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message 51:
by
Monica
(new)
Aug 08, 2011 03:34PM
Thanks, Carol! I just finished a workshop with my college roommate, her mom and gorgeous niece who just got engaged to a lovely young man from Baltimore!...and just finished watching the last season of The Wire all written about and filmed there!!
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All I can say is 'wow'! I am always amazed at the detail that Durer can put in his woodcuts, which cannot be easy!Thank you for expounding on that, Carol. I love his work.
I can't imagine how challenging it was for him to do.Baltimore is a great place to visit. The Walters Museum is fantastic and general admission to either museum is free.
AUGUST 222004: Munch's The Scream and Madonna stolen !!!
Armed robbers steal from the Munch Museum in Oslo two paintings by Edvard Munch [12 Dec 1863 — 23 Jan 1944]: a version of The Scream (1894), regarded by many as his most important work and an icon of existentialist angst, and Madonna (1894), two parts of his “Frieze of Life” series. Two masked robbers threaten with a gun a female employee at the Munch Museum and take down the two paintings. They escape in a car driven by a third man. The pictures, worth millions of dollars, are cut from their frames which are found discarded and broken later in another part of the city. Munch produced four versions of The Scream. The stolen version consists of tempera and pastel on board.
Symbolist painter Edvard Munch has said that The Scream represented the "infinite scream of nature." In an interview with Sue Prideaux, Munch recalled a time when he was on the verge of madness, and, as he walked with friends, the sun set in a sky that was nearly blood red. Exhausted, he felt an overwhelming anxiety. He said, "You know my picture, The Scream? I was stretched to the limit - nature was screaming in my blood... After that I gave up hope of ever being able to love again." Munch, born on December 12, 1863, created several versions of the painting, which were part of a series of works he called The Frieze of Life - A Poem About Life, Love and Death.
AUGUST 221911 Mona Lisa stolen
On Tuesday, August 22, 1911, Béroud walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. But on the wall where the Mona Lisa used to hang, in between Correggio's Mystical Marriage and Titian's Allegory of Alfonso d'Avalos, sat only four iron pegs.
The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid the investigation. When it was reopened, a line of people had come to solemnly stare at the empty space on the wall, where the Mona Lisa had once hung. An anonymous visitor left a bouquet of flowers.
More... http://history1900s.about.com/od/famo...
AUGUST 221961 Goya's The Duke of Wellington stolen
From the National Gallery in London, is stolen the recently acquired The Duke of Wellington, the most famous of his three portraits by Goya
In 1961, Charles Wrightsman, the oil-rich American collector, bought Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" for $392,000 and planned to take it stateside. Such was the public outrage that the government raised the necessary matching sum. Less than three weeks after its triumphal hanging in the National Gallery, it was stolen. The thief demanded a ransom of the same amount and said he was going to devote it to charity.
In 1965, the thief sent a claim ticket to London's Daily Mirror and the painting was picked up by police in a railway baggage office. The thief, an unemployed bus driver named Kempton Bunton, gave himself up six weeks later. He had planned to use the money to buy TV licenses for the poor, serving three months in jail for his offense.
Heather wrote: "AUGUST 221911 Mona Lisa stolen
Stealing the Mona Lisa: A Minute-by-Minute Account of the World's Most Famous Art Theft, A Century After the Fact
I just found this kinda fun story recreating the theft of Mona Lisa. Hope you enjoy!
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/384...
Heather wrote: "Stealing the Mona Lisa: A Minute-by-Minute Account of the World's Most Famous Art Theft, A Century After the FactI just found this kinda fun stor..."
Hmm...interesting! I know Mona Lisa had been Da Vinci's favourite and all, just wonder what he would've said if he knew how frantic the world would go when his painting got stolen 300 years later :)
I almost missed this one!8 September
1504
Unveiled on 08 September 1504: DAVID, Michelangelo's statue
Originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, the statue was instead placed in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. Because of the nature of the hero that it represented, it soon came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici family. The eyes of David, with a warning glare, were turned towards Rome.
David by Michelangelo
[image error]
Michelangelo's David differs from previous representations of the subject in that the Biblical hero is not depicted with the head of the slain Goliath, as he is in Donatello's and Verrocchio's statues. For most scholars David is depicted before his battle with Goliath. Instead of appearing victorious over a foe much larger than he, David's face looks tense and ready for combat. The tendons in his neck stand out tautly; his nasolabial muscles are tight; his brow is furrowed; and his eyes seem to focus intently on something in the distance. Veins bulge out of his lowered right hand, but his body is in a relaxed contrapposto pose, and he carries his sling casually thrown over his left shoulder.
The pose is unlike that of any earlier David; Donatello and Verrocchio had both represented the hero standing victorious over the head of Goliath, and Andrea del Castagno had shown the boy in mid-swing, even as Goliath's head rested between his feet, but no earlier Florentine artist had omitted the giant altogether. The contrast between his intense expression and his calm pose perhaps suggests that David is represented after he has made the decision to fight Goliath but before the battle has actually taken place. The majority of his weight is on his back leg, staying consistent with the Renaissance practice of depicting its subjects in recoiled, calm positions, just prior to action. It is a representation of the moment between conscious choice and conscious action.
A copy of the statue standing in the original location of David, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
Michelangelo's David is a Renaissance interpretation of a common ancient Greek theme of the standing heroic male nude. In the High Renaissance, contrapposto poses were thought of as a distinctive feature of antique sculpture. In David, the figure stands with one leg holding its full weight and the other leg relaxed. This classic pose causes the figure’s hips and shoulders to rest at opposite angles, giving a slight s-curve to the entire torso. In addition, the head turns to the left while the left arm is raised to his left shoulder with his sling flung down behind his back. Michelangelo’s David has become one of the most recognized works of Renaissance sculpture, becoming a symbol of both strength and youthful human beauty.
David Donatello
David Verrocchio
David Andrea del Castagno
Great choice. The proportions are also designed so that the head is larger than it would be in life, as the statue is seen from below, so that it appears proportioned correctly, and there is a strong sense of personality.
The little reproductions don't really capture this correctly.
I am still unpacking my things in the house, a huge job. But the other night I unpacked the journal that I kept while studying art in Italy.I wrote about the first time I saw Michelangelo's David. I was awestruck by the bold features. I actually felt by his stern and focused gaze that I was really part of the scene. Goliath was right behind me as David was pondering his next move. It was really neat. In fact, I wrote a paper for my Humanities class comparing and contrasting Michelangelo's David with that of Donatello. There really is no comparison in my opinion. Of course, Donatello is definitely a master, but I don't care for his David nearly as much as Michelangelo's. It was quite a lengthy paper and such an exciting challenge to actually sit in front of the two statues in person scrutinizing every facet of the work. Technique, emotion, etc. I got an A-.
Oh darn it! I'm again a day behind!September 10
1981
GUERNICA GOES TO GUERNICA
n September 10, 1981, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's monumental anti-war mural Guernica is received by Spain after four decades of refugee existence. One of Picasso's most important works, the painting was inspired by the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica by the Nazi air force during the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, Picasso gave the painting to New York's Museum of Modern Art on an extended loan and decreed that it not be returned to Spain until democratic liberties were restored in the country. Its eventual return to Spain in 1981--eight years after Picasso's death--was celebrated as a moral endorsement of Spain's young democracy.
Early in the Spanish civil war, Spain's leftist Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Working in Paris, Picasso read in horror of the April 1937 German bombing of Guernica, a Basque town that had sided with the Republicans against General Francisco Franco's right-wing Nationalist forces. Guernica was well behind the battle lines, but Franco authorized the attack as a means of intimidating his foes in the region. The attack was later admitted to be an experiment by the German Luftwaffe in carpet bombing--air raids that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. More than 1,000 residents of Guernica were killed in the three-hour attack.
Outraged by the brutality of the act, Picasso seized on the bombing as the subject of his mural, which he completed in just three weeks. The enormous painting, which measures 11.5 feet by 25.5 feet, is a savage indictment of man's inhumanity to man. Painted in desolate tones of black, white, and gray, the painting shows a gored horse, a screaming mother holding a dead child, a bewildered bull, and other nightmarish images that effectively evoke the horror of war.
Guernica was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition and in 1939 was sent to New York on a tour for the benefit of the Spanish Refugee Committee. When World War II broke out later that year, Picasso requested that Guernica and a number of his other works be held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on extended loan. After the war, most of these works were returned to Europe, but Picasso asked that Guernica and its preliminary studies be kept by MoMA until the "reestablishment of public liberties" in Spain. The painting was occasionally lent to European museums at the request of Picasso.
Francisco Franco ruled over Spain as dictator for the rest of Picasso's life, and the artist never returned to his native country. In 1967, Franco restored some liberties, and in 1968 his government made an effort to recover Guernica. Picasso refused, clarifying that the painting would not be returned until democracy was reestablished. In 1973, Picasso died in France at the age of 91. Two years later, Franco died and was succeeded as Spanish leader by King Juan Carlos I, who immediately began a transfer to democracy. Spain then called for the return of Guernica, but opposition by Picasso heirs who questioned Spain's democratic credentials delayed its transfer until 1981. Finally, Picasso's former lawyer gave his ascent to the transfer.
On September 10, 1981, Guernica arrived in Madrid under heavy guard. The painting was to be housed in a new annex of the Prado Museum, only two blocks from the Spanish parliament, which had been the scene of an abortive military coup in February 1981. King Juan Carlos defused the revolt by convincing military commanders to remain loyal to Spain's democratic constitution.
On October 25--the 100th anniversary of Picasso's birth--Guernica went on exhibit to the public behind a thick layer of bullet-proof glass. Picasso's preparatory sketches for the painting, likewise protected behind thick glass, were housed in adjacent rooms. The threat of terrorism against the highly politicized work required high security, and visitors passed through a metal detector to view the paintings. Because the painting had been damaged in its years of travel, curators at the Prado said it was unlikely that Guernica would ever go on tour again.
A number of groups in Spain, particularly Basque nationalists, objected strongly to Guernica's permanent exhibition in Madrid. Complaints escalated after the painting was relocated to the new Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 1992. Since the 1997 opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, Basque nationalists have been calling for its transfer there.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hi...
I like David by Michelangelo as well. Wish I could see it up close and personal like Heather did. Oh well.
This is of course a very special day, I don't want to post anything too morbid, so I thought I'd post the work of a September 11 survivor.Thomas Haddad is a visual artist and designer, but aside from his commercial work, he has had a prolific production of odd, dark, and vaguely humorous on-the-spot drawings that he has executed on the bus to work every day.
On this day, September 11, 2001, he went to work as he did, every day...to the 89th floor of the World Trade Center, Tower 1.
Thomas Haddad
Drawings from the bus and other moments of misery
He says:
"I graduated from Pratt Institute and continued my studies at DPSI, with illustrator David Passalacqua. For the past 11 years I have been creative director of an NYC communications firm. I am a World Trade Center survivor from the 89th floor of WTC1. My experiences on 9/11 inspired my wife to purchase me a sketchbook, as a way to refocus my energy on my passion. From this was born The Bus Drawings project. Simply put, all of the enclosed drawings were produced while riding commuter buses."
http://www.coroflot.com/thaddad/Bus-D...
A description of his harrowing experiences may be found in Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11
His interview is one of the best because his descriptions are very vivid and visual.....
Here's a few exerpts:
FIRST, I heard the engine. It was incredibly loud. I’d been in the office late at night during thunderstorms a couple of times....I replayed the first 30 to 60 seconds over and over again in my head, trying to make order of it. I couldn’t. Let me start at the beginning....
I got to work early that day. My company does corporate communications; we do a lot of internal work for banks. JP Morgan had just merged with Chase so we’d been given a project to educate bank employees on which services were available to them under the new conglomerate. The client wanted a quick turnaround so I was in the office until about nine at night on the evening of September 10 th . I got to the office at about 7:30 in the morning on the 11 th , still working on the campaign designs. There were only five people in the office at that point....
... I thought of another question to ask her so I got up out of my chair to call her back and look at the designs one more time when we were hit. The impact threw me about three feet ...All the power went out like flipping off a light. The office was plunged into total darkness. Then it erupted into flames. And then the sprinkler system popped on. When I came to everything was on fire except for a three-and-ahalf-foot path to the door....Later on, after talking about it, we found out how lucky we were. Everything around us had burned....
[Arriving at the lobby after fighting their way downstairs....]
The escalator wasn’t working... The bottom steps were knee-deep with water. All the glass leading out of the concourse was broken. All the revolving doors? Broken. The floor was covered in glass. Here, the staggered line of police officers was directing traffic... We exited to the Trade Center campus. I think we were on Church Street, just Lynn, Evan, and myself. And here there were more police officers and they were yelling, “Don’t look up, just keep going!” Which is, of course, exactly when I decided to look up....
Then I heard a sound, like a creaking. Almost like when you have an upstairs neighbor and they’re walking around, the beams in the ceiling squeak and squeal. Sort of like that, but really, really loud. And then it was thunder. I turned around and saw the building was coming down. We were only a block away....
Total blackness. No air at all. Panic. Then something hit me on the head and I pulled my shirt up over my head. I couldn’t see anyway, so what did it matter? I remember thinking, I can’t believe it. After walking down 80 flights of stairs, I’m going to die right here in the street.....A police officer sat down next to me and took my hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just let it out. You’re experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.” I thought, post? No way I’m post. I think I’m still in the trauma....
[He manages to reunite with his co-worker, just by chance...]
Evan and I got to the Double Tree Hotel and I thought that maybe they’d let us use their phones. Once we got inside, the people there looked at us as if we were nuts. This was Midtown and we were the only people covered in soot head to toe. We must’ve looked like space aliens. Little did they know there were hundreds more people like us. Thousands. But most of them were walking north from the Trade Center. Because of the bus we’d been lucky to board, Evan and I arrived about an hour or so before them. The receptionist behind the desk at the Double Tree looked at me and said, “You’re dirty.” A definite reproach. Uh huh. Thanks for telling me. “Okay,” I said. I remember getting angry. “I was just in the World Trade Center and I need to use your phone....”
...UPDATE
Tom Haddad and I caught up with each other in late January 2007, at a diner off Park Avenue South. I admit that I had reservations about seeing Tom again. The man I remembered from our first interview was prone to anger and dark lapses in conversation. Under the circumstances, it was a perfectly understandable reaction. All the same, I wondered how Tom had weathered the past five years. His experience on 9/11 had been dire. How had he managed it since? My fears evaporated the moment Tom slid into the bench across the table from me. He was smiling ear to ear. We exchanged a few pleasantries and ordered coffee. Then I realized that, miraculously, I was grinning too. Tom’s pleasure was infectious.
"I found something else that keeps me sane.” And with that, he pulled out a sketchbook and started leafing through the pages. It’s difficult to describe what he showed me. A different drawing leaped forward from every page, each stunningly detailed to a professional level. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but Tom said: “My wife bought me my first pad. She thought it would help me work things out. And I had all this time commuting to the city from home, an hour on the bus each way, every day. So I’ve used the time to draw. I call it my Bus Therapy.” The drawings, quite frankly, were astonishing. In one, a white-collar worker with the head of a bison, in shirtsleeves and a tie, hunched over a computer keyboard, typing with its hooves. In another, a beast with the body of a man and the head of a fish rode a lonely bus from someplace to another, all the while staring out the window at the barren landscape moving past. In all, Tom has filled countless notebooks with his work. His attic, he said, is full of them. “I can’t seem to stop,” he grins. “It’s really something. But I should tell you: most of these drawings have nothing to do with my experience on 9/11.”
Marco, Damon; Kean, Thomas (Foreword by). Tower Stories : An Oral History of 9/11.
Santa Monica, CA, USA: Santa Monica Press, 2007. p 25.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/september1...
Copyright © 2007. Santa Monica Press. All rights reserved.
Ed wrote: "This is of course a very special day, I don't want to post anything too morbid, ..."Thanks Ed, this was perfect.
That's a beautiful story of healing from that day that none of us will ever forget.
On 11 September 1841 the American portrait painter John Goffe Rand patented his "Improvement in the Construction of Vessels or Apparatus for Preserving Paint". Or, to put it more simply, the collapsible paint tube....Read more:
http://painting.about.com/od/artsuppl...
Sep 23, 1964:Chagall's ceiling unveiled
The Paris Opera unveils a stunning new ceiling painted as a gift by Belorussian-born artist Marc Chagall, who spent much of his life in France. The ceiling was typical of Chagall's masterpieces—childlike in its apparent simplicity yet luminous with color and evocative of the world of dreams and the subconscious.
Marc Chagall was born in the town of Vitebsk in the Russian empire in 1887. His parents were Jewish merchants, and the society he grew up in was in many ways a survival from the medieval era. The Jewish and Russian folkloric themes to which he was exposed in his youth would inform his artwork throughout his career. He took up drawing as a child and in 1906 went to St. Petersburg to study art with the help of a rich Jewish patron. In 1908, he was invited to the Zvantseva School to study under the prestigious theater designer Leon Bakst and that year produced one of his great works, The Dead Man, a nightmarish painting inspired by a brush with death.
In 1910, another Jewish patron sent Chagall to Paris, rescuing him from what might have been a career confined to folk art. In Paris—the center of the Western art world—he was embraced by avant-garde artists who encouraged him to exploit the seemingly irrational tendencies of his art. Imaginative works like I and the Village (1911) generated widespread enthusiasm, and Chagall entered the artistic phase that many viewed as his best. His pictures, wrought in a variety of artistic mediums, showed a fantastical world in which people, animals, and other figurative elements were cast in bright and unusual colors and seemed to dance and float across the canvas.
He had his first one-man show in Berlin in 1914 and with the outbreak of World War I was stranded in Russia during a visit to Vitebsk. He welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917, which provided full citizenship for Russian Jews and brought official recognition of Chagall and his art. He was made a commissar for art in the Vitebsk region and helped establish a local museum and art academy. However, he was soon frustrated by aesthetic and political quarrels and in 1922 left Soviet Russia for the West.
He was welcomed as an idol by the Surrealists, who saw in Chagall paintings like Paris Through the Window (1913) an important precursor to their own irrational and dream-like art. He took up engraving and produced hundreds of illustrations for special editions of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, and the Bible. In 1941, he fled with his wife from Nazi-occupied Paris to the United States, where he lived in and around New York City for seven years. War-induced pessimism and sadness over the death of his wife infused much of his art from this period, as seen in the Yellow Crucifixion (1943) and Around Her (1945). In 1945, he designed the sets and costumes for the New York production of Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, and in 1946 Chagall was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1948, he returned to France, and eventually settled in the French Riviera village of St. Paul de Vence, his home for the rest of his life. In 1958, he designed the sets and costumes for a production of Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloe at the Paris Opera. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he produced stained-glass windows, first for a cathedral in Metz, France, and then for a synagogue in Jerusalem. In 1964, Chagall completed a stained-glass window for the United Nations building in New York that was dedicated to the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold.
Meanwhile, Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, commissioned him to design a new ceiling for the Paris Opera after seeing Chagall's work in Daphnis et Chloe. Working with a surface of 560 square meters, Chagall divided the ceiling into color zones that he filled with landscapes and figures representing the luminaries of opera and ballet. The ceiling was unveiled on September 23, 1964, during a performance of the same Daphnis et Chloe. As usual, a few detractors condemned Chagall's work as overly primitive, but this criticism was drowned out in the general acclaim for the work. In 1966, as a gift to the city that had sheltered him during World War II, he painted two vast murals for New York's Metropolitan Opera House (1966).
In 1977, France honored Chagall with a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. He continued to work vigorously until his death in 1985 at the age of 97.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hi...
What a beautiful ceiling, Heather!There has been a big push in my state to restore the artwork in the ceilings of some older theaters. It's so important so the next generation can enjoy them. I volunteer at a local theater with Art Deco artwork. People who never go to art museums do spend time looking at the ceiling and asking questions about it. (Doesn't compare to the Chagall ceiling, though.)
Ed wrote: "Heather wrote: "18 February 1913 French painting Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 (1912) by Marcel Duchamp causes a scandal at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City. Nude Descending a Staircase
..."
I had to share this....
(Duchamp once submitted an upside down urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" and signed "R. Mutt", for those who don't know the story. Needless to say, this created a delightful scandal, as intended.)
Ed wrote: (Duchamp once submitted an upside down urinal as a sculpture titled "Fountain" and signed "R. Mutt", for those who don't know the story. Needless to say, this created a delightful scandal, as intended.) "like"!
October 12, 1492Columbus' Landing in the New World
A lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez Bermeo), spotted land about 2 a.m. on the morning of October 12, and immediately alerted the rest of the crew with a shout. Thereupon, the captain of the Pinta, Juan Alonso Pinzón, verified the discovery and alerted Columbus by firing a lombard.[37] Columbus later maintained that he himself had already seen a light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christop...
The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus
Salvador Dali 1959
First Landing of Christopher Columbus
Frederick Kammelmeyer 1803
The Landing of Columbus
Edward Hicks 1837
Publius Vergilius Maro, more commonly referred to as Vergil or Virgil was born on October 15, 70 B.C.[image error]
Virgil
Legend has it that when Virgil was in the womb, his mother dreamed that she gave birth to a laurel branch that, once planted, sprung immediately from the earth, and within moments became a tree heavily laden with fruit and flowers. The very next day, Virgil's mother was walking along a dirt path when she suddenly flung herself into a ditch and then delivered such an extraordinarily mild-mannered child that all who encountered him remarked that he was surely destined for greatness.
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/virgil/
His birth was said to have been miraculous, and, when you compare it to the supposed birth of the god Hermes/Mercury, you might think Vergil was a reincarnation of that god.
http://www.new-wisdom.org/cultural_hi...
VIRGIL: THE MAJOR WORKS
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PI...
Aeneid
The Aeneid
[image error]
Delacroix
Dante and Virgil
[image error]
Jean-Joseph Taillasson
Virgil reading the 'Aeneid' to Augustus and Octavia
You're on a roll Rachel. So, Virgil grew up near Mantua and is thought to be homosexual. Who knew?
17 October 2001Modern art really is rubbish
Damien Hirst [07 Jul 1965~], master con man of the modern British art scene, may fetch huge bids and draw international crowds, but in the eyes of one savvy gallery worker, his art belongs in the bin. And that's exactly where cleaner Emmanuel Asare, 54, tosses an exhibit that Hirst created at a launch party for a show of his work.
The pile of empty beer bottles, dirty ashtrays, coffee cups and sweet wrappers left over from the 16 October 2001 evening party at the Eyestorm Gallery in west London had been arranged by Hirst into an impromptu installation. But when Asare arrives at the gallery the morning after the night before, he dumps the whole lot in the garbage.
“As soon as I clapped eyes on it, I sighed because there was so much mess,” the cleaner told The Sun newspaper. “I didn't think for a second that it was a work of art. It didn't much look like art to me.” Less enlightened gallery employees retrieved the items from the trash bags and used photographs to recreate the exhibit [photo below], which has a kinship the conceptual unmade-bed display of fellow YBA Tracey Emin [03 Jul 1963~] .
So...thoughts anyone?I'm curious about what everyone really thinks of this particular piece of 'art'.
I like it as a photograph. I have enough of my own belongings and I wouldn't want the cleaner to come near my place if I was not around!
Ok, "belongings" yes, but come on..."The pile of empty beer bottles, dirty ashtrays, coffee cups and sweet wrappers left over...". Who would want to keep that? Or worse, display it? That is just disgusting!I hear you, though Monica, I wouldn't want anyone touching my stuff either. It seems there is method to the madness!
Heather wrote: "Ok, "belongings" yes, but come on..."The pile of empty beer bottles, dirty ashtrays, coffee cups and sweet wrappers left over...". Who would want to keep that? Or worse, display it? That is just di..."...looks like some tubes of paint as well, maybe $20.00-$30.00 bucks worth of paint....
...of course Hirst could afford it...
...my thinking is that it is meant to be funny, or it was undertaken with a sense of fun, if so, the removal of the art as rubbish was probably giving completion to the work...
OCTOBER 31 1541Michelangelo's Last Judgement is unveiled
The Last Judgment was an object of a heavy dispute between Cardinal Carafa and Michelangelo: the artist was accused of immorality and intolerable obscenity, having depicted naked figures, with genitals in evidence, inside the most important church of Christianity, so a censorship campaign (known as the "Fig-Leaf Campaign") was organized by Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) to remove the frescoes. When the Pope's own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, said "it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully," and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather "for the public baths and taverns," Michelangelo worked Cesena's face into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld (far bottom-right corner of the painting) with Donkey ears (i.e. indicating foolishness), while his nudity is covered by a coiled snake. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain.
The genitalia in the fresco were covered 24 years later (when the Council of Trent condemned nudity in religious art) by the artist Daniele da Volterra, The clouds in the background are merged using the technique of Sfumato, to blend into the background, creating a sense of depth, as well as whom history remembers by the derogatory nickname "Braghettone" ("the breeches-painter"). A single spectator, Francesco La Cava recognized the self-portrait in 1925. Some have hypothesized that Michelangelo depicted himself in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew based on feelings of contempt Michelangelo may have had for being commissioned to paint "The Last Judgment." While his idea gained popular support, the greater art historical community has consistently refuted this theory. Michelangelo often drew himself in a way where he had lost all his power and might. He questioned over thoughts of dying and the Day of Judgement, which is seen as a reference to this work. Michelangelo was in his late sixties when he finished this painting and it's considered the peeling of Bartholomew is also the peeling of the flesh awaiting a new rebirth. The figure of St. Bartholomew was also theorized to depict the satirist and erotic writer Pietro Aretino, who had tried to extort a valuable drawing from Michelangelo; this theory has largely been refuted because the conflict between Michelangelo and Aretino did not occur until 1545, seven years after the fresco's completion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last...
I learned Volterra's nickname was 'Daniele da Pantellone'. Not sure how it's spelled but it's pronounced "pan-teh-lone-eh". 'Daniele of the underpants'. Luckily this undertaking was removed during recent restoration. I like Daniele's work very much. He was one of, if not the only artist for whom Michelangelo provided cartoons. It wasn't his fault he got that contract.
From the celling to the last judgment as I understand it, the mood , zeitgeist of the Age dramatically changed. I believe I got this from Kenneth Clark who had a unique take on it.As I remember, Michelangelo went from a Renaissance optimism to a post renaissance dispare and cynism .
Yes, he may well have presented himself as St. Bartholomew but what does that really say? He had trouble with the church all along.
Also, being Catholic and knowing the feel of Catholicism and it history , the aging of the piece was a serious part of its art. It's like faux painting something and taking away its antiquing . A lot of the allure is lost.
Not sure exactly what you mean KRad, but having seen the Michelangelo's Sistine in the '70s plus 1/2 dozen times during the restoration, in my opinion the restored chapel shows the masterpiece in it's true glory. Removing Volterra's loincloths was a very wise move. Perhaps interested parties will take a closer look at Volterra's more significant work as in his Massacre of the Innocents.
I tend to agree with Monica.There was a lot of resistance to the restoration, some by very intelligent people. The idea that the overpainted and smoke darkened images were Michelangelo's original intent took hold because it was thought that, being a sculptor, he would have worked only in chiaroscuro and modeling, with value (light and dark contrast) and not with color. So the idea of Michelangelo as a sculptor in paint, and of Raphael as the one who used color and line grew with time.
In fact, if you read Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling you'll see all kind of evidence that he intended to work in boun fresco (painting into the wet plaster) almost entirely, in which almost everything was built directly into the plaster with a vivid pastel-colored palette. Hence, the outer layers of paint would not be his. A lot of the retouching was done over the soot and dust layers by restorers who were not yet alive when the ceiling was painted, and they tended to match what they saw.
Now to create a ceiling that "holds" for the viewer at such a distance, he'd naturally think of using more brilliant color than he might have used on a wall that could be seen on close inspection. In reproduction, these restorations seemed too garish for people whose expectations were based on what the Sistine Chapel had looked like. In place, they work well.
You can see that this is a misconception that Michelangelo never used rich colors in his painting by looking at The Holy Family, a work in tempera. All the sculptural quality is there--look at St. Joseph's forehead, and St. Mary's biceps!--but the color is a significant design element.
KRad does have a point that we tend to think of an art object as one thing for all time, with one intention, rather than being a living changing thing, with, alas, a finite life span, and a cluster of historically changing perceptions and expectations on the part of viewers, which is closer to the truth. Doubtless the restored version will develop a patina with time; perhaps the way it will look in a hundred years will be how he "intended" it to look, who knows? I doubt the prerestoration state is the way he intended the work to look, however.
DECEMBER 19, 20022002 Return of Picasso painting looted by the Nazis is demanded
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Pablo Picasso's "Femme en Blanc" was painted in 1922
Thomas Bennigson sues in Los Angeles Superior Court for the return of Picasso's Femme en Blanc (aka Femme assise) of 1922, which belonged to his late grandmother (of which he is the only heir) and was looted by the Nazis in 1940.
His grandmother, Carlota Landberg, a Jew, managed to escape from Berlin and the Nazi persecution in 1938. She entrusted the painting to a Paris art dealer, J. K. Thannhauser. But the next year Word War II broke out, and in June 1940 the German troops occupied Paris and over half of France. Immediately they started to persecute Jews there, just as they had been doing in Germany, and confiscating all Jewish property on which they could lay their hands. This included the Picasso painting, according to a letter Mrs. Landberg received from the art dealer in 1958 when after searching for 13 years she was at last able to locate him. Mrs. Landberg tried in vain to find out what had happened to her painting, until she died in 1994.
The story...
The Ten Million Dollar Woman
http://www.karaplatoni.com/stories/pi...
I think that "Femme en Blanc", among the Picasso neoclassical giantesses is oen of the most pensive. I have a fantasy that she is sad, at all the heartbreak, and greed.
Yes, I agree. I had never seen this particular painting before. She does look pensive and sad. It is interesting how disproportionate her features are. Her hands are much larger than would be appropriate for her body, her whole body is almost a semblance of a form of triangle. I wonder what he was thinking when he painted that.
I'm glad the painting is back with it's rightful owner. I don't want to know Picasso's thoughts. He rubs me the wrong way because of the way treated people.
I have to agree, his personality kind of taints his paintings.
Well, I always think that there is always a separation between the person and the person-as-artist. Marcel Proust had a theory, that there is an artist part that is not always the same thing as the guy/gal who slurps their soup and leaves their towels on the floor like everybody else. They're connected, of course, but they are not the same thing.
When folks say something like that, I think of Caravaggio! Frankly, he was kind of a thug! That he was a violent and unconventional man, and that there is an aspect of that in his work, but his work is beautiful (don't you agree?) but his life is not (poignant, perhaps, or filled with pathos, but not really an exemplary citizen,)
I'm just giving people permission to enjoy (if they choose) the marvelous things that are sometimes made by more or less rotten (or at least fallible) people without feeling guilty or sneaky.
Heather wrote: "She does look pensive and sad. It is interesting how disproportionate her features are. Her hands are much larger than would be appr..."This was a period, sometimes called his neoclassical phase, it came after a period of doing extremely flat geometrical work that emphasized forms. He took what he's learned there onto a more traditional type of painting but tried to make the figures very defined, and solid instead of flat.
Now painting is flat, so a solid form doesn't look as solid in a painting or photograph. He made the figures have real weight so he exaggerated the features and their thickness as if they were a stone sculpture. This also tends to make the figures look gigantic, monumental, regardless of the scale (larger animals have thicker limbs.)
Not saying you should like it, or not like it, just explaining why I think he did it that way. (I actually like this one, he got some tenderness into it which you would not expect in this kind of treatment, that seems like a tricky thing to do.)
I'm particularly sad that someone so completely horrible to his friends, women and fellow artists could be so hugely popular. It shows how stupid human beings are.
JANUARY 191889: MILLET PAINTING INSPIRES POEM
L'homme à la houe (The Man with the Hoe) by Jean-François Millet c. 1860-1862
The Man with a Hoe
Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940), who used the penname Edwin Markham
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?
Bleak and hopeless, but beautiful, Heather.
Heather wrote: "JANUARY 191889: MILLET PAINTING INSPIRES POEM
L'homme à la houe (The Man with the Hoe) by Jean-François Millet c. 1860-1862gh
The Man with a Hoe
Charles Edward Anson Markham (1852-1940)..."
Thanks for sharing that with me, Heather. I am making my way through Van Gogh: The Life. The poem really captures some of the emotion that Vincent experienced with Millet, and which he projected on the peasantry, a kind of brutal nobility, a kind of martyrdom to despair, with which he deeply identified.
I was going to comment about how important Millet was to Vincent, but Ed said it much better than I would have. In that biography, they talk about why Vincent made so many copies of Millet's works. It's interesting and sad.
I think it is interesting how Millet focused on the common ordinary peasant people and Van Gogh followed. This is evident in his time spent in the mines, with the women weaving, etc.
Shepherdess, The (after Millet)
Peasant Woman Binding Sheaves (after Millet)
Sheaf-Binder, The (after Millet)
"The work of French artist Jean Francois Millet, in particular, resonated with Van Gogh. In many ways Millet’s experiences and the subjects he chose to paint mirrored Van Gogh’s life and work. Van Gogh could relate to Millet’s paintings of peasant life and the depiction of the plight of laborers. It was this realistic approach that Van Gogh often emulated in many of his paintings"
Millet's Influence on Van Gogh
http://blog.vangoghgallery.com/index....
I was afraid I'd have to message Dvora to find Ed's comments about the connection between Millet and Van Gogh. Some of the articles here are so long I haven't read them but I certainly appreciate them. Enjoy your weekend, art lovers!
The pictures Heather posted in message 97 remind me of something I learned in a PBS documentary about Alfred Steiglitz's honeymoon with his frrst wife. His bride expected the grand tour: fabulous meals, concerts and couture. But Steglitz schleped her out to the west coast of France to gather pictures of farmers collecting their harvest, and other "Millet" inspired work. A quick search brought this example but there are others that are better.
Art Lovers
Books mentioned in this topic
Van Gogh: The Life (other topics)Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (other topics)
The Aeneid (other topics)
