A little piece of art for everyone!

[Johnny S]

Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572) Florence Italy


Allegory of the Triumph of Venus 1540-1545

[martin48]

I like it, but why here?

[bluesoul]

i think he's trying to liven the place up with some cultural art

[Prospero]

I like it too.... and why not. There are at least two music threads, a movie thread and a very occasional literary thread. So hey - there seems to be room for all kinds of things. (There was even a favourite car thread a few months ago which, mercifully, died the death).

So here is another...This is a painting called The Origin of The World by the post impressionist painter Gustave Courbet, painted in 1886.

[Johnny S]

Every person, gay straight or bisexual, worships a body.
I think that we should also take a look at the bodies in art and how the artists (as dream lovers) worshippped them!

[trish]

Saint George and the Dragon by Giorgio de Chirico

[maaarc]

Matthias Grünewald’s (1470 AD – 1528 AD)
depiction of “The Temptation of St. Anthony"

[Prospero]

An image by the great Viennese secession artist Egon Schiele

[Stavros]

Those of you in the UK or planning a visit may want to consider the Veronese exhibition that is currently showing at the National Gallery in London. I made a trip to see this -expensive- collection of 50 paintings most of which have never travelled before. Paolo Caliari was born in Verona -hence 'Veronese'- in 1528. Veronese is technically a flawless painter which means his work is tediously brilliant, therefore making this relatively small exhibition quite tiring. As it happens, I have a limited taste for altar pieces but was deeply impressed by his portraits -in fact I would rank his skills in this genre along with the masters, such as Rembrandt, Velasquez and Titian. It is a point of interest that the background in his portraits is as spare as found in Caravaggio (born in the decade before Veronese's death in 1588)), and this I think enables Veronese to focus on the person rather than, say, their possessions and land as one gets in other portraits, notably in the decadent 18th century. Of the classical and biblical themes paintings, one stands out, The Supper at Emmaus (normally in the Louvre)-this odd painting depicts the supper attended by a resurrected Christ, yet throws into the scene, one presumes, the family of the man who commissioned the painting: so that it is The Supper at Emmaus being Witnessed by a Wealthy Venetian and his Family -it may look devotional to them, but there is an almost crazy mis-match between the biblical and the contemporary, yet the arrangement of the figures clustered to the right and the left of Christ, and the foreground of two girls and a dog offers superbly choreographed drama drawn with consummate skill so that the overall effect is actually quite moving, and if the two girls in the foreground seem disinterested in the main event, perhaps that too is an accurate moment in the picture.

The portrait of a Venetian lady, name unknown, is exquisite in its treatment of fabric and colour and to my mind the arms and the hands prefigure the portraits of Ingres.

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Supper-at-Emmaus-by-Veronese-1560.jpg

http://www.thearttribune.com/IMG/jpg/Veronese_Nani.jpg

[martin48]

I was only asking!



Seated Dancer in Pink Tights - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1890)

[Stavros]

After the Veronese, I went to Paris where amongst other things, I went to see the exhibition of works by Bill Viola in the Grand Palais -this exposition is on until July and I would urge as many people as possible to see it. Viola has established himself as one of the most important American artists of the last 50 years, of whom there have been so few I am struggling to think of any, perhaps Rothko if his work was not so limited.

Viola's early work is presented here with The Reflecting Pool which establishes Viola's recurring themes of time and water -although he almost drowned in a pool/lake at a young age he found the experience exhilarating- and the use of time-lapse photography and editing. Video installations that I have seen are, for the most part, rubbish pure and simple, provoking no serious thought in me about the nature of things, time, space and so on, whereas Viola goes beyond the purely visual to tease out our assumptions. The Quintet of the Astonished arranges figures much as you might find in Hals but asks the question -what were these people doing before and after that moment captured in paint? Viola sees himself working out of the tradition of painting rather than film, although he also uses the sculpting in time concept (also applied to Tarkovsky if not b the director).

Two stand out exhibits beg to be seen again and again (which means I shall be going back next month) -The Crossing which I have not linked because it must be seen through nine gauze curtains each of which presents the crossing in a different way. The second is a room with five screens which play their own story simultaneously and is called Going Forth by Day which appears at first to be an endless sequence of people walking, passing a door, preparing to bed-down by a pool, an elderly woman leaving behind a dead husband as she sails off with all her possessions, and an arc of fire above a door -until something explosive happens, as indicated in the second clip below.

Bill Viola also produced the video for Peter Sellars' production of Tristan und Isolde at the Paris Opera -I did see the concert version in the UK and most of it doesn't work but the Liebestod is awesome.

Once again I strongly urge people to spend time with Viola's work, it is challenging but rewarding in a way that too much contemporary art is not.

The Reflecting Pool is complete, the rest extracts.

Bill Viola - The Reflecting Pool - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_urrt8X0l8)

Bill Viola au Grand Palais, The deluge (teaser) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTJy6NxvKx8)

Bill Viola: The quintet of the astonished (The Passions), 2000 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As7OtWMYPRc)

[Prospero]

some American artists....

[Prospero]

Georgia O"Keefe

[Prospero]

Rothko

[Stavros]

Oh dear Prospero, do pay attention. I used the word 'important' for a reason, if you just want to produce a list of American artists, or worse, examples of their pointless work, you get 0 points for critical acumen. Andy Warhol is not really an artist, unless you think attaching the prefix Con to the word makes a valuable difference. Let's be honest, his work is rubbish -but it's not my fault if some idiot in the market-place wants to buy it for $millions, plenty of dross has been sold for such sums because some critic said it was 'vital'. Barnett Newman is a colossal bore; de Kooning over-rated and capable of mostly hideous slush; as for Georgia O'Keefe -well is it even art or just colourful drawing? Jackson Pollock had his moments, brief as they were, but his art was as dead an end as the man's life.

The obvious question: is this important? begs an answer but I daresay we all have our own definitions. I think art that is important uses materials in an original way -could be paint, could be paper, could be film, could be bronze, and call it Craft- art that is important shows a sense of imagination; art that is important may be emotional or refer to emotions though this is not essential but can give art depth; art can be satirical, comedic, referential but to succeed the person experiencing it should have access to these nodal points -Viola achieves many of these things where, for example, O'Keefe, Newman, Rauschenberg, Pollock, Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein are lacking in multiple dimensions. You cannot really compare the work of these artists with say, Winslow Homer or even Edward Hopper, a borderline case.

Americans fare poorly when set against the trio of outstanding artists from the UK in the same period: Lucian Freud, William Turnbull and Bridget Riley. But we too have had our duds in the UK -David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Tracy Emin, Martin Creed and in fact all of the 'Brit Art' phoneys. It is because making art that is meaningful and lasts is so difficult that I think you will agree Bill Viola's work stands out in an otherwise arid landscape.

[Prospero]

Oh dear Stavros... stop being such a pompous aand self important chap. Were you a teacher?

Pay attention at the back.

[trish]

Halo, a picture by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[Prospero]

Dale Chihuly... American artist in glass.

[maxpower]

Dale Chihuly... American artist in glass.


He made a sculpture for the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. It's called "River Blue." It's really beautiful and quite impressive when you're standing next to it. Unfortunately, last year some dumb fuck fell over the guardrail in an attempt to touch the piece, and broke part of it.

[Prospero]

Fall on a glass sculpture and you could also get rather badly injured!

[buttslinger]

[quote=Prospero;1478152]Oh dear Stavros... .....
Everyone's a critic.......

When I was collecting music off the internet (poor man's evening)
I got a fat book of Rock Discography, and you could go to say, Pink Floyd, and they would rate each and every album they made. 1-10.

That seems so stupid, people like what people like, but as my collection grew and I was deciding what I wanted in it, ........the critics are usually right or close enough.

Here's Madonna's Picasso. Score one for the Material Girl.

[buttslinger]

Here's the painting I have over my fireplace, Matisse, Girl with a tambourine, it's the exact duplicate of the original, size, computer generated brushstrokes.
And in my room my original Buttslinger, worth absolutely zip, but I love her just the same.

[trish]

Here's Madonna's Picasso. Score one for the Material Girl.
Very Vermeer'esque, if only Madonna were standing off to the side in modest dress (how likely is that?).

[trish]

Donatello's David. I think I would've like meeting him.

[Stavros]

Thank you Trish for bringing this to our attention.
The youtube discussion linked below avoids taking into consideration the feminine/effeminate figure which a later scholar (Lanyi) decided was more Mercury/Hermes as if that made a difference; and which can be seen from this angle as a woman:


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Donatello%2C_David_%28bronze%29%2C_side_view.jpg/170px-Donatello%2C_David_%28bronze%29%2C_side_view.jpg

whereas it is considered in the wikipedia entry where Mary McCathy is quoted as saying this David is 'a tranvestite's and fetishist's dream of alluring ambiguity'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_%28Donatello%29#The_bronze_David

Donatello, David, bronze, c. 1440s - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kUUJJV_MNA)

[trish]

It must be at least six years since I've been in Florence, but I distinctly remember spending an hour in front of this beautiful bronze sculpture, and then returning the next day just to see it again.

Thanks, Stavros, for the fascinating video. ~Kisses~

[trish]

Candle and mermaid,
I Watch You Without Blinking,
The Dark,

by Ikenaga Yasunari

[Stavros]

Evocation of Venus, by William Turnbull, Britain's finest sculptor since Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth -stolen from the Cass Sculpture Foundation and never recovered.

http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/article_images/The%20Cass%20Sculpture%20Foundation%20in%20Goodwoo d.jpg