to create a theory that would justify those behaviors, and of course, we need to bring a few art critics who will deliver their interpretation of art based on that theory. And a few who will heavily promote it.
Psychiatry and psychology has always been used as a tool of mass manipulation and control. Freud and his fraudulent theory was very handy. Even thought his theory was criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists, it is still used by many to justify all perversions. The rest will blindly follow without questioning……. :lol:
There is a good documentary movie done by BBC that explains how psychiatry and psychology was used for mass manipulation and control. This video has many layers.
The century of The Self
The Century Of The Self 1 of 4 Happiness Machines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo
The Century of the self:- 2 of 4 The Engineering of Consent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tenfbDqiDns
The Century of the self - 3 of 4 There is Policeman Inside all our Heads
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...78873186559982
Century Of Self Part 4 The Century of the self:4 of 4 Eight people sipping the wine
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...87027796578107
Let’s look how it is done.
I have already looked at Schiele’s and Bathus life and art. I have also learned here about Félicien Rops.
Félicien Rops - Saint-ThérèsaQuote:
Like the works of the authors whose poetry he illustrated, his work tends to mingle sex, death, and Satanic images. Felicien Rops was one of the founding members of Société Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels (Free Society of Fine Arts, 1868–1876) and Les XX ("The Twenty," formed 1883).
Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licien_Rops
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...9r%C3%A8se.png
Engraving by Félicien Rops . Published in 1865 in Le Diable au Corps
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...en_Rops_69.jpg
Lesbos, Known as Sappho Félicien Rops
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ca_1890%29.jpg
Félicien Rop, Illustration des Diaboliques
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...s_Le_Crime.jpg
Quote:
Rops met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of the poet's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licien_Rops
Illustration cover for Les Épaves, by Baudelaire's friend Félicien Rops
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ro...paves_1866.jpg
Felicien Rope’s a few quotes.
"Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil.
"There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'."
Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.
Louise Bogan
:lol:
Let’s look at Baudelaire.
Quote:
Charles Pierre Baudelaire ( 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translatorof Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil),
Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything."
Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender. During this timeJeanne Duval became his mistress. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. She was rejected by his family. He made a suicide attempt during this time.
He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
The Flowers of Evil was inspiration for another Belgian occultis, Carlos Schwabe
Carlos Schwabe, The Flower of Evil
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...es_damnees.jpg
So, let’s look how interpretation and justification have been done. Let’s look at Beardsley.
Aubrey Beardsley, Aristophanes LysistrataQuote:
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898) was an English illustratorand author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.
Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexual—which is hardly surprising, considering his chronic illness and his devotion to his work. Speculation about his sexuality include rumors of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried.[9][10] During his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of the disease that would end it.
Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. His illustrations were in black and white, against a white background. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga artwork, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations concerned themes of history and mythology; these include his illustrations for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...istrata-01.jpg
Aubrey Beardsley, Aristophanes Lysistrata
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...istrata-04.jpg
And his art has been interpreted based on idiocy of Freud.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Puderquast.jpgQuote:
Beardsley also depicts women who do not willingly conform to their role as mothers. This challenges the Victorian idealization of motherhood, where all women are expected to naturally conform to their roles as mothers, and enjoy bearing and raising children. However, Beardsley was aware that many Victorian women feared pregnancy because of the high number of maternal deaths in childbirth. In responding to this anxiety, he created a series of drawings of women with fetuses. In all of the pictures, the fetuses resemble diminutive monsters, and the women seem to express limited delight in their motherhood.
The Salome drawings played upon the latent fears and anxieties of Victorians concerning the New Women. For example, Salome is portrayed in perverse extremes. Many of her gestures are masculine and unattractive, her sexuality is calculated, and her motives are evil in their nature. This is how many Victorian men felt women would emerge once they had achieved all of the objectives of the women's movement. Because male dominance and superiority was being challenged by this movement, men subconsciously feared their social order would be replaced with an equally repressive system of female superiority. As a result, these fears can express themselves in visions of monster-women such as Salome.
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm
image can be seen at the link bleow.Quote:
In what were his most shocking illustrations, Beardsley portrays women who are clearly unashamed about their bodies and sexual needs. Some of his drawings show women with their backs facing the front who appear to be masturbating (illus. 8). In the drawing, Two Athenian Women in Distress, both women masturbate openly (illus. 9). This drawing, however, was suppressed by the 1857 Censorship law because of its obvious suggestiveness.
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm
Quote:
Beardsley expressed a sexuality in his drawings which mocked. the prudishness of the Victorian age, and advocated full freedom to explore sexuality. He shocked Victorians with his grotesque and highly unnatural style, and drawings of nude bodies which were not idealized. Nonetheless, his drawings do not explicitly depict fornication or denigrate women. For these reasons, Beardsley's art can arguably be placed in the sphere of erotica rather than pornography.
Through his criticisms of Victorian vices, Beardsley offers an alternative vision to the hypocrisy and patriarchy of Victorian society. In many of his fantastic and grotesque designs, he creates a world where gender lines blur, and women are depicted as aggressive, powerful, and sexual. This accounts for the erotic themes in much of Beardsley's art. Like the other Decadents, Beardsley was tired of Victorian social pretensions which censored sex in art and literature, and treated women as sexual objects. Rather, he portrays women who he feels are symbolic of the "New Woman" in Victorian society.
Beardsley expressed a sexuality in his drawings which mocked. the prudishness of the Victorian age, and advocated full freedom to explore sexuality. He shocked Victorians with his grotesque and highly unnatural style, and drawings of nude bodies which were not idealized. Nonetheless, his drawings do not explicitly depict fornication or denigrate women. For these reasons, Beardsley's art can arguably be placed in the sphere of erotica rather than pornography.
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm
So, we may ask from where those idea of mass manipulation and control comes.
Well, I need to bring a C. Jung quote.
But from whom he got his idea. Well, we need to go to Giordano Bruno. Renaissance occultist and magician.Quote:
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense - he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.
(Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)
At Oxford University, Giordano Bruno’s brief, obscure but very profound work, De vinculis in genere, is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought – on the par with Machiavelli’s Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernity’s most intelligent and insightful political work.
These academics, and among them Dahrendorf, and the now deceased Eliade and his disciple Couliano, are just the latest scholars to consider the De vinculis in genere a masterpiece. The first to recognize the importance of Bruno’s text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movement’s history.
Bruno knew as he said in De vinculis in genere that love and sex is “bond of bonds’, the most powerful tool of mass manipulation and control.
Public nudity, pornography, prostitution, all sexual perversions , including pedophilia and incest are the tools to make change in society. We have already see the photos a naked siblings in a sexual context.
We may ask where we are going. Today, 20 millions people in America suffer from major depression. Similar number of people suffer form anxiety. When we can add 51% people of divorce and all addiction, we may see the seriousness of the problem.
And a few Goethe's quotes.
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So true. :ihih:
I usually don’t waste my time looking at artists whose art is ugly and disturbing but I am glad that I was inspired here to do so.
Art is an individual's expression inspired by his or her experiences. Unfortunately, the world is not always pretty... and considering that art mirrors the world, art is not always going to be pretty. Art is more likely to tackle the ugliness in the world over the past couple hundred years than in the more distant past due to the fact that the themes or subjects of art are no longer dictated by aristocrats and the clergy.
Let’s connect the dots. If we want to make changes in society, we need to bring a few morally corrupted and perverted artists. We need to create a theory that would justify those behaviors, and of course, we need to bring a few art critics who will deliver their interpretation of art based on that theory. And a few who will heavily promote it.
Only a few idealists among artists ever looked to art to change the world. Artist's may comment on issues and offer criticism of the same, but very few imagine that they have any real impact upon the course of history.
It may be of interest to point out that your moral judgments passed upon "perverted" and "corrupted" artists are not far removed from those passed by the Nazis upon "Degenerate Art". Indeed, it would seem that your opinions of just which artists qualify as perverted correlate to a great extent with those identified as "Degenerate Artists".
Psychiatry and psychology has always been used as a tool of mass manipulation and control. Freud and his fraudulent theory was very handy. Even thought his theory was criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists, it is still used by many to justify all perversions. The rest will blindly follow without questioning…….:lol:
First of all... I will reiterate the suggestion that your excessive use of emoticons tends to work against you. The constant use of this :lol: laughing icon comes off as ridiculous... like one who keeps laughing assuming that others are laughing with them... when in reality they are laughing at them.
Hitler didn't like Freud either. There's a lovely site here that echoes many of your attacks on Modern Art as nothing more than "perversion":
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net...moon-ArtI.html
There is a good documentary movie done by BBC that explains how psychiatry and psychology was used for mass manipulation and control. This video has many layers.
So the whole of Modern Art... or the majority of Modern Art that you find "ugly" has only succeeded due to the brainwashing of the masses. Of course the "masses" have largely been irrelevant to art. So it must be the "decline of art" must be attributed to the degeneracy of the "elites"? This is not to say that there aren't problems with the "art world"... the system of art education and the art market. But ultimately the vast majority of all art has always been mediocre at best. Discerning what among the art of the recent past is the finest work, has always been the challenge... and open to debate. As with the judgment of literature, it ultimately all comes down to opinion... but some opinions are better than others. Many would question the opinions of any individual who is quick to dismiss any art that doesn't meet his or her ideals of "beauty" as the product of "perverted and corrupted" artists... especially when said artists have been long recognized as important figures in the history of art.
Let’s look how it is done.
I have already looked at Schiele’s and Bathus life and art. I have also learned here about Félicien Rops.
And to what end? Rops was a minor figure, at best... just one of many artists/poets/composers among those known as the "decadents": Franz von Bayros, Ferdinand Hodler, Franz von Stuck, Harry Clark, Jean Deville, Alfred Kubin, Odilion Redon, Gustave Moreau, Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, J.K. Huysmans, Comte de Lautréamont, Theophile Gautier. Algernon Swinburne, Edgar Allen Poe, etc... There was a preoccupation with an exploration of the dark side of human nature throughout much of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Much of this dates back to the Romantics: paintings by Goya, Coleridge's Christabel, Frankenstein, Dracula, horor and ghost stories.
Let’s look at Baudelaire.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire ( 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translatorof Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil),
Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything."
Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender. During this timeJeanne Duval became his mistress. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. She was rejected by his family. He made a suicide attempt during this time.
He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed
The Flowers of Evil was inspiration for another Belgian occultis, Carlos Schwabe
Somehow I think you're undermining your arguments against the "perversion" in Modern/Contemporary art when you include a figure such as Charles Baudelaire among your list of "perverted artists". Baudelaire is one of the greatest poets of all time... perhaps the finest writing in French.
But from whom he got his idea. Well, we need to go to Giordano Bruno. Renaissance occultist and magician.
At Oxford University, Giordano Bruno’s brief, obscure but very profound work, De vinculis in genere, is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought – on the par with Machiavelli’s Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernity’s most intelligent and insightful political work.
These academics, and among them Dahrendorf, and the now deceased Eliade and his disciple Couliano, are just the latest scholars to consider the De vinculis in genere a masterpiece. The first to recognize the importance of Bruno’s text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movement’s history.
Bruno knew as he said in De vinculis in genere that love and sex is “bond of bonds’, the most powerful tool of mass manipulation and control.
Public nudity, pornography, prostitution, all sexual perversions , including pedophilia and incest are the tools to make change in society. We have already see the photos a naked siblings in a sexual context.
We may ask where we are going. Today, 20 millions people in America suffer from major depression. Similar number of people suffer form anxiety. When we can add 51% people of divorce and all addiction, we may see the seriousness of the problem.
And a few Goethe's quotes.
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I suspect that I'm not the only one who feels like most of this is just aimless rambling. Your point is?
I might add that I also suspect that outside of the quotes you found on the internet, you actually have never read Goethe. If you had... you'd be aware of his vulgar Walpurgisnacht as well as a any number of erotic poems that surely challenge his quote on "taste". Or one might alternatively suggest that it is likely that Goethe's concept of "taste" may not be at all in line with what you think of as "taste".
{edit}
You haven't addressed my points regarding mass manipulation and control that has been clearly presented in The Century of The Self I posted.
The documentary movie I posted was a key to understand the depth of mass manipulation and control. I didn't criticized painters but I quoted art critic who applied Freud theory to explain art, theory that was heavily criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists.
Second, I looked at private life of a few artists. I have found pedophilia, incestuous relations, prostitution, contracting syphilis, and alcoholism. It is not a secret. I am glad that I have done it...... everything become crystal clear.
I am not going to add anything else....{edit}
I want to end our discussion since I feel uncomfortable when my points are ignored.
Enjoy LitNet