legion of honor, brief and vague inquisitions of art.
MIND YOU- SOPHISTICATED INTELLECTUAL AT PRIVATE LIBERAL ARTS SCHOOL- I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ART AND DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO AN ART HISTORY CLASS,THIS IS WHERE ALL MY LEARNING AND SPECULATION OCCURS, so i’m just passing along whatever piques my interest in the hopes of a good conversation and insight from my peers, in other words- art democratized.
- there are several bare breasted women in 16.c-19c. paintings & sculptures (mostly emulating the madonna/muses/godesses,) was this common place for the women outside of the context of a painting/sculpture? if not, then how and why was this not culturally rendered as vulgar in said art work?
- everyone, (a generalization of 15 c.-19 c. european artists,) tries to anthrapomorphize baby jesus; a child with a wise, serious, and consciosly thinking expression. in this very notion another nail is added to the coffin in my secular understandings, i simply cannot understand a baby as all-knowing and aware of it’s own divinity, especially if it doesn’t know how to not shit it’s own pants. i like religious art though, and their tales are interesting (i.e. the marriage of tobias and sarah).
- i can easily dismiss all religious art as old, and forget that a good portion of them are especially telling of their contemporary takes on these tales, as that too is now old. but one painting did strike me as very contemporary for it’s time, in a way that a horror film traditionally carries a contemporary air in which it is recognizeably dated and stylized instead of spanning a modest and “timeless” aesthetic for quite some time. the painting was the passion of christ/the crowning with thorns by master of cappenberg. notice the attire, definitely not of jesus’s time though belonging to the fashions of when the painting was made. another interesting observation: note that each man’s weiner/wee wee/package/penis is visibly outlined on each dude, whereas when you look at j.c.’s crotchage, it is quite modest and not emphasized. perhaps the penis was used to emphasize each man’s manhood and by extention mortality, which jesus transcends.
- FUNNY CHERUBS. At this point, my eyes register cherubs as simply ornate, though here are some that are not simply placed as crowns on architectural decor. A) martyrdom of saint bartholomew by luca giordano is a striking portrait that captures you with the most accute detail of subtle lighting, but contrary to this neorealist vein the trtansluscent cherub heads that emmerge from the upper left hand corner are whimsically distracting. B) check out the two cherubs making out in landscape with venus and cupid, this is funny/amusing because cherubs essentially look like babies.
-you can trace the sardonic style early on in german painting, even in religious art, i love seeing this tone evolve throughout the more liberal and abstract german romanticism and expressionism.
- until now i didn’t realize that my preference and fascination for art mostly lies from the ornate Rococo through the 19th Century, nor did I realize that I have a love for A )portraits of children, B) nordic/dutch/danish landscapes, and C) busts.
A) master james hatch by sir william beechey; sculpture, painting, architecture- all by charles-andre (carle) vanloo- i think they are hilarious and impressive, though i could see how some would think them creepy
B) my eyes instantly widened and absorbed all of a cloud and landscape study by moonlight when I saw it, it really was the one that had the greatest sensation/attraction for me and reminded me of a painting that brought silly weepy tears of awe to my eyes when I saw coppenhagen harbor by moonlight at the met back in April- and it reminded me of it for a very good reason too- they are both by johan christian dahl, I didn’t fully know until after the fact when I scanned the plaque, and for that I am forever grateful and admire johan christian dahl.
C) mary queen of scots by albert-ernst carrier-belleuse, the most ideal ideal I ever saw.
- holy week in seville by jose jimenez y aranda, so rich with detail, culture, and a distinct set of characters, but the woman in black who looks right at you kills me. she is someone i’ll probably think about late at night when i’m trying to sleep though am caught in thinking about mysteries of the world.
- With its airy celebration of the lavish and royal, I savored the curator’s definition of rococo which put it well into perspective; to parapharase- assymetryical motifs, curves, and counter curves; rich ornaments, luscious colors; shimmering fabrics; the sensual/fragile rococo waned with the emmergence of the enlightenment. Rococo or Rocaille from 18th c. France and Italy was named after formations like rocks and seashells.
-WHAT IS ART? is a question as old as abstract thought and figurative language, it’s as easy to answer as WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? Im sure many scholars and academics of which i am ignorant of have broken down art in it’s own elements, but these were my observations today:
the three elements that art might be broken into are the ornate, the conceptual, and the narrative. The ornate could be a rococo sofa for the royalty of buorbon, the conceptual of some picasso-bizzaro-whatever, and the narrative a death of marat by david. each element can be exclusive or collaborative of each other. A great piece masters one of these elements, a masterpiece perhaps masters all three.
-lastly, i’ll leave you with a a delightful painting to look at. as you may know I have a softspot for bookish girls of old souls and snark, enid and wednesday adams being patron saints, here is emile carolus-duran’s portrait of his daughter, marie-anne carolus-duran, I cant help but imagine some sort of precursory resemblance or continuity to my favorite, marguerite by matisse.
the legion of honor’s flickr collection- pretty pictures. though you should go to the legion of honor and size up those brush strokes and lighting that does not require the calibration of a pixelated screen- which is only an estimate- you should go for the architecture alone.
-pretend art collector
