Can't say I'm a huge fan of the Nimoy pic. Though, I'm suddenly craving cottage cheese. . . .
Can't say I'm a huge fan of the Nimoy pic. Though, I'm suddenly craving cottage cheese. . . .
Here're are some from two of my favorite artists. True, I don't know many artists, but I've always enjoyed these two. I like weird stuff.
Salvador Dali
M.C. Escher
I'm surprised Emil hasn't chimed in on that Nimoy pic.
I had spotted this painting at the Kimbell thinking it may have some correlation to the Three Graces, but I now learn it is based on the "The Judgement of Paris" by Lucas Cranach the Elder, German (1472–1553), still a wonderful piece.
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Cranach actually painted several variations on The Three Graces:
As did his peer, Hans Baldung Grien:
Cranach and Baldung produced some of the most blatantly erotic paintings of the age... indeed some of the most blatantly erotic paintings prior to the 20th century. Cranach makes clear that his women are not idealized Greek goddesess. They are unquestionably sophisticated and knowing women of contemporary Germany. Their nudity is often seen in contrast to the latest urban fashions... hats, jewelry. Their figures fit the ideals of the time: thin, tall, with rounded bellies and small high breasts. Cranach often veiled his nudes in moralizing themes drawn from the Bible or mythology... but ultimately, these were but an excuse for the artist to paint what he was most interested in: desirable naked women.
Last edited by stlukesguild; 10-02-2011 at 03:47 PM.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher are two of the most popular artists with adolescent boys. I remember studying the development of artistic sensibilities back during my Art Ed courses. It was shown how our thinking with regard to images changes and develops in a predictable manner. Around the time of middle-school, children begin to develop a love for visual realism... for art that presents an illusion of reality. Students begin to explore shading, linear perspective, reflective light and color, etc... This is the point at which the vast majority of the population stops developing their artistic sensibilities. Escher and Dali are incredibly popular with teenagers because they combine a mastery of illusionary "realism" with an unreality... fantasy... or inventiveness. According to the studies of the development of visual or artistic sensibility few individuals ever more beyond this stage into the higher level of development in which art is appreciated abstractly. By this I do not mean to infer that a love of abstraction is superior to a love of "realism". A good many young would-be artists embrace abstraction... because they imagine it is easy. rather, what I mean is that very few attain the level of visual artistic appreciation/understanding similar to that of the artist in recognizing the "abstraction" inherent in all art and grasping the abstract underlying structures within all art... figurative, realist, expressionist, of abstract.
Dali and Escher are not among my top-ten... but certainly they are good artists... and both attain the level of greatness in any number of instances. Among my favorite paintings by Dali I would include:
Dali's early painting are like hallucinatory dream-scapes painted in acidic technicolor. These often tiny paintings were masterfully rendered which only added to their unsettling nature. Unfortunately, Dali's career, like that of John Lennon's, was undermined by his wife. Gala, who left her husband, the poet Paul Eluard for the more financially promising union with the painter, pushed Dali into churning out product... mass producing prints, cranking out ridiculous portraits of wealthy socialites, pandering to the media, and even working for Disney. Critics... including his former Surrealist compatriots began to refer to her as "Gala Dollars" rather than Gala Dali. His later works rarely attain the level of the masterpieces of his early years. In spite of this, Dali was the first "serious" artist that I purchased a book by in high-school.
Escher has similar "surreal" elements on the surface... but these are rooted in logic and mathematics taken to a level of absurdity rather than rooted in the subconscious and dreams ala Dali. For this reason, Escher is quite often beloved by scientists, mathematicians, and musicians. His strengthened his ties to the analytic and the logical by the elimination of color (linked to emotion) and the focus upon line. The prints are actually quite marvelous in person.
Some of Escher's work with Tessellations and Fractals are among the most complex efforts in art outside of Arabic art. It is still more impressive when one considers that Escher created these works without the aid of computers or other such technology.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
That is why I love Escher--the complexity. Whereas I love Dali because I find his work surrealistically beautiful, when I look at Escher's work, it just messes with my head, but in an awesome way. How he figured out doing the tessellations and fractals is just mind-boggling.
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I've just seen it Gilliatt and I wish I hadn't as I'm eating my evening meal in front of the computer.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I don't think StLukes meant the "adolescent boys" comment as an insult against me (as I've admitted I don't know much about art), or I at least hope he didn't. Still, I'm glad you found it so amusing, Emil.
It's precisely because he didn't mean it that I find it amusing.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I'd expect no less from you, Emil.
I'll take that as a compliment.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Currently I'm looking a lot at the mural paintings of Stelios Faitakis. Considering all the political unrest around the world at the moment I find Faitakis paintings extremely timely... especially when one considers them born in Athens with all the current political unrest taken to the streets.
I am always looking for new artists. I was simply bored one evening some time ago and so I began entering various terms at random and seeing what might pop up in a Google search. At one point I entered (I believe) "Contemporary Icon Mural Painting" and I happened upon Stelios Faitakis.
Stelios Faitakis was born in 1973. In 1996 entered the School of Fine Arts in Salonica, Greece. He later transferred to the School of Fine Arts in Athens, from which he graduated in 2003. The artist is obsessed with Japanese woodblocks, Byzantine icons, graffiti, literature, and philosophy. As an artist he began painting unrefined, simplistic, images and scrawled texts upon the walls of Athens, the ancient but notoriously ugly town whose walls, according to Faitakis, “literally beg to be painted.” This experience led him to embrace a socio-political notion of art. "Art should be used as a tool for human beings to educate themselves," he declares. “Art is created for the people” This drive to maintain contact with the public inspires him to paint not only on canvas for gallery shows but on buildings and even in hotel lobbies. The level of public access to his work is an important factor to Faitakis, allowing him to layer meaning to appeal both to the more “demanding eyes” of the art world and to average people just walking to work.
His paintings commonly deal with socio-political issues. They represent a merger of "high" and "low-brow" culture. There are elements that suggest Breughel, Bosch, Byzantine icons, Persian and Japanese art, the Mexican Muralists as well as the prints of José Posada as well as the German Expressionists including Otto Dix and George Grosz, and social realists of the 1930. The artist also makes extensive use gold leaf... suggesting the most precious of materials and images. This, he admits, owes much to his parent's labors as jewelry makers. At the same time, Faitakis' imagery seems culled equally from comic books, MAD Magazine, R. Crumb, and graffiti. The formal, structural solidity of the paintings and the audacity of the scale, however, make his work more than slightly impressive:
Faitakis' themes include the ever-increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor, American involvement in the Middle-East, riots in Greece, the Middle-East, etc..., the commodification of sex, the debasement of religion and spirituality, the employment of sex, drugs, religion, and spectacle to numb the minds of the masses, etc... These themes often take the allegorical form of various traditional themes of art: the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the Book of Revelations, the Plagues of Egypt, Byzantine/Asian Saints, the gardens oasis of Middle-Eastern painting, etc...
continued..............................
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
I have noticed that you posted art. I haven't read many posts so it sounds I have missed update. I would appreciate if you could let me know about changes.
BTW, this art is disturbing.I guess I feel the impact of occult symbolism on Super Bowl and Grammy.
I hope that you can post art that will fill the soul not drain it.
BTW, this art is disturbing. I guess I feel the impact of occult symbolism on Super Bowl and Grammy.
I hope that you can post art that will fill the soul not drain it.
As you certainly know, Art is employed toward a vast array of ends. Considering that Faitakis is confronting some of the pressing social/political/economic issues of our time, I would be surprised if his art didn't have a degree of edginess to it that some might find disturbing. Indeed, I suspect the artist intended his work to be disturbing just as the poverty, drug abuse, the increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, the abuse of power, the American involvement in the Middle-East, etc... are themselves disturbing. As a whole, however, (unlike such political artists as Otto Dix or George Grosz) the work retains (I feel) a definite sense of beauty in the employment of the rich, yet harmonious coloring, the patterns and stylization, and the use of gold leaf.
Perhaps I shall look for some "soul enhancing" works of contemporary art later today.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
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