My job, social life and sun-worshipping has kept me offline for the most part but now I have the prospect of a few reasonably easy days ahead of me, the sun has departed for less English climes and with the exception of a couple of niggling little social requirements my friends seem content to leave me in peace for a short while. So ... I thought it was about time I chucked out a post, you know, just so you don't think I'm dead. I have been around, I've managed to read some posts, although I haven't always had time to leave comments, and they're all fablogulous as usual.
I'm still working on the short story that Diane inspired me to have a crack at ... but gosh it's difficult!!! Muchos kudos to Diane for doing hers so well (it was so cool, had that beatnik, "On the road" vibe to it), because it's really challenging. I'm determined to use the names of all the blogs/bloggers I follow which is quite a few now :/ plus so many of you have weird bloody blog titles ... which really doesn't help! Why can't you all call your blogs things like "The" and "Cat" or "Sat", maybe an "On" or even a "Mat"? I mean, come on! Work with me here people!
Anyway, one of the posts that I really enjoyed this week was this one by Mr Condescending in which he shared some of his favourite works of art. We've actually chatted about art before and share similar tastes, and being quite passionate about art anyway Mr C's post started me thinking about my own favourites.
I'll start with the glorious Caravaggio
This painting is titled "Amor Vincit Omnia" (love conquers all)
I love it, Cupid looks so real, so human, not like those sickly sweet, generic cherubs that clutter up Baroque art. Look at that cheeky smile, the careless, inelegant pose, look at his cute little pot belly! He's totally charming and endearing. If somebody's going to hit me in the butt with a love arrow ... I want it to be him. Just imagine the cheeky little laugh he'd have as he did it.
This is "Judith Slaying Holofernes" by Artemisia Gentileschi
I really like her style. she was actually greatly influenced by Caravaggio which I think shows. Look at Holofernes arm, the skin looks so real you could almost reach out and brush it with your fingertips. It's a rather gory subject, Caravaggio himself did a version of the same story, but I prefer Artemisia's because there's so much more emotion behind it.
But it's Artemisia's own story that fascinates me more. She was an amazing woman, she was the first female member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence, which given the attitudes towards women in those times was really quite an achievement. But it wasn't always an easy life, her father who was a respected artist in his own right hired a rather nasty piece of work called Agostino Tassi, a fine artist but a total scumbag of a human being, to tutor her. Tassi raped Artemisia with the help of another man. Although traumatised Artemisia believed he intended to marry her and so allowed the relationship to continue. Tassi however then refused to marry her claiming she was having an affair with another man. An ugly trial followed when her father pressed charges against Tassi and a whole can of sordid worms was opened revealing Tassi to be a thief (he was planning to steal paintings from Artemisia's father's studio), an adulterer (with his own sister in law) and potential murderer (he was plotting to kill his wife). The trial process was brutal and none suffered more than Artemisia, not only was she subjected to a harrowing gynecological examination but she was also tortured in an effort to corroborate the truth of her allegation, they bound her fingers and slowly tightened the leather straps, effectively crushing them, possibly the worst punishment you could mete out to an artist. Later she painted this picture and her experiences, her hatred and anger towards brutal men clearly colour her art with raw emotion.
In his post, or it might have been in the comments, Mr Condescending mentioned Turner and said he rocked, which I was really pleased about because
J M W Turner is one of my absolute favourites. I even love his "fuzzy" stuff as I think it was referred to, I think it's those pieces that capture the most energy and emotion.
This piece is "Slave Ship" and for me is one of Turner's most interesting pieces.
Turner was a great advocate for the abolition of slavery and painted this in an effort to help the cause. The picture highlights how the slave traders of the time would throw the bodies of the dead or sick slaves, of which there were many thanks to the appalling living conditions on the slave ships, overboard. They could then claim insurance on the bodies as the victims of drowning and make a tidy sum. I think Turner's anger and abhorrence for this practice is shown in the violence of the sea, and the colours and harsh, vivid brushstrokes he employed.
I know nothing about this picture. I came across it by accident a few years ago and loved it so much that I've kept in on my laptop ever since, always hoping to one day find out who painted it and what it's called/what it's portraying etc.
If anybody knows, please let me have the details.
This is "Rolla" by Henri Gervex
I like the decadence and languishing sensuality of the subject
This is a portrait of "Dame Margot Fontaine" one of the greatest prima ballerinas of all time, painted by Sir Claude Francis Berry.
Portraits are my favourite genre of painting, all part of my obsession with people watching I guess. And I also love to watch ballerinas dance. Berry has perfectly captured the fascinating mix of grace, strength and fragile vulnerability they all seem to exhibit.
I know Mr C has a thing for ballerinas too, so he should enjoy this one.
This is a "Louise Jopling" by Sir John Everett Millais.
Isn't she beautiful?
He's most famous for the rather twee "Bubbles" (not Wacko's chimp, btw) the Little Lord Fauntleroy lookalike with the pipe and the bowl of Fairy Liquid which Pears Soap shamelessly forced down consumers throats in a tirelessly long running ad campaign. As a consequence he has come to represent the image of bland, sentimental Victorian art, which is rather unfair as he was capable of a great deal more, as this portrait shows.
Louise Jopling was a talented Pre-Raphaelite artist in her own right and was a contemporary rival of Millais'
Probably my favourite artist of all is John William Waterhouse and I have a print of this painting of "Hylas and the Nymphs" in my bedroom.
Hylas was one of the infamous Argonauts, rumoured to be the son of a nymph and the mighty Heracles. A handsome youth, he was kidnapped by the spring nymph Dryope who had fallen in love with him and was lost forever, enthralled and captivated by her beauty and allure.
I fell in love with Waterhouse's work as a little girl, simply because he painted the things I loved, mythological figures such as mermaids, sirens and enchantresses and tragic literary figures such as poor, mad Ophelia from Hamlet and Elaine, Lady of Shallot who died as a consequence of the unrequited love of Sir Lancelot. His female subjects were beautiful, ethereal and feminine in every way and I wanted to be just like them.
This is "Automat" by Edward Hopper.
Probably most people are more familiar with his "Nighthawks" but I prefer this one. She looks so sad, so resigned to being alone and I recognise those emotions, they speak to me and I feel for her.
There's lots more I could include, but then this post would be endless. For instance, I'm not a big fan of landscapes but I love Canaletto's views of Venice and London, they're the closest things we have to photographs from those times and his eye for the most minutest of detail is breathtaking.
I haven't included any really modern art, Hopper is as recent as I'm going to get for now ... mostly because I loathe it with a passion. It's one of my pet peeves.
Here's where I start to rant ...
Rachel Whiteread once exhibited an old mattress off a bed, some other loony whose name I can't remember had everything he possessed crushed and shredded and then placed into plastic bins and put on show, and what about when the Tate displayed Carl Andre's "sculpture" of 120 firebricks laid on the floor in a rectangular formation? Prompting Keith Waterhouse to sum it up rather nicely (even if he did write for the ghastly Daily Mirror): "Bricks are not works of art. Bricks are Bricks. You can build walls with them or chuck them through jeweller's windows, but you cannot stack them two deep and call it sculpture".
And he's right! It's a load of old phooey!
However, I seem to be the only one who thinks so, so I would clarify at this stage, in my defence, that I'm quite happy to look at modern art, and call it art, even if it's not particularly to my taste, IF it has some artistic merit to it. An old mattress and a box of fragmented junk has NO artistic merit to it in my opinion, it's rubbish, quite literally.
If I left an old mattress standing outside my house, how many people would stop and say "Wow! Will you look at that! Isn't that amazing! What a piece of art!"? Not many I'm guessing. Yet if someone with more nerve than talent declares it to BE art, sticks it in a poncey art gallery with a ludicrous, jumped up title like "Contemplation of life and death and Swedish Meatballs" then you can bet all the pretentious art snobs would come running like so many sheep, bleating about how "deep" it is and how it moved them to consider mortality, rebirth and prime cuts of beef. Tossers!
*Takes some deep, calming breaths*
Ok, that's better ... it really IS good to share!
Have a great weekend all :) x
