Favorite artists - contribute!

[Lalaith]

I love art. I don't know if I could pick a favorite artist; I tend to like someone from nearly every genre. I'll freely confess that I'm not a huge fan of modern art. Some of it is nice, but I don't like Dali. Maybe it's because I know he was probably a serial killer or serial killer wannabe, but it's completely turned me off to his works.

I do like Mary Cassatt quite a bit (no surprise).



Edmund Blair Leighton.





John William Waterhouse.





(I don't mind admitting that. Their paintings are lovely--no shame in liking them!) I think Vermeer's paintings are lovely,



as are John Singer Sargent's.



Dame Laura Knight is probably less well-known, but I do love her paintings. Some of you will recall seeing them in my sig pics.



And Winslow Homer.



(Yes, obviously, I like romantic paintings. )

And apologies if these have already been discussed. I read the first few pages of the thread but didn't have time to read the entire thread.


Lali

[Jnyusa]

Those are lovely choices, Lali. And yes, you are a romantic!

Dali ... I had not heard or read that he was a serial killer wannabe but I heard that he and Gala were both into young boys and were infamous for their pedophiliac parties. To be honest, it does put me off his work to some extent, but the sheer power of his artistic vision keeps winning me back. In some respects it is the very juxtoposition of his lascivious lifestyle and the mysticism of some of his works that makes him so intriguing.

Jn

[yovargas]

Considering how popular and famous he is, I find it odd that, apparently, me and Jn are the only ones here who like Dali. Any ideas on why that would be?

(I like that Homer painting quite a bit, Lali )

[Lalaith]

Thanks, yovi.

I liked some of Dali's paintings before I watched a documentary on his life; it's been a long time since then, so I don't remember the details very clearly. What I do recall is that he obviously had some issues with women, as evidenced by some of his paintings of them (that I find grotesque and bizarre). I thought there was some connection between his paintings and some serial murders, but I could be completely wrong. (Can't seem to find anything online at the moment). Apologies if I've slandered him, but a painting like this:



I can hardly bear to post, it bothers me that much. To me, it seems incredibly evil, whether that's what Dali intended or not.

<shudder> Really, it bugs me very much.


Lali

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Is that Dali? I suspect it might be Clovis Trouaille (I havent Googled it and might have his name wrong) who was keen on decadent visual puns. That skull seems to say more about the Romantic fixation of Death and the maiden.
Are you also thinking of Patricia Cornwell's theory that Sickert was Jack the Ripper? I think she is mistaken but she is sure she is right.
Dali was certainly weird but I don't think he had paedophile tendencies rather than repressed gay ones. Gala liked toy boys and orgies but not involving children as far as I know.

[Primula Baggins]

That's repellent on so many levels, Lali!

My parents had a Dali print when I was very young—the limp watches fascinated me—and my father, a pastor, had Dali's Last Supper in his study at home (link, because I don't have my Photobucket account handy). For the longest time I thought of God as a naked male torso.

I accidentally clicked on the Sadao Watanabe link at the page linked above and I remember we had that one as well.

[Lalaith]

Is that Dali? I suspect it might be Clovis Trouaille (I havent Googled it and might have his name wrong) who was keen on decadent visual puns. That skull seems to say more about the Romantic fixation of Death and the maiden.

Well, it was on Wikipedia as belonging to Dali. A Google search seems to confirm that, but I'm not willing to fall on my sword for it.

Are you also thinking of Patricia Cornwell's theory that Sickert was Jack the Ripper? I think she is mistaken but she is sure she is right.
Dali was certainly weird but I don't think he had paedophile tendencies rather than repressed gay ones. Gala liked toy boys and orgies but not involving children as far as I know.

No, I'm not thinking of Sickert (though I could be getting details confused in my mind, for sure). (And I do think Sickert did it. ) The documentary I watched was on PBS; unfortunately, I don't have the time right now to research it further.

Prim, I agree (about it being repellent).

I don't know; there's just something incredibly repellent to me about most of his paintings. Sorry, yovi.


Lali

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

No Lali, I'm not prepared to fall on my sword either. It just looked like his style rather than Dali's. I should research before I post.

[yovargas]

No need to apologize, Lali! I just found it curious that this particular group of intelligent and educated Tolkien fans seems to generally dislike Dali's work. I was thinking of perhaps some tenuous possible connection between fantasy-minded geeks and a dislike for the surreal...

[Lalaith]

No Lali, I'm not prepared to fall on my sword either. It just looked like his style rather than Dali's. I should research before I post.

Like that's stopped me before? I just accused Dali of being a serial killer or serial killer wannabe. I think I should have researched that a bit more carefully before posting. I know better than to trust my fuzzy neurons.

I just found it curious that this particular group of intelligent and educated Tolkien fans seems to generally dislike Dali's work. I was thinking of perhaps some tenuous possible connection between fantasy-minded geeks and a dislike for the surreal...

That's an interesting thought. You might think that fantasy-minded geeks, on the whole, would like the surreal; however, perhaps Tolkien is a bit unique in the fantasy world. Think about the lengths he went to to make Middle-earth as realistic as possible, to give it such a depth and history. In one sense, it is a very realistic fantasy world. It might make sense that more Tolkien fans like realistic paintings rather than surrealistic ones.

Then, given the overall themes of battle, honor, nobility, kings, queens, Elves, and the like and I would think that most Tolkien fans would have a love for the more Romantic paintings, those depicting knights and maidens fair.

I don't know. Just thinking out loud here.


Lali

[vison]

I just had a wonderful eloquent post vanish because Internet Explorer was encountering difficulties. Drat. Double drat.

Oh, well. It was probably too long, anyway.

I used to have nightmares of being in a world such as Dali painted. I had these nightmares long before I ever saw a surrealist picture. So I guess I "recognize" the nightmare realm in those pictures and I hate them. Those worlds are inhuman and inhumane, there is nothing I can love or desire in them. Monstrous landscapes for monstrous beings. I can see the artist's skill, but skill isn't enough.

I don't like melting clocks or limbless trees that have stretched tires hanging from them. I like things that stay the way they are. I don't really like paintings that are just photographic depictions of things, though. As we said earlier when talking about the Degas, I like pictures that tell a story. But then, I love the Varley picture of Georgian Bay, too. I can "put myself" in that picture, I guess.

LOTR is the only "fantasy" I ever liked and I confess it wasn't the "fantasy" in it that appealed to me. All the Ents and Orcs could have been left out and I would still have liked it. I guess that sounds weird, it's the characters I like, but I like the language the best. The paintings Lalaith posted of knights and fair maidens (and others posted earlier in the thread) are very pretty, but they aren't my favourites.

[yovargas]

A too long post by vison? I've yet to see such a creature. It might actually be some sort of contradiction in terms.

Interesting that you associate Dali and his ilk's paintings with "the nightmare realm". It reminds me of a thread on b77 where a couple people said that they found Van Gogh's Starry Night ominious or foreboding, which I found shocking since I find it to be exactly the opposite - inspiring and hopeful and vibrant. Where you see "the nightmare realm", I see world's of grandeur and endless possibility. Ain't it fascinating how many different ways our little human brains have of interepreting the world?

[Jnyusa]

Dali was fascinated by Freud and some of his paintings are supposed to depict the unconscious dynamics described by Freud. They are accordingly bizarre and violent.

He was also greatly influenced by his Spanish Catholicism, which tends to glorify gore, imo. But I don't find the whole of Dali's work to be disturbing in those senses. He did marvelous things with shapes and translucency. I have a book of his prints here that was published in the 1970s under his supervision. Let me see if I can google some of my favorites and post them here.

Jn

[Rowanberry]

No need to apologize, Lali! I just found it curious that this particular group of intelligent and educated Tolkien fans seems to generally dislike Dali's work. I was thinking of perhaps some tenuous possible connection between fantasy-minded geeks and a dislike for the surreal...

Then, I definitely don't fit in the mold - I find surrealism quite attractive. The romantic paintings on the other hand - well, they're nice and beautiful, but somehow too sweet to my taste. I'd take the masters of the Baroque over them any day, or many Finnish painters of the late 19th and early 20th century - I'll have to dig up some examples on a better time.

But, one style that has recently grown on me is the Chinese ink painting. It's amazing how the artist can often with just a few pencil strokes create a very lively picture... I'll seek for examples of that style too.

[Jnyusa]

Ok - here's my favorite Dali ever ... painted in 1958 iirc, and in a private collection:

Port Lligat fisherman at sunset (rebuilding after the Civil War)



And two others that I like very much for their juxtoposition of raw material power and mysticism:

Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus



Battle of Tetuan (Arabs)



Oh, darn. I copied the thumbnails so they wouldn't be too large, but now the detail doesn't show so you can't really see what's going on in the picture. I'll try again with a larger version. (Will have to come back and mess with this later.)

[Whistler]

Is everyone aware that Dali worked, for a time, with Walt Disney? Can you imagine those two in the same room, let alone in collaboration on an artistic endeavor? The only thing they had in common was that both had mustaches, though Disney's (unlike Dali's) was not a radio antenna that picked up messages from the subconscious.

They were making a short film called Destino which was eventually abandoned due to budget constraints. Recently Disney artists dredged up Dali's original sketches (these had long been stored away in the Disney vaults) and completed the film with neither Dali nor Disney at the helm. I don't know how one would go about seeing that film, but I'm certainly interested.

It's about baseball. Go figure.

Below is a photo of the two artists, along with art from the poster.

[yovargas]

Please tell me that poster is a joke.

[Whistler]

A joke? Not at all. It's quite clever and expertly painted...though not (of course) by Dali.

Dali greatly admired Disney, whom he considered one of the world's great surrealists. He had similar praise for the Marx Brothers.

[truehobbit]

Hmmh, when I was in London with Jewel and Pearl this summer, both liked Dali's sculptures, then on exhibition there, quite a lot - maybe they'll come in there and tell us of their impressions.

I like some of Dali's paintings, the surrealism sometimes seems to convey interesting allegory, so I like trying to figure out what's meant. I don't see it as an attempt to create a world, that would indeed be horror.
But because you can at least recognise some items in Dali's pics, I like it better than most completely abstract art.

I'd never heard about the killer/pedophilia allegations!
(I think it's just more interesting for the media to try to pin something scandalous to a famous name. Jack the Ripper being someone halfways famous or important (like in the Johnny Depp movie, which had the royal house involved) is more attractive than some nobody, right? )

Jny, I think I like the Discovery of America pic.
A Dali I like is the Crucifixus - this is just a detail, I couldn't find the whole picture online:

[Jnyusa]

Hobby, the Dali that you posted is also one of my favorites. It is supposed to be the vision of St. John of the Cross, seeing the crucifixion from God's point of view.

I've tried uploading a larger version of the Port Lligat painting. When I saw it in large I realized that it is not actually my favorite of this setting. The one I like best in the Charles Morse private collection and I did not find it on the web, but the composition and 'actors' are very similar. Let's see if this size comes out right. If not I'll be tweaking it for awhile.



Is it stretching the page? I reduced it but the reduction is not 'taking' on my screen.

Here's a link to a whole passel of Dali paintings:

http://www.dali-gallery.com/

On the front page, click on "Art Gallery"