Favorite artists - contribute!

[Ethel]

Yes. Corot, and then Gustave Courbet. Both of whom I like more than most of the Impressionists.

Whistler, my dear lovely art lover... I shall hope to wander through the National Gallery with you one day.


Er... didn't mean to imply anything. Didn't mean to be tiresome. Just really, really love the collection of paintings in the National Gallery.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ethel, there was absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with your post. In fact I posted my little joke Monet before even seeing your post. It was my post that was ill-timed and ill-considered, not yours.

I love this thread, but I have nothing real to offer to it. You on the other hand have made wonderful contributions, and you will continue to do so.

And yes, that is an order.

[Frelga]

I'm like Ethel and Vison - I like pictures with a story in them. Like the "Unequal marriage" that I posted - did you all notice the smouldering young man behind the bride? That's the artist's self-portrait.

But Degas defied all my powers of explanation. A very disturbing painting indeed.

All right, we are on landscapes now. Is this Shishkin too big?

[Jnyusa]

Frelga, that's not too big for me, but vison has been having problems with stretchy pages. We're going to do a little experiment in one of the short threads to see whether large pictures are the cause. If it turns out that they are, I'll probably ask everyone to downsize their pics below a limit which I am waiting for phpbb support to recommend to me.

Jn

[Frelga]

All right, I compressed it a bit. Hope this is better.

[Jnyusa]

It looks the same to me.

But don't worry about it until we figure out whether the larger sized pictures matter to the appearance of the page.

Jn

[Frelga]

Hmm, it's supposed to be 75% of the original size. Perhaps you need to refresh page to see the reduction?

Anyway, let me know if I need to recise anything.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Frelga, its still 754 pixels wide. If you could reduce it to 600, that would be a great help.

[Frelga]

Really, V? Photobucket says it's 565x341. All right, I'll reduce it some more.

OK, it's 424x256 now, but you won't see the new size until you hit Refresh.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Now its too small.



565x341 would be perfect.

[Frelga]

Sorry, can't go back. I reduced it right in Photobucket, so I can't make it bigger now.

But how about this one? I adore this painting, for the colors and textures, for the woman's confident expression, and especially because she is NOT SKINNY!



Merchant's Wife Drinking Tea, Kustodiev

[Jnyusa]

Now I'm not seeing Frelga's picture at all. It can't be refresh because I just signed on.

Jn

edit: Oh, I like the new one! Except for that raisen roll, everything she's eating is low cal!

[Frelga]

Jn, your computer may still has the cached picture from the last time you browsed here. When in doubt, Refresh.

[Jnyusa]

Hm ... no, It's still not there.

Actually, it was gone when I signed on the first time this morning and I thought you had removed it to resize.

I could dump my cookies, I guess. (Hate doing that!)

Jn

[truehobbit]

What a lovely thread! I wish I had more time to discuss and post some pics, too.

(LOL, this thread is two days old, and already it feels like I've missed an age of discussion here.)

I don't have any qualms about going back to ancient discussions, though!

I'm not into modern art at all, I'm afraid, so no comment on the examples of that.
It was almost scary how much I agree with vison on modern art and the awful Dejeuner (I've had the same reaction from when I first saw it, but I never thought the women were prostitutes - I took it they had some symbolic meaning that I didn't get).

There's hardly anything to add to Ber's list of great paintings - wonderful choices.

I was very suprised to find some pics posted here, though, which I'd have admitted to liking only blushingly - glad others like them, too.

On is the pic with the kids and the lampions in the garden, from Ber's list - I found that while googling a while ago, and saved it because I liked it, but thought others would probably consider it kitsch.

The others are Mrs Baggins's pics.
Sidonzo (that's just easier to type than Mrs Baggins - what's your preferred short form of your name?), yes, the pics you post would most definitely be considered kitsch by the critics - and I love those paintings!
I'd never heard of the French guy (sorry, just one window open so I can't go back to page one to look at the name) - his "Birth of Venus" is like the Renaissance done by Hollywood!
But very often I like the Hollywood-approach! It's art with all the jarring, hard parts cleared away and all the tasty, juicy bits multiplied. It's just something I need at times, I think.

I also love those photo-realistic historical painting style, shown in some pics here.
Whistler, what a great comment on the "Trust me" painting - I only looked at it briefly, so I didn't notice the vertical divide at first - thanks!

As to the Degas - hmmh.

Hmmmh.



I read the discussion (thought more quickly than I would have liked, hope I didn't miss too much) - but I'm not convinced.
I'm not even convinced it's a woman in the pic.
Why is her hair so short?
Like yov I first thought it was a boy, but I agree the physical shape is more like a woman. (Thanks for the link to the really big version, btw!)
I think there's something to be said for all your interpretations, but at some point or other there's always something that doesn't fit.

I'll look at it a bit more, maybe google some, and hope to be back later. (And if people get their Christmas cards for Easter, I'll blame it on you guys! )

[Ethel]

I must say, though, that this sort of examination of these paintings is fun to me but it feels more like an interesting game than it does interesting art to me. I personally find it kinda silly from an artistic pov...it's just not how I react to or enjoy art. Very interesting to see a very different approach. (Which is not to say I want people to stop talking about it, cuz it really is a pretty cool discussion.)

There is something here worthy of further exploration. While I was looking up favorite artworks to share in this thread, I snagged quite a large number of images that just didn't seem (to me) to 'work' on a computer monitor. I'm not a huge fan of nonrepresentational painting, but there is some modern sculpture that I simply sw00n for. For instance... I love Constantin Brancusi. I have seen a number of his works in person and they are just so beautiful. Elegance personified. But they look like crap on a little computer monitor. Well, and my monitor isn't even all that small, and it's very high rez, but still. Just didn't work. I felt that the beauty I had seen and experienced simply wasn't available in this medium. Sculpture needs to be experienced in 3D. I did not want to share it in a way that diminished it.

I have trouble with some but not all 'modern' art. Maybe it's... well... I think there are some enduring human needs that art speaks to. We are wired to love stories and pictures and songs. I deeply believe this. One of the things that 'modern' painting tried to do was remove the representational and move into a realm of pure color and shape. I find some of this work interesting and even beautiful, but it has never 'spoken' to me the way pictures of people or landscapes do.

Anyway, yov, I would still be interested in your answer to my dumb and obvious question. Is visual art 'about' pleasing colors and shapes, or it about something else? What is it that gets you, personally, excited about a work of art?

[JewelSong]

I have to rush to work, but I had to pop in here and say what an absolutely awesome thread this is! It's like I stumbled into a fantastic art history discussion.

I htink it is wonderful that a flat painting can evoke so many feelings and emotions...

I will be back.

[yovargas]

Ethel, I'll try to answer more fully later, but for now I wanted to say that it seems that for me that the emotions of a painting lay in its colors and lines and forms. While the subject matter can be interesting, it rarely taps into my brain's "art-receptors", if you know what I mean. (And if you don't, hopefully I can explain better later ).

[vison]

Ethel, I'll try to answer more fully later, but for now I wanted to say that it seems that for me that the emotions of a painting lay in its colors and lines and forms. While the subject matter can be interesting, it rarely taps into my brain's "art-receptors", if you know what I mean. (And if you don't, hopefully I can explain better later ).

That is my first reaction to a picture: the initial response to light and dark. Too much dark? Then, right away I don't like it, it takes a lot to overcome that.

But within heartbeats I am looking for the "story", and if I don't find one, I'm outa there. The story is always about people, one way or the other. As I said above, it could be only some tiny signal that Humans are in the world portrayed, a glove on the ground, a board fence, smoke from a chimney. Without that, it's not a world I want to look at.

So, come on, yovargas me dear, elucidate!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Is visual art 'about' pleasing colors and shapes, or it about something else? What is it that gets you, personally, excited about a work of art?

To me, its about both. A painting doesn't work for me if it not well-crafted in terms of the artist's use of space and color and light. But equally, a painting doesn't work for me unless it says something to me, unless is about something. Like this one: