# Art > Art & Art History >  The Art Thread

## stlukesguild

Well... we have a thread for exhibiting one's own artistic endeavors, and another for guessing the mystery painting... but inspired by some recent threads I thought I'd start a thread for actually discussing art.

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Inspired by some of the discussions concerning fashion and the nude, I took up reading Sir Kenneth Clark's seminal book, _The Nude_, once again. Considering the discussions of the representation of women throughout history, I was somewhat surprised with the history of the development of the female nude in Western art.

Professor Clark argues that the NUDE is not merely a genre or subject matter, like a landscape, of still life of fruit, but rather it is also an artistic form with its own formal vocabulary... not unlike the sonnet or the string quartet. The NUDE involves a celebration of the beauty of the human body and in doing so employs certain elements of abstraction... in this it is removed from of different from the mere image of the naked.

By way of example, Clark leads us to look upon the drawings of the medieval architect Villard de Honnecourt. De Honnecourt is admired top this day for his marvelous drawings of buildings, designs, animals, plants, etc...



De Honnecourt employs an elegant simplified linear abstraction whether he is drawing a lobster... or a fly... or a cat licking itself. He is equally adept when it comes to drawing the robed human figure...



The Gothic elements of tense linearity, hooks, and loops perfectly animates the folds and creases of draperies.

But then De Honnecourt made an attempt at drawing what he termed a "nude in the antique classical style"...



The result is painfully ugly... horribly crude... and comic in it pretension toward the classical nude. The problem is that Gothic art was based upon a system of forms... a vocabulary... wholly unsuited and completely foreign to the rendering of the nude.

When speaking of the Nude is art, we commonly think today of the female nude... but in reality the Nude as we know it began in Greece with the male nude. There is no known sculpture of the female nude dating from before the 5th century B.C.... and even then it was rare. The first Greek nude sculpture, excluding the small Cycladic figurines... were the "kouroi" or "Apollos":

 



These nude male figures were clearly modeled upon the Egyptian images of the figure that predated the "kouroi" of the Greek 6th century by more than a thousand years.



Once the Egyptian artists had attained a certain level of perfection of form and abstraction, their art underwent only the slightest variations from century to century... over entire millennia. In the restless West, however, the evolution was rapid and dynamic. By the early 5th century B.C. we are already confronted with kouroi of far greater sophistication and elegance...



And less than a generation later we are presented with the so-called "Kritios Boy"...



The Kritios Boy represents one of the most important innovations in the history of art. Where the Egyptian figures stood staidly and rigidly for century after century, the Greek sculptor of this masterpiece had the audacity to animate the figure. As he steps forward, his weight and his center of gravity... and thus his entire body shifts with the slightest hint of the "S curve" or contraposto that will be so important to the whole of the nude in Western art.

The sculptor, Polykleitos will build upon the contraposto pose while bringing the next essential element: he will establish "the canon"... the ideal human proportions... based upon mathematical abstractions. His sculpture of the _Doryphoros_, of "spear bearer" was intended to illustrate his ideals... and has become itself known as "the canon". Polykleitos further stresses the tilt of the contaposto pose leading to the emphasis of the sweep of the line up the one thigh to the torso.



Unfortunately, we are left relying largely upon mediocre Roman or fragmentary Greek copies of Polykleitos' sculpture. 

As already stated, there is no known female nude sculpture from the 6th c. B.C. The few vase paintings of the female from the same period are as ugly as the "nudes" of De Honnecourt. Even the idea of a nude Venus... the goddess of love and sex... was thought of as heresy. This was echoed in Greek society. Men habitually wore nothing more than a short cloak and exercised in the nude, while women went about draped from head to foot. There role in the culture was nearly wholly limited to the domestic. The Spartan women were the sole exception, and they scandalized the rest of Greece by showing their thighs during sporting competitions.

We also must remember the institution of what later became derogatorily termed "Greek Love"... the idea so earnestly celebrated in the Odes of Pindar and in the dialogs of Plato, in which the notion is put forth that the love between two young men is nobler and more "natural" than between a man and a woman. 

The first known sculpture of the female nude is the so-called _Esquiline Venus_...



Again... unfortunately, we are forced to rely upon a mediocre Roman copy (or Greek fragments). Still we can gain some insight into the earliest images of the female nude in Western sculpture. Where even the kouroi represent an abstraction... and the "canon" of Polykleitos offers an ideal based upon mathematics and an ideal of perfect proportions, the Esquiline Venus is short and squat with high small breast placed far apart. She is undoubtedly the image of any Greek peasant girl, and immediately calls to mind the ballerinas of Degas. 

Plato, in the Symposium, argues that there are two Aphrodites, whom he calls the celestial and the vulgar: Venus Coelestis and Venus Naturalis. His dialog became the justification of the female nude in Western art. For the whole of history, artists have sought relief from and expression of the obsessive, unreasonable nature of physical desire. To give these images a form which ceases to be vulgar only, but aspires to the celestial... the ideal... a celebration of beauty... this has been the aspiration of the female nude in Western art.

By the end of the 5th century, sculptors began to exhibit a mastery of the female figure... but still avoided the heresy of the female nude (while reveling in it) through the invention of the draped nude. It is here, prior to Praxiteles, that we must search to find the female nude in art. Through employing a light, semi-transparent, clinging garment (wet drapery) the artist was able to at once conceal and reveal the body. As Kenneth Clark states, "The section of a limb as it swells and subsides may be delineated precisely or left to the imagination; parts of the body that are plastically satisfying can be emphasized, those less interesting can be concealed; and awkward transitions can be made smooth by the flow of line." The wet drapery is perhaps best known from the masterful figures from the Parthenon (part of the Elgin Marbles).



The representation of the female figure catches up with those of the male in the late 5th/4th century B.C. The so-called _Venus Genetrix_ fully reveals the beauty of the female body through its drapery...



The contraposto pose with the weight resting on one leg while the other is raised as if to move was perfected by Polykleitos for the male nude... but it is the female nude that has gained the most from his innovation. This pose created a perfect contrast between the sweeping arc of one leg as it rushes up the thigh toward the breast with the slow undulating contour of the relaxed leg. 

to be continued....

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## Vonny

The Art Thread: What a Great Idea Luke! I can't believe it's taken this long for you to think of this!

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## Paulclem

Yeah. I enjoy the art essays that you post St Lukes. 

One question - does the definition of a Nude indicate a particular purpose - in representing the human form realistically? 

I'm thinking of the Indus Valley Venus - which pre-dates the 6th century, but, it is thought, was a fertility sybol. 

http://humanpast.net/art/art18k.htm

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## stlukesguild

One question - does the definition of a Nude indicate a particular purpose - in representing the human form realistically? 

I'm thinking of the Indus Valley Venus - which pre-dates the 6th century, but, it is thought, was a fertility sybol. 

Yes... there are far earlier representations of the naked female figure in art. I'll assume you are referring to the Mohenjo Daro _Dancing Girl_:



This figure dates from somewhere around 2500 BC. Of course there are even older representations, such as the famous Venus of Willendorf that dates back to at least somewhere around 25,000 BC.



Venus of Willendorf was undoubtedly little more than a fertility figure, stressing the breast and hips/belly and reducing the face and arms to the bare minimum. The Mohenjo Daro dancer is truly unique. There is nothing else like her known in art. She appears to be about fifteen years old and stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on... perfectly confident of herself in a manner that we rarely see in any artistic representation of the nude woman prior to the 20th century. 

Obviously, this dancer had no impact upon Western art considering that she was not discovered until 1926... and is still little known outside of classes devoted to Non-Western art. Even so, I believe that what Sir Kenneth Clark was aiming for when he defined the "Nude" and opposed to the naked was the development of the representation of the naked female body that was at once "realistic" and based upon abstract ideals... a merger of Plato's ideal of two Venuses: Venus Coelestis and Venus Naturalis... the Vulgar and the Celestail... the concept that essentially justified the existence of the female nude in art as something more than the merely vulgar... arousing... even "pornographic".

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## stlukesguild

Arguably the single most important figure in the development of the female nude in Western art was the sculptor, Praxiteles. Unlike Polykleitos and a number of other major Greek sculptors, we are blessed with at least one near complete masterpiece from Praxiteles hand by which we may gain an idea of how his art appeared. Praxiteles stands as the high-water mark of Greek classicism. His figures are animated in a manner unknown to most classical sculpture and clearly inspired the near Baroque movement of the later Hellenistic period. He exhibits a subtlety and sensitivity to the handling of the surface textures that is almost "impressionistic."

His famed sculpture of _Hermes with the Infant Dionysus_ in which Hermes teases the future god of wine by holding a cluster of grapes beyond the infant's reach conveys a soft, erotic, effeminate manner that clearly prepared Praxiteles for his role as the virtual inventor of the female nude... 



The opportunity needed came when Praxiteles was commissioned by the people of Kos to produce a figure of Aphrodite/Venus. In their piety, however, they rejected Praxiteles' nude Venus in favor of a clothed figure of the goddess by another artist. The island of Knidos profited by their piety and became the home to the "Knidian Venus"...

 

The _Knidian (Cnidian) Venus_ exists only in copies in which Praxiteles exquisite sensitivity to touch is lost... but still we are given some concept of what for centuries remained the most famous sculpture of antiquity. The _Knidian Venus_ was placed in a sanctuary in a small shrine surrounded by fruit trees and festoons of grapes. Her white and radiant body shone in contrast to the surrounding verdure. 

As revealed in the writings of one Greek writer of late antiquity, there was no pretense to aesthetic detachment. He spoke of her as if she were a living woman of overwhelming beauty. One of his compatriots in a visit to the shrine was so overcome with excitement that he leaped upon the pedestal and threw his arms around her neck. Later, in return for a small gratuity, the sacristan unlocked the rear door of the shrine to allow the visitors equal appreciation of the goddess' derrière. The idea of merging eroticism with spirituality or religious veneration may seem shocking to many... but we should not forget that the link between physical and spiritual longing has long been a source of literature from the Biblical _Song of Songs_.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the Knidian Venus... beyond the artist's audacity in representing the goddess fully nude... was the natural or "un-posed" aspect of the figure. The goddess is simply captured in a fleeting moment as she has removed her robes and prepares to step forth into her bath. Sir Kenneth Clark notes, however, that the unvarnished eroticism and sensuality of the figure is still, in contrast to the Mohenjo Daro dancer, modified by the Greek sense of decorum so that the gesture of her hand, which in Eastern religions indicates the source of her powers, in the _Knidian_, modestly conceals it.



Praxiteles' invention of the female nude was rapidly followed by a wealth of sculpture of the female nude... to such an extent that some have argued that nearly every motif of the female nude was established within a short period of time following the innovations of Praxiteles. 

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

The attention to detail is amazing, such as the sandal straps across the feet, the postion of the hand, fingers, not to mention the fingernails in your last image. I'm curious to know if the finger tips actually touch the leg? 

I recalled the many frescoes, mosaics and sculptures discovered at Pompeii, many of which are now housed in the Museo Archiologico Nazionale di Napoli. Among the many pieces of art salvaged from the ruins, include variations on the nude The Three Graces. Here are two fresco examples:







A mosaic:




While searching the Pompeii examples, I discovered this Greek example in sculpture:




It appears that the The Three Graces have served as a popular subject among painters and sculptors. A nineteenth century example by Antonio Canova : 



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## stlukesguild

Yes... the _Three Graces_ is to come. Canova's work has long been praised as having portrayed the three finest asses in the history of art. :Eek2:  :Ihih:  :Blush: 







Personally, I feel that the Neo-Classicists are too perfect... to the point that the life is polished out of the work. Using the Platonic analogy, they've lost any hint of Venus Naturalis. I find far more of this spark of life in something like the small terra-cotta figures of Clodion:

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## cl154576

stlukes, your posts about art are always very interesting and enlightening. Thank you for posting.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Wow...I'm going to take a cold shower.
Speaking of art, the plan is to head out to the Kimbell today and see Titian's 'La Bella,' Woman in a Blue Dress, before she departs.

https://www.kimbellart.org/Exhibitio...ls.aspx?eid=76

After that we will swing by the Amon Carter. If I run into any nudes, I'll be sure to let the Forums know.

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## stlukesguild

Continuing on our way with the development of the Venus or the female nude in art, let us explore some of the developments that occurred rapidly in the wake of Praxiteles' "Knidian Venus".

Perhaps the first major variation on Praxiteles' _Knidian Venus_ was the so-called _Venus de Medici_...



At first glance there is but the slightest difference between the _Knidian Venus_ and the _Venus de Medici_. Beyond inverting the pose of Praxiteles' figure, the latter Venus assumes a more modest attitude... now covering her breasts from view as well. The pose became known as the _Venus Pudica_ or Venus of Modesty. Yet there is a certain irony to this term. Where Praxiteles' figure is completely natural... un-selfconscious... unaware of an audience as she undresses and prepares for her bath...



... the Venus Pudica is clearly self-conscious... embarrassed as she attempts to cover herself from the viewer. As such, she becomes the model for all the images of the nude who are clearly posed and aware of an audience. It is not surprising that examples of the more "modest" Venus Pudica survived into the Renaissance than those of Praxiteles figure. 

It should be noted that the _Knidian Venus_ was not the sole Venus created by Praxiteles. He created a second Venus for the Thespians, and in the process brilliantly resolved two problems facing the sculptor of the nude. First there was the issue of propriety. The pose of the Knidian Venus was simply far too risque for the majority of the Greeks. Secondly there was the formal issue of resting the mass and weight of the torso upon spindly, tapering supports. Praxiteles solved both of these "problems" in one fell swoop by creating a nude figure whose legs were wrapped in draperies allowing the sculptor to dispense with the use of the vase and robe (as in the Knidian Venus) or other such elements as a needed secondary support, and allow for a free-standing figure. The torso rested firmly upon the draped legs as if upon a pedestal. 



Once again we are left only with Roman copies to base our opinions. We do have, however, one splendid Greek variation upon the concept, that of the well-known _Venus de Milo_. 





For all the clarity of form and classical simplicity of the _Venus de Milo_, the manner in which her body twists in space in an almost Baroque manner leads us into into the Greek Hellenistic period.

It is during the Hellenistic period that the female nude is finally given free reign. It is here that we will first confront an array of variations upon the female nude that by comparison appear not only unabashed... but even audacious.

One of the most influential variations upon the nude comes from the Greek colony (and later Roman city) Cyrene (present day Shahhat) in Libya on the coast of the Mediterranean... the so-called Cyrene Venus:







The _Cyrene Venus_ stands with arms raised, wringing the sea-water out of her hair as she steps forth from the foam. For the first time we are presented with the unobstructed image of the female body. This pose... which resulted in the added curve as the back arched and the breasts were thrust forward toward the male viewer... will be the source of endless images of the female bather... from French academics...



... through artists such as Degas, who eliminated the classical references, recognizing that every woman rising from her bath or washing her hair was Venus...



... and on through the painted and photographic paintings of the last century...

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## stlukesguild

Returning once more to our exploration of the Nude as an exploration of ideal form, we have a few last examples of real importance before moving on from the Greeks. 

The first of these is the _Venus Kallipygos_, literally the "Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks"...



The sculpture is a later Roman copy of a Greek Hellenistic sculpture... possibly in bronze. The statue was identified as Venus and associated with a temple to Aphrodite Kallipygos at Syracuse, discussed by Athenaeus in his _Deipnosophists_. The sculpture without a head was discovered during the Renaissance. It underwent restoration in the 16th century and the restored head was made to look over the shoulder, drawing further attention to the statue's bare buttocks and thereby contributing to its popularity. This pose draws further attention to the naked buttocks, and gives the figure a distinctly erotic aspect. The decision of the restorer was not without precedent. 

The restoration recalls a story recorded in Athenaeus' _Deipnosophists_ of two girls in Syracuse who were trying to decide which of them had the more shapely buttocks:

_"The people of those days were so attached to their sensual pleasures that they even went so far as to dedicate a temple to Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks, for the following reason. Once upon a time a farmer had two beautiful daughters. One day these girls, getting into a dispute as to which one had a more beautiful backside, went out onto the public street. And by chance a young man was passing by, the son of a rich old man. They showed themselves to him, and when he saw them he voted in favor of the older girl. And in fact, falling in love with her, when he got back to town, he took to his bed and told his younger brother everything that had happened. And the younger brother also went to the country and saw the girls, and he fell in love with the other daughter. And so when the boys' father tried to get them to marry someone of the upper classes, he couldn't persuade his sons, and so he brought the girls in from the country, with their father's permission, and married them to his sons. And so these girls were called fair-buttocked by the citizens, as Cercidas of Megalopolis says in his Iambic Verses: "There was a pair of beautiful-buttocked girls in Syracuse." And so these girls, when they got wealthy and famous, founded a temple of Aphrodite and called the goddess the Fair-buttocked, as Archelaus of Chersonesus tells us in his Iambic Verses."_

Where the _Venus de Medici_ and the _Cyrene Venus_ both convey an attitude of posing for the viewer, the _Venus Kallipygos_ definitely presents the notion of the female body as an object of visual delectation. Indeed, it is not even the whole body that is offered up for the viewer's appreciation, but rather a focus upon the buttocks. prior to the pin-up photographs of the 20th century it would be difficult to think of a nude female figure so obviously presented with a focus upon a single sexual aspect of her anatomy... even among the most unabashed works of Titian, Rubens, Courbet, and Renoir.

The next major Venus we shall explore is the so-called "Kneeling-" or "Crouching Venus". Again, this work is of the Hellenistic period but known only through Roman copies...



There are numerous variation upon this subject. The most common portrays Venus alone. Thought to have been surprised at her bath she turns her head toward the intruder/viewer while twisting away and attempting to cover her breast with her arm.



In other variations, Venus is interrupted by an infant Cupid...



...or driven to distraction by a sex-starved satyr...



The pose became one of the most influential in the history of art...


-Renaissance Drawing


-Peter Paul Rubens


-Peter Paul Rubens


-Edgar Degas

Part of the impact of this pose was that it presented, perhaps for the first time, the notion of the figure/sculpture in the round. Whereas one could certainly appreciate the Knidian Venus from all sides (as the tale of the sacristans revelation of her beautiful backside for a small fee suggests) in this, and in all the other sculpture we have explored, there is an ideal view from which the figure is seen in its best light. With the Crouching Venus there is no such best point of view. Rather, we are expected to circle the sculpture viewing it from multiple sides.

Several variations of the "Crouching Venus" show her tying her sandal. Another sculpture of a standing figure of Venus deals with the same theme...



As is common during the Hellenistic period, this sculpture conveys an increased sense of action and even suggested narrative. This is even more true of the final figure we will look at in this installment.

Whereas the horny satyr drives Venus to distraction in some variations of the "Crouching Venus", she is more than able to handle herself in the witty sculptural group known as _Venus Hitting the Satyr (Pan) with her Sandal_.





This late Hellenistic work presents an implied narrative suggestive of a tale out of Ovid as imagined in a Mozartian opera. The sex-starved Pan grabs at the arm with which Venus attempts to cover the source of her power over Pan... and men in general. With her free hand she raises a sandal prepared to slap the impudent suitor, while Cupid mocks him by grabbing on to his horns. There is little doubt Venus means business... and her knowing smile suggests that while Pan will surely not gain the object of his affection, she is both bemused... and perhaps even flattered by his attentions.
 
This work was surely in the back of the minds of many Rococo artists when painting and sculpting similar scenes of unrequited love... and sure Mallarme must have had this work in mind while writing his famed, _Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune_.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

While at the Kimbell to see the visiting Titian this past Sunday, I managed to track down a nude. 
Here's another example of the crouching Aphrodite, or what's left of her, similar to some of the examples you identified above.






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## ftil

I hope that you dont mind if I respnd to your post here.




> My aversion to the term "self-expression" is multi-fold. First of all we have the notions of the Romantics... and more so their less talented heirs such as the Beats. Romanticism pushed forth the notion that the artist had a single true poetic "voice". Shakespeare has no voice. There is no single character in his plays whom we can say with any certainty is closest to the author himself. We cannot say which of the heteronyms is truly Pessoa. Picasso and Stravinsky change like chameleons. Many Romantics would argue that such an approach to art is false.



Hm..I look at self-expression in a bigger picture. Not everybody is a painter or composer. Not everybody can sculpt or make art photography. We express who we are by the way we dress, decorate a house or a table. We express ourselves the way we dance. Art is one of the way of self-expression. Those who write, compose or paint are not better than those who spent their life.designing a rocket or making chocolate. Creativity has no barriers.




> Freudian theory took the idea of self-expression further. It was assumed that art commonly involves the subconscious and subliminal which properly analyzed might reveal much about the individual. The problem here is that it is often impossible to discern what aspects of a work of art were intentional ... where the artist was fully aware of the possible interpretations... and what aspects of the work of art were indeed the product of the subconscious... or even accident.


Well, I have already expressed my opinion about Freud. As I said, I dont take him seriously and I dont even want to talk about his theory. There are psychologists or psychiatrists whom I respect very much and who refused Freud theory. For example, psychiatrists E. Berne or A. Bowen. Or one of my favorite psychologist, Maslov who spent his career studying creative people. But list is much longer than that. They were laughing out loud about his theory of sexual repression. BTW, I have seen Freud genogram and I have not been surprised. 

I understand your approach to art as an art teacher. It is not my way of looking at art. As I said earlier, my approach to working with art is influenced by my passion for psychology and healing. I view art as a right brain activity that involves feelings and insights and not a left one. Art helps to connect a right brain with a left one and many people have both hemispheres disconnected. Images also help to access our subconscious, providing a powerful tool of self awareness. There is much more than that but it is not a subject of our discussion. Finally, I dont waste my time to look at art that evokes negative feelings and dense energy. Artists are free to paint what they want but it doesnt mean that I would appreciate their self-expression. I go for beauty and uplifting feelings.
I have also noticed that the more I look at paintings, the more I want to stop using words. Strange, indeed, as I was born to talk.  :FRlol:

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## stlukesguild

Let's continue our exploration of the evolution of the tradition of the female nude in Western art. Kenneth Clark suggests that the last great beautiful invention of the classical world in the art of the female nude, was the Three Graces, which Gilliatt Gurgle, which was briefly explored above. The image was probably rooted in several sources. First of all the motif allowed for the presentation of the female body front and back. The viewer was given the best view of both worlds. Kenneth Clark further suggests that the image of three women, arms interlaced, was almost inevitable... and quite probably derived from a row of dancers, arms intertwined, alternating front and back, as is still common in various Greek folk dances.

What is especially intriguing of this motif is the fact that it survived from the classical world into the Renaissance and beyond... in spite of the fact that most of the images of the Three Graces are of the crudest bumbling craftsmanship. There are but a few fragmentary versions of the motif by Greco-Roman sculptors:





The best sculptural versions we have from of this motif from the classical era are rather mediocre Roman copies:





And there are any number of versions in sculptural relief:



Clearly the motif was incredibly popular... and we must presume that there must have been at least one great sculptural "original" of real genius in spite of the relatively poor quality of what has survived. It would be difficult to otherwise justify the endless variations on this theme found among Roman ruins. We have several examples in Roman fresco paintings:



... on Roman coins:





...and on endless mosaics across the former Roman Empire:







The motif of the Three Graces was undoubtedly one of the most influential in the revival of the female nude during the Renaissance... especially in the work of Botticelli...





and Raphael...



in spite of the fact that the motif of the Three Graces was little more than an idea by the time of the Renaissance... known, if at all... only in the form of the rudimentary images on coins or ancient cameos.

continued...

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## stlukesguild

From the rebirth of the _Three Graces_ (and the female nude) during the Renaissance, the image of the three beautiful nude dancers... arms entwined... spread across the whole history of Western art:


-Italian Renaissance coin


-Lucas Cranach the Younger, German Mannerist


-Hans von Aachen, German Mannerist


-Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque


-Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish Baroque


-Charles Andre van Loo, French Rococo


-Jean-Baptiste Regnault, French Neo-Classical


-James Pradier, French Neo-Classical


-Antonio Canova, Italian/French Neo-Classical


-Antonio Canova, Italian/French Neo-Classical


Aristide Maillol, French 19th/20th century


-Jozo Kljaković, Croatian 20th c.


-Picasso, Spanish 20th c.


-Janice Weissman, American 20th c.


-John Currin, American 20th c.


-Emil Schildt, Danish 20th c.


-Leonard Nimoy, American 20th c. (Yes... THAT Leonard Nimoy. He's been a professional photographer for over 40 years)


-Kehinde Wiley-American 20th c.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Can't say I'm a huge fan of the Nimoy pic. Though, I'm suddenly craving cottage cheese. . . .

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

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*

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

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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## stlukesguild

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.

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## stlukesguild

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.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

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.

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## Emil Miller

> 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 and M.C. Escher are two of the most popular artists with adolescent boys. .


 :FRlol: 





> I'm surprised Emil hasn't chimed in on that Nimoy pic..


I've just seen it Gilliatt and I wish I hadn't as I'm eating my evening meal in front of the computer.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

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.

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## Emil Miller

> 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.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I'd expect no less from you, Emil.

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## Emil Miller

> I'd expect no less from you, Emil.


I'll take that as a compliment.

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## stlukesguild

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..............................

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## stlukesguild



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## ftil

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.  :Smile5: 

BTW, this art is disturbing.  :Reddevil:  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.  :Biggrin:

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## stlukesguild

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.

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## ftil

> 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.


Well, I didnt find beauty at all. When I dont look at mythology or religious themes, I am interested in feelings and emotions that the paintings evoke. 
I was picking up quite negative feelings. Art is a powerful medium of expression and artists may address political or social issues. But the way they express it tells a lot about the artist. I have found many contemporary artists whose art is ugly even though they have talent.

I would like to learn about artists whose art enhances our souls. We are bombarded with ugly images on TV, video music, or advertisement and I am very aware how images affect us. Giordano Brunos work was utilized in full.  :Yikes:

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## stlukesguild

You still haven't learned your lesson from Oscar Wilde:

_The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors._ 

In other words, the fact that you find no beauty in a good deal of Modern Art says more about you than it does about the artists for the simple reason that "criticism" is a form of autobiography. The notion that the work of art reveals much of the inner thoughts and emotions of the artist is an idea rooted in Romanticism and reinforced by Freud. As Wilde states elsewhere in his famous Preface to Dorian Gray, the goal of art is to reveal art and conceal the artist. The artist and the art work are not one and the same. Goya is not necessarily obsessed with horror. Shakespeare is not Hamlet or Polonius or Lear. They are but characters invented by Shakespeare.

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## ftil

LOL! Why would I want to learn from Oskar Wild? You should have known by now that I am not a follower and I choose from whom I want to learn.  :FRlol:  I have better words of Giordano Bruno that express my approach to art and beauty. It has always been my approach as I have written it here and on my tread. I didn’t know about Bruno’s work until recently and it is nice to find another soul who understood art and beauty as I do.

BTW, I know modern artists whose art I love. Don’t make assumptions again. I just have a very different taste then you have. The art we choose express who we are. I love beauty and art is much more for me than colors and lines.
You need to understand that not everybody is like you and to appreciate individuality of others. :Biggrin:  




> The real religion of Bruno was the religion of analogy. He did not believe that the meanings of words, images, sounds and symbols could be defined semantically but could be understood intuitively and analogically through other words, images, sounds and symbols. The world of the mind is the world of the phantasy for which understanding occurs- not through rationality, as rationality is impossible but through the contemplation of images:
> 
> "For the philosophy, music or poetry is also painting, and the painting is also music and philosophy, and true poetry or music is a kind of divine wisdom and painting."Elsewhere I have discussed how any painter is naturally an establisher of infinite images who, by means of his image forming power, constructs from sight and sounds by combining in a multiplicity of ways. 
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/77006735/B...ano-Bruno-1991

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## stlukesguild

I haven't read much by Bruno... and it was some time ago. I tend to lean toward a more aesthetic/formalist interpretation of art: Zola, Gautier, Baudelaire, Pater, Wilde, Paul Valery, Mallarme, Ruskin, Robert Hughes, David Sylvester, Donald Kuspit, etc... although I do admire William Blake's spiritual take on art (among others). 

The interpretations I most abhor are those that employ art as little more that something to illustrate a given bias or those that employ art in a utilitarian manner toward a given "larger" goal with little concern for what is actually there. 

Beside an aesthetic view of art, I mostly value the historical view. By this I don't mean to suggest that I am interested in interpretations based upon a knowledge of the artist's personal history... or biography... but rather I am interested in looking at the work of art within the historical context. It is nearly impossible to appreciate a great deal of Modern or Contemporary art without some concept of historical context because of the centrality of formal innovation to much of this art. In other words, a great majority of Modern art builds off of its predecessors to the point of developing a new visual language as opposed to employing a well-known and understood visual language as a means of communicating with a larger audience.

Interestingly enough, Stelios Faitakis, like the German Expressionists, employs an older visual language in order to assure that his message might be accessible to the largest possible audience. Of course the work is disturbing because the message is disturbing. The artist is conveying a degree of anger at the economic and social injustices of the world, violence, the abuse of sex and drugs, etc...

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## ftil

Everybody is unique. We are inspired by wise people. Ideally, people should make own decision who is wise or not and who they want to listen or not.

I dont look for any interpretation of art. If I dont look at mythology and religion in art, I enjoy the beauty and feelings the art evokes. The healing aspect of art cant be underestimated. I still need to read more Brunos books to understand the depth of the impact of the images and sound upon our soul. I am excited that I have found his books as his books will expand my understanding of our psyche from a magician point of view as well as explain my observations and experience. I see it as a journey.

Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the quintessence of life as he said, Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

I couldnt say it better.  :Smile: 

Oh, I did lots of talking.not talking but writing and I hate writing.

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## stlukesguild

Yes... I remember Emerson asking the question as to whether it was better to live in a culture that was at the peak of its achievement... but quite likely facing a long, slow decline... or whether it was better to be living in a nation at it's birth... lacking a history or tradition... and this have the chance to be one of those who forms that tradition. Of course Emerson chose the latter... imagining the United States as this virgin nation without a history. Unfortunately, the reality is that the United States was never a nation without a history. We adopted a great majority of our culture from Western Europe... especially Britain... but of course this was merged with traditions from elsewhere: Eastern Europe, the Native Americans, Africa, Latin-America, Asia, etc...

The idea of going where there is no path... no predecessors... is ideal... but largely an unrealistic fantasy as an artist. Cezanne said it best, declaring "One enters into the Louvre through Nature, but one enters into Nature through the Louvre." In other words... Art of real merit is achieved through a response to life... but the artist develops that language needed to respond to life through his or her experience of the history and tradition of art.

I would be hard-pressed to name any art without precedent. Whether the artist is aware of said precedent of not is an individual choice. I choose to know what I am building upon.

I'm still looking for an example of a contemporary artist that I think you might like... which I would also like enough to post images and write about.

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## ftil

> The idea of going where there is no path... no predecessors... is ideal... but largely an unrealistic fantasy as an artist. Cezanne said it best, declaring "One enters into the Louvre through Nature, but one enters into Nature through the Louvre." In other words... Art of real merit is achieved through a response to life... but the artist develops that language needed to respond to life through his or her experience of the history and tradition of art.
> 
> I would be hard-pressed to name any art without precedent. Whether the artist is aware of said precedent of not is an individual choice. I choose to know what I am building upon.
> 
> I'm still looking for an example of a contemporary artist that I think you might like... which I would also like enough to post images and write about.




His words are a metaphor, not to follow others but go where nobody has gone yet. Many people are followers and conformists. I see it as a way of our programming. I was laughing out loud yesterday when I read an article that discussed research according to which followers have more grey matter than rebels. We are living in interesting times……so many pseudo scientists and pseudo research.  :FRlol: 

I have 800+ posts of art on another forum and I don’t want to talk about artists I know. I would like to learn about artists I don’t know.  :Wink5:

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

.

On the subject of "mural" paintings, I happened to overhear on the news that today is Michelangelo's birthday (March 6th 1475). 
Happy Birthday Michelangelo !






From Wikipedia:

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Another notable birthday recognized by Google on their home page. It was a pleasent surprise to see the recognition of Gris born on 23rd of March 1887. I was introduced to Gris' work in Architecture school and ever since, I've favored him among the Cubist artists along with Amédée Ozenfant.

A few images of Gris' works from Wikipedia:

Violin and Checkerboard:




The Bottle of Anís del Mono:




A particular favorite - Still Life with Checked Tablecloth:




.

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## Alexander III

I was in the brera in milan today and Canova's sculpture of napoleon truley struck me, i must have spent a good half hour staring at it like an idiot, first peice of Canova that I have ever encountered. Has any one else seen his napoleon or is aquainted with his other works?

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Alexander,
I have not seen the Napoleon sculpture myself, but you drove my curiosity to briefly research what you are referring to. I see that a bronze copy is located in the courtyard and the original stone is in London. It looks impressive based on photos. 
According to Wiki, Napoleon was apparently not pleased with the sculpture, stating that it was too athletic. If you haven't scanned this entire thread, you will find a few references to Canova a few pages back. 

The only Canova sculpture I have seen in the flesh, is a modest piece at the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth) collection. It is titled Ideal Head of a Woman.

Here is a photo I took during a recent visit:




Cropped detail:






The painting in the background is: The Allen Brothers (Portrait of James and John Lee Allen) by 
Henry Raeburn, (Scottish) (17561823)


.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

It's funny how much my tastes have changed within the last couple years. Ask me then what my favorite kind of art is, or what my favorite era is, I'd have replied, "Modern," with no hesitation. But since I've started browsing pictures on the internet, I've found that the Baroque era is by far my favorite. I've always admired technical skill when it comes to any form of art, and possibly barring some contemporary artists, it seems like the Baroque masters just had so much skill. On top of that, I just love the images--the tone, the mood, the color. It's always so _alive_. My two favorite artists are Caravaggio and Rembrandt, among others (principally Brueghel, Lorrain, and David). Here are some of my favorite paintings I've come across (I'm sure some of these may not be exactly within the baroque period). I'd love to get some other people's opinion on the era. I don't know much more about it than that I like the pictures.

Caravaggio 















Rembrandt 













Claude Lorrain (I've always loved art dealing with the sea)









Pieter Brueghel the Elder









Jacques-Louis David







Paolo Veronese


(got to see this at the Louvre-it was awe-inspiring)

Frans Francken the Younger (this piece is just so meta)


(this serves as my current iPad background)

David Teniers the Younger (again, meta)



Hendrick Van Cleve

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Nice range of examples Mutatis and I applaud your sense of discovery, finding a new favorite among the periods of art. Free flowing, exuberant decoration, use of curvaceous forms (less orthogonal/ rigidity), ornate precision, are the first impressions that come to mind when I think of the Baroque period.
Caravaggios paintings to my neophyte eye, appear to exemplify the characteristics of Baroque, but to be precise, I believe he falls in the transition between the Late Renaissance and Baroque. Mannerism?. He certainly had major influence on the Baroque period artists and architects. Of course the lines are typically fuzzy along the edges of one style to the next.
Veronese too was late Renaissance with influence on the Baroque. Speaking of Veronese, you might be interested in his fresco paintings in Andrea Palladios villas. Take a look at Villa Barbaro and Veronese trick of the eye.

Perhaps St. Lukes will stop by to expound on the topic.

Theres no particular favorite period of art for me, but Ill share a few examples of sculpture, architecture and painting from the Baroque period that are still fresh on my mind either from recent museum visits or posts elsewhere:

*Salvator Rosa*

_Death of Atilius Regulus 1662_

From Art Institute of Chicago website:



_Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld_ 

From Kimbell Art Museum website:



_Jason Charming the Dragon_




*Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini:*

_Ecstasy of St. Teresa_ 

From Wikipedia:



Portion of the _Fountain of the Four Rivers_ as it appeared in 1988.
The figure shown represents the Danube River reaching up to touch the Papal Coat of Arms.





The Baldichino (canopy) over alter at St. Peters in Rome.

From Wikipedia:


*Francesco Borromini*

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane

From wikipedia:






*Eustache Le Sueur* _Meekness_
Photo taken at Art Institute of Chicago






*Pietro da Cortona*

_Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power_


From Wikipedia

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Beautiful pictures, Gilliat. I especially like Allegory of Define Providence and Barberini Power and Jason Charming the Dragon, both of which shall go into my iPad's pictures folder (I wonder how many people use the pictures folder of their iPad strictly for art?).

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## stlukesguild

Caravaggios paintings to my neophyte eye, appear to exemplify the characteristics of Baroque, but to be precise, I believe he falls in the transition between the Late Renaissance and Baroque. Mannerism?. He certainly had major influence on the Baroque period artists and architects. Of course the lines are typically fuzzy along the edges of one style to the next.

Caravaggio is actually considered to be the key linchpin... in the shift from Mannerism to the Baroque. Quite commonly he is credited as the father of the Baroque. His earliest works exhibit certain Mannerist tendencies. In many ways Mannerism can be compared with Modernism. Following upon the heels of the Renaissance, the Mannerists rejected naturalism and stressed the artificial. Proportions were distorted and abstracted, the sense of space was confused, and the compositions often revolved around a central void:


-Bronzino-_Allegory_


Pontormo-Descent from the Cross


Parmagianino-Madonna Enthroned (Note the bizarre proportions of the Mother, the leg of the figure to the left, and especially the child. Note the confusing spatial construction with the smaller figure in the distance seen lower down)


Rosso Fiorentino-Deposition

The Mannerist paintings often dealt with a certain "decadent" sexuality:



And graphic violence... both often quite gratuitous in nature:



There was also a sarcastic, mocking view of heroism and nobility. Hercules might become absurdly bloated... like a 16th century Michelin tire man:



Or the Greco-Roman God, Mercury might be turned into an effeminate, prancing, pretty-boy:



Caravaggio began his career painting his own pretty-boys... often for high-ranking, clergy:



Like the Mannerists, his early works were often sarcastic or mocking in nature... such as in the _Conquest of Amor_ in which Michelangelo's famous sculpture representing the heroic Triumph of Justice is reduced to the triumph of the smug and sexually alluring boy cupid over the arts and sciences. 





Yet already Caravaggio has brought something new to painting. His figures exhibit a masterful naturalism that is more "photographically" real than anything seen up to this time. He also brings a new drama of light. 

His mature paintings, on the other hand, take things to a whole new level. He brings an unrivaled naturalism, and explosive and theatrical use of the contrast of light and dark, and fully rejects the artifice of Mannerism:





The changes wrought by Caravaggio are more influential than those of almost any artist in the whole of art history save but a few (Picasso, Michelangelo...) Nearly every major Baroque painter was profoundly impacted by his work: Rubens, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Del La Tour, Le Nain, Rembrandt, etc... and this influence carried over into the Romantic movement with the paintings of Delacroix, Jacques Louis David, etc...

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## stlukesguild

I think the Baroque was the period that I first became truly enamored of... for much the same reasons as Mutatis: the absolute mastery of painting... of drawing, perspective, rendering of form and space and shadow and color. Truly there is no period in the whole of Western art that surpasses the Baroque in terms of the absolute technical skills of painters and sculptors in rendering the illusion of real form and space. I was also drawn to the absolute theatricality of the period... the energy, passion, and sheer sensuality. And the compositions? They are so "organic" in nature that one almost fails to recognize just how consciously constructed they are. Among my favorite artists and paintings of the Baroque I would include:

*Bernini:*

Surely Bernini stands shoulder to shoulder with Michelangelo as a sculptor. What can rival the absolute "miracle" of the Daphne and Apollo as Daphne metamorphoses into a tree... her fingers sprouting the most delicate leaves carved from marble so thin that they are transparent!



Or what of that other masterwork illuminating still another scene from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_: The Abduction of Persephone? Hard marble virtually breathes with life and warmth as the muscular God's fingers sink into the warm flesh of Persephone:





Or yet again... what of the Ecstasy of St. Theresa... the sculptural group set in an architectural stage:

 

Gilded rays carry light down from a stained-glass window above. Theresa's robe quivers and crackles with electricity. The beautiful angel thrusts his arrow into Theresa again and again... as she writhes in a spiritual/sexual ecstasy... her limbs limp, her head thrown back, eyes rolled, and mouth intoning a moan is a virtual portrayal of an orgasm. 

_"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it..."_



*Diego Velazquez*

The great Spaniard began his career as a masterful follower of Caravaggio. On the recommendation of Peter Paul Rubens, he was sent to study in Italy and returned having fully absorbed the lessons of Titian, Rubens, and others. His brushwork virtually dances like the swordplay of a master swordsman creating a scintillating surface... even to the most mundane of subjects:



The hands of the simple seamstress are a blur of motion... rendered in but a few rapid brush-strokes:



His brush dances with equal verve in portraying the ornate embroidery of the coat of the King of Spain:



Velazquez rose to fame and fortune under one of the most repressive and backward regimes in the whole of Europe. In spite of his reverence for Titian and Rubens... the great masters of the nude... Velazquez painted but a single nude... the _Rokeby Venus_... 



...which remained in the private collection of a nephew of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the power behind the throne... and essentially the most feared man in Spain. The Rokeby Venus has long been acknowledged as having perhaps the "finest a.." in the whole of art history... something that was quite likely recognized by the suffragette Mary Richardson, who attacked the painting with a knife in 1914.

Yet another master who was profoundly influenced by the work of Peter Paul Rubens was Anthony van Dyck... Ruben's most talented assistant. Following his years under Rubens, Van Dyck studied in Italy and eventually moved to England where he became the favorite portraitist. Can one imagine a more exquisite portrait that the lovely Marie-Louise de Tassis?



Van Dyck's slightly elongated and elegant portrayals of the British aristocracy established the model for royal portraiture for a century or longer. Yet he was not one to avoid capturing the true nature of his sitters as well. Can one imagine a more telling portrayal of the smug arrogance of inherited wealth and power as seen in this portrait of the Stuart Brothers?





This famous portrait of Charles I is a masterful exercise in the key elements of royal portraiture. Charles is represented as a man of true power. He stands nonchalantly, his hand jauntily poised on his hip, giving but a slight sideways glance toward the viewer. This is a man for whom portraiture is no big deal. His clothes are expensive (the finest lambskin boots and gloves and the most exquisite, satin jacket)... yet convey the ease and indifference of which Robert Herrick speaks:

_A sweet disorder in the dress 
Kindles in clothes a wantonness: 
A lawn about the shoulders thrown 
Into a fine distraction: 
An erring lace which here and there 
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby 
Ribbons to flow confusedly: 
A winning wave (deserving note) 
In the tempestuous petticoat: 
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie 
I see a wild civility: 
Do more bewitch me than when art 
Is too precise in every part._

Perfection and precision are best left to those uncertain as to their position. Such is not Charles. He stands a head above his servants who attend to his steed... who is himself bowing before the king. Indeed the branches of the trees themselves echo this gesture as if nature itself were humbled.

More to come...

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I eagerly await the next post, StLukes!

Your post on Mannerism was fascinating . . . honestly, I've never even heard of it, and I didn't know things like they painting of the woman pinching the other's nipple and sketch of an hyperbolic Hercules were even done so long ago. If you posted them with no context, I would've assumed they were done within the last 50 years.

Those Bernini sculptures are amazing--the translucent leaves and the fingers sinking into the skin. Wow. While I'm more a fan of painting than sculpture, I'll always admire the skill of sculptors more. Painting I get--I have a little skill when it comes to drawing, so I can wrap my head around it. I can't say the same with sculpture. I wouldn't know where to begin. When I was at The Loucre, my favorite section was the ancient Greek sculpture, not so much because of the beauty, but because I was looking at pieces thousands of years old. I don't know, it just boggles my mind that art could survive so long . . . that there is still such a direct connection to such a distant past.

I'm curious, on a practical level, how did they get so much detail out of hard stone? How'd they get it so smooth? Where'd they even get pieces of marble that big?

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## stlukesguild

I'm curious, on a practical level, how did they get so much detail out of hard stone? 

I'm a painter myself. My entire approach to art is accumulative... I'm adding to the canvas. Sculpture... when it involves carving from marble... is reductive. It involves removing what is already there. I cannot even begin to think in such a manner. Michelangelo spoke of marble block as already having a figure contained within. All that needed to be done was to remove all that wasn't the figure... like letting the water out of a bathtub in which a figure lies. Sounds easy enough, eh? What I really can't fathom is the inability to make mistakes. If I draw the head too big... I just erase it and draw it again. If the color isn't quite right... let it dry and paint over it. But if you slip and lop off a hand???!

How'd they get it so smooth?

They use a type of polish that contains a grit. 

Where'd they even get pieces of marble that big?

Carrara:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrara_marble

----------


## Gilliatt Gurgle

Thanks St. Lukes thats what I call expounding. Bernini was the man! 
Quite prolific throughout Rome under the patronage of Popes. A characteristic Ive noticed that may be unique to Baroque, or at least common between Bernini, Carvaggio and I suppose Rosa, regards what I perceive to be a heavier handed use and articulation of garments. Notice the many layers and folds in The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, the blanket or mantle of hell that death emerges from in the Tomb of Pope Alexander (below), the flowing cape of Jason in Rosas painting above. Is that a correct perception or am I being too specific? maybe it is a small example of a braoder characteristic to that period.

*quote St. Lukes:* _Parmagianino-Madonna Enthroned (Note the bizarre proportions of the Mother, the leg of the figure to the left, and especially the child. Note the confusing spatial construction with the smaller figure in the distance seen lower down)_

^ this brought to mind a Le Sueur painting I posted on the name the painting where Christ is presented at the Temple. Note the odd proportion of Christ, even considering the fact that he was young (12 I believe) according the Bible







A few more examples by Bernini that I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see in the flesh include :

The Tomb of Pope Alexander the VII. (from 1988) The two women represent Charity and Truth, with the foot of Truth resting on Earth. A thorn pierces Truths toe representing the thorn of English Protestantism. Skeletal death floats into the tomb on wings beneath the mottled red marble holding an hour glass indicating Alexanders time was up and reminding all who pass by, that our grains are numbered.







Cathedra Petri

Two in one shot (from 1988)
Cathedra Petri beyond as seen through the four twisted columns of Berninis Baldichino. Note the similarity in the golden rays to those illuminating St. Teresas Ecstasy. Clouds, Cherubs and Angels intertwined with the sun rays.





A much better shot from Wikipedia:





The Piazza at St. Peters Basillica including the open arms of the colonnades embracing the piazza. The inner parapets of the colonnades are lined with statues of saints.




From Wikipedia:





Influenced by Bernini

Bernini created the concept for the design of ten sculpted angels to line each side of Ponte SantAngelo (bridge) and actually completed two of the angels himself. The remaining angels were sculpted by other Baroque artists of the time. When I snapped the shot below, I assumed it, along with the others, was sculpted by Bernini. Angel with Lance, representing the lance used to pierce Christ while on the cross, was sculpted by *Domenico Guidi:*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Guidi

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## Lokasenna

I've always loved Bernini - he's my favourite sculptor, and to be honest I think he's better at it than Michelangelo.

It's curious just how clearly his mark is stamped all over Rome. I'm speaking from the perspective of an interested but subjective layman here, but more than any other artist he seems to me to have spread himself over the city in a highly individual way.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

> I'm curious, on a practical level, how did they get so much detail out of hard stone? 
> 
> I'm a painter myself. My entire approach to art is accumulative... I'm adding to the canvas. Sculpture... when it involves carving from marble... is reductive. It involves removing what is already there. I cannot even begin to think in such a manner. Michelangelo spoke of marble block as already having a figure contained within. All that needed to be done was to remove all that wasn't the figure... like letting the water out of a bathtub in which a figure lies. Sounds easy enough, eh? What I really can't fathom is the inability to make mistakes. If I draw the head too big... I just erase it and draw it again. If the color isn't quite right... let it dry and paint over it. But if you slip and lop off a hand???!


Exactly! I never thought of it that way, but that's exactly why sculpting seems so difficult, there's something very comforting by having that erasur.

While I've been collecting images of various paintings in my iPad, I haven't done so with sculptures. I just don't think pictures do sculptures enough justice. Not that I'm saying I don't like looking at pictures--all this is fascinating as usual--it just seems to lose something in the translation, understandably so.

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## stlukesguild

I've always loved Bernini - he's my favourite sculptor, and to be honest I think he's better at it than Michelangelo.

I love Bernini myself... but I would never underestimate Michelangelo. 

Michelangelo was barely out of his teens when he produced the _Drunken Bacchus_...



...recognized as the most sophisticated and "realistic" work of sculpture since the ancient Greeks and Romans. Indeed, the work was reportedly intended to be marketed as a legitimate antique Roman sculpture... something from the Mannerist Antonine period ala the famous portrait of Commodus:



Already, Michelangelo is playing with the contrasts between the smooth simplicity of the naked body and the ornate detail of the hair, grapes, etc...

Another early work, the _Bruges Madonna_, rivals the elegant simplicity of the great Flemish and German sculptors of the period:





His next sculpture... the masterful _Pieta_, surpassed anything done since the ancient Greeks... and established Michelangelo as the greatest living sculptor of the Renaissance. 



The sculpture is a masterpiece of unrivaled elegance and beauty. In spite of Michelangelo's reputation for "ugly" women based upon male models, the young Virgin is more than lovely:



The real "miracle" of the _Pieta_, however, is largely overlooked as a result of the apparent ease and naturalism of the work. The Pieta had long been a favorite subject matter of painters... but was largely avoided by sculptors for the simple reason that the portrayal of a full grown adult male laying across the lap of a woman would almost certainly look awkward. This was acceptable in the "expressionistic" works of the German Medieval sculptors...





... but such a solution was unacceptable to the Renaissance sculptors with their emphasis upon classicism and naturalism. Michelangelo, however, brilliantly solved the problem by employing a degree of abstraction or distortion that is all but invisible. The Virgin's voluminous robes billow out forming a substantial platform or cradle in which the limpid body of Christ lays. The swollen and expansive fabric effectively masks the fact that were Mary to stand, she would tower some several feet over the dead Christ in height. And yet in spite of the extreme abstraction, all appears natural and "realistic".

Michelangelo would repeatedly pull off such illusions of naturalism in spite of the extremes of distortion. The famous _Libyan Sibyl_, for example, is often cited as being one of the the most beautiful figures within the whole of the Sistine...



This is true in spite of the fact that this lovely woman was based upon the studies of a male model:



The pose itself is also physically impossible. The artist wanted to convey a sense of movement as the Sibyl turns away from us, places her heavy tome upon a dais, and steps away from her studies. He achieves this through an almost Cubist technique combining multiple view points: Her left foot is turned directly toward us, the big toe jutting out at the viewer in a foreshortened manner... and yet her back and arms are turned completely opposite... moving away from us... while at the same time, her right leg steps forth daintily... in spite of her precarious pose and the weight of her book. And yet as a whole, the figure appears completely natural and believable as the _Pieta_. 

The _Pieta_ drew crowds of spectators, and many speculated that the work most assuredly must have been the product of a Flemish master as a result of its high degree of polish and detail. There are several anecdotes concerning Michelangelo overhearing such slander leading him to carve his name in bold letters upon the Virgin's sash proclaiming authorship.







Perhaps Michelangelo's greatest achievement in sculpture, however, was the _David_. The David is undoubtedly the single iconic image best representative of the ideals of the Renaissance. As opposed to the drama and action portrayed in the _David_ of Bernini, Michelangelo's David is a man of thought.



His brow is furrowed and his eyes glower (Michelangelo deeply undercut these) as he contemplates what lies before him. The weight of the trial or contest that lies before him can also be felt in the exaggerated scale of his hand in which he holds the stone that is his only defense against the vastly superior strength of Goliath. 



The Florentines saw the tale of David and Goliath as a narrative akin to their own rise to grandeur. The scale of the David... some 17 feet high... reinforces the heroism of the subject matter. 

Hell... even the David's penis has become an iconic image:



Not only does Michelangelo present one of the first representations of pubic hair in post-Classical European art... but he renders this with such loving care... almost as a swirl of fire. The question has often been asked concerning the diminutive size of the David's manhood... especially considering the artist's sexual preferences. There are at least two feasible explanations. Since Greco-Roman times a large penis was often seen as proof of bestiality... the triumph of the body and sexuality over the mind. Figures such as Priapus and Pan (or other Satyrs)...



... were commonly portrayed with comically over-sized appendages... and were seen as sad, vulgar, ridiculous... and forever frustrated. 

On the other hand, some scholars have suggested that David's penis is yet another element of "realism" in Michelangelo's sculpture... accurate to the manner in which the genitals would contract in the face of fear and imminent danger. 

*********

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## stlukesguild

One of the final sculptures to be rendered in a naturalistic manner was the marvelous _Christ Carrying the Cross_. One of Michelangelo's artist contemporaries Sebastiano del Piombo declared that the knees alone were worthy of more than the whole Rome... a comment similar to one made concerning the knees of Ruben's Venus from the painting of _Venus and Adonis_. The figure is indeed one of the most classical representations of Christ as a virile, muscular young God... in a manner not unlike Apollo.





Much of the remainder of Michelangelo's career as a sculptor was spent laboring upon two major commissions: the Medici Tombs and the Tomb of Pope Julius II. The Medici Tombs were completed with portraits of Lorenzo and Guillaume:





It is the flanking figures representing Day and Night, and Dawn and Dusk, however, that are far more important. The tombs themselves... like most Renaissance art... assumes a frontal view:





Yet the figures themselves break away from this limitation... inviting views from the sides:



The Sistine frescoes clearly informed Michelangelo's thinking in considering the appearance of the sculpture from various angles... something that will become a staple of Baroque sculpture. 

The figures of the _Medici Tombs_ point the way toward Mannerism with their distortions of anatomy and hyper-sensuality... even eroticism:





The Medici Tombs show the artist making a conscious effort to employ various degrees of finish to the surface... achieving an almost coloristic effect. The two female figures are especially smooth and polished:



The figure of Dusk, especially, is carved in a rougher manner over much of the body... with the head... furthest removed from the viewer... hacked in crudely



The technique almost suggests the manner in which Rembrandt (among others) blurs out less important details... or areas of the image removed from the area of central focus... such as the hands in this self-portrait:



Perhaps the most important figure in the Medici Tombs is that of _Night_. 



Night was clearly modeled upon Michelangelo's lost painting of _Leda and the Swan_:



The pose of the nude with the raised leg would be influential upon artists for centuries. The poet Baudelaire enthused:

_The Ideal

It's not with smirking beauties of vignettes, 
The shopsoiled products of a worthless age, 
With buskined feet and hands for castanets  
A heart like mine its longing could assuage.
I leave Gavarni, poet of chloroses, 
His twittering flock, anaemic and unreal. 
I could not find among such bloodless roses, 
A flower to match my crimson-hued ideal.
To this heart deeper than the deepest canyon,
Lady Macbeth would be a fit companion,
Crime-puissant dream of Aeschylus; or you,
Daughter of Buonarroti, stately Night!
Whose charms to suit a Titan's appetite,
You twist, so strange, yet peaceful, to the view._

tr. Roy Campbell

*****

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## stlukesguild

The second major commission of Michelangelo's latter years... the Tomb of Pope Julius II has left us a "heap of broken images"... fragments that ironically became the most influential works upon artists centuries later. The final realization of the tomb was a poorly realized compromise involving sculptural figures mostly rendered by assistants. 

The figure of Moses, the most finished sculpture of those initially intended as part of the tomb, ultimately wound up in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. This muscular, Old Testament visionary rivals the images of God on the Sistine Ceiling in conveying absolute strength and power.



Just as the Sistine Ceiling included a wealth of "ignudi"... male nudes flanking the narrative panels... so the _Tomb of Pope Julius II_ was to include a good number of such sculptural nudes. These figures have been referred to as "slaves". The Louvre houses the most finished of the "slaves", the so-called _Dying Slave_:





It is the other "unfinished" figures who struggle to come into being... to break free from the living rock... like some distortion of the legend of Prometheus... who are clearly the most influential upon Modern art:









One cannot imagine the innovations of Rodin without these examples of "unfinished" figures by Michelangelo:







The last sculpture from the hand of Michelangelo, the so-called _Rondanini Pieta_ is perhaps even more influential upon Modern art. For a great many years the work was dismissed as the sad efforts of an artist who had lost his abilities as the result of age. In actuality, the _Rondanini Pieta_ shows an artist of incredible skill and vigor. 



After having worked upon the sculpture for a good deal of time, Michelangelo made a sudden decision to completely re-work the composition... rapidly carving away much of the original Christ figure. Close inspection of his carving reveals the expertise and vitality of the artist as he rapidly blocked out the essential forms:



The resulting sculpture thrusts upwards in an arc that suggests Brancusi's _Bird in Space_:



The artist was clearly aiming toward an expressionism that was centuries away from the naturalism and classicism at which he began.

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## stlukesguild

Returning to the Baroque painters and some of my favorites...

*Vermeer:*

Johannes or Jan Vermeer is another of those linchpins of art history. As the Northern Protestant counties/states of the Netherlands broke away from the Catholic states that would eventually become Belgium, there was a drastic change in the art market. Where artists had long been seen as skilled craftsmen working for wealthy aristocrats and clergy, in Holland the arts became a commodity... a product like any other... bought and sold on the open market. Artists themselves became small businessmen. The audience and buyers for art were no longer wealthy and educated aristocrats and clergy... but rather the upper-middle class or Bourgeois. The Bourgeois buyers knew little or nothing of art and artists... but they knew what they liked. They wanted to be able to shop about and compare the product the same as they might any other. As a result, the middle-men sprouted up: art dealers who could show the potential buyer a range of finished paintings from which to choose. You want a landscape? Water of no water? Cows? Horses? Or perhaps you prefer winter scenes with skaters? The dealers had a ready stock of paintings and knew which artists produced what. 

This rather mercenary shift in the market continues to impact the art market (for better or worse) to this day. On the positive side it led to opening up art to a vast array of subject matter long ignored. No longer was list of possible subjects in art limited to God and Kings, and grandiose mythologies. Of course the resulting work was not inherently better than what went before. It all depended upon the individual artist. The "Little Dutch Masters" produced an endless array of mundane and virtually identical paintings of the Dutch landscape, still-lifes, etc... for the market. But other artists could take the most mundane subject... the intimate, every-day scenes of life... and turn them into something truly "poetic". Vermeer was one such artist.

Vermeer will become virtually a role model for many Modern artists. He was able to infuse mundane, common, everyday scenes with a magic and intensity that virtually drowns out acres of canvases painted by others. Part of the power of his paintings lies in the time he spent with each canvas. They all speak of of care... order... silence. They are also immaculately realized. Vermeer applied endless layers of transparent oil paint until the surface of his paintings glowed like jewels. The analogy is apt in that Vermeer frequently employed the most expensive of pigments... including gemstones such as Lapis Lazuli. Vermeer also employed the latest optics... looking through a lens... and even utilizing the _camera obscura_. Looking through the lens, Vermeer saw images as a series of small pixel-like dots which would have a profound influence on Impressionism.









The full magic of Vermeer's paintings are something that must be seen in person. The clarity and richness of the colors is spectacular, while the surface... layered endlessly in transparent glazes into which flat dots of color have been worked... like refractions of light... can only be truly described as akin to liquid gems:

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## Lokasenna

A marvellous refutation, as always! :P

I don't know though - on a purely personal and subjective level, I still kind of prefer Bernini. Michelangelo certainly has his moments - _Piéta_ is one of the finest sculptures in existence - I do think he's a little bit too totemised. If I'm honest, I don't really see what all the fuss is about _David_ and the Sistine Chapel - neither really made that much impression on me.

Vermeer, though, is superb. No argument from me there!

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Interesting stuff, as always stlukes.

I'm not too crazy about those painting above (as in they're not going into my "favorite paintings" collection), but I get what you mean on making the mundane beautiful. I do find the use of light in those paintings quite beautiful. Interesting light effects are a staple when it comes to paintings I like, it seems--those pictures I posted show that.




> The full magic of Vermeer's paintings are something that must be seen in person. The clarity and richness of the colors is spectacular, while the surface... layered endlessly in transparent glazes into which flat dots of color have been worked... like refractions of light... can only be truly described as akin to liquid gems:


My grandmother has a print this, actually. Before my grandparents moved, it was prominently displayed over the fire place in their living room (I was at that house a lot). My grandmother is an artist (casual, she just draws and never sells anything, but she's escellent) and art lover herself. She always has plenty of prints and pieces of art on the walls, but that one always struck me for a reason I can't determine. I'd always look at it. Even now, I'm not sure I'd say I like it, but it captivates me. Probably just a sign of how good it is.

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## Petrarch's Love

Hi St. Lukes! Glad when I check in after a long absence to find the art corner of Lit. Net in good shape with Vermeer. What reproductions can never convey, of course, is the luminosity of his work. I don't even know how to describe how the paint glows. I think part of the wonder of seeing his work in person is the way the painting is a noticeably smooth and completely flat surface--the impression is that the surface is as thin and one dimensional as a single piece of paper--while it simultaneously possesses a depth of light and color such that the viewer can easily get lost for hours in a square inch of canvas. The effect is something like looking through a fragile, thin sheet of fresh ice floating on the surface of a deep lake. From one angle all you can see is an almost invisibly thin shinning surface, and from another you are looking into endless luminous deeps, shot here and there with the fire of the sun. Anyway, though I adore other masters as much, I don't know that anyone--save perhaps Bellini--gets the same sort of jewel-like glow out of that little scrim of oils covering Vermeer's canvas.

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## stlukesguild

PL... Good to see you still alive. I agree that Vermeer is one of those artists whose work must be seen in person. I've seen nearly the whole of his oeuvre (New York has a good number and Washington has 3 or 4). I believe the only one I haven't seen is the great Allegory of Painting in Vienna:



You are right that Bellini has a similar glow. I would add Giorgione and Ingres as well. Other painters who only stunned me after I saw their work in person include Velazquez and Bonnard... both in a like manner. Blobs and swirls of paint that seemingly dance across the surface in a random manner fall together in the most magical manner as you back up.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Looking beyond the greatness of Vermeer, some random digging through the Dutch Baroque or Golden Age period, turned up Jacob van Campen; Architect, painter and member of the Guild of St. Luke. According to Wikiin Haarlem the architects and painters were both in the same guild, and many were both, such as Pieter Saenredam and Salomon de Bray), and studied painting under Frans de Grebber."




Campens architectural accomplishments include 
*The Royal Palace aka Town Hall in Amsterdam:*


From Wikipedia


From Wikipedia



Interior relief sculptures by Artus Quellinus (from Web Gallery of Art):





*Noordeinde Palace:*






and *Mauritshuis* now art gallery which, coincidentally, is home for _Girl With a Pearl Earring_







Certainly not on par with Vermeer, but still holding some merit for an architects hand, a few examples of Jacob van Campens paintings include:


The Last Judgement (from web gallery of Art):





Mercury, Argos and Io (from web Gallery of Art)




Double portrait of Constantijn Huygens and wife Suzanna van Baerle

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I've stumbled on to two artists I really like from browsing the Art Renewal Center's website. The first is the French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a late 19th early 20th century painter who paintings very realistic paintings, hardening back to the baroque masters (not that I'm telling you anything you don't know). 











Another artist along this vein, around the same time, was Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

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## nancybella

Luke, you put some stunning pictures in your posts, turns the thread into a rich flat-screen gallery and shows your love of art well. But you pack so much in, I tend to scroll through it. The plate is too full.

I'm sure you've lots of readers, but for this reader, I would attend more carefully to each of your posts if I didn't have so much information and pictures to contend with. But I'm just one reader, obviously. But I'm sure you'd prefer to put less in the thread if more attention was given to it, rather than the other way round.

You might say you put so little in the posts anyway, compared to what you want to put in and with all the art out there. That's true. A real anguish of choice there, for the lover of art trying to communicate their enthusiasm. Still, you'll have to add in even more rigor to your choices. Unfair, but if you want more readers' attentions...

The only book on art I ever read was Sister Wendy Becket's 1000 Masterpieces. I think Sister Wendy is wonderful. I learnt a lot from her.

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## ftil

[QUOTE]


> Hell... even the David's penis has become an iconic image:
> 
> 
> 
> Not only does Michelangelo present one of the first representations of pubic hair in post-Classical European art... but he renders this with such loving care... almost as a swirl of fire. The question has often been asked concerning the diminutive size of the David's manhood... especially considering the artist's sexual preferences. There are at least two feasible explanations. Since Greco-Roman times a large penis was often seen as proof of bestiality... the triumph of the body and sexuality over the mind. Figures such as Priapus and Pan (or other Satyrs)...
> 
> 
> 
> ... were commonly portrayed with comically over-sized appendages... and were seen as sad, vulgar, ridiculous... and forever frustrated.



Thanks for a good laughter. We need some balancenot only naked women.  :Biggrin5: 

BTW, I was curious why Hermes was depicted with a big phallus. Nothing has indicated that he was a fertility god. He was a messenger from gods identified with Egyptian god Thoth who wasnt a fertility god either. But Egyptian god Min was. I havent resolved that mystery but a phallic cult was thriving. 

This one is interesting....one phallus was not enough.  :Rofl: 




Bronze figurine with phalluses (Naples Archaeological Museum, Italy; from Pompeii. *The Pompeian Mercury* tintinnabulum. It has an attachment for a bell on his phallus, and also attachments on the two long phallic antlers on his head. 






*God Min*





*Statuette of Osiris with phallus and amulets*








*Statue of a Satyr, Athens Archaeological Museum
*







*Satyr, 560 and 550 BC*







*Satyr Family, Albrecht Durer*



And in cathedrals.




*Elines (Santander), Spain* 






*Interior corbel at Mere (Wiltshire)*




And phallic cults are thriving today. 





*Japan*

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## stlukesguild

Speaking of "phallic cults" there's always this one:

The bronze statue of Victor Noir at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Victor Noir, (27 July 1848 in Attigny, Vosges  11 January 1870 in Paris), was a French journalist who is famous for the manner of his death and its political consequences. His tomb in Paris later became a fertility symbol.

On 30 December, _l'Avenir_, the Parisian loyalist press, published a letter sent to its editor by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, the great-nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and cousin of the then-ruling Emperor Napoleon III. Prince Bonaparte castigated the staff of the radical press, _la Revanche_ as cowards and traitors. Grousset, editor of _la Revanche_ took offense and demanded satisfaction.

Prince Bonaparte wrote a letter to Henri Rochefort, owner of _la Revanche_ declaring that he would most certainly uphold the good name of his family:

_"After having outraged each of my relations, you insult me with the pen of one of your menials. My turn had to come. Only I have an advantage over others of my name, of being a private individual, while being a Bonaparte... I therefore ask you whether your inkpot is guaranteed by your breast... I live, not in a palace, but at 59, rue d'Auteuil. I promise to you that if you present yourself, you will not be told that I left."_

On the following day, Grousset sent Victor Noir and Ulrich de Fonvielle as his seconds to fix the terms of a duel with Pierre Bonaparte. Contrary to custom, they presented themselves to Prince Bonaparte instead of contacting his seconds. Each of them carried a revolver in his pocket. Noir and de Fonvieille presented Prince Bonaparte with a letter signed by Grousset. But the prince declined the challenge, asserting his willingness to fight his fellow nobleman Rochefort, but not his "menials". In response, Noir asserted his solidarity with his friends. According to Fonvieille, Prince Bonaparte then slapped his face and shot Noir dead. According to the Prince, it was Noir who took umbrage at the epithet and struck him first, whereupon he drew his revolver and fired at his aggressor. That was the version eventually accepted by the court. 

A public outcry followed and on 12 January, led by political activist Auguste Blanqui, more than 100,000 people joined Noir's funeral procession to a cemetery in Neuilly. Attendance in this procession was regarded as a civic duty for republicans. At a time when the Emperor was already unpopular, Pierre's acquittal on the murder charge caused enormous public outrage that erupted into a number of violent demonstrations.

A life-size bronze statue was sculpted by Jules Dalou to mark Noir's grave, portrayed in a realistic style as though he had just fallen on the street, dropping his hat which is depicted beside him. The sculpture has a very noticeable protuberance in Noir's trousers. According to some accounts, Noir was due to get married the day after he was killed. This has made it one of the most popular memorials for women to visit in the famous cemetery. Myth says that placing a flower in the upturned top hat after kissing the statue on the lips and rubbing its genital area will enhance fertility, bring a blissful sex life, or, in some versions, a husband within the year. As a result of the legend, those particular components of the oxidized bronze statue are rather well-worn.

Some women, however, have taken the legend too far...by humping and straddling the bronze crotch of Noir excessively. As a result, in 2004 a fence was erected around the statue of Noir, to deter superstitious people from touching the statue. Due to the fake protests of the "female population of Paris" settled by a French TV anchor however, it was torn down again. So the deterioration of the statue continues.

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## ftil

> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> Speaking of "phallic cults" there's always this one:


And we have a modern version..... :FRlol: 


*Peter Lenk*

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## Babyguile

> And we have a modern version.....
> 
> 
> *Peter Lenk*


That is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen.

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

> Speaking of "phallic cults" there's always this one:
> 
> The bronze statue of Victor Noir at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
> 
> Victor Noir, (27 July 1848 in Attigny, Vosges  11 January 1870 in Paris), was a French journalist who is famous for the manner of his death and its political consequences. His tomb in Paris later became a fertility symbol.
> 
> On 30 December, _l'Avenir_, the Parisian loyalist press, published a letter sent to its editor by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, the great-nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and cousin of the then-ruling Emperor Napoleon III. Prince Bonaparte castigated the staff of the radical press, _la Revanche_ as cowards and traitors. Grousset, editor of _la Revanche_ took offense and demanded satisfaction.
> 
> Prince Bonaparte wrote a letter to Henri Rochefort, owner of _la Revanche_ declaring that he would most certainly uphold the good name of his family:
> ...


That's awesome. I'd be so stoked if I knew women were going to be humping my tomb. Party on, that's what I say.

It also looks like there's considerable wear on the feet. Seeing as I have no risk leeway here on LitNet, I'll keep the various jokes I thought of to myself, much to the reader's disappointment, surely.

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## ftil

> That is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen.


I agree. Berlin newspaper financed it. BTW, the art was titled "Peace Be With You". He is the author of more ugly public art. Well, I wouldnt call it art and I am not going to post it.  :Eek2: 

To read the article

http://open.salon.com/blog/lost_in_b...cative_artwork

http://www.drivebyplanet.com/2008/09...sculpture.html

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

The previous posts call to mind the Jen Jacques Le Queu, the French neo classical fantasist of neurotic power. 

http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search?f_creat...isSearch=false

Shifting gears...

Back on June 2nd I was allowed to spend a day in Fort Worth to see the _Great French Paintings From the Clark  Barbizon Through Impressionism_ exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum. 
http://impressionism.kimbellart.org/exhibit

Excerpt from the link above: 

The 73 paintings in the exhibition include 21 Renoirs and six Monets, along with works by Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and other prominent French painters of the period. Among them are some of the most familiar masterpieces of the Impressionist era.

Other painters featured include: James Tissot, Pierre Bonnard, Camille Corot, Jean-Francois Millet, Constant Troyon, Theodore Rousseau, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Eugene Boudin, Gustave Caillebotte, Honore Daumier, Mary Cassatt, Henri Fantin-Latour, Carlous-Duran, Jean-Leon Gerome, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Alfred Stevens, Giovanni Boldini

An impressive collection to say the least. A few standouts for me include: (thumbnails)

Camille Corot _Bathers of the Borromean Isles_



A video tour of the painting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbRV0d6a-g


Claude Monet _The Cliffs at Etretat_




Mary Cassatt _Offering the Panal to the Bullfighter_




Giovanni Boldini _Crossing the Street_




[James Tissot _Chrysanthemums_ This one is absolutely stunning, although I would question whether this is considered impressionist given the near photorealism, in fact one source categorizes it as such. Nevertheless, I found myself drawn to it in part due to the sheer size at 118.4 x 76.2 cm

Here is a video tour of the painting:

http://www.clarkart.edu/museum/video...dex.cfm?vid=20


Four John Singer Sargent paintings tagged along with the tour, but were taken over to the neighboring Amon Carter Museum of American art for viewing. 
The paintings included: 
_ A Street in Venice, A Venetian Interior, Portrait of Carolus Duran and Smoke of Ambergris_

I was entirely captivated by _Smoke of Ambergris_, finding it difficult to pull myself away- 





*For those of you in or near London, the exhibit is heading your way to the Royal Academy of Arts.*


.

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## ftil

> Shifting gears...
> (Not sure if the thumbnail rule applies here, but I'll kept theses toward the smaller side)


LOL! You are kidding, aren’t you…..have you already forgotten a big size of art you posted on a previous page?....... It was just a month ago.

I guess……. anxiety.  :Smilewinkgrin:

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Your point? It's a new rule.


I really like that piece by Monet, Gilliat. It's one of my favorites of his.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

> LOL! You are kidding, aren’t you…..have you already forgotten a big size of art you posted on a previous page?....... It was just a month ago.
> 
> I guess……. anxiety.





> Your point? It's a new rule.
> 
> 
> I really like that piece by Monet, Gilliat. It's one of my favorites of his.


Ftil and MM - I'll post my reason for making the thumbnail point and a little history on the rule in your Profile Page.

One of the beautiful aspects of the Monet, is how he caprured the sunlight at the tops of the cliffs.

.

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## ftil

> Ftil and MM - I'll post my reason for making the thumbnail point and a little history on the rule in your Profile Page.
> 
> .



Hey, I am very aware of the rule that was posted in November last year on Pictures / Images How-to thread. Please don’t make it personal as it was very clear in the moderator’s note that it applied to all discussion threads not to my Post Your Favorite Artist thread. You and stlukesguild have posted a big size of images as I have mentioned in my previous post. It was a month ago. I assumed that the rule has been changed. I addressed it here asking for a clarification a few months ago but I haven’t received any answer. 

You may read the moderator note posted in November and December.
Post # 52 and 58.

http://www.online-literature.com/for...85#post1094885

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## Darcy88

Goya. Right now I'm really into Goya. His paintings are at once beautiful...sublime....and - terrifying. The scenes he painted, the historical events he depicted...so ghastly, revealing in their grisly glory the darkness that characterizes much of history and dwells within the heart of man.





I don't know art terminology that well. All I know is that some painters have a greater power than others to arise emotions and make me feel pain, joy, hope, despair. I find Goya is one such painter for me. El Greco is probably my favourite painter but right now I am really into Goya.

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## stlukesguild

Back in art school I had two teachers who both attempted to direct me toward the great Spanish painters Velazquez and Goya. In both instances they were attempting to point me away from my obsession with Rubens. My first year drawing teacher (who was Spanish) absolutely revered Velazquez. At that time I couldn't see it at all. All that brown and black and gray... blech! I wanted color. And only one nude?! :Eek2:  Later... as I was in my final year of school one of my painting professors kept advising me to "Look at Goya." Finally I responded, I like Goya fine enough, but I love Ruben's." "Well of course," he responded. "Who doesn't? But what can you learn from him? The man wasn't human. He never made a mistake or changed a brushstroke." Indeed, Rubens was one of those superhuman figures who set an almost unattainable standard. Still... I must say that I did learn much from him... especially with regard to color and defining the form of the figure through drawing... the contour... as opposed to defining the form through hatching and brushwork ala Cezanne... and later, Lucian Freud.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I love Goya. He appeals to the heavy metal fan in me.

And, stlukes, maybe you could give me a little lesson on Rubens, because I just don't dig his stuff at all. It could be a purely subjective opinion that can't be changed, but that's not usually the case. When I google him, I just see a bunch of paintings of overweight, lumpy women.

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## Darcy88

I must admit to being not much familiar with Rubens. Some of his paintings are very striking. I can see what you mean St Lukes when you refer to him as "superhuman." I like art of that style and that age, but I find I enjoy more paintings that are simpler. Expressionism and impressionism and classical reliefs are what get me most. I say El Greco is my favorite painter and this is because the lines in his paintings are so sharply drawn, the figures so distinct, almost as if you are looking at a relief rather than a painting. His paintings are simple but profound, like a water well. Here are some of my favorites.

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## stlukesguild

Sir Anthony van Dyck, the star pupil and assistant of Sir Peter Paul Rubens was the first "old master" whose work I was able to seriously assess in person as the result of a retrospective exhibition in Washington D.C. The trip itself was almost as memorable as the exhibition considering that I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go with me, and so this became my first serious solo trip far from home... and in the rather sizable city that is the nation's capitol. 

One of the things that had most impressed me about both Rubens and Van Dyck was their handling of drapery... and clothing in general. Quite honestly, I seriously envied the artists of the Baroque and the Rococo for the clothing they had to work with. 

The two paintings by Van Dyck that truly stunned me include his _Portrait of Marie-Louise de Tassis_... who was decked out in such rich satins and lace that I could not help but imagine her as some fairy-tale princess...



The second... even more stunning... was his _Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini_. This huge canvas... shimmering in glowing reds... kept me enthralled for at least half an hour. I recognized then how a Rothko painting could seduce the viewer with nothing more than red... and red has indeed become a major element of my paintings. 



How, I wondered, was I, as an artist, to compete with such visual splendors... when as opposed to these spectacular colors, satins, lace... I had nothing but blue-jeans and t-shirts to work with?!

In a painting such as this marvelous _Crucifixion_ by Rubens (located in a small French town) the clothing takes on an almost stained-glass-like nature that must be seen in person:



There is a second crucifixion in which the clothing glows in a similar manner. 



In Rubens late paintings... a great many painted for himself as he no longer needed to churn out the product for aristocrats across Europe... he was by then one of the wealthiest artists who ever lived... and a titled "Lord" in his own rite. His late mythologies are absolutely stunning and unabashedly sensuous as they shimmer with flesh tones and rich satins and lace:



In this late _Madonna and Child_ the artist's second wife, Helena (at the right), serves as an attendant... dressed in all her finery...



Following the death of a child from his first marriage, Rubens was driven to commemorate his family... his beautiful young wife and his children... all of whom he saw were dressed in the finest clothes... with the exception of those times when he painted his wife nude.



Perhaps the painting that most made me envious... in terms of clothing... was _The Garden of Love_. I'm not the only one. The painting, it has been argued, spawned the whole of the Rococo.



continued...

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## stlukesguild

Undoubtedly, it is paintings such as these that eventually led me to a fascination with costume... with the costume of the burlesque:





Classic Pin-Ups:



Hollywood dress:



Tattoos:



Costumed Superheroes and Villains:







And certainly Indian... and other Eastern traditional dress:





I suspect that the glorious dress or costume is part of my fascination with opera...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMY3Ou9L5xE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utIFGyUIBo0

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Thanks for the overview, stlukes. I actually really liked the examples you gave. There definitely is a richness to Rubens' paintings.

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## Mr.lucifer

Can someone please help me understand portraits?

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

What is there not to understand?

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## ftil

Stlukesguild, I have something for you as I have noticed your obsession with nudity. Mahlon Blaines and Nova Venus.

Ironically, young people are not obsessed with nudity.but it is obsession for 40+.  :Rofl: 

His drawing # 17 Laughter become scorn, life a combat..expresses it all.  :FRlol: 


http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/mahlon1.html

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## stlukesguild

This, and Beardsley, and Rops, and Franz von Bayros are certainly what were referred to in the old 19th/early 20th century come-on: "Come on up and let me show you my etchings."

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I'm obsessed with nudity. Just sayin'.

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## ftil

> This, and Beardsley, and Rops, and Franz von Bayros are certainly what were referred to in the old 19th/early 20th century come-on: "Come on up and let me show you my etchings."



I didnt know those chaps. It is hard to call them artist.  :Biggrin:  BTW, I didnt know that Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium.

Well, preoccupation with sex, lesbians and much more from very sick minds. 

Are they your favorite?  :Devil: 


*Franz von Bayros*

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...anz_von_Bayros


*Félicien Rops*

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...%A9licien_Rops

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## stlukesguild

...preoccupation with sex, lesbians and much more from very sick minds. 

Are they your favorite? :Devil:  

I don't know how "sick" they were. I doubt they were any more obsessed with sex than artists of any other period... however spurred on by the times, sex had become a theme which could be tackled far more openly than in the past.

Are they favorites of mine? Far from it. My favorite artists of the period would include Manet, Degas, Monet, Odillon, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Vuillard, Munch, Klimt, Schiele, etc...

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## stlukesguild

Stlukesguild, I have something for you as I have noticed your obsession with nudity.

I won't deny this. As an artist the nude is my primary subject matter... and has been one of the primary themes of the whole of art. On the other hand... unless you count the near-naked Christ being taken down from the cross or a few putti, the only nudity in the post above was in Ruben's _Allegory of Peace and War._

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## ftil

> ...preoccupation with sex, lesbians and much more from very sick minds. 
> 
> Are they your favorite? 
> 
> I don't know how "sick" they were. I doubt they were any more obsessed with sex than artists of any other period... however spurred on by the times, sex had become a theme which could be tackled far more openly than in the past.


Well, if you cant see how sick is that.I cant help you.  :Biggrin5:  Second, dont project your issues upon other artists. Not ever artist was obsessed with sex. It is a big difference between sick minds of the artists I posted and a mind who appreciates beauty and love.




> I won't deny this. As an artist the nude is my primary subject matter... and has been one of the primary themes of the whole of art. On the other hand... unless you count the near-naked Christ being taken down from the cross or a few putti, the only nudity in the post above was in Ruben's Allegory of Peace and War.


First, I didn't talk about you last post but we had a conversation on Public Nudity thread. Second, dont try to hide behind being and an artist. You are art teacher, arent you? You know much more artists than I and you know their paintings. There is a number of painters who were psychologically challenged, and luckily, they don't constitute the majority. I dont care if they had a talent if their art reflects their sick mind.  :Eek6:

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## Paulclem

St Lukes - your contributions to threads with your breadth and knowledge of art are admired from the many posts I've seen complimenting you. I just thought I'd add this after reading how someone has tried to set you up. 

Keep up the good work.

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## ftil

> St Lukes - your contributions to threads with your breadth and knowledge of art are admired from the many posts I've seen complimenting you. I just thought I'd add this after reading how someone has tried to set you up. 
> 
> Keep up the good work.


LOL! Thats a direct communication. I didnt try to set stlukesguild up. I have noticed that you have a problem when I honestly express my thoughts and concerns.......Nothing has changed since we have had a conversation about Buddhism where you couldnt digest that I had a very different opinion.  :Brow: 

Dont forget change is inevitable.misery optional. 


I have a gift for you.....a different painter but the same theme. 


*An allegory of Truth and Time (1584-5), Royal Collection, London, Annibale Carracci.* 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CA...e_(1584-5).JPG

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## stlukesguild

Well, if you can’t see how sick is that….I can’t help you. Second, don’t project your issues upon other artists. Not ever artist was obsessed with sex. It is a big difference between sick minds of the artists I posted and a mind who appreciates beauty and love.

I think perhaps you need to learn a bit about art history before you start making such statements. Caravaggio, the father of the Baroque in painting... surely recognized as one of the greatest artists in history... 



... began his career by pandering homoerotic images of prepubescent boys to high-ranking clergy with a taste for such.

Gauguin... one of the seminal figures in the transition from 19th century art (and the whole of the Post-Renaissance focus upon the illusion of reality) to Modernism died of syphilis as a result of any number of sexual trysts with prepubescent girls in Tahiti.

Do I need to bring up Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Rodin, Klimt, Schiele, etc...

Artists are no less "obsessed" with sex than anybody else. In some cases this obsessing may verge upon the pathological... but I don't think I'd want you in charge of deciding which sexual passions are acceptable and which are "sick".

Until the period of Romanticism, most art was created on commission and thus if a painter employed an erotic theme it was in response to the demands of the patron. Michelangelo's erotic passions famously drew a good deal of criticism when included in the Sistine frescoes. It was not until the late 19th century that art allowing an open exploration of sexuality (and I'm excluding non-Western and pre-Medieval art here) was allowed. 

Goya's famous Naked Maja is perhaps the first image that displays the existence of pubic hair... and was commissioned for one of the most powerful figures in Spain at the time. Even so, Goya was summoned and interrogated by the Inquisition. 

Beardsley's prints were repeatedly ran afoul of the censors. Klimt's nudes... painted in the 20th century... earned him criticism from the officials of the academic art establishment of Vienna, while Schiele's cost him a stay in prison.

Bayros and Rops are both minor figures in the history of art... and along with Beardsley they tapped into a demand for titillation and eotica not far removed from today's pornography... albeit with a greater degree of aesthetic sophistication. I'm not willing to jump to conclusions about their "sick" sexual obsessions based upon their art work for the simple reason that I don't see art in a Freudian manner as an autobiography in which we may analyse the personality of the artist. Schiele painted some of the most graphic and some of the most disturbing nudes... and yet from all I have read of him, he was rather conservative in his personal life... happily married and little by way of any suggestion of affairs or illicit sexual conduct.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Awwwwwww snap, school's in session!




> St Lukes - your contributions to threads with your breadth and knowledge of art are admired from the many posts I've seen complimenting you. I just thought I'd add this after reading how someone has tried to set you up. 
> 
> Keep up the good work.


Ditto.

I also like ftil's technique of throwing in an emoticon after every jab. Every insult comes with plausible deniability. "Insult? That wasn't an insult! Look at the emoticon, I was just joking!"

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## ftil

> Originally posted by *Mutatis-Mutandis*
> 
> Ditto.
> 
> I also like ftil's technique of throwing in an emoticon after every jab. Every insult comes with plausible deniability. "Insult? That wasn't an insult! Look at the emoticon, I was just joking!"



You are making assumption like Paulclem. It sounds that it is also your modus operandi.  :Biggrin5:  Dont waste your and my time. I have been on a few forum where I have learned all methods to stop, silence, or distract members. Very primitive methods indeed. Interstingly enough, they were masons or occultistsvery clever indeed but being clever doesnt mean being smart. It didnt take that long to see their games.  :Rofl: 

BTW, you may not like using emoticons. You may have suppressed your feelings so that there is no need to use emoticons.  :Rofl:  

Enjoy LItNet forum and find likeminded people. 





> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> I think perhaps you need to learn a bit about art history before you start making such statements. Caravaggio, the father of the Baroque in painting... surely recognized as one of the greatest artists in history...


No, I studied about artists enough and it is not of my interest what "authority" says. In fact, I was laughing sometimes when I read their interpretation, therefore, I never read about the artist before I can see his or her art as I dont want to be influenced by educated interpretations. Only the artist or the sponsor can talk about the art, everything else is a pure speculation.

Yes, Carravagio was one of the greatest painters and he was suffering from mental illness but it is not that kind of illness I was talking about. Dont even try to compare Franz von Bayros, Félicien Rops, Shiele, or Klimt with Carravagio, Michelangelo, or Renoir to name a few.





> Artists are no less "obsessed" with sex than anybody else. In some cases this obsessing may verge upon the pathological... but I don't think I'd want you in charge of deciding which sexual passions are acceptable and which are "sick".


I think that maybe you should learn bit about psychology to understand what obsession and psychological health means. As I said not every artists was obsessed with sex. Please dont repeat like a broken records your arguments. Think harder or give up.




> talbeit with a greater degree of aesthetic sophistication


.

LOL! We definitely have a different sense of beauty. Their art is nothing else but ugly and reflect their sick mind.

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## Scheherazade

*W a r n i n g*

*Please do not discuss each other but the topic at hand.

Off topic posts will be deleted without further notice.*

 :Smilewinkgrin:

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## stlukesguild

...it is not of my interest what "authority" says.

In other words, you are not interested in what others who know more about a given topic have to say.

I was laughing sometimes when I read their interpretation...

Because, of course, your own interpretation... which ignores any inconvenient facts that may be brought to the topic by someone a bit more versed than yourself is irrelevant... are naturally far better.

I dont want to be influenced by educated interpretations.

That's clear enough.

Only the artist or the sponsor can talk about the art...

So why are you talking? Hmmm... in fact of the two of us here which one is actually a working and exhibiting artist?

The reality is that art is open to interpretation by anyone... however, having some knowledge of the history of the artist, the period and tradition in which he or she worked, etc... is useful in developing a more accurate interpretation.

Dont even try to compare Franz von Bayros, Félicien Rops, Shiele, or Klimt with Carravagio, Michelangelo, or Renoir to name a few.

All artists are open to comparison. I find it telling, by the way, that you would throw a pair a major Modernist painters such as Klimt and Schiele in with Rops and Bayros. 

Gustav Klimt was the leading figure in the visual arts in Vienna at the turn of the 19th century. After having visited Ravenna and viewed the mosiacs there with their use of decorative pattern and gold, Klimt began to employ similar elements in his painting. His portraits were in high demand by the wealthy elite of Vienna...



... while the most famous of Klimt's paintings, The Kiss, is the single most reproduced work of art... beyond even the _Mona Lisa_...



These two facts alone would seem to indicate that Klimt was a little more than some minor deviant as you would have us believe. Regardless of your personal preferences and beliefs... unhampered as they are by the facts... Klimt is one of the most respected and influential artists of the 20th century. 

He may have shocked the conservative establishment of Vienna with his more sexually daring works... such as _Hope_... one of the first paintings to portray a pregnant nude... But of course this painting, like most of Klimt's nudes, offered something far more than mere titillation. In this case, he sought to convey the hope of birth and new life brought into a world filled with evil and death... seen lurking in the background...



Even so... Klimt was admittedly a sensualist who had multiple affairs with his models. He absolutely worshipped women and his primary theme as an artist was his awe before the power of women's sexuality...



Beyond this, Klimt was the most important decorative painter of the era... and a major landscape artist...





Klimt brought to Impressionism a sort of elegant decorative design and daring composition. 

Egon Schiele, the younger peer and pupil of Klimt in many ways, brought to his art a wiry mastery of line, an angst, and a sort of simultaneous attraction and repulsion from or horror of the flesh, that echoed German Gothic art, and pointed the way toward German Expressionism.

Klimt is acknowledged by artists and art lovers as a master draftsman...



Like the sculptor Rodin, and Klimt before him, Schiele was able to capture the unexpected poses... often seething with an unbridled sexuality... by allowing his models to simply move about the studio according to their own whims. 

 



In spite of the artist/model relationship that many artists over the years have taken advantage of, Schiele, from all reports, maintained a strictly professional relationship with his models. Quite often, while working, he was accompanied by his long-term lover, Wally... and later his wife, Edith. 



He was actually with his wife when the incident occurred that led to his arrest for "indecency". Schiele and his wife wished for a break from the confines of the city, and so they left Vienna for a stay in a small rural town, accompanied by one of their models. The residents of this town, having less liberal concepts with regard to nudity reported the goings-on in Schiele's studio to the authorities and the police raided the studio, arrested Schiele and seized a good number of drawings. He spent nearly a month in jail awaiting trial for indecency. The most serious charges were dismissed as it became clear that there was no suggestion of Schiele having sex with his model, but he was fined for contributing to the deliquency of a minor for having erotic drawing on display where a minor might have seen them. Just to drive the point hoome, the judge burned one of the drawings in the courtroom. An act that some of today's more prudish critics would undoubtedly agree with.

Schiele's career ended tragically... just as he was beginning to develop a real ability for painting (He had long been a talented draftsman... but struggled as a painter). He, his wife, and their infant son all succumbed to the Spanish Influenza epidemic of the period following WWI.



Both Klimt and Schiele are major figures in the history of 20th century painting. While neither may be as much of a towering figure as Caravaggio or Michelangelo (and few artists are of such distinction), neither are they minor figures and sexual deviants best forgotten... as some would have us think.

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## ftil

> In other words, you are not interested in what others who know more about a given topic have to say.
> 
> Because, of course, your own interpretation... which ignores any inconvenient facts that may be brought to the topic by someone a bit more versed than yourself is irrelevant... are naturally far better.


LOL! You haven't learned yet that I am not a blind follower but I think independently.  :Rofl:  How many times I have to repeat it?

I choose from whom I want to learn and what I want to learn. If I read someone’s’ brain farts who tries so hard to interpret the painting…...I laugh out loud. Second, I am interested in learning about certain techniques and I love to learn about new artists. I need a name of the painter and a few words about the artist. I would never give up a pleasure to study on my own and if I have a question, I always ask. But since I am not an artist, it is not my priority to learn about techniques. I am more interested how images affect our mind. After all, Bruno’s The De vinculis in Genere is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought – on the par with Machiavelli’s Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernity’s most intelligent and insightful political work. 

Second, Carl Jung, godfather of art therapy, utilized art making process in therapy. He was Gnostic and his knowledge has come from the occult. Goethe, a mason, considered his Theory of Color more profound than his poetry. Rudolf Steiner, esotericist and founder of Anthroposophy, was very interested in his theory.
I definitely share masons or occults passion for art but my reason are very different than that of masons and occultist. 

I don’t even want to talk about Klimt. Egon Schiele has a few interesting paintings but many of his paintings are disgusting. 

BTW, a few months ago you wrote:




> You still haven't learned your lesson from Oscar Wilde:
> 
> The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
> 
> Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
> 
> There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.



I don’t know if you remember what I said. I was laughing that I was choosing from whom I wanted to learn and I preferred to quote Bruno who understood art the same way as I do. I didn’t agree with Wilde but I didn’t explore it deeper. But thanks to you I connected Wilde, another mason, with the Félicien Rops, Franz von Bayros, or Franz von Stuck and aestheticism related to other movements such as symbolism or decadence. I understand his words. After all, he has to find justification for his perversions.  :Biggrin5:

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Still, isn't a little close minded to not open oneself up to interpretations and art that one may not agree with or like? How can someone discover something new if not by steeping out of their comfort zone? I like plenty of art now that I never had an interest in before. If I never let myself explore other works I wasn't initially interested in, I'd still just be a Dali and Escher fan (not that I am not now). 

I like to try to understand as much about any subject as I can, including what I don't like. I've learned that my opinion does not necessarily translate to an evaluation of a piece of art's worth. I don't really like the above pieces by Klimt posted above, but I get what their impact was (at least a little). Maybe someday I will like them, I don't know. I'll leave myself open, though.

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## ftil

> *Still, isn't a little close minded to not open oneself up to interpretations and art that one may not agree with or like?* How can someone discover something new if not by steeping out of their comfort zone? I like plenty of art now that I never had an interest in before. If I never let myself explore other works I wasn't initially interested in, I'd still just be a Dali and Escher fan (not that I am not now). 
> 
> I like to try to understand as much about any subject as I can, including what I don't like. I've learned that my opinion does not necessarily translate to an evaluation of a piece of art's worth. I don't really like the above pieces by Klimt posted above, but I get what their impact was (at least a little). Maybe someday I will like them, I don't know. I'll leave myself open, though.


Absolutely not! I wrote earlier that I had my own approach to art. Nobody was teaching me that but it was a result of my understanding of psychology and healing. I was surprised when I read Brunos work, a renaissance occultist and magician, who understood the art as I do. So, saying that it may be a little close minded is very wrong. We have to get back the control over our minds and not to blindly listen to authority. 

I wrote earlier that I was laughing sometimes while I was reading someones brain farts. I read carefully, thought about it, and laughed. Only children or immature adults can't think critically. But a psychologically healthy adult moves into Critic stage of development at the age of 20. Many peole are locked in earlier stages of development and never reach this stage or Integrated Faith. 

Dont make assumptions that I dont use my brain. I use it and I love using it. I am not afraid to question pseudo scholars or authority. People are close mined who blindly listen without questioning and researching the subject. Or using the human development terminology, they are at Literalist or Loyalist stage.

My point is that we have mind and we got it for a reason. People need to think independently and sharpen their critical thinking. Unfortunately, school doesnt teach to think independently and critically.

I guess we can go back to art. Hopefully, St. Luke will bring new artists I don't know and I will enjoy looking at their art. But it was good to learn about Félicien Rops or Franz von Bayros to see how sick some artist can be.  :Biggrin:

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Well, I didn't really say any of that, but okay.

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

> I must admit to being not much familiar with Rubens. Some of his paintings are very striking. I can see what you mean St Lukes when you refer to him as "superhuman." I like art of that style and that age, but I find I enjoy more paintings that are simpler. Expressionism and impressionism and classical reliefs are what get me most. I say El Greco is my favorite painter and this is because the lines in his paintings are so sharply drawn, the figures so distinct, almost as if you are looking at a relief rather than a painting. His paintings are simple but profound, like a water well. Here are some of my favorites.


After seeing these pictures, I looked into El Greco a little more, as I only knew of him by name. I love his bold use of colors, and while his style is simplistic, it manages to convey more emotion than many realistic pieces. After seeing his work, I was quite surprised to see he was a late 16th-early 17th century painter, since it looks more like something out of expressionism.

From what I've read, he only did two landscapes, or at least only two still exist. One of them, _The View of Teledo_, is one of my favorite landscape paintings of all time.

----------


## stlukesguild

LOL! You haven't learned yet that I am not a blind follower but I think independently. How many times I have to repeat it?

In other words... you think independent of the facts... or the facts that might contradict your own personal interpretations. Sounds like an approach taken by many with regards to politics. 

By the way... I must agree with the comments per your use of emoticons. Such an excessive use comes off like a drum roll after a bad joke.

I am more interested how images affect our mind.

The problem is that there is no "our". Clearly you respond to art in a vastly different way than many others. 

After all, Brunos The De vinculis in Genere is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought  on the par with Machiavellis Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernitys most intelligent and insightful political work. 

Now that was certainly a major and wholly irrelevant digression. I almost found myself thinking (ala Monty Python) "And now for something completely different."

Carl Jung, godfather of art therapy, utilized art making process in therapy.

Who cares? Jung was probably a bigger idiot than Freud, and art therapy has nothing to do with art as created by professional artists.

Goethe, a mason, considered his Theory of Color more profound than his poetry.

Is there any point to these digressions? By the way... if Goethe did indeed believe this, he was wrong. Any artist will tell you that you'll learn far more about color theory by studying the a few paintings by Veronese, Rubens, Ingres, Monet, and Bonnard than from all the collected written theories by Goethe, Albers, and even Matisse.

(Matisse famously went on for pages in discussing his theory of color when asked. He was then told Picasso's answer to the same question about his color theory: "If I don't have red, I use blue." Matisse responded, "I wish I'd said that.")

I dont even want to talk about Klimt. Egon Schiele has a few interesting paintings but many of his paintings are disgusting.

You forgot the key sentence in Wilde's preface to Doran Gray:

"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."

Your disdain and disgust say far more about you than they do about the art work of the artists in question.

I wrote earlier that I was laughing sometimes while I was reading someones brain farts. I read carefully, thought about it, and laughed. Only children or immature adults can't think critically. But a psychologically healthy adult moves into Critic stage of development at the age of 20. Many peole are locked in earlier stages of development and never reach this stage or Integrated Faith. 

Now there's surely a subtle way to dismiss everything that you personally disagree with... you simply portray such as the product of immature or diseased thinking as opposed to your own advanced development and psychological good health. :Rolleyes5:

----------


## stlukesguild

I looked into El Greco a little more, as I only knew of him by name. I love his bold use of colors, and while his style is simplistic, it manages to convey more emotion than many realistic pieces. After seeing his work, I was quite surprised to see he was a late 16th-early 17th century painter, since it looks more like something out of expressionism.

Back in art school I became quite enamored of El Greco... in part because of his use of tall, narrow formats that I was intrigued with myself:



I was also fascinated with his bold, gestural brushwork... which indeed appears Modernist and Expressionistic. I agree that his use of color appears quite bold... but in actuality he was not much of a colorist. Indeed, he could have said as well as Picasso, "If I don't have red, I use blue." This may owe much to the fact that he studied under Tintoretto... who in spite of his name (his nick-name meant "little dyer" or "little colorist") was perhaps the single Venetian master who was not much attuned with color, and more concerned with the drama of light and dark):



Seeing his works in person as part of a major retrospective a few years back reinforced my recognition of how poor a colorist he was. The worst paintings almost come off like black velvet painting. Nevertheless... the strongest works... such as the View of Toledo... certainly do have a real power... and an almost unearthly, electric energy than one might term "visionary". 

Still... I'd take Veronese in a pinch:



By the way... for the experience of Baroque art that seems as if out of its time... give a listen to this... wait until the second movement...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DJpaxT7wg

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I'm a big fan of Veronese, and the Wedding at Cana is one of my favorite paintings--I've found I'm a fan of clutter, for lack of a better word. I love works with a lot going on, be it lots of people, objects, colors, etc. Anyways, I saw Wedding at Cana at the Louvre, and was blown away by its immensity. I loved the contrast of it with the Mona Lisa, which is displayed on the opposite wall of the big room (I know you've been there, of course, but maybe the set up has changed). I can't say the same for The Mona Lisa, which was quite underwhelming (a reaction I think most have when finally seeing the actual painting), though it was neat to see what is probably the most famous painting ever.

And I'll listen to that, but when I'm not fighting to stay awake (as my rambling paragraph shows).

----------


## ftil

> In other words... you think independent of the facts... or the facts that might contradict your own personal interpretations. Sounds like an approach taken by many with regards to politics.


I don’t have any idea where your interpretation of my words comes from. Hey, why don’t you read carefully my post …. :Rofl: 




> By the way... I must agree with the comments per your use of emoticons. Such an excessive use comes off like a drum roll after a bad joke.


Thanks for good laugher. No feelings that need to be expressed???? Not healthy for physical and emotional well being.




> The problem is that there is no "our". Clearly you respond to art in a vastly different way than many others.



Why don’t you read Giordano Bruno. The first to recognize the importance of Bruno’s text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movement’s history. He was very perceptitive into human nature and he made his observations from a different angle that modern psychology. I my reiterate that De Vinculis in Genere, is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought – on the par with Machiavelli’s Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernity’s most intelligent and insightful political work.

You will understand why I said ‘our”  :Ihih: 





> Who cares? Jung was probably a bigger idiot than Freud, and art therapy has nothing to do with art as created by professional artists.


Hey, you have missed my point again. Jung was Gnostic and he got his knowledge from the occult. Rossicrucians, masons, or Steiner and Antroposophy were very interested in occult work of Giordano Bruno and art. Connect the dots.
You know very well that there are a number of painters who were/ are masons or occultists. I have posted a few of them on Mythology and Religion in Art thread but there are much more than that...... Try to think outside of the box. Everything is connected when we start paying attention. Fragmentation is not a good sign. 





> Your disdain and disgust say far more about you than they do about the art work of the artists in question.


 True. You maybe exited to watch Franz von Bayros’ version of masturbation, lesbian sex or his painting of a dog and a naked women. It is similar to India temple’s sculpture and sex with animals. I remember your excitement about sexual freedom in India.  :Reddevil:  But I have a very different idea about beauty and love. I can’t be more clear than that. 




> Now there's surely a subtle way to dismiss everything that you personally disagree with... you simply portray such as the product of immature or diseased thinking as opposed to your own advanced development and psychological good health.



Hehehe……you mean that I don’t agree with you. You are right. I don’t but I don’t stop learning about art. I love art very much. BTW, I know several painters, very talented, and we don’t have any problem to understand each other. A few of them share my passion for psychology and think outside of the box. Like attracts alike.  :Tongue: 


So, why we go back to art. I have been looking at Jean Delville, (1867 – 1953), Belgian Occultist Symbolism and his painting School of Plato. Very intriguing indeed. All men have feminine feature except Plato. It is similar to Apollo, Dionysus, or Siva or Michelangelo's Ignudi at Sistine Chapel. We hear a lot about transgender. Well, collages even have course about that subject. 

He must have been a prophet like Michelangelo, for example....... :Rofl: 

*School of Plato*

http://jeandelville.org/Paintings/Sc...lato/index.htm

More of his paintings.

http://jeandelville.org/Paintings/index.htm

----------


## Revolte

Truth be told, I'm more interested in... I'm not sure how to put it. Art forms I haven't seen before. 

This women is my favorite artist. It's hard to even call it performance art, but what it does to people is captivating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS7xMOM1EE

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## ftil

> Truth be told, I'm more interested in... I'm not sure how to put it. Art forms I haven't seen before. 
> 
> This women is my favorite artist. It's hard to even call it performance art, but what it does to people is captivating.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS7xMOM1EE


Captivating. No. It is a new age version of “ being present in the moment” like Ophra's E. Tolle.  :Rofl: 

Can you imagine how captivating was a glamour model at London Fashion Week? Programming people to new behavior in a full light! 


*Hat's on! But everything else is off... Pregnant glamour model walks the runway naked at London Fashion Week*

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...hion-Week.html

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

> Truth be told, I'm more interested in... I'm not sure how to put it. Art forms I haven't seen before. 
> 
> This women is my favorite artist. It's hard to even call it performance art, but what it does to people is captivating.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS7xMOM1EE


I don't get it.

----------


## Alexander III

I really feel I ought to mention this as; Ftil, you keep mentioning masons as if they were some occult sect with secret knowledge. My father is one, it is essentially a club of affluent and powerful and intelligent men of all walks of life - art, business , politics, lawyers, doctors et.c. It serves as an except social networking space, that is all, a bunch of influential men who meet each other and thus are able to help each other and scratch each others backs. 

There is some religious element to it, but it is merely that one must believe in God to enter, but the God of the masons was the free-thinkers God, the god devoid of all the superficial inanities in all the abrahamic religions used to pander to the masses. At first it was a club were free-thinkers could discuss their religious ideas and politics without fear of persecution. Nowadays it is essentially a country club.


The internet is full of those consiprasists who say the Masons, are a secret religious sect which plan to conquer the world or have special knowledge of magic and know the powers of god. But truly let us think about this. This was born as a society were intelligent and educated and influential men could be free to discuss with each other their political and religious beliefs, sans persecutions. Is it such a surprise that the uneducated and superstitious men of the time believed that masonry was some sort of supernatural, secret knowing, society for devil worship? 

As a person who knows my after and has met several of his friends who are part of it as well, it is hilarious to see such speculations on the internet.

----------


## ftil

> I really feel I ought to mention this as; Ftil, you keep mentioning masons as if they were some occult sect with secret knowledge. My father is one, it is essentially a club of affluent and powerful and intelligent men of all walks of life - art, business , politics, lawyers, doctors et.c. It serves as an except social networking space, that is all, a bunch of influential men who meet each other and thus are able to help each other and scratch each others backs. 
> 
> There is some religious element to it, but it is merely that one must believe in God to enter, but the God of the masons was the free-thinkers God, the god devoid of all the superficial inanities in all the abrahamic religions used to pander to the masses. At first it was a club were free-thinkers could discuss their religious ideas and politics without fear of persecution. Nowadays it is essentially a country club.
> 
> 
> The internet is full of those consiprasists who say the Masons, are a secret religious sect which plan to conquer the world or have special knowledge of magic and know the powers of god. But truly let us think about this. This was born as a society were intelligent and educated and influential men could be free to discuss with each other their political and religious beliefs, sans persecutions. Is it such a surprise that the uneducated and superstitious men of the time believed that masonry was some sort of supernatural, secret knowing, society for devil worship? 
> 
> As a person who knows my after and has met several of his friends who are part of it as well, it is hilarious to see such speculations on the internet.




Internet is full of conspiracies but who is going to believe conspiracy theories.  :Rofl:  But I will tell you something. My grandfather, a man of brilliant mind, was very interested in masonry. He researched this subject very thoroughly. There was not Internet at that time but many books were written about masonry and masons had bad reputations for centuries. Do your research and you will be surprised how many books you will find. Anyway, I wanted to research that subject to make up my mind about masonry. I have started with "blue blood" masons and I found scandals and corruption. But I have also found Masonic the Royal Order of Jester and their sex scandals. 

*Royal Order of Jesters from Masonic museum.*

http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masoni...ters_plate.htm

A few examples. 




> Several members of the organization in Western New York were charged with providing prostitutes for Jesters functions and transporting them across state lines. Retired State Supreme Court Justice Ronald Tills was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in August 2009. Previously sentenced was former police captain John Trowbridge (two years probation) and Till's law clerk Michael Stebick (4 months home confinement).[5] The charges were limited to these members of the Buffalo chapter, and a Jesters spokesman stated that this conduct was confined to that chapter.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Order_of_Jesters


This one was in Canada. 

*From CBCnews.*
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2001/01...ner012901.html




> *Police launch Shriners investigation*
> 
> There are several investigations underway concerning a raunchy Shriners fundraising event last week, and now the Winnipeg police are involved as well.
> Last Thursday night, the Motor Patrol of the Khartum Shriners held a 'gentlemen's dinner' fundraiser at the Garden City Inn. Roughly 400 men paid $75 each for the event, which included exotic dancers.
> *Witnesses at the event say the dinner turned lewd when a naked woman began performing lap dances. Lap dancing was declared illegal by the Supreme Court three years ago. They also say one woman was lying nude on a table and a man inserted a beer bottle in her. Later, men were throwing money on the table and performing oral sex on the same woman.* There are several investigations underway concerning a raunchy Shriners fundraising event last week, and now the Winnipeg police are involved as well.Last Thursday night, the Motor Patrol of the Khartum Shriners held a 'gentlemen's dinner' fundraiser at the Garden City Inn. Roughly 400 men paid $75 each for the event, which included exotic dancers.Witnesses at the event say the dinner turned lewd when a naked woman began performing lap dances. Lap dancing was declared illegal by the Supreme Court three years ago. They also say one woman was lying nude on a table and a man inserted a beer bottle in her. Later, men were throwing money on the table and performing oral sex on the same woman.There are four separate investigations into what happened at the dinner eventThere are four separate investigations into what happened at the dinner event The organizer of the event said money raised would go to help Shriners charities. But the Shriners executive says it didn't sanction the event, even though the liquor permit for the event used the Shriners name. So far, the Liquor Control Commission, the Garden City Inn and the Shriners have launched investigations into what happened that night. Now the Winnipeg police have entered the picture. "With what we've heard, and certainly what's been reported in the media, we have to look into it," says Inspector Gary Walker of the Winnipeg police. "There's significant interest in the community, and I think people want police to have a look at it." Manitoba's Minister of Justice, Gord Mackintosh, says the public needs to come forward to help police. "The allegations are disappointing and disturbing to me, and I urge anyone who believes they witnessed a criminal offence, to report that to police as good citizens."A spokesman from the Garden City Inn said today that as a result of the dinner, it will no longer allow strippers in its banquet room. No one from the Winnipeg Shriners would agree to an on-camera interview Monday.But the man in charge of all the Shriners in North America says he'll ask for an investigation.
> "It's always bothered me that in a large organization where we have half a million members, the actions of a few individuals can tarnish the image of the majority who work so hard to do so much good," says Robert Turnipseed, the Imperial Potentate of the International Shriners, speaking to CBC News from Idaho.The local chapter of the Shriners says it will not be accepting any of the money raised through the dinner.


There are more sex scandal and corruptions exposed but I don't want to waste my time for those bastards. Yes, they are well educated, judges, layers, or scientists. 

Again, do your research before telling people what they should think about masonry. I am not saying that every mason is like that. In fact, a mason in Texas a member of The Royal Order of Jesters said that many masons in his lodge were not aware was was going on in The Royal Order of Jesters. They love secrecy.  :Yikes:

----------


## Paulclem

> I don't get it.


Me neither. I wonder if it's a case of the emperor's new clothes, or am I missing something? Yes I am, the clothes are there. 

Edit: Just imagine if one of them started sniggering. I hope they had deep cushions. 

I really like the View of Toledo though. Never seen it before.

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## stlukesguild

The French writer and art critic, André Malraux made a good number of observations concerning art that have remained with me for years:

_There are no Sumerian, Egyptian, or Medieval hacks, but (our time is overrun with them). 

Masterpieces were never the "best products of their period," and they seem to be connected only with each other, and to rejoin each other across time- sometimes very long periods. The best part of Rodin's work knows nothing of the three centuries preceding it but continues Donatello. 

We know... that the pursuit of the divine is no assurance of genius, but genius cannot exist without it.

The artist can reach art only on the stairs of his highest values which he recognizes within his heart...

The matter of fact gods cannot replace those of profundity... money cannot replace god or spiritual longing as a source of passionate inspiration for the artist.

All great works of art are "original" but not in the modern sense of the word. For they are unique, and not unusual. Today "original" tends to mean "surprising"... the search for novelty... and the unusual._

For centuries religion... the Catholic Church and other religious/spiritual institutions... were the greatest patrons of the arts. There were, as Malraux suggested, few Medieval... and one might add few Renaissance "hacks" for the simple reason that the artists were largely employed in the honest expression of their highest beliefs and heart-felt faith. 

One first discovers a wealth of hack-work in the field of painting during the Baroque period... especially in Holland. Where the French, Spanish, and Italian artists still labored for the aristocrats and the church... whether their art conveyed their unsullied faith in the infallibility of these institutions... or whether, like Bosch and Breughel (among others) they offered satirical critical commentary upon the same. The Dutch, however, turned painting into one more mass-produced commodity. They instituted the middle-man... the art dealer... and they promoted specializations in order to reach every possible market: "You want a landscape with cows?" We got a guy who paints just that." "You want a still-life painting with lobster and tropical fruit to convey your wealth?" We got that too." Rembrandt struggled... and in his later years slipped into obscurity and poverty for the simple reason that he could not paint for such a market. Even when he made an attempt... such as in these paintings of a young girl at the doorway... a subject any other "Little Dutch Master" would have rendered in a cloyingly cute manner... certain to attract the buyer...





Rembrandt was unable to avoid attempting something a bit more profound... a sense of the personality or character of the sitter... and a certain brooding meditation upon the temporal nature of youth and beauty.

All these thoughts came to bear as I stumbled upon the sculptor, Ana Maria Pacheco. I used to stumble upon new artists quite frequently when I played a game over at the art site I frequent, at trying to guess the mystery artist from a posted image. Unfortunately, programs such as TinEye...:

http://www.tineye.com/

eliminated the challenge. Nevertheless, during a recent image search I stumbled upon Ana Maria Pacheco's work.

Ana Maria Pacheco is a sculptor, painter, print-maker who was born in Brazil and works and resides in the UK. Her work is partly inspired by the troubled period of Brazil's history, culminating in the takeover by the military junta in 1964, to which she was an eyewitness. Pacheco is best known for her multi-figure groups of polychrome (painted) sculptures carved from wood. These often deal with social/political issues as well as questions of spirituality and mortality. The works themselves are at once darkly sinister, touching, and comic. 

I brought up Malraux's comments and the notion of the church as patron of the arts for the simple reason that Pacheco's strongest work is undoubtedly a multi-figural installation created for Salisbury Cathedral, entitled _The Longest Journey_... which undoubtedly alludes to the journey from life to death... and whatever (if anything) awaits beyond.

























Pacheco's choice of medium: polychromed wood, alludes to the Spanish/Latin-American tradition of polchromed retables or altarpieces:



-Retable of the Cathedral of Toledo, Spain




-Retable of Turibius of Mongrovejo



-Retable of the Cathedral of Iglesia de Santa Ana in Maca

The simplistic forms of her carvings suggest the wood sculpture of the German Expressionists, such as E.L. Kirchner:



They also offer a nod in the direction of the simple and honest work of folk artists... in a manner not unlike the work of Elie Nadelman:



Perhaps most importantly, Pacheco's work employs a clarity of form and simplicity of gesture commonly found in the work of medieval sculptors:





This simplicity was demanded by the Church that looked to the visual arts as a means of conveying the essential narratives of the faith to a largely illiterate audience.

Malraux speaks of true "originality" as having little to do with novelty and striving for the latest astonishing effects. In contrast to many sworn-Modernists, Malraux recognized that contrary to the usual accusations of conservatism and reactionary tendencies, an artist may actually build upon the past... and even ignore the present and even generations that have preceded... and still achieve work of real merit... even genius. Pacheco avoids novelty and ornate or convoluted intellectual and/or visual complexities. Rather, she employs a "traditional" visual language capable of reaching an audience unfamiliar with the mental Onanism of Post-Modernist art and theory. 

Her installation, The Longest Journey, is quite touching in its representation of the waiting figures... men, women, and children. The boat is some ways suggests the crossing over to an unknown shore... whether this be the crossing of the River Styx undertaken by Dante in the _Comedia_, or that in Max Beckmann's iconic Modernist masterpiece, _Departure_, to which the sculpture almost surely pays homage...



...or any number of folk tales and songs that allude to going down to the river and waiting to cross over to the other side.

Pacheco's work is worth exploring. Beyond _The Longest Journey_ she has created memorable images of the often sinister powers that be and their abuse of those who they lord over:





Perhaps intriguing to the literary lovers are Pacheco's allusions to various literary/poetic narratives... such as Aeneas fleeing the destroyed city of Troy and carrying his elderly father, Anchises... an image implied by Pacheco's _Shadows of the Wanderer_:



And then there is the _Dark Night of the Soul_, an image of suffering, brutality, and torture that is both a response to _The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian_ by the Pollaiuolo brothers, and to the great poem by the visionary Spanish poet, San Juan della Cruz:



You can explore more of Pacheco's work at her website:

http://www.prattcontemporaryart.co.u...ria-pacheco-2/

----------


## Anton Hermes

> And then there is the _Dark Night of the Soul_, an image of suffering, brutality, and torture that is both a response to _The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian_ by the Pollaiuolo brothers, and to the great poem by the visionary Spanish poet, San Juan della Cruz


I got to see this when it was installed at a gallery in Massachusetts a few years ago. Very affecting work. Your picture doesn't convey the imposing size of the sculptures: huge, heavy presences which make the scene seem all the more foreboding.

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## stlukesguild

This one cracked me up:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19349921

I couldn't help but thinking of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=NQevyIy8hzs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMpsM...eature=related

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Ha! so that's what it looks like.
I had just overheard this today on the TV news at the airport waiting to board, but I didn't have a chance to actually see it.
The "restoration" is quite unusual a blend of St. Ignatius and a Teletubby.

Funny videos too.

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## Charles Darnay

I'm looking for a painting and I do not have the title or artist, and Google is not being helpful - so I'm hoping one of you might know the work.

I'm going to say it's Renaissance, but it may be Classical.

Three sections (panels) depicting Moses in three stages of life. The first one is him as an infant, the third is him leading the Jews out of Egypt - that's about all the details I have.

Thanks in advance!

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

"Three" and "panels" sounds like a Triptych? You might narrow your search under that category. Do you recall if the panels were connected or could it be you recalled three separate paintings in a series?

One example is the triptych of Moses and the burning bush:
http://www.artfinder.com/work/the-tr...-1/in/tag.oil/

If you are recalling images then perhaps the Moses series at the Sistine Chapel, by Perugio, Boticelli, Roselli and Signorelli but if this is something you saw in the flesh, then you wouldn't have forgotten the Sistine Chapel!

Other painters you might consider, that used Moses as a subject, include: Gentileschi, Veronese, Collantes, Poussin, Eckersberg, Romanelli, Subleyras. (from the old family bible illustrated with paintings) 

Maybe St. Lukes or someone else will peg this.
I'll pass on anything else that comes to mind.

.

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## Tor-Hershman

Hey, St. Luke's Guild, I can't find the thread for postin' your own art, please... where is it?

Anywho, here's a video with a most special appearance by Duchamp.

 :CoolgleamA:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwc65bf99_o  :Drool5: 

Stay on groovin' safari,
Tor

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## Charles Darnay

Aha, I found it!

It is a painting by 16th c. Flemish painter Peter Classens the Elder. "Moses Breaking Pharaoh's Crown"

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

A bit different from your recollection, but good to see you found it none the less.

Now that my thoughts are on Moses, I'm recalling the sculpture of Moses with horns by Michelangelo at San Pietro in Vincoli Rome. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_(Michelangelo)





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_(Michelangelo)

One of the fresocos at San Pietro in Vincoli :

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## Charles Darnay

> A bit different from your recollection, but good to see you found it none the less.


yeah, sorry: thanks for the help nonetheless.

I think my mind has combined Classens' painting with Bosch's Garden into some weird, I've got to stop absorbing too much art at the same time, mess.

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## stlukesguild

Now that my thoughts are on Moses, I'm recalling the sculpture of Moses with horns by Michelangelo at San Pietro in Vincoli Rome. 

The year I graduated from Art School I moved to New York where I worked for a while as a "demo-man" (tearing out conduit and pipes out of a building being renovated and turned into artist's work-live studio apartments. The head demo-man... a towering man at least 6 foot 6 in height with a full flowing beard worthy of an Old Testament prophet looked like Michelangelo's _Moses_ to an astonishing... I should say a disconcerting extent... especially as I'd never met another individual who swore as consistently... and with such bravura... as he did. His most eloquent and passionate use of profanity was reserved for his partner, a little black man from the islands (the Bahamas or there about) named Griff. "Moses" got his comeuppance one night when after getting paid we all ended up in a bar where Griff and he engaged in a competition downing shots of rum... the loser to pay. In spite of his admirable height and heft, rum was like mother's milk to little Griff who ended up drinking "Moses" under the table... where he literally passed out and spent the rest of the evening.

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## Mr.lucifer

Hey Luke, how come you don't post pics of your art anymore?

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## stlukesguild

Considering that I have been painting nudes for some time, I've somewhat shied away from posting these considering the wrong ideas some have concerning nudity in art. I can't say I ever got much response when I did post my work here one way or the other, on the other hand... I have recently been showing a number of the works at a local gallery and university art department.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

> Now that my thoughts are on Moses, I'm recalling the sculpture of Moses with horns by Michelangelo at San Pietro in Vincoli Rome. 
> 
> The year I graduated from Art School I moved to New York where I worked for a while as a "demo-man" (tearing out conduit and pipes out of a building being renovated and turned into artist's work-live studio apartments. The head demo-man... a towering man at least 6 foot 6 in height with a full flowing beard worthy of an Old Testament prophet looked like Michelangelo's _Moses_ to an astonishing... I should say a disconcerting extent... especially as I'd never met another individual who swore as consistently... and with such bravura... as he did. His most eloquent and passionate use of profanity was reserved for his partner, a little black man from the islands (the Bahamas or there about) named Griff. "Moses" got his comeuppance one night when after getting paid we all ended up in a bar where Griff and he engaged in a competition downing shots of rum... the loser to pay. In spite of his admirable height and heft, rum was like mother's milk to little Griff who ended up drinking "Moses" under the table... where he literally passed out and spent the rest of the evening.


I really enjoyed this. Like a mini short story.  :Nod:

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## ftil

> Considering that I have been painting nudes for some time, I've somewhat shied away from posting these considering the wrong ideas some have concerning nudity in art. I can't say I ever got much response when I did post my work here one way or the other, on the other hand... I have recently been showing a number of the works at a local gallery and university art department.


LOL! Nudity is beautiful but you have a such a bad taste of artists who perverted nudity.
But I understand considering your age :Brow:

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

> LOL! Nudity is beautiful but you have a such a bad taste of artists who perverted nudity.
> But I understand considering your age


I love when someone completely insults someone else and then adds an emoticon as if to say, "hey, I was just kidding," when everyone knows they weren't

----------


## stlukesguild

I have "bad taste" in artistic nudity I take to mean that I actually like a number of Modern and even Contemporary artists who have employed the nude. Perverts such as:

Gustav Klimt (Click small images for full-sized image):



Amedeo Modigliani:



Henri Matisse:



Pierre Bonnard:



Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski):



Pablo Picasso:



Max Beckmann:



Romare Bearden:



George Tooker:



Peter Blake:



Niel Welliver:



William Beckman:



and undoubtedly the worst of all is that degenerate, Lucian Freud:



Of course, I suspect that what ftil means by "perverted nudity" is any use of nudity that suggests the least erotic or sexual content... as if there was none of this in the masterpieces of nude art created by the old masters:

Michelangelo:



Titian:



Veronese:



Peter Paul Rubens:



Boucher:



Eugene Delacroix:



Anders Zorn:



Rodin:



and Degas:



Of course I am in full agreement with the great art historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, who suggested:

"... the human body is rich in associations, and when it is turned into art, these associations are not entirely lost. It is ourselves and arouses memories of all the things we wish to do with ourselves; and first of all we wish to perpetuate ourselves... it is necessary to labor the obvious and say that no nude, however abstract, should fail to rouse in the spectator, some vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow, and if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals. The desire to grasp and be united with another human body is so fundamental a part of our nature, that our judgment of what is known as "pure form" is inevitably influenced by it; and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art, is that these insticts cannot lie hidden... but are dragged into the foreground, where they risk upsetting the unity of responses from which a work of art derives its independent life. Even so, the amount of erotic content a work of art can hold... is very high. The temple sculptures of tenth-century India are an undisguised exaltation of physical desire, yet they are great works of art..."

But perhaps ftil is too old to remember any of this. :Biggrin:

----------


## ftil

> I have "bad taste" in artistic nudity I take to mean that I actually like a number of Modern and even Contemporary artists who have employed the nude.


I didn't expect such a fast response.  :Brow:  You have a short memory as we had several discussions where I expressed my thoughts about ugliness of art you have chosen.






> Of course, I suspect that what ftil means by "perverted nudity" is any use of nudity that suggests the least erotic or sexual content... as if there was none of this in the masterpieces of nude art created by the old masters:


Hmm.....where did I expressed my disapproval of great masters you posted?
Poor attempt to turn everything upside down.  :Eek:  I was talking about ugly art.







> Of course I am in full agreement with the great art historian, Sir Kenneth Clark, who suggested:
> But perhaps ftil is too old to remember any of this.


LOL! After reading his words I wouldn't waste my time to read more.You too much depend what others say to defend yourself.

Sadly, you still dont understand my pointafter many months and many discussions.  :Mad2: 

You have posted again a few painters........Let's look at beauty of art of your favorites.  :Reddevil: 

 

*Balthus, Guitar Lesson, 1934,* 




*Balthus*



or another your favorite........ :Biggrin5: 




*Egon Schiele, A woman nude body*





*Egon Schiele, Masturbation 2*

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

I think you need to use more emoticons, ftil. They really enhance your point!

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## stlukesguild

mm.....where did I expressed my disapproval of great masters you posted? Poor attempt to turn everything upside down. I was talking about ugly art.

Somehow I don't think I'd want you defining what art is or is not "ugly". Certainly there is art that is "ugly"... and yet aesthetically "beautiful"... that which was later referred to as the "sublime":











More toward our own time, that which was once deemed "sublime" often became known under the name "expressionism". The themes were often the same: an art which explores horror, pain, angst, ugliness... the most intense of human emotions. Or perhaps you notion of art is that it should only explore that which is pretty and fluffy?



A painting such as Edvard Munch's Madonna is not pretty... but it is an aesthetically powerful work that explores the artist's own fears of sexuality and its links with Tuberculosis and venereal diseases that were rampant in the late 19th/early 20th century.

Neither does Egon Schiele offer a candy-coated view of the world. As might be expected of a Viennese artist, he was well acquainted with many of the ideas related to sexuality and angst that were circulating among Viennese artists and intellectuals. He was also cognizant of the hypocritical nature of the view of sex among the Viennese middle-class who expected men to be sexually experienced... through prostitutes or their servants, while demanding that women remain ever virginal. The very idea that women might have sexual desires was considered outrageous and blasphemous. 

Schiele offered a view of women as femme-fatales and vampires... seductive... and yet dangerous and reeking of death. 



In a painting like Death and the Maiden, Schiele explores an old Germanic theme linking death and beauty... death and sex. The subject was one employed by Franz Schubert in both one of his best known lieder... and a late string quartet... composed as he was aware of his own impending early demise... due to syphilis. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoZJkkWX8Yw

Yes... Schiele could offer a view of sexuality that was disturbing... angst-laden... dangerous... such as the images you posted. But he could also offer a view of sexuality that was turbulent and passionate:



His works could even be quite sensitive and touching... when portraying his own beloved wife:



Balthus was considered by many to have been one of the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century. Early in his career he was associated with the Surrealists, and like them, he sought to outrage the bourgeois sensibilities. A good many of his earlier paintings were blatantly blasphemous and pornographic. The painting you posted above, The Guitar Lesson, succeeded on both levels. The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's _La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon_:



If you knew your art history as well as you think you do, you would know that Balthus later repudiated these early juvenile attempts to shock. When the director of MoMA, Alfred Barr, mentioned that he wished to display Balthus' painting, The Street... but could not... due to a certain overtly sexual detail, Balthus offered to repaint the offending passage, and Barr accepted his offer:



Balthus is most known and admired for his classically constructed compositions, his marvelous handling of color and paint, and the fresco-like surfaces of his canvases. The most admired paintings by Balthus look like this:







The second painting by Balthus that you posted above, _The Chamber_, is certainly one of his finer... and best known works. As with many of his paintings, it deals with the anxieties of adolescence... the period of transition from innocent childhood... to knowing adulthood... and all that entails. In _The Chamber_, a golem-like figure throws back the curtains exposing an adolescent girl lost in her dreams... perhaps of a nascent erotic nature. In many other paintings of the period, he presents adolescent girls as clearly far more knowing that their male counterparts. In this game, it is clearly the girl... seated like a queen on her throne... as opposed to the boy... uncomfortably balanced on his stool... who holds the winning cards:



After reading his words I wouldn't waste my time to read more.You too much depend what others say to defend yourself.

Oh please... this from the woman who continually sites a bunch of psycho-babble writers in attempting to interpret art.

----------


## ftil

> If you knew your art history as well as you think you do, you would know that Balthus later repudiated these early juvenile attempts to shock. When the director of MoMA, Alfred Barr, mentioned that he wished to display Balthus' painting, The Street... but could not... due to a certain overtly sexual detail, Balthus offered to repaint the offending passage, and Barr accepted his offer:


Thanks for good laughter. You know very well that I am not an art teacher and I don’t have any desire to become as such. I would stop loving art.  :FRlol:  I don’t deepened on art scholars as you do. But I love art and beauty and I love art scholars who have brilliant mind and rich soul that appreciate beauty. 






> Oh please... this from the woman who continually sites a bunch of psycho-babble writers in attempting to interpret art.


You need to show me where I said it. LOL!

I never interpret art and I said it several times......but you ignore it as usual. It is you who made assumptions about artist’s intentions.......and I am sure that you believe that it is true. 

Second, it was you who tried to support your argument about sexuality in Hindu temple by bringing Freud. Hey, you may benefit if you study what projection means…you may get rid of your bad habit of projecting your issues upon others.

Finally, you know very well that I choose teachers and scholars from whom I want to learn. You have quoted Sir Kenneth Clark twice in this thread. It sounds that he is an ultimate authority for you to follow. As I said after reading his few words, I wouldn't waste my time.  :Tongue:

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## mona amon

StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?

----------


## ftil

> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> 
> The painting you posted above, The Guitar Lesson, succeeded on both levels. The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon:
> The work was clearly a disturbingly sexual parody of Enguerrand Quarton's La Pietà de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.


I was quite intrigued what you wrote about Guitar Lesson as a sexual parody and I did search what others have to say about it. 




> The most controversial of his works is the painting titled The Guitar Lesson (see fig.1) which was one of his first five works he exposed in the Gallery Pierre in Paris in 1934 during his first solo exposition. The painting scandalized the public and the French media showed no mercy. He was generally accused of being obsessed with sexual perversity. One of the strongest statements came from Gaston Poulin[6] who named the artist a fanatic nymphomaniac. Furthermore, he described his style as naïve and crude portraying Balthus as the cruelest painter than Goya and Rouault. This particular painting is rarely shown and at the present it is in the hands of a privet collector. Whenever it was exposed, even the first time, it was presented mostly in separate rooms covered with the curtains just for special public to see. For forty years Balthus did not wanted this painting to be exposed or printed because as he himself explained from fear of the public misunderstanding of his controversial piece. The close examination of this particular artwork might vaguely respond why would people be offended to such degree by this image. Certainly, it would not be exaggeration to say that this image represents the zenith of his provocative artistic perversity.
> 
> Many artists are trying to surround themselves with the mist of mystery in order to attract the public interest in their creative efforts[7] and* Balthus was a master of it. He never gives any explanation why he does what he does.* That is why so much curiosity surrounds him. To criticize his artwork by the imagery would be too easy and unfortunately many critics do it. Before judging his paintings positively or negatively one needs to focus on deeper study of his artwork because in Balthus case each element of the image tells a story, understanding of which depends on how far we are prepared intellectually to dissect the hidden meanings. The Guitar Lesson depicts the moment of sadistic violence executed on the innocent female child by her guitar teacher. The child is lying on the teachers knees in the position of Pieta[8] suggesting the death Jesus reincarnated in the girls denuded figure. The naked body of the child is smoothly transferred symbolically into the erotic guitar on which the teacher is playing the sadistic notes of erotic education. It looks like the child is forced to play hesitantly with the partially denuded sensually erected breast of the teacher. *Looking at the Balthus study sketches done for this painting, it becomes clear that he wanted to paint himself as a teacher but probably he realized that such scene would not be acceptable for any public display.* It would be too personal and too revealing of his somehow overloaded with sexual fantasies mind. That is why he decided to replace himself with a woman. It probably appeared to Balthus safer to depict lesbian sodomy rather than to use the mixed genders. However, he could not refuse himself the pleasure to portray at least his face in the corps of the woman teacher. Comparing the teachers facial futures with the Heathcliff face from The Cathys Toilet, (see. fig.2) artwork where Balthus portrayed himself as a Heathcliff and his future wife[9] as a Cathy, the two principal characters of his favor bookWuthering Heights, the resemblance of the two faces is unquestionable. Furthermore, his sketches (see fig. 3) for the artwork clearly confirm that. The teachers right hand is squeezing the girls hair lock as the guitar neck and with her left hand she is pulling the imaginary strings in the childs pubic area. The almost feinted girl gives impression of being entirely submitted to her teachers erotic game. Her face projects evident signs of the total subjection to the sadistic sexual sodomy of her innocence. The childs right hand partly reposing on the floor is touching the guitar neck lying on the parquet forming a triangle suggesting the pubic area. The instrument noise hole is symbolizing the loss of innocence by the girl. The colors[10] of the childs clothing are also symbols of the transition from the state of innocence to the state of impurity of experienced sexual pleasures. The vertical lines on the wallpaper suggest the cage of immorality to which each female child will eventually be subjected. The green color of the lines symbolizes the freshness of the girls femininity. The piano situated on the left side of the painting suggests much more elaborated erotic initiation in the near future when the girl would be a woman.[11] It is really fascinating artwork executed with simplicity and sincere adoration of innocent purity of the childish femininity. This painting is mentioned in many publications as a legendary probably because of its provocative content. Balthus will never again be so open to expose his explicit interiority to the exterior world. This artwork forces us to recognize that we all have a room for provocative drastic perversity and only by pure hypocritical social attitude some of us find paintings like this drastically shocking.
> 
> After his questionable experiences with The Guitar Lesson painting Balthus elaborated his provocative attitude by painting the adoration of childish femininity using rather poetic eroticism.
> 
> Most scholars recognized the particularity of the subjects of his artistic quest and also his artistic greatness and individuality, while others see rather just the obsessive pedophiliac character and mediocrity of it. His artwork is certainly controversial according to the contemporary social fragility towards such delicate issues as a depiction of the sexual innocence of the children, especially young girls.
> 
> Balthus was one of those artists whose persona had extremely rich inner world filled up with elaborated perverse fantasy.
> ...


I wouldn't agree with last paragraph. From psychological point of view, an adult man who is preoccupied with his own childish memories and erotic fantasies indicates mental and emotional immaturity. I would argue that each of us has a hidden room for perversity that is room for pedophilia. Finally, since the author said that Balthus never has given any explanation why he did what he did.....we can only make assumptions. Therefore, the image is worth more than thousands of words.

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## stlukesguild

StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?

That reproduction... the best available on the net (good reproductions of contemporary work is often difficult to find due to issues of copyright and the desire of galleries to maintain control over images by artists they represent) is undoubtedly not the finest. I have seen the particular painting... a portrait of the artist's wife... several times in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. The painting is rendered in an exquisitely polished manner. It is at once "painterly"... and yet the sense of detail and the polished surface are stunning. I am reminded of Ingres. The color is equally exquisite. The background... which appears as little more than a muddy brown in the reproduction, in real life reveals layers of color. One especially notices the subtle mauve or lavender beneath the surface color... which contrasts the warm flesh tones beautifully.

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## Pierre Menard

I just read every page of this thread with fascination. 


Stlukes, is there a particular book/books that you'd recommend to a art newbie who wants a pretty solid overview of art history, the major players, movements, etc?

I'd more than appreciate suggestions from anyone else as well.

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## Scheherazade

*~

W a r n i n g

Please do not personalise your comment

and 

discuss the topics at hand rather than each other.

~*

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## ftil

> This particular painting is rarely shown and at the present it is in the hands of a privet collector. Whenever it was exposed, even the first time, it was presented mostly in separate rooms covered with the curtains just for special public to see. For forty years Balthus did not wanted this painting to be exposed or printed because as he himself explained from fear of the public misunderstanding of his controversial piece. The close examination of this particular artwork might vaguely respond why would people be offended to such degree by this image. Certainly, it would not be exaggeration to say that this image represents the zenith of his provocative artistic perversity.


Stlukesguild, 

I am quite curious about the painting mentioned in the article I posted. There is no title. Have you seen it, and if so, do know where I can find it? It would be interesting to see it considering the fact that Balthus had no objection to show Guitar lesson.

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## stlukesguild

There are a number of highly respected Art History tomes commonly employed in college/university Art History surveys. Jansen's is one of the finest:

http://www.amazon.com/Jansons-Histor...rds=art+jansen

http://www.amazon.com/History-Art-H-...history+abrams

Perhaps the finest sources I have are the "coffee-table" books published by Konemann. These focus upon a single art historical period or city, are lavishly illustrated, and the text is clear and quite in-depth. Among these you might look at:

































Seriously, you can gain a solid art historical education just through Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Mesopotamia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_and...ure_of_Assyria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_ancient_Egypt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Kingdom_of_Egypt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycladic_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Greece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeian_Styles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_sculpture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_portraiture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_architecture

Using the links... you could conceivably garner a grasp of the whole of Western Art History by starting here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_art_history 

But a well-constructed text like Jansen's is probably the best route... after a basic art history survey course.

----------


## stlukesguild

The article you posted refers to Balthus _The Guitar Player_, which you already posted above.



The painting was particularly disturbing not only because of the sexual nature of the imagery as well as the age of the participants... but also due to the style of Balthus painting... which was rooted in children's book illustrations... as well as the blatant blasphemous nature of the work. You'll notice how the woman's hand... fondling the girl... is a clear echo/parody of the saint strumming the rays of Christ's halo in Enguerrand Quarton's _Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon_... a painting that Balthus would have known from the Louvre. 



Balthus at the time was very much under the influence of the Surrealists. Surrealism made many references to subconscious sexual desires and rejected any notion of editing or repressing the expression of these desires... however offensive or "perverse". Similar themes of the sexuality of children were explored by Andre Breton, Georges Bataille (see his infamous _Story of the Eye_) as well as by Balthus own brother, the writer Pierre Klossowski. Perhaps most infamous were the works of the artist, Hans Bellmer, much of whose work (drawings, prints, photographs, and dolls) verges on the pornographic. 

Much of the sex-obsessed work of the Surrealists comes off (with the passage of time) as juvenile, and many of the strongest artists who worked within the Surrealist vein were those outside of the group proper: Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, etc... Balthus himself eventually moved on from his youthful obsessions with perversity and shock... probably due in part to a coming of age brought about by the realities of WWII and his first marriage. His later works were primarily formalist and classicist in nature... influenced by early Italian painting as a result of his tenure as the director of the French Academy in Rome, and later by Japanese art, brought about by his experiences as a cultural diplomat to Japan instigated by the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, where Balthus met his second wife-to-be, Setsuko Ideta.

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## ftil

Well, it is your interpretation and very different from Andre Puet, painter and writer, the author of the article I posted. It seems that he is quite knowledgeable about Balthus as he listed in bibliography 25 books written about Balthus. Even though I dont agree with everything what he wrote in terms of his interpretation of mental and emotional states of Balthus and his motives to paint Guitar lesson, I agree with his overall evaluation of that painting. 

BTW, do you know the name of his painting that was presented mostly in separate rooms covered with the curtains just for special public to see. 

My curiosity is quite high.  :FRlol:

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## mortalterror

> StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?
> 
> That reproduction... the best available on the net (good reproductions of contemporary work is often difficult to find due to issues of copyright and the desire of galleries to maintain control over images by artists they represent) is undoubtedly not the finest. I have seen the particular painting... a portrait of the artist's wife... several times in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. The painting is rendered in an exquisitely polished manner. It is at once "painterly"... and yet the sense of detail and the polished surface are stunning. I am reminded of Ingres. The color is equally exquisite. The background... which appears as little more than a muddy brown in the reproduction, in real life reveals layers of color. One especially notices the subtle mauve or lavender beneath the surface color... which contrasts the warm flesh tones beautifully.


I'm not exactly thrilled by that realistic style either. It seems like everyone who works in realism makes that same boring painting. An unidealized man or woman stands or sits against a blank background with maybe one or two other squares of color to liven and contrast the composition.

"Oh, the wall behind them isn't really blank? It's layered and textured? Bull****! I don't care about your stupid painterly effect if it's boring to look at. Learn to draw a landscape like Da Vinci put behind his _Mona Lisa_. Or draw the freaking body in motion instead of your models locked in frozen poses.

"Well Rembrandt did it that way." "You ain't Rembrandt." Besides Rembrandt would throw all kinds of detail and individual character into people's clothing, skin, and hair. They were always in costumes with cool plays of light and shading. He was theatrical. Titian's _Man with the Blue Sleeve_ works like it does because of the expressive nature of his subject, the handsome costume, and the intricate detail of said costume. It's not because people love single toned blank walls.

The artists I'm criticizing should try something more like what Ghirlandaio did with his _An Old Man and His Grandson_ or what Piero della Francesca achieved with his _Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and His Wife Battista Sforza._ That way if your model is uninteresting you might catch the attention of a viewer by some other detail.

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## stlukesguild

Well, it is your interpretation...

What interpretation? I simply offered you some basic art historical background on Balthus. The only opinion I expressed was that of the assessment of the merits of Surrealism. 

...very different from Andre Puet, painter and writer, the author of the article I posted. It seems that he is quite knowledgeable about Balthus as he listed in bibliography 25 books written about Balthus. 

According to his website, Andre Pijet is primarily an illustrator. His efforts as a writer seem limited to the essays he has posted on his web site. By that standard, you and I are just as much "writers" as Pijet... although I do have a number of published essays. His citation of some 25 books for a brief essay seems like a bit of overkill... although I have employed as in depth of a bibliography when writing for a college courses. Of course it doesn't mean one has read the whole book. Having said that, I wouldn't begin to suggest that I am an "expert" on Balthus. I am actually far more familiar with his paintings than I am with his biography. 

Even though I dont agree with everything what he wrote in terms of his interpretation of mental and emotional states of Balthus and his motives to paint Guitar lesson...

Well any such interpretation of the mental and emotional states of the artist is but speculation.

----------


## ftil

> Well, it is your interpretation...
> 
> What interpretation? I simply offered you some basic art historical background on Balthus. The only opinion I expressed was that of the assessment of the merits of Surrealism. 
> 
> 
> According to his website, Andre Pijet is primarily an illustrator. His efforts as a writer seem limited to the essays he has posted on his web site. By that standard, you and I are just as much "writers" as Pijet... although I do have a number of published essays. His citation of some 25 books for a brief essay seems like a bit of overkill... although I have employed as in depth of a bibliography when writing for a college courses. Of course it doesn't mean one has read the whole book. Having said that, I wouldn't begin to suggest that I am an "expert" on Balthus. I am actually far more familiar with his paintings than I am with his biography.



Well, I read his article with a pleasure and I am glad that I found it. You are entitled to your opinion but dont expect that others will accept it without questioning or verifying if it is true or not. I certainly have done it as it was such a discrepancy between what I saw on Balthuss and Schieles paintings and your interpretation.

It is not a good argument to undermine his work. His article stands on its own that everybody can see it.

BTW, you are a master of avoidance.... :FRlol: Anyway, I sent him an e-mial, asking where I can find the painting. I am eager to read a few books about Balthus. I really want to see his heights of artistic perversion as well as who was lucky to be chosen to see his paintings. 






> Well any such interpretation of the mental and emotional states of the artist is but speculation.


Well, it has nothing to do with interpretation or speculation provided that you can read feelings behind paintings. Later, I may elaborate a bit about it regarding Schieles art.

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## stlukesguild

"Boring" speaks more of the viewer than of the art work... and we all know that your bias in art is toward the literary narrative, the theatricality, and the complex. But visual art is first and foremost VISUAL. It is about the "stupid" visual elements of color, line, texture, value, etc... and how these are organized before anything else. 

Learn to draw a landscape like Da Vinci put behind his Mona Lisa. Or draw the freaking body in motion instead of your models locked in frozen poses."Well Rembrandt did it that way." "You ain't Rembrandt." 

Yes... all art must be about the narrative... people running about or acting out some grandiose drama. The simple still-life can't be great art...

 













But then you are confronted with Rembrandt's or Vermeer's or Raphael's static portraits and all you can come up with is "Well you ain't Rembrandt"... because you really don't know what makes Rembrandt work... because it involves a sensitivity to the visual elements... the artist's touch... the colors and textures... and not to something that can be easily put into words... something narrative. 

Besides Rembrandt would throw all kinds of detail and individual character into people's clothing, skin, and hair. They were always in costumes with cool plays of light and shading. He was theatrical. Titian's Man with the Blue Sleeve works like it does because of the expressive nature of his subject, the handsome costume, and the intricate detail of said costume. It's not because people love single toned blank walls.

And do you honestly believe that Rembrandt's or Vermeer's paintings are so admired because of the details... the cool costumes... the staged lighting? No other artists of the era were doing the same thing just as well? And do you honestly imagine that complexity is inherently an attribute... that simplicity
cannot result in a great work of art?











The artists I'm criticizing should try something more like what Ghirlandaio did with his An Old Man and His Grandson or what Piero della Francesca achieved with his Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and His Wife Battista Sforza. That way if your model is uninteresting you might catch the attention of a viewer by some other detail.

In a way, if you are dealing with an attractive model... or an overly "unique" model, there is a danger in the art becoming secondary to the subject. In other words... the viewer is seduced/intrigued by the subject... but not necessarily by what the artist has done with the subject.

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## ftil

Thank you for still life. Nice change. Simple and beautiful. I like Jean-Baptiste Chardin. 

A few more of his paintings.



*Jean-Baptiste Chardin, Still Life with a Basket of Peaches, White and Black Grapes with Cooler and Wineglass.*




*Jean-Baptiste Chardin, The Kitchen Table*


Or, Paul Cézanne



*Paul Cézanne, Apples on a Sheet*





*Juan Gris, Still Life with Guitar, book and newspaper*




*Still Life' and Andre Derain*




Or, Balthus.........

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

I've yet to come across a still life that does much for me, unless it has something cool in it like skulls or something.

----------


## mortalterror

> "Boring" speaks more of the viewer than of the art work... and we all know that your bias in art is toward the literary narrative, the theatricality, and the complex. But visual art is first and foremost VISUAL. It is about the "stupid" visual elements of color, line, texture, value, etc... and how these are organized before anything else. 
> 
> Learn to draw a landscape like Da Vinci put behind his Mona Lisa. Or draw the freaking body in motion instead of your models locked in frozen poses."Well Rembrandt did it that way." "You ain't Rembrandt." 
> 
> Yes... all art must be about the narrative... people running about or acting out some grandiose drama. The simple still-life can't be great art...
> 
> But then you are confronted with Rembrandt's or Vermeer's or Raphael's static portraits and all you can come up with is "Well you ain't Rembrandt"... because you really don't know what makes Rembrandt work... because it involves a sensitivity to the visual elements... the artist's touch... the colors and textures... and not to something that can be easily put into words... something narrative. 
> 
> Besides Rembrandt would throw all kinds of detail and individual character into people's clothing, skin, and hair. They were always in costumes with cool plays of light and shading. He was theatrical. Titian's Man with the Blue Sleeve works like it does because of the expressive nature of his subject, the handsome costume, and the intricate detail of said costume. It's not because people love single toned blank walls.
> ...


Take away his little pictures and he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Are you even trying now? Look how flimsy your arguments are! They are just a series of ad hominem and reductio ad absurdum. You can't pretend I didn't make valid points just by omitting them in your response. If you don't refute them, then they stand as proved.

1.Da Vinci and Piero della Francesca did a nice job with those landscapes in the back of their famous portraits. It would be nice to see more like that.

2.William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?

3.Beckman is just one of a dozen painters making that same painting today, and that lack of originality on his part is more boring than the picture itself.

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

I'm way out of my league on this one. I'm just gonna enjoy the show.  :Lurk5:

----------


## ftil

> Take away his little pictures and he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Are you even trying now? Look how flimsy your arguments are! They are just a series of ad hominem and reductio ad absurdum. You can't pretend I didn't make valid points just by omitting them in your response. If you don't refute them, then they stand as proved.
> 
> 1.Da Vinci and Piero della Francesca did a nice job with those landscapes in the back of their famous portraits. It would be nice to see more like that.
> 
> 2.William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?
> 
> 3.*Beckman is just one of a dozen painters making that same painting today, and that lack of originality on his part is more boring than the picture itself.*


You have brought strong points. I agree with you. Anyway, I don't want to interfere but I want to post paintings you have mention in your posts.



*Piero della Francesca, Federico da Montefeltro.* 





*Domenico Ghirlandaio, An Old Man and his Grandson.* 





*Titian, Man with the Blue Sleeve*




*Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa*





*Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid* 





*Raphael, La Donna Velata* 


And *William Beckman*  :FRlol:

----------


## stlukesguild

William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?

Your hypothesis is based on what? A crappy online reproduction? You've never seen a William Beckman in person... and I doubt you've even seen a Vermeer in person... but you are making your assessments of the painting merits from second-hand knowledge.

Certainly I will agree that there are dozens of realist painters of equal merit. Lucian Freud was far better, and Will Cotton is no less good... albeit his approach owes less to Ingres or Neo-Classicism and more to the light touch and playfulness of the Rococo. However, I have seen a good dozen of Beckman's paintings in real life... in his New York Gallery as well as in a couple of museums. His paint handling is absolutely stunning. No... the work doesn't exhibit the fluidity of the Baroque... or even of a painter like Sargent... it is far closer to the Neo-Classicism of William Bailey. Unfortunately you critical assessment of contemporary... and even modern art is as useless as your assessment of modern and contemporary literature... for the simple reason that you are biased against it as a whole... and only admire that which pastiches the work of the old masters.

But then, Mortal... you have ftil on your side with her brilliant grasp of art... and her mastery of emoticons... so you might just have the upper hand.

----------


## mona amon

> StLukes, I liked all the paintings you posted, except the one by William Beckman. To me it looks like an uninteresting painting of a not particularly beautiful or particularly ugly woman. What am I missing?
> 
> That reproduction... the best available on the net (good reproductions of contemporary work is often difficult to find due to issues of copyright and the desire of galleries to maintain control over images by artists they represent) is undoubtedly not the finest. I have seen the particular painting... a portrait of the artist's wife... several times in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. The painting is rendered in an exquisitely polished manner. It is at once "painterly"... and yet the sense of detail and the polished surface are stunning. I am reminded of Ingres. The color is equally exquisite. The background... which appears as little more than a muddy brown in the reproduction, in real life reveals layers of color. One especially notices the subtle mauve or lavender beneath the surface color... which contrasts the warm flesh tones beautifully.


Ah, I thought it may be that. I've seen paintings that seem unimpressive in the catalogue but look amazing when you see them in the gallery.

Interesting that it's a portrait of his wife. One of the problems I had with this painting is that the face and figure were so individualized - like someone you'd bump into in the supermarket, but without her clothes on. A bit disconcerting!  :Alien:

----------


## stlukesguild

ftil... since you obviously find my taste in Modern and Contemporary art so laughable, I think we'd all be pleased to see your idea of what constitutes some of the finest paintings by living artists.

Interesting that it's a portrait of his wife. One of the problems I had with this painting is that the face and figure were so individualized - like someone you'd bump into in the supermarket, but without her clothes on. A bit disconcerting!

Actually... that was quite the feeling that I initially got upon seeing that painting in person. I had just finished art school... and in many ways this painting... and the nude by Lucian Freud in the same gallery left me absolutely disconcerted. Coming out of years of study of Modernism and Post-Modernism, these paintings didn't look at all like what we had been taught art was like. But I kept coming back... and looking again. Later I found myself thinking how the experience was not unlike the sort of disconcerted... and even outraged responses that Courbet had faced. Quite honestly, my own taste leans away from this sort of realism, and toward something more stylized... abstracted... "artful". But I still found the work quite powerful.

I have an early morning class and then I'm off to the studio, but later tomorrow I'll try to dig up some reproductions of work by a number of artists active over the past few decades... regardless of subject matter or style... whose work I quite like.

----------


## ftil

> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> But then, Mortal... you have ftil on your side with her brilliant grasp of art... and her mastery of emoticons... so you might just have the upper hand.


Hehehe..have you missed Scheherazades post about not making personal comments? It was on a previous page.
You can do better than that..  :Reddevil: 

Lets go back to Egon Schiele.




> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> 
> Neither does Egon Schiele offer a candy-coated view of the world. As might be expected of a Viennese artist, he was well acquainted with many of the ideas related to sexuality and angst that were circulating among Viennese artists and intellectuals. He was also cognizant of the hypocritical nature of the view of sex among the Viennese middle-class who expected men to be sexually experienced... through prostitutes or their servants, while demanding that women remain ever virginal. The very idea that women might have sexual desires was considered outrageous and blasphemous. 
> 
> Schiele offered a view of women as femme-fatales and vampires... seductive... and yet dangerous and reeking of death. 
> 
> 
> Yes... Schiele could offer a view of sexuality that was disturbing... angst-laden... dangerous... such as the images you posted. But he could also offer a view of sexuality that was turbulent and passionate.




Let's look at his art and his life.

*The new York Times:The Wider, Not Wilder, Egon Schiele
By KEN JOHNSON*
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/ar...pagewanted=all





> The Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) had only two urgent interests: himself and his sexual fantasies. Out of such limited preoccupations and by means of a preternatural gift for drawing and graphic design, he created artworks that still burn with narcissistic yearning, erotic desire, bohemian dissent and existential anxiety.




*Black-haired girl with high skirt*





> Was Schiele a pornographer? In some sense he surely was making art with the purpose of provoking sexual arousal - in addition to shocking the bourgeoisie - and there were people who purchased his work with that purpose in mind, so the answer is yes. (There is also enough evidence to get him charged, if not convicted, as a pedophile by today's standards.) But there have been few pornographers who drew as well as he did. At his best, Schiele was in Toulouse-Lautrec's league as a draftsman. His ways with composition, line and color and his responsiveness to paper were nothing short of exquisite.
> Then there was the issue of Schiele's personal life: his interest in underage girls who often modeled for him, and his arrest and 24-day imprisonment in 1912 on charges - eventually dropped - of abducting and molesting a 13-year-old girl. The catalog is circumspect about Schiele's personal life, but the myth of his transgressive predilections remains intact.




*Woman With Blue Stockings*





> Unlike Toulouse-Lautrec, however, Schiele takes little interest in women as people. Women for Schiele are almost always archetypal; in portraits they have severe, masklike faces; in full-figure drawings they are interchangeable objects of desire. There is a certain pathos to his depiction of women, as there is in his portrayal of himself. The body may be a source of ecstatic pleasure, but it can also be an affliction to be endured - see, for example, the studies of nude pregnant women made in a maternity hospital. There is often something overripe in his female figures, as though the body were a barometer of moral degeneration.





*Lying woman*





*Reclining nude with black stockings*






> In self-portraits Schiele glamorizes himself, exaggerating his soulful eyes, his lithe and skinny body, his long, prehensile fingers, his high forehead and his mass of standing-up hair. He grimaces and gestures dramatically; in some cases - haloed as he is by touches of white gouache, so that he seems to radiate electric energy - he looks positively satanic. He never looks very healthy. He has the emaciated, fiercely hungry look of a spirit starved by the industrial brutality of modernity.





*Self-Portrait with Black Earthenware Vessel* 





*Self-portrait standing*


In writing about Schiele, scholars and critics dwell on how syphilis killed his father, which he had contracted from a prostitute during his honeymoon and had fatally passed the disease on to four of his children. An older sister died, probably of the disease, when Egon was three, and his father finally succumbed in 1904, when the artist was fourteen.





*Sitting male act 2*





> During his late adolescence Schiele's emotions were directed into an intense relationship with his younger sister, Gerti, which was not without its incestuous implications.
> "In 1909 he left the Academy, after completing his third year. He found a flat and a studio and set up on his own. At this time he showed a strong interest in pubescent children, especially young girls, who were often the subjects of his drawings.
> 
> Already a superb draughtsman, Schiele made many drawings from these willing models, some of which were extremely erotic. He seems to have made part of his income by supplying collectors of pornography, who abounded in Vienna at that time.
> In 1911 Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Wally Neuzil, who was to live with him for a while and serve as the model for some of his best paintings. Little is known of her, save that she had previously modelled for Klimt, and had perhaps been one of the older painter's mistresses. 
> 
> They then moved to the equally small town of Neulengbach, half an hour from Vienna by train. just as it had been in Vienna, Schiele's studio became a gathering place for all the delinquent children of the neighbourhood. His way of life inevitably aroused animosity, and in April 1912 he was arrested.
> 
> "Schiele's narcissism, exhibitionism and persecution-mania can all be found united in the poster he produced for his first one-man exhibition in Vienna, held at the Galerie Arnot at the very beginning Of 1915, in which he portrayed himself as St Sebastian. 
> ...




*Two Female Nudes One Reclining One Kneeling Aka The Friends*





*Pair of Women (Women embracing each other)*




> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> 
> In a painting like Death and the Maiden, Schiele explores an old Germanic theme linking death and beauty... death and sex. The subject was one employed by Franz Schubert in both one of his best known lieder... and a late string quartet... composed as he was aware of his own impending early demise... due to syphilis.


Well, his father died from syphilis.

Sunday Times art critic and specialist in German Expressionism, Frank Whitford remarked:




> Schiele was obsessed with his own image like no other 20th century artist. Its true to say that a great many 20th century artists, particularly in the German-speaking countries, were concerned with the self-portrait, with the Self, but none of them really can be compared with Schiele, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, a narcissist...
> Schiele was not only fascinated by sex, indeed obsessed by it, he was also fascinated and obsessed by death, probably in equal measure.
> 
> 
> Schieles painting was the latest in the long line of images linking sex and death. The theme of Death and the Maiden, coupling a beautiful girl with a skeletal figure, had been recurring in north European paintings for 500 years.
> 
> 
> 
> It goes back as far as the 16th century, south German, Hans Baldung Grien. You see it over and over again, you see a skeleton embracing a nubile young woman, gorgeous tight skin, touching her often in a very suggestive way.

----------


## mortalterror

> William Beckman doesn't execute that technique as well as Raphael or Vermeer. He may be trying for the same thing but he's not getting there for some reason. I've offered a hypothesis as to why he's not achieving that level of excellence. Why don't you offer a reasonable hypothesis of your own if you actually disagree with me. Or do you really think he's as great a painter as those masters?
> 
> Your hypothesis is based on what? A crappy online reproduction? You've never seen a William Beckman in person... and I doubt you've even seen a Vermeer in person... but you are making your assessments of the painting merits from second-hand knowledge.


I see your ridiculous quibble and raise. If you in fact saw all these paintings at a museum, as you claim, then you were either standing too close or to far away to fully appreciate them. If you saw them at every range then the lighting was wrong. If the lighting was perfect the frame was lousy. If the frame was fine, the gallery director put it between two other paintings which made it look funny. If they were all by the same artist, then it wasn't in the correct series. If they were all by the same series then they weren't in a proper phase of restoration and you should go back because they all look completely different now.

You and your seeing everything in person business. Bah! As if this painting looks like this online



and this 



in real life. And before you fire a barrage of different looking Mona Lisa reproductions at me; let's just agree that for the purposes of internet debating there are many fine reproductions out there of famous artworks and a reproduction is often sufficient to get everybody on the same page.




> Certainly I will agree that there are dozens of realist painters of equal merit. Lucian Freud was far better, and Will Cotton is no less good... albeit his approach owes less to Ingres or Neo-Classicism and more to the light touch and playfulness of the Rococo. However, I have seen a good dozen of Beckman's paintings in real life... in his New York Gallery as well as in a couple of museums. His paint handling is absolutely stunning. No... the work doesn't exhibit the fluidity of the Baroque... or even of a painter like Sargent... it is far closer to the Neo-Classicism of William Bailey. Unfortunately you critical assessment of contemporary... and even modern art is as useless as your assessment of modern and contemporary literature... for the simple reason that you are biased against it as a whole... and only admire that which pastiches the work of the old masters.
> 
> But then, Mortal... you have ftil on your side with her brilliant grasp of art... and her mastery of emoticons... so you might just have the upper hand.


I don't care if ftil is an expert or how many emoticons she uses. I don't think we see eye to eye on everything any more than you and I do but if someone makes a point and they are right they are just right. I know a few smart well educated self-declared experts who get a hold of a bad idea and there is no shaking them. They are really good at defending their erroneous beliefs and justifying it to themselves or others. You have to look at the argument and the chain of reasoning. Though, of course things can be true and still have faulty reasoning, but let's not go too deep into that.

Besides that, I get the impression much of the time that we agree on more than we disagree about and you just like to be a contrarian. You argue both sides of an issue because you are good at it, it keeps you sharp, and you can't stand anyone looking smarter than you. I mean if you really thought that subjects were value neutral you wouldn't paint so many female nudes. All those guys who you say draw ugly things so that all the credit for any success goes to their skills are handicapping themselves. There are good subjects and bad subjects, and if you don't like saying so from a narrative point of view, how about from a visual one? Some shapes look better, some colors look better. Art is a sensory experience and our biology craves things. Nothing is neutral. If a painter wants to paint a solid yellow square that's fine, but it doesn't have the same effect as a man of equal talent drawing a figure. You could paint with mud and urine if you want a challenge, but oils on canvas are just better materials. How can you champion standards on one hand and then have no standards for subjects in art? How can a blank wall be equal in your eyes to rivers, trees, castles?

Besides, a lot of those new age theories you throw around to explain why your picture of broccoli is better than any Madonna and child are usually convoluted up in your head type things produced by people over thinking their craft. There might be something to your "painterly" mumbo jumbo, but I bet a lot of it is just stuff you do so that other professionals know that you can do it and don't laugh at you, not something that genuinely adds to the work. Some of that stuff is just getting graded on the difficulty of execution which is a technical 10 but a visual 4. Picasso could dash off a quick sketch of a bull fight and it might be better than something Daumier worked over for a month layering and repainting.

----------


## stlukesguild

I see your ridiculous quibble and raise. If you in fact saw all these paintings at a museum, as you claim, then you were either standing too close or to far away to fully appreciate them. If you saw them at every range then the lighting was wrong. If the lighting was perfect the frame was lousy. If the frame was fine, the gallery director put it between two other paintings which made it look funny. If they were all by the same artist, then it wasn't in the correct series. If they were all by the same series then they weren't in a proper phase of restoration and you should go back because they all look completely different now.

You and your seeing everything in person business.

That is the most pathetic argument. The fact that you really cannot discern the vast difference between a work of art in reproduction... and a work of art seen in reality... or have never had the experience... pretty much illustrates the limitations of your visual acumen. 

I cannot begin to count the number of paintings... and other works of art... that changed greatly in my esteem as a result of having seen the works in person. Attending an exhibition of Seurat's works I found myself absolutely enthralled with his drawings... that had such a richness and subtly that never came across in any of the reproductions I had seen. The richness and transparency of the colors in Vermeer is wholly lost in reproduction. 

I can offer up a single example: Matisse's _Music_ is one of a pair of mural-sized paintings created for the Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin. The other being the famous _Dance_:



Looking online, one finds a slew of reproductions of Music... which all look quite different in terms of color and value (of course Mortal doesn't grasp the concept that it is these visual elements that are key to a work of visual art).:










The painting is currently housed in the Hermitage in Russia. I was lucky enough to see it some years back as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At the time I wasn't a great fan of Matisse... but I had missed a couple of stellar art exhibitions by artists I wasn't enthralled with at the time... but who I later came to love... and I swore not to miss out on such again. 

Looking at the reproductions, one cannot be certain which color scheme is closest to the original... and for Matisse, color is paramount. The reproductions are also limited... as most photographic reproductions are... in that they only convey that which a viewer might see from a distance... but they wholly fail to suggest the actual look of the actual surface... the paint as built up in layers which can be "read" in a painting in real life. One of the criticisms leveled at contemporary painting is that it is all about image... that the artist's lack a sensitivity to the painting as an actual, physical object. This is a result of the fact that the vast majority of art students attend art school or college art departments far from any museums, and their entire concept of painting is based upon what they see in reproductions... in books, slides, and on the internet. Sounds like someone we know.

Contrary to Mortal's belief... based, undoubtedly, on his vast experience of having seen art in person... the experience of the art object in reality can be vastly different from what one gets from reproductions. There is relationship between the physical scale of the work of art and our own being. The experience of seeing Vermeer's precious, jewel-like canvases from inches away or standing dwarfed by the vast scale of Rubens' or Veronese's epic, mural scale canvases in which the figures are life-sized or larger... in which brush strokes that look like the most delicate little marks in the 3X5" reproduction are seen to actually be broad sweeping strokes... these are essential to the experience of painting.

The first museum exhibition I attended was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC featuring dual retrospectives of Titian and Van Dyck. The Titian exhibition was largely limited to minor works... except for the last painting. In a room by itself stood _The Flaying of Marsyas_.



The painting was a late work by the artist. The loose, bravura brushwork won't be seen again until Rembrandt... and Impressionism. This may be the result of it having been left unfinished, although Titian's works became increasingly "expressionistic" as he grew older. The painting in some 7 feet square and absolutely glows... or rather "smolders". None of the reproductions I have seen have even hinted at the glow... the richness... the burgundies and blood reds in the shadows that reinforce the theme of the martyrdom of the artist. I was so stunned by this painting... housed in an obscure collection where I will likely never again see it (Kroměří Archdiocesan Museum)... that I spent nearly an hour before the work.

----------


## stlukesguild

Lets go back to Egon Schiele.

I'm waiting for your idea of what constitutes great art by living artists... not rather useless attempt to undermine Schiele... or another artist whose work has now been in the museums and the art history books for nearly a century.

----------


## ftil

> Lets go back to Egon Schiele.
> 
> I'm waiting for your idea of what constitutes great art by living artists... not rather useless attempt to undermine Schiele... or another artist whose work has now been in the museums and the art history books for nearly a century.


Useless attempt....in your opinion.  :FRlol: 

I usually dont waste my time looking at artists whose art is ugly and disturbing but I am glad that I was inspired here to do so.

Lets connect the dots. If we want to make changes in society, we need to bring a few morally corrupted and perverted artists. We need to create a theory that would justify those behaviors, and of course, we need to bring a few art critics who will deliver their interpretation of art based on that theory. And a few who will heavily promote it. 

Psychiatry and psychology has always been used as a tool of mass manipulation and control. Freud and his fraudulent theory was very handy. Even thought his theory was criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists, it is still used by many to justify all perversions. The rest will blindly follow without questioning.  :FRlol: 


There is a good documentary movie done by BBC that explains how psychiatry and psychology was used for mass manipulation and control. This video has many layers.

*The century of The Self*

*The Century Of The Self 1 of 4 Happiness Machines*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo

*The Century of the self:- 2 of 4 The Engineering of Consent*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tenfbDqiDns

*The Century of the self - 3 of 4 There is Policeman Inside all our Heads*

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...78873186559982


*Century Of Self Part 4 The Century of the self:4 of 4 Eight people sipping the wine*

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...87027796578107

Lets look how it is done.

I have already looked at Schieles and Bathus life and art. I have also learned here about Félicien Rops.




> Like the works of the authors whose poetry he illustrated, his work tends to mingle sex, death, and Satanic images. Felicien Rops was one of the founding members of Société Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels (Free Society of Fine Arts, 18681876) and Les XX ("The Twenty," formed 1883).
> 
> Félicien Rops was a freemason and a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licien_Rops


*Félicien Rops - Saint-Thérèsa*

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...9r%C3%A8se.png


*Engraving by Félicien Rops . Published in 1865 in Le Diable au Corps*

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...en_Rops_69.jpg


*Lesbos, Known as Sappho Félicien Rops*

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ca_1890%29.jpg


*Félicien Rop, Illustration des Diaboliques* 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...s_Le_Crime.jpg





> Rops met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of the poet's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9licien_Rops



*Illustration cover for Les Épaves, by Baudelaire's friend Félicien Rops*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ro...paves_1866.jpg


Felicien Ropes a few quotes.

"Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil.


"There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'." 

*Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity. 
Louise Bogan* 

 :FRlol: 



Lets look at Baudelaire.




> *Charles Pierre Baudelaire* ( 9, 1821  August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translatorof Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), 
> Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." 
> 
> Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender. During this timeJeanne Duval became his mistress. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. She was rejected by his family. He made a suicide attempt during this time.
> 
> He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire



The Flowers of Evil was inspiration for another B*elgian occultis, Carlos Schwabe*

*Carlos Schwabe, The Flower of Evil*

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...es_damnees.jpg



So, lets look how interpretation and justification have been done. Lets look at Beardsley.





> Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 1872  16 March 1898) was an English illustratorand author. His drawings in black ink, influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic.
> 
> Although Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and other English aesthetes, the details of his sexuality remain in question. He was generally regarded as asexualwhich is hardly surprising, considering his chronic illness and his devotion to his work. Speculation about his sexuality include rumors of an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have become pregnant by her brother and miscarried.[9][10] During his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of the disease that would end it.
> 
> Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and grotesque erotica, which were the main themes of his later work. His illustrations were in black and white, against a white background. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga artwork, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations concerned themes of history and mythology; these include his illustrations for a privately printed edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, and his drawings for Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which eventually premiered in Paris in 1896.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley


*Aubrey Beardsley, Aristophanes Lysistrata*

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...istrata-01.jpg


*Aubrey Beardsley, Aristophanes Lysistrata*

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...istrata-04.jpg

And his art has been interpreted based on idiocy of Freud.




> Beardsley also depicts women who do not willingly conform to their role as mothers. This challenges the Victorian idealization of motherhood, where all women are expected to naturally conform to their roles as mothers, and enjoy bearing and raising children. However, Beardsley was aware that many Victorian women feared pregnancy because of the high number of maternal deaths in childbirth. In responding to this anxiety, he created a series of drawings of women with fetuses. In all of the pictures, the fetuses resemble diminutive monsters, and the women seem to express limited delight in their motherhood.
> 
> The Salome drawings played upon the latent fears and anxieties of Victorians concerning the New Women. For example, Salome is portrayed in perverse extremes. Many of her gestures are masculine and unattractive, her sexuality is calculated, and her motives are evil in their nature. This is how many Victorian men felt women would emerge once they had achieved all of the objectives of the women's movement. Because male dominance and superiority was being challenged by this movement, men subconsciously feared their social order would be replaced with an equally repressive system of female superiority. As a result, these fears can express themselves in visions of monster-women such as Salome.
> http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Puderquast.jpg





> In what were his most shocking illustrations, Beardsley portrays women who are clearly unashamed about their bodies and sexual needs. Some of his drawings show women with their backs facing the front who appear to be masturbating (illus. 8). In the drawing, Two Athenian Women in Distress, both women masturbate openly (illus. 9). This drawing, however, was suppressed by the 1857 Censorship law because of its obvious suggestiveness.


image can be seen at the link bleow.
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm




> Beardsley expressed a sexuality in his drawings which mocked. the prudishness of the Victorian age, and advocated full freedom to explore sexuality. He shocked Victorians with his grotesque and highly unnatural style, and drawings of nude bodies which were not idealized. Nonetheless, his drawings do not explicitly depict fornication or denigrate women. For these reasons, Beardsley's art can arguably be placed in the sphere of erotica rather than pornography.
> 
> Through his criticisms of Victorian vices, Beardsley offers an alternative vision to the hypocrisy and patriarchy of Victorian society. In many of his fantastic and grotesque designs, he creates a world where gender lines blur, and women are depicted as aggressive, powerful, and sexual. This accounts for the erotic themes in much of Beardsley's art. Like the other Decadents, Beardsley was tired of Victorian social pretensions which censored sex in art and literature, and treated women as sexual objects. Rather, he portrays women who he feels are symbolic of the "New Woman" in Victorian society.
> 
> Beardsley expressed a sexuality in his drawings which mocked. the prudishness of the Victorian age, and advocated full freedom to explore sexuality. He shocked Victorians with his grotesque and highly unnatural style, and drawings of nude bodies which were not idealized. Nonetheless, his drawings do not explicitly depict fornication or denigrate women. For these reasons, Beardsley's art can arguably be placed in the sphere of erotica rather than pornography.
> http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journa...-3/smith-e.htm



So, we may ask from where those idea of mass manipulation and control comes.

Well, I need to bring a C. Jung quote. 




> The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense - he is 'collective man,' a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.
> (Carl Jung, Psychology and Literature, 1930)


But from whom he got his idea. Well, we need to go to Giordano Bruno. Renaissance occultist and magician.

At Oxford University, Giordano Brunos brief, obscure but very profound work, De vinculis in genere, is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought  on the par with Machiavellis Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernitys most intelligent and insightful political work.

These academics, and among them Dahrendorf, and the now deceased Eliade and his disciple Couliano, are just the latest scholars to consider the De vinculis in genere a masterpiece. The first to recognize the importance of Brunos text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movements history.

Bruno knew as he said in De vinculis in genere that love and sex is bond of bonds, the most powerful tool of mass manipulation and control.

Public nudity, pornography, prostitution, all sexual perversions , including pedophilia and incest are the tools to make change in society. We have already see the photos a naked siblings in a sexual context.

We may ask where we are going. Today, 20 millions people in America suffer from major depression. Similar number of people suffer form anxiety. When we can add 51% people of divorce and all addiction, we may see the seriousness of the problem.

And a few Goethe's quotes.

*The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.* 
*Johann Wolfgang von Goethe* 

*None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe* 


*Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe* 


*Personality is everything in art and poetry. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe* 
 
So true.  :Ihih:

----------


## stlukesguild

I usually dont waste my time looking at artists whose art is ugly and disturbing but I am glad that I was inspired here to do so.

Art is an individual's expression inspired by his or her experiences. Unfortunately, the world is not always pretty... and considering that art mirrors the world, art is not always going to be pretty. Art is more likely to tackle the ugliness in the world over the past couple hundred years than in the more distant past due to the fact that the themes or subjects of art are no longer dictated by aristocrats and the clergy.

Lets connect the dots. If we want to make changes in society, we need to bring a few morally corrupted and perverted artists. We need to create a theory that would justify those behaviors, and of course, we need to bring a few art critics who will deliver their interpretation of art based on that theory. And a few who will heavily promote it.

Only a few idealists among artists ever looked to art to change the world. Artist's may comment on issues and offer criticism of the same, but very few imagine that they have any real impact upon the course of history. 

It may be of interest to point out that your moral judgments passed upon "perverted" and "corrupted" artists are not far removed from those passed by the Nazis upon "Degenerate Art". Indeed, it would seem that your opinions of just which artists qualify as perverted correlate to a great extent with those identified as "Degenerate Artists". 

Psychiatry and psychology has always been used as a tool of mass manipulation and control. Freud and his fraudulent theory was very handy. Even thought his theory was criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists, it is still used by many to justify all perversions. The rest will blindly follow without questioning. :FRlol: 

First of all... I will reiterate the suggestion that your excessive use of emoticons tends to work against you. The constant use of this  :FRlol:  laughing icon comes off as ridiculous... like one who keeps laughing assuming that others are laughing with them... when in reality they are laughing at them.

Hitler didn't like Freud either. There's a lovely site here that echoes many of your attacks on Modern Art as nothing more than "perversion":

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net...moon-ArtI.html

There is a good documentary movie done by BBC that explains how psychiatry and psychology was used for mass manipulation and control. This video has many layers.

So the whole of Modern Art... or the majority of Modern Art that you find "ugly" has only succeeded due to the brainwashing of the masses. Of course the "masses" have largely been irrelevant to art. So it must be the "decline of art" must be attributed to the degeneracy of the "elites"? This is not to say that there aren't problems with the "art world"... the system of art education and the art market. But ultimately the vast majority of all art has always been mediocre at best. Discerning what among the art of the recent past is the finest work, has always been the challenge... and open to debate. As with the judgment of literature, it ultimately all comes down to opinion... but some opinions are better than others. Many would question the opinions of any individual who is quick to dismiss any art that doesn't meet his or her ideals of "beauty" as the product of "perverted and corrupted" artists... especially when said artists have been long recognized as important figures in the history of art.

Lets look how it is done.

I have already looked at Schieles and Bathus life and art. I have also learned here about Félicien Rops.

And to what end? Rops was a minor figure, at best... just one of many artists/poets/composers among those known as the "decadents": Franz von Bayros, Ferdinand Hodler, Franz von Stuck, Harry Clark, Jean Deville, Alfred Kubin, Odilion Redon, Gustave Moreau, Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, J.K. Huysmans, Comte de Lautréamont, Theophile Gautier. Algernon Swinburne, Edgar Allen Poe, etc... There was a preoccupation with an exploration of the dark side of human nature throughout much of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Much of this dates back to the Romantics: paintings by Goya, Coleridge's _Christabel_, Frankenstein, Dracula, horor and ghost stories. 

Lets look at Baudelaire.

_Charles Pierre Baudelaire ( 9, 1821  August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translatorof Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), 
Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." 

Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender. During this timeJeanne Duval became his mistress. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. She was rejected by his family. He made a suicide attempt during this time.

He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed_

The Flowers of Evil was inspiration for another Belgian occultis, Carlos Schwabe

Somehow I think you're undermining your arguments against the "perversion" in Modern/Contemporary art when you include a figure such as Charles Baudelaire among your list of "perverted artists". Baudelaire is one of the greatest poets of all time... perhaps the finest writing in French. 

But from whom he got his idea. Well, we need to go to Giordano Bruno. Renaissance occultist and magician.

At Oxford University, Giordano Brunos brief, obscure but very profound work, De vinculis in genere, is considered a cornerstone of modern political thought  on the par with Machiavellis Prince. In fact, many Anglo Saxon and Middle European historians and intellectuals consider De vinculis in genere modernitys most intelligent and insightful political work.

These academics, and among them Dahrendorf, and the now deceased Eliade and his disciple Couliano, are just the latest scholars to consider the De vinculis in genere a masterpiece. The first to recognize the importance of Brunos text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movements history.

Bruno knew as he said in De vinculis in genere that love and sex is bond of bonds, the most powerful tool of mass manipulation and control.

Public nudity, pornography, prostitution, all sexual perversions , including pedophilia and incest are the tools to make change in society. We have already see the photos a naked siblings in a sexual context.

We may ask where we are going. Today, 20 millions people in America suffer from major depression. Similar number of people suffer form anxiety. When we can add 51% people of divorce and all addiction, we may see the seriousness of the problem.

And a few Goethe's quotes.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 


Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 


Personality is everything in art and poetry. 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

I suspect that I'm not the only one who feels like most of this is just aimless rambling. Your point is? 

I might add that I also suspect that outside of the quotes you found on the internet, you actually have never read Goethe. If you had... you'd be aware of his vulgar _Walpurgisnacht_ as well as a any number of erotic poems that surely challenge his quote on "taste". Or one might alternatively suggest that it is likely that Goethe's concept of "taste" may not be at all in line with what you think of as "taste".

----------


## ftil

*{edit}*

You haven't addressed my points regarding mass manipulation and control that has been clearly presented in The Century of The Self I posted. 

The documentary movie I posted was a key to understand the depth of mass manipulation and control. I didn't criticized painters but I quoted art critic who applied Freud theory to explain art, theory that was heavily criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists. 

Second, I looked at private life of a few artists. I have found pedophilia, incestuous relations, prostitution, contracting syphilis, and alcoholism. It is not a secret. I am glad that I have done it...... everything become crystal clear. 

I am not going to add anything else....*{edit}*

I want to end our discussion since I feel uncomfortable when my points are ignored. 



Enjoy LitNet

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## Pierre Menard

> ...



Thanks for the recommendations. I'll get cracking  :Smile:

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## stlukesguild

You can find many of these books... or similar volumes on art history... in most good used book stores for considerably less than new.

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## stlukesguild

Well... let's start posting some work by some of the most interesting artists who have been active over the past 30 or 40 years. 

Francis Bacon falls at the extreme of that time limitation. He first garnered some degree of attention in the 1930s and 1940s, but really didn't gain any real notoriety until the 1960s when he was oddly clumped along side Pop Art. Bacon's work was profoundly influenced by the fragmentation of Picasso, by film and photography; icons and altarpieces... and by his own personal life. By his own admission, Bacon was into the Sadomasochistic Homosexual scene... the "rough trade", and his erotic obsessions are given clear voice in his paintings where coupled with the forms and colors and themes (especially the crucifixion) of religious icons and altarpieces, and images of struggle and violence drawn from photography, the paintings have been recognized as a comment on the horror and violence of the 20th century:





The triptych, _Three Studies for a Crucifixion_, completed in the early 1960s and currently housed in the Guggenheim Museum, NY, is quite possibly, Bacon's strongest work. Bacon employed the triptych format... historically reserved for religious altarpieces... quite likely inspired by the German Expressionist, Max Beckmann. The painting employs a rich, painterly handling of paint, a brilliant glowing red that undoubtedly alludes to blood and to the background of many crucifixions, including that of the Flemish Renaissance master, Rogier Van der Weyden:



In the central panel, Christ's martyrdom is echoes in the agonized torture of a figure writhing in pain. The bed is blood-spattered and the body contorted and having the appearance of rotting flesh. 

In the left panel, we are given a glimpse almost as from the point of view of the tortured figure on the bed. Looking down his own contorted body, past his legs, stand two onlookers... figures in suits. We are left wondering whether they are friends... faceless bureaucrats, or his torturers. I find myself leaning toward the idea of the horrific bureaucrat ala Franz Kafka or those who organized and documented the "final solution". 

In the right panel we see a hanging cow carcass which undoubtedly alludes to Rembrandt's famous painting:



...as well as that of the more contemporary Expressionist, Chaim Soutine:



But there is also a suggestion of the horrific "still life" paintings made by Gericault during the height of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror:



Bacon has admitted a certain fascination with meat... and the butchers' shop. He has spoken of the hanging carcass as perversely akin to the image of the crucified Christ: so much hanging, dead flesh. 

Bacon remained obsessed with images of horror and violence staged in an iconic manner. In the painting, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, humanoid figures are staged in a stark setting not unlike the artifice of a classical Greek play. The central figure... Agamemnon... sits hunched over on his throne... behind him the typical "cloth of honor" often hung behind images of the Holy Virgin or the Pope. Blood runs through the open doorway on the left as the image of the Fury hovers in the air. On the right... a headless muscular figure suggests the "hero", Orestes.

Perhaps the most disturbing of Bacon's triptych's is his _Triptych- May-June 1973_: 



In this painting we are presented with an iconic view of the death of Bacon's long-term lover, George Dyer. Dyer is seen rushing to the sink in the right panel where he vomits. In the central panel he staggers in the dark... beneath a burned out single light bulb... the shadow hovers over him like some great bird of prey... until he collapses... and dies on the toilet. Only bacon with his cruel sense of irony could have appreciated... and painted the pathetic death of a loved one in such a manner.

Bacon's paintings are certainly not "pretty"... but they are stunningly gorgeous... "beautiful" in aesthetic terms. I had the chance to see nearly the whole of his major works at the retrospective recently staged at the Met in NY. The colors absolutely glow... and there is a freshness to the work that appears as if it were just painted yesterday and was still wet. He's not an artist whose work I would want hanging in my living-room... but then again, I don't want to look at many of Goya's paintings everyday, nor watch Schindler's List repeatedly.

The next artist I offer will be something quite removed from the harrowing aspects of Bacon.

----------


## stlukesguild

You haven't addressed my points regarding mass manipulation and control that has been clearly presented in The Century of The Self I posted. 

I want to end our discussion since I feel uncomfortable when my points are ignored. 

I don't really see how these have anything to do with the purpose of this thread... or with Modern Art.

Second, I looked at private life of a few artists. I have found pedophilia, incestuous relations, prostitution, contracting syphilis, and alcoholism. It is not a secret. I am glad that I have done it...... everything become crystal clear.

It is the art I judge and not the artist. Caravaggio pandered homoerotic images of young boys to high-ranking clergy with similar tastes, and was a known murderer. That doesn't effect my assessment of this painting:

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Bacon is a new one on me and judging by what you presented I must say he was "out there".
I can't quite discern what is depicted in the first triptych example, comes across as a smoked oyster.

While you prepare for the next artist, heres some miscellaneous time filler. 

Regarding books for Pierre, there is one that I picked up several years ago titled _Medieval Art  Painting, Sculpture, Architecture 4th  14th Century_ by James Snyder.

Philosophical quotes: 
I tend to defer to Will Rogers 
"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. "


Something related to your next period.
I had visited The Modern museum of Fort Worth last year. I wasnt aware of what was currently on exhibit before entering. As it turned out they were featuring paintings by Richard Diebenkorn (1922  1993) including his Ocean Park series. I was not familiar with Diebenkorn prior to that visit, but I was impressed enough that I can at least recall his name along with a lasting impression of _Ocean Park No 54_:



I was drawn to the palette of colors used and their tones as they are similar to those I instinctively use in watercolor. Beyond the use of color, there is a subtle three dimensional layering aspect that is interesting parts of which appears as folded paper.

Another by Diebenkorn I admired is _Cityscape_:



I see it as creating tension along the well defined edge between urban sprawl and the unspoiled landscape on the right. I was drawing similarities, between Diebenkorn and these images I rediscovered from Charles Macintosh (from the name the painting game):






Speaking of The Modern, Tadao Andos architecture aint half bad either:

From museum website


http://www.themodern.org/

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## stlukesguild

I quite like Diebenkorn's work myself. He... and the whole of the so-called California/San Francisco School of Figurative Art are far more rooted in the colorist tradition of French Modernism... Matisse, Bonnard, Degas, Monet, Vuillard than in Picasso, Cubsim, Surrealism, Dada and Formalist Abstraction... which had a far greater impact upon the paintings of the New York School. 

One needs only look at these paintings by Matisse:








... to see where Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series is coming from. It may also owe much to the light and landscape of California... so different from the urban environment of New York... that led the California painters to look to a different group of artists for inspiration.

Other interesting painters from the California School include:

*Elmer Bischoff*:

Bischoff merged elements of the rich painterly brushwork of Van Gogh, Soutine... and DeKooning with the color and everyday subject matter of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism... and a nod to Edward Hopper's views of the American landscapes and cityscapes:





























Bischoff's paintings... like most of the works of the California School... were incredibly juicy in their paint handling:



*David Park:*

Park was another leading figure of the California School. His paintings employed an even broader use of the brush than Bischoff... and a subject matter suggestive of Social Realists such as Walt Kuhn, Isabel Bishop, and Raphael Soyer:











*Paul Wonner:*

Wonner was still another leading figure in the California School:



















*Rolland Petersen:*

Another senior figure in the Bay Area Figurative School, Petersen focused as much upon pattern as on color making him stand out among other painters of the group:











*Joan Brown:*

The California School was somewhat unique in that a number of the leading painters were women. Joan Brown was part of what is considered the second generation of the California School of Painting. She studied under Elmer Bischoff and was married to the sculptor, Manuel Neri. Many of her early paintings allude to art historical/Biblical themes merged with references to her personal life/inclusion of friends/lovers/and her dog.

















You gotta appreciate the clown who tries to copyright his photographs of someone else' paintings. The Supreme Court, by the way, ruled that photographs of original art works are themselves not "original" works of art and cannot be afforded copyright protection.

Another marvelous female painter of the school is *Linda Petersen*:













The impact of the San Francisco/Bay Area/California School of Figurative Painting... which was at its peak during the 1950s and early 1960s... continues into the work of any number of contemporary artists. 

*Kevin Bean's* figurative paintings are based upon non-descript family snapshots. These are filtered through the haze of memory... losing all details but gaining the "perfume" of atmosphere and mood wrought by his expressive use of color:











Another marvelous female painter working in the tradition of the California School is *Kyle* (pronounced Ki [with a long I] Lee)* Staver*, a New York artist who merges elements of the French Intimist (Matisse, Bonnard, Vuillard) tradition... which was itself a major inspiration for the California School... with the painterliness and funky drawing of the Bay Area artists:



















Another interesting artist who has built upon the tradition of the California School is Stephanie Kim Frohsin, whose paintings owe as much to the graphic elements of Pop Art and 1960s psychedelic posters (another California art form) as to the Bay Area School. 









My own work is far more traditionally rendered than the work of the California School... but I have long appreciated their paintings... and especially their mastery of an expressive use of color.

----------


## ftil

> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> 
> I might add that I also suspect that outside of the quotes you found on the internet, you actually have never read Goethe. If you had... you'd be aware of his vulgar Walpurgisnacht as well as a any number of erotic poems that surely challenge his quote on "taste". Or one might alternatively suggest that it is likely that Goethe's concept of "taste" may not be at all in line with what you think of as "taste".


I had to read...there was no free lunch at school.  :FRlol: 

I dont separate the work of the artist from his life.
I can be moved by erotic poetry written by a young manbut Goethe was 64 when he fell in love with 18 years old woman and 74 when he proposed to 19 years old. It is disgusting.

It reminds me about Luis Faleros Fausts Vision"




And Annibale Carracci, An allegory of Truth and Time , Royal Collection, London, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CA...e_(1584-5).JPG


But I will read his Theory of Colors and I totally agree with him that personality is everything in art and poetry" So, I dont throw everything in the garbage bin.  :Tongue:

----------


## stlukesguild

I dont separate the work of the artist from his life.
I can be moved by erotic poetry written by a young manbut Goethe was 64 when he fell in love with 18 years old woman and 74 when he proposed to 19 years old. It is disgusting.

The inability to separate the artist from the art work becomes problematic when the individual bases their judgments of the artist's achievements not upon the art but upon their judgments of the artist's personal life. I think many might question just what gives anyone the right to set themselves up as the judge of the personal lives of others. Goethe is "disgusting" because he still had erotic feelings at 64? I guess that means Peter Paul Rubens was a real pervert, after all he married a 16-year old that he was passionately in love with at age 53... and went on to have a slew of children with her. And what of all those homosexuals? Ewwww! How disgusting. I'll never look at a Michelangelo painting again. :Rolleyes5:

----------


## ftil

> Originally posted by *stlukesguild*
> The inability to separate the artist from the art work


It is not inability but a choice. It is a big difference. Yes, for me it is disgusting for 74 old man to have erotic thoughts about 19 years old. I am a female and we may differ in opinion. However, my male friends are also disgusted but it. It would be not fair to put everybody into the same box.

BTW, I didn't mention homosexuality and I appreciate Michelangelos talent.

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

> I dont separate the work of the artist from his life.
> I can be moved by erotic poetry written by a young manbut Goethe was 64 when he fell in love with 18 years old woman and 74 when he proposed to 19 years old. It is disgusting.
> 
> The inability to separate the artist from the art work becomes problematic when the individual bases their judgments of the artist's achievements not upon the art but upon their judgments of the artist's personal life. I think many might question just what gives anyone the right to set themselves up as the judge of the personal lives of others. Goethe is "disgusting" because he still had erotic feelings at 64? I guess that means Peter Paul Rubens was a real pervert, after all he married a 16-year old that he was passionately in love with at age 53... and went on to have a slew of children with her. And what of all those homosexuals? Ewwww! How disgusting. I'll never look at a Michelangelo painting again.


True . . . but still, condemning someone like Caravaggio for being a murderer isn't that much of a stretch . . . unless you've taken the stance of Alex and become a complete cultural relativist.  :Biggrin:  Even taking Caravaggio into account, does him being a horrible person devalue his art? I don't think so. But can it effect how we look at it? I do think so.




> It is not inability but a choice. It is a big difference. Yes, for me it is disgusting for 74 old man to have erotic thoughts about 19 years old. I am a female and we may differ in opinion. However, my male friends are also disgusted but it. It would be not fair to put everybody into the same box.
> 
> BTW, I didn't mention homosexuality and I appreciate Michelangelos talent.


How can you be disgusted by an old man having erotic thoughts about a 19 year old? Or even a 15 year old? Or any female who has reached puberty and is developing in ways that man is biologically and genetically programmed to find arousing? I suspect your male friends are just agreeing with you so you don't unjustly label them as perverts, too.

----------


## ftil

> How can you be disgusted by an old man having erotic thoughts about a 19 year old? Or even a 15 year old? Or any female who has reached puberty and is developing in ways that man is biologically and genetically programmed to find arousing? I suspect your male friends are just agreeing with you so you don't unjustly label them as perverts, too.


Well, it is not just to have erotic thoughts. 74-year-old Goethe persuaded his friend, the Grand Duke Charles Augustus, to make a formal marriage proposal to 19-year-old Ulrich. 

Where did I say perverts? Dont distort my words.  :Yikes: 

There are men who are locked in teenage mentality..refusing to grow.  :FRlol:

----------


## Mutatis-Mutandis

Yes, because associating the word pervert with calling someone disgusting for having erotic thoughts about a 19 year old is a real stretch. 

I also find it ironic that you accuse others of being in a teenage mentality when you can't write two sentences before using an emoticon, a teenage behavior if there ever was one.

----------


## ftil

> Yes, because associating the word pervert with calling someone disgusting for having erotic thoughts about a 19 year old is a real stretch.


No, it is only your opinion and your interpretation of my words. I may say again I didn't use pervert. But if you want to distort my words and use as an argument.I better go back to my reading.  :Tongue: 






> I also find it ironic that you accuse others of being in a teenage mentality when you can't write two sentences before using an emoticon, a teenage behavior if there ever was one.


LOL! You perhaps dont need to express the intensity of your feelings. I do. Please don't assume that everybody is like you.


On a final note, images speak lauder than words. 

77 year old Goethe, 3 years later after his marriage proposal 19-year-old Ulrich.  :FRlol: 



http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...jpg?uselang=pl

*Lulius Sebbers, The portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1826*



Enjoy Litnet,

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

> No, it is only your opinion and your interpretation of my words. I may say again I didn't’ use pervert. But if you want to distort my words and use as an argument…….I better go back to my reading. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> LOL! You perhaps don’t need to express the intensity of your feelings. I do. Please don't assume that everybody is like you.
> 
> 
> ...


"The intensity of my feelings"? Are you serious? The only reason one uses emoticons is because they're unsure of the clarity of their language, or, in your case, to distort the message.

Thanks for the picture, though. I didn't know what an old man looked like.

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## ftil

> "The intensity of my feelings"? Are you serious? The only reason one uses emoticons is because they're unsure of the clarity of their language, or, in your case, to distort the message.


Wrong assumption.Again.

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

Nope.

Enjoy LitNet.

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## Alexander III

> There are men who are locked in teenage mentality..refusing to grow.


People like you are the reason rape jokes are funny. You take serious topics and treat them with such totalitarian moral and social stances that you render the topic ridiculous; and comedy and satire become the only logical way of protesting such absolutist views, for how can you use logic when your opponent does not acknowledged it.

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## ftil

> People like you are the reason rape jokes are funny. You take serious topics and treat them with such totalitarian moral and social stances that you render the topic ridiculous; and comedy and satire become the only logical way of protesting such absolutist views, for how can you use logic when your opponent does not acknowledged it.


I guess, you havent read what I wrote....or you didn't understand. 

It is a serious issue when some men refuse to grow up. You may find many research about that subject. Perhaps, you would want to hide it. I don't especially when such behaviour lead to exploitation of women and children.

take serious topics and treat them with such totalitarian moral and social stances........I am afraid that you use words you dont fully understand. :FRlol: 


*Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. 
Immanuel Kant*

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

She's a lost cause, Alex.

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## Scheherazade

*~

This thread is now closed due to... Well, I think it is rather obvious why.

Those who find themselves unable to show respect towards those who do not share their own views might like to consider not taking part in public debates.

~*

StLukes> Please feel free to start another thread on this topic.

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