Favorite artists - contribute!

[Jnyusa]

I like modern art. I like the Tanguys you posted, yov. They are reminiscent of Dali, and Dali is probably my most favorite painter. (Hi, Ber!)

Kandinsky never appealed to me because he's too 'busy'.

Rodia I love two of the Ruszczyc's you posted, but the oxen picture in the middle looks as if it were done by a completely different artist. The ship is a fantasy ship, but look at the detail of the foam in the foreground and the immenence of the wave. This is like the trees in the third painting, they have an immediacy to them that is present in the water but not in the oxen and fields. It is really interesting to me that the oxen painting is the most famous one. I'm not familiar at all with this painter's work, but I find it hard to believe that the oxen painting is the most typical.

The other pictures that have that sense of immediacy (for me) are the Friedrich and the Whistler posted by Ber. Even though there is something muted and fantastic about the settings, the eye is drawn - Zoom! - to one specific point in the painting and it almost shouts, "Look at ME!" The puddles in the foreground of the Friedrich and the human figure in the Whistler. Color, I think, in the Friedrich and shape in the Whistler create that effect.

I'm afraid that I've wearied of classical painting. It was the only kind of thing presented to us in school ... we were never even shown a Picasso in Art History class much less real modern art! Just lots and lots of buxom, mythological women! Now I don't enjoy any of the classical styles any longer, not even the Impressionists really.

Jn

[Whistler]

[vison]

Woot.

Many lovely pictures, a feast for the eyes, and some, even, a feast for the heart and soul.

Sadly, there are several I cannot love. Of those, the one I love the least is the Manet, the one of the picnic in the woods. How I hate that picture. It makes me grit my teeth. Yet, as a friend of mine says, "It has power, me dear, if it makes you so angry!"

Well, yes. It has power, but so does a smack in the kisser.


I love the de Chirico, of the little girl with her hoop and stick, and the Magritte, I have a cheap print of that one.

And the lovely Vermeer. Any Vermeer, actually.

Those Lawrences, Reynolds, and Gainsboroughs. Beautiful.

If that Ophelia by Millais doesn't give you the heebie-jeebies, then you are dead from the shoulders up.

Millais illustrated many of Trollope's books. I like his pictures, but not that Ophelia.


I never knew anything about Whistler beyond his mother and a few anecdotes. Obviously there's more to learn.

[Whistler]

I should say there is!!!!

[Primula Baggins]

Hint to vison: Click Whistler's "www" button.

This is a magnificent thread. I am stunningly ignorant and hungry for crumbs. My mother had a book of Famous Paintings with little critical remarks about them, and I read it over and over. Ber, the Sargent you posted was in there, the one of the two little girls with the paper lanterns, "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose," and I remember the text informing me that some critic once called it "Damnation, Silly, Silly Pose."

This is the kind of thing I remember about art. I remember words about art really well.

[Erunáme]

My favorite is Monet, but of course we all know about him.

I've mostly come across some artists on the web. They'd not be classified under fine art, but they have lots of talent to me.

One is Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I don't often like her paintings so much, but I am in utter awe of her technique. She works wonders with watercolors. I've tried painting with them so I know how darn tough they are. Her paintings are just plain awesome. Some ones I do like:

Medalon

Charmed Sphere

A Memory of Lothlórien

Sweet Intoxication of the fall

I really like Kajsa Flinkfeldt. She also works wonders with watercolors. I'll post some of her images tomorrow as you can't link to individual pictures on her website.

[Rodia]

My favourite actually IS Millais, but I wanted to be all posh-polish. Bah.

Screw that. I LOVE THE PRERAPHAELITES...and I don't care how typical of twenty-something onliner chicks that is.

In London, I was delighted to be able to step up to 'Christ in the House of his Parents' at a nose's distance...I blocked the view for everyone in the room (well that was a bored Gimli and some solitary scholar, so not much harm done) for a long time. I was shocked- Millais was actually a pointillist!

[Berhael]

What better entertainment when insomniac than posting about favourite art...

Sadly now I'm very much the opposite of insomniac and at work. Sigh.

*zzz*

[yovargas]

vison, what is it about the Manet picture that you dislike so much?

[Whistler]

Prim, if you like to read artistic criticism, you could not do better than Whistler. You will find his very clever (and abrasive) comments in a book of his own letters and lectures. The title is "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."

Included are transcripts of a trial (it was almost the Michael Jackson trial of its day) in which Whistler claimed public defamation charges against John Ruskin, the most influential critic of the period. Ruskin had seen Whistler's infamous painting "Nocturne In Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket" and had accused Whistler of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

Taking advantage of the fact that both he and Ruskin were celebrities, and that their public quarrel would be sure to receive extensive press coverage, Whistler decided that a lawsuit would be the perfect means of publicizing his philosophies of art. This he did with typical flamboyance and scathing wit.

Whistler won, and was awarded damages in the amount of one farthing. This “victory” bankrupted him, but at least he made his point. To this day, artists revere Whistler as a man who put his neck on the line and risked (and lost) everything for the sake of blazing a new artistic trail.

There’s also a really good dirty story about Ruskin. But of course I won’t tell it.

[Primula Baggins]

Of course.

Thank you for the tip, Whistler! Being diffident about my own opinion, I do enjoy reading the opinions of knowledgeable people, even (or especially when) they disagree with each other. And it often leads me to art I would not otherwise have sought out.

[Whistler]

Prim:

Here's the picture in question. You probably won't like it, and if not I can understand why. I didn't either, at first, but as I learned more about Whistler I came to understand how fine it is. This painting is one of a handful of works that can be regarded as heralding the beginning of all things modern.

[yovargas]

Ooooh, I haven't like any of the other Whistler's I've seen but I like that one a lot!

[Whistler]

Yov, Whistler essentially "invented" abstract art by finding it in the real world and painting what he saw, as he saw it. This picture shows a fireworks display. In the background there's a tall building. You can see reflections in a river. And there is a foreground in which a figure stands.

But you don't see all of this at first. For that matter, you needn't see it at all. Whistler's art is not about anything but color and composition.

I'll explain all of this in greater detail, perhaps, when I can.

[yovargas]

But you don't see all of this at first. For that matter, you needn't see it at all. Whistler's art is not about anything but color and composition.

I was just thinking about that yesterday as I looked at many of the paintings posted, many of which are truly beautiful and remarkable. The skill involved in those Bouguereau paintings Sidonzo posted is astonishing! But few of them grab me the way the wholly abstract paintings I linked to do. Thinking about this, it occurred to me that it is because, in paintings, I seem to mostly respond to the flow and movement and tone of the colors and forms. The subject matter, if there is a subject matter, is very much secondary to me. I think I may even find concrete subject matters a bit distracting, as they pull my focus way from my primary interest.

It reminds me a bit of complaints I used to hear all the time from the modern rock I primarily listened to in the 90s, where people would complain "How can you like this - you can hardly make out what they're saying!" and if you could make out what they're saying "But I can't figure out what these lyrics mean - they don't make any sense!" Which to me is entirely missing the point - it's the sounds, and the dynamics, and the textures. Those are where the deepest emotions reside. Lyrics are almost always secondary.

[Primula Baggins]

Whistler, I do like that painting. Though my reasons are far less sophisticated than yours.

I "heard" it before my eye took it in (muffled popping and crackling).

And then my eye took it in as it probably would a real fireworks display—first the smoke and light and falling sparks, then the hint of a lit building beyond, then the foreground.

I get a real sense of sparcs arcing up and then falling—if I had to guess I would say these are just past the top of their arc.

I like the color as well. I would love to see this painting in person.

[Whistler]

Whistler considered art to be the visual equivalent of music, neither more nor less. To illustrate this point, he often titled his works with such musical titles as "Symphony in White” or (the proper title of “Whistler’s Mother) “Arrangement in Black and Grey.” The term "nocturne" is also a musical one, and Whistler's most important pieces are his nocturnes, a series of nighttime landscapes and seascapes.

The term “nocturne” also refers to the importance of night in these compositions. What happens when you view a scene at night? Perspective grows flattened; colors blur and blend; details are obscured. The result? Instant abstractionism, if you are willing to see it. All of Whistler’s nocturnes are highly realistic, but never on an initial viewing. At first they seem (as Ruskin observed) like random drips and spatters.

The point is this: Whether they “mean anything” or not, they are they same compositions. So does it really matter if an indigo blob is a boat, or a bridge, or a tower? The whole idea is color and design, not illustrative content…or, as Whistler’s philosophy had it, “art for art’s sake.”

Prim, I'd like to see the painting, too! I traveled 2,000 miles to do just that, only to find that the museum was remodeling and had stuck it in a closet.

[Primula Baggins]

Oh, that's right—was that at the Philly m00t? So it's in Philadelphia?

[Whistler]

No, that was another trip. It's in Detroit.

In the dark.

[Primula Baggins]

How frustrating that must have been for you, Whistler! But Detroit? Phooey. I might go to Philly again someday, but I have no other reason to go to Detroit.