Thread for the Fine Arts of painting, sculpture, and other interesting mediums!

[QA48]

Thanks to CopperFox for the idea to create a thread for those who love art or at least are interested in the arts!

Personally, I enjoy the arts produced in the era of the Renaissance and Baroque, as well as the architecture and sculpture produced during antiquity. Some Late 19th century art like, Impressionism (Monet, not to be confused with Manet, Degas, and Renoir) and Post-Impressionism (most famously, my beloved Van Gogh who only sold ONE painting during his lifetime).

A friend of mine was talking to a visiting art historian professor at my university and he said that it has been implied that Art, in our times, is dead. At first, I gave art the benefit of doubt, but then I saw what was passed off as art nowadays with the controversial project that was to be presented during this year's student annual art exhibition at Yale. This girl purposely impregnated herself several times, afterwards inducing herself to have miscarriages all the while videotaping herself and preserving the fluids that came from the miscarriages with Vaseline. This was to be presented as Art. Fortunately, after a public out cry, the exhibition was banned and the dean who approved the project was suspended. This is one of the many disgusting and disturbing examples that are being passed off as art today.

The question of "What is art?" has been debated going way back to Plato. He thought art could be used as a way to achieve universal truth and beauty through mimesis , in other words, by producing an exact copy of an idea (in those days artist sought to replicate nature). He had little interest in the final product, for him the original idea of the art was the art itself.

Going back to the Yale incident I mentioned, many will argue that what the student produced was indeed art according to Aristotle's view on what art is. He added to Plato's idea of what art was by giving credit to the artist perception of what art is since, in this case, the artist is the creator of his or her idea. I think this gave artists back then, and nowadays, more possibilities of defining the term "art."

Hopefully this is a good start to the thread

 

[EveningStar]

When it comes to outrage presented as art -- relying on shock value -- it's not new.

Look up DADAISM on the web. Yes, back in the early 20th century people who were fed up with established norms in art did shockingly ugly works to try and stir up controversy and a discussion of what constitutes art.

The most famous Dada work was called "Fountain", by Marcel Duchamp. It was a urinal with the word FOUNTAIN written on it. No, I'm not kidding. And that was NINETY ONE YEARS AGO (1917).

What bothers me most about such "anti-art" movements (yes, that's the technical term) is that the controversies are so predictable in nature. Take one mainstream religious figure, add a bodily substance to it, give it a sexually suggestive title, and claim that it throws attention on a certain threat to public health or freedom. Get some gallery that needs publicity to host it. Wait for the outcry. Remove it. Allow the gallery to reap the attention that it defended freedom of expression. Some other place decides to host it with lots of security. Make money. Sell your soul.

That's not art. It's the frustrated attempts by people who could never be great seeking a shortcut to fifteen minutes of fame. Art comes from original minds who solve old problems in new ways. Such men and women would never dare follow a formula like showing ___the Apostle Paul____ made out of ___urine and kidney stones___ called ___"really p***d off"____ and highlighting ___the Catholic Church's inaction on the problem of Seborrhic Dermatitis in New Guinea____.

And I hardly exaggerate! What really bothers me is how foolishly the same old protest groups for and against get the same old TV and print coverage in the same old way so they can make the same old money...rather than ignoring them. What if they put up a Christ made of caramels and cigarette butts and NOBODY CAME!

 

[Copperfox]

Eagerly anticipating the advent of this thread, I originally intended that my first entry on it would be sort of at the opposite end of the graph line from the "outrage" issue. I was going to write about the issue of when and how a literal factual representation of things becomes art. I was going to mention a Christian novel titled "Come Spring," which I once read aloud to my ever-blessed Janalee. That novel takes place about 95 years ago, and its hero is a photographer trying to get art galleries to acknowledge his photos as an art form. I still recommend the novel (I seem to recall that it was written by Tim LaHaye), but now let me toss my hat in the outrage ring.

I believe that the prevalence of shock art arises from the fact that, over the past 110 years or so, educated Western society has increasingly embraced self-indulgence as a holy creed. (I cite the fake anthropologist Margaret Mead, literally _inventing_ a sex-crazed Samoan culture in order to justify her own real-life promiscuity.) If an artist considers herself as part of a community, with a responsibility to _contribute_ something positive to that community, she is not going to murder her own babies as part of a campaign to wallow in obscenity. But if she thinks that existence generally is all about self-gratification and self-exaltation, then she will also think that art in particular is all about self-gratification and self-exaltation. Then there is no telling how far she'll go to stroke her own ego by making a filthy splash.

The self-indulgence problem was visible in its build-up long before these urine-and-feces travesties became so commonplace. I was noticing it in modern literature almost as soon as I was old enough to tackle any literature worth mentioning. How can I put this? Novelists told stories in which the narrative simply _withheld_ information from the reader. Authors flattered themselves that they were creating a "profound" work that "challenged" the reader and invited layered interpretations of subtext and alternate meanings and yada yada yada...when all they were doing was refusing to _tell_ us what was supposed to be going on.

Anyone can play that game. If I wanted to write a fake-profound piece of literature about my childhood, I could use incomplete information too. For instance: "Charlie was taller than Jeff. My dinosaurs always drove the green tractor. The old man is fat. And there were all those times bailing out from the swings. Coke on you! Great soybeans on your Grandpa's farm." That has no profundity, it merely _doesn't_ tell you what I was talking about. Self-indulgent artists, feeling themselves "above" the common people of their community, would likewise feel no obligation to let the peasantry know _what_ they were "talking about." Or, if making it plain what they were talking about, they would feel no obligation to respect the peasantry's feelings when saying it.

 

[EveningStar]

Let's escort Copperfox back to the warmer end of the artistic spectrum. A more civilized bit of discourse suitable for tea and biscuits in the parlour...

Once there was a genuine incentive for the greatest painters of the world to achieve startling lifelike simulations of reality.

Then came photography, but still only the great painters could capture the evanescent play of light in late evening IN COLOUR. There was still a need for landscape painting to show someone WHAT SOMETHING REALLY LOOKS LIKE.

Now colour photography is everywhere. Without the constraints of film, folk take potshots at ultra-reality with cell phone cameras and send them around the globe. Television is high-def and webcams abound. We know what the back side of the moon looks like, and even have a glimpse of the Martian north pole.

The purpose of painting has graduated from JOURNALISM to STORYTELLING. We are now seeing people paint things that CANNOT be photographed. Painting has, therefore, become the camera of the INNER EYE.

How do you think this trend will evolve in the coming years? What do you like about it? Hate about it? Wish for it? And what's your favourite material?

 

[QueenSusanofNarnia]

Painting is life. I love it, especially watercolour and acryllic.
During art class last year I did a lot of painting but since I didn't take art this year I've only done two pieces outside of school. I hope that this summer I'll be able to do more!

 

[inkspot]

Just an aside ... I believe the young woman who claimed to want to do miscarriage art later said that he never really had been pregnant; she was just lying about that.

Both my step-daughters are in art school right now, and they are good artists, but they find me woefully inadequate as a critic because I do not know enough about art. They like the Mom-critic response "That's the best one you've done yet!" but would prefer a real-critic-critical response now that they are grown up.

The elder one is majoring in print-making, and she was explaining the process to me ... I wish could explain it back to you, but she is somehow carving or etching her vision in wood or laminate, and then using that to sort of stamp a layer of ink onto canvas or paper or whatever material ... but only one color/layer at a time ...

Anyway, the stuff she produced this way was just really cool looking.

 

[Copperfox]

This is not the highest of highbrow, but my first wife Mary loved doing counted cross-stitch. The last and greatest piece she ever did before the strain on her eyes became too great was a scene of a female angel carrying a baby in her arms above the waves of the ocean. That picture still hangs in my living room.

 

[QA48]

Just an aside ... I believe the young woman who claimed to want to do miscarriage art later said that he never really had been pregnant; she was just lying about that.

Actually, that's what she said at first but then she claimed they made her say that. Today she still stands by her story.

On a lighter note, here's an interesting anecdote:

Leonardo and Michelangelo couldn't stand each other. And both Leo and Mike (as I like to call him) couldn't stand Raphael who so admire them both. In fact, when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he would not let anyone inside the chapel whatsoever. Not even Pope Julius II, who was the one who commissioned it. While Michelangelo was painting the chapel, Raphael was on the other side painting his famous School of Athens. He was so curious to see what Michelangelo was painting that he asked Bramante (who was the Vatican's architect and distant cousin of Raphael) to lend him the keys of the Sistine Chapel so he could take a peek. He did so and sketched what he saw, which was Michelangelo sitting on the floor thinking and sketching. Needless to say, when the painting was unveiled to the public, Michelangelo was angry that Raphael would actually have the nerve to peek inside the chapel. Leonardo was in Rome at the time so he also makes an appearance in Raphael's School of Athens.

Also, how Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel was actually a ploy by Bramante and Raphael. They both convinced Pope Julius II to have Michelangelo (who considered himself primarily a sculptor) paint the Sistine chapel. Their intention was for Michelangelo to fail in the medium of painting so that people would then remember Michelangelo for this great failure rather than his achievements in sculpture. We all know how that turned out

P.S. Michelangelo is seen sitting on the foreground. Leonardo's at the center.

 

[Copperfox]

I guess the catty rivalry we associate with actors and pop singers was to be found among the classic artists. Imagine if they had had tabloid papers and junky TV shows back then to fuel the personality conflicts!

Tell us, was the Leo-Mike friction you describe here ever the subject of a college paper you did?

 

[QA48]

I guess the catty rivalry we associate with actors and pop singers was to be found among the classic artists. Imagine if they had had tabloid papers and junky TV shows back then to fuel the personality conflicts!

Tell us, was the Leo-Mike friction you describe here ever the subject of a college paper you did?

I didn't really emphasize the rivalry, but i briefly talked about it in one of the transitional paragraphs. Both, Leo (the painter) and Michelangelo (the sculptor), thought that the medium they primarily worked in was the best medium in which art could best manifest itself, publicly dismissing each other's medium as inferior. For Leonardo (at least according to his writings) there was more at stake when creating a work of art in painting rather than in sculpture. To Leo, the sculptor only had to worry about volume, form, movement, and the placing of a sculpture into its intended environment. But for him, sculpture lacked, for one thing, one very important element, color.

Michelangelo was aware of Leonardo's thoughts on sculpture and this was one of the reasons attributed to their rivalry. And to make matters worse, Leonardo wrote in his "Treatise on Painting" (Great to read, if you're interested in the medium of painting) that sculpture required "less mental effort" than painting (ouch!) because while a sculptor only had to worry about the four things that I previously mentioned, a painter had to put more "metal" effort when composing a painting. All these comments from Leonardo, in my opinion, comes from an elitist point of view. Leonardo disregarded sculpture as art for the blue-collar since the sculptor would have to had physically work, sweat, and labor in order to create a sculpture, whereas, Leonardo would just had to sit in his pretty little comfortable studio to create his work.

Oh, and Rivalry goes WAY back to the Archaic period (600-480 BCE) in Greece. There were these two artists, Euthymides and Euphronios who each specialized in pottery. On Euthymides "Three Revelers" amphora, he signs it, "Euthymides painted me..." and then adds "as never Euphronios could do!" On that amphora you have the first evidence of trash-talking among artists going all the way back to antiquity.

 

[Copperfox]

This is looking like a great thread!

>> But for him, sculpture lacked, for one thing, one very important element, color.

Did not the ancients sometimes paint the surfaces of statues?

 

[QA48]

This is looking like a great thread!

>> But for him, sculpture lacked, for one thing, one very important element, color.

Did not the ancients sometimes paint the surfaces of statues?

Yes, they did! In fact they painted their temples and statues with bright colors. Unfortunately, as time passed, and these temples and sculptures disappeared and when discovered buried underground, time had erased all traces of color, and the world then had a romanticized view of what the temples and sculptures in antiquity looked like. That's why during the Renaissance and Baroque era, when artists looked back to antiquity for inspiration we see sculptures of those eras made out of white marble. Never had they imagined that the art they were influenced by were brightly painted by any means! It wasn't until scientific technology had advanced later on in the 20th century (I'll have to chase my notes on whether it was late 19th or 20th century) that historians began to see traces of paint on ancient walls and sculptures. Let me see if I can find some examples of it on my USB. I had a lot of great examples on my old laptop but it crashed taking with it everything.

Edit: Managed to get some of the pics (you can also find these online)

Dying Gaul (Hellenistic sculpture from Greece) as discovered.
As it would've been painted
Grave Stele of Hegeso
Grave Stele as it would've been painted back then
The Parthenon as the world sees it
Parthenon as the Greeks would've seen it (corner of one of the cornice and frieze of the temple)

I had a lot of more examples on my old computer. It's sad that I lost almost all of it.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, If any of you live in Tennessee, they have an exact reconstruction of the Parthenon down to the 40ft. statue of the Goddess Athena sculpted by the great Phidias, who also sculpted the colossal statue of Zeus for his temple at Olympia. Both of them no longer exist! The Athena replica is the only one in the world.

 

[Copperfox]

Tiff, even if you can't provide ANY graphic images here, your astute insights are making this thread lively indeed.

If anyone else does have the means to place fine-art images on this thread, please do so, and maybe Spiffy Tiff will be able to comment on whatever does appear.

 

[QA48]

Tiff, even if you can't provide ANY graphic images here, your astute insights are making this thread lively indeed.

If anyone else does have the means to place fine-art images on this thread, please do so, and maybe Spiffy Tiff will be able to comment on whatever does appear.

I added some images to my post. They don't include any nudity so it's safe to look

Let me know if I'm not allowed to so I can take them down.

 

[Copperfox]

I don't _know_ of any reason why the Mods wouldn't let you keep those pictures you found on this thread. Thanks for your perseverance in finding them for us. Once the element of color is added to sculpture, and considering the sculptor's need to work in three dimensions, I'd say that Michelangelo wins the brawl.

Say, Tiff, I just thought of something. There's a Christian man back in Illinois, a friend of mine--and while she was here, a friend to Janalee--who is a sculptor. His work is all in wood carving, but under his hands it has the dignity to stand alongside stone. His name is Salem Barker. I'm going to see if I can interest him in joining TDL, just so he could contribute to this thread. AND to the architecture thread, for carvings of his have been made centerpieces of office-building lobbies.

 

[QA48]

I don't _know_ of any reason why the Mods wouldn't let you keep those pictures you found on this thread. Thanks for your perseverance in finding them for us. Once the element of color is added to sculpture, and considering the sculptor's need to work in three dimensions, I'd say that Michelangelo wins the brawl.

Say, Tiff, I just thought of something. There's a Christian man back in Illinois, a friend of mine--and while she was here, a friend to Janalee--who is a sculptor. His work is all in wood carving, but under his hands it has the dignity to stand alongside stone. His name is Salem Barker. I'm going to see if I can interest him in joining TDL, just so he could contribute to this thread. AND to the architecture thread, for carvings of his have been made centerpieces of office-building lobbies.

I'd say that's a great idea! Maybe we can get him to post some of his works on here. Maybe we can analyze his work with some psychoanalysis lol. Nah, I wouldn't go that far. As long as the artist is alive, I will take his or her word for what the work truly means.

Hopefully he won't get scared of the Dada infected section of this forum

There is so much to talk about when it comes to sculpture and carving in architecture. Have you seen the sculptural programs that were so popular in Gothic architecture during the medieval period? I mean, they seriously required extensive knowledge in carving. All those portals, doors, jambs, archivaults, tympanums so heavily decorated in carvings of just about anything! I'm sure your friend would have something to say about that as well

I have yet to touch upon one of my all time favorite artists besides Michelangelo, and that is the great Artemisia Gentileschi! Her painting of "Judith Beheading Holofernes" is what made me change my major from Embalming to Art History. I'll go into more depth about the painting tomorrow. Though, I do have to warn, the painting is very graphic, yet so powerful after knowing the background on how the painting came to be. Unfortunately, they only mention her briefly in my History of Western Art class and in my Baroque art class so everything I know about her is because I've done research on her during my own personal time. Even my professors give me this look of, "I know you already know this stuff," when talking about her in class. One of my professors say that I will have to wait until I go to grad school and start attending seminars to learn more about her works. I'm just so passionate about the life of this woman and how events greatly impacted her works.

P.S. I added some links to the 40ft. Statue of Athena at the Parthenon in Tennessee. Worth checking out to get a feel of what the Greeks would've seen upon entering the real Parthenon at the Acropolis in Greece during the 400's BCE

 

[Copperfox]

Embalming?? But after an instant of surprise, it is not so strange after all that you would have considered the funereal field. Not for any art-related reason, of course, but rather because your Christian spirit would have made you an exceptionally compassionate comforter of the bereaved if you worked in the funeral industry.

As for my pal Salem, not much can shock him. He has never been an ivory-tower artist, but has travelled overseas in connection with working at some rather macho blue-collar jobs. He's also a Second Amendment enthusiast. I've already written to him, and am hoping for a soon reply.

I'm afraid I haven't seen the sculptural programs you mention. But the very fact of your mentioning them reminds me of something I will want to bring up over on the Architecture thread. See you there!

 

[Tarkheena_Finduilas22]

This is not the highest of highbrow, but my first wife Mary loved doing counted cross-stitch. The last and greatest piece she ever did before the strain on her eyes became too great was a scene of a female angel carrying a baby in her arms above the waves of the ocean. That picture still hangs in my living room.

I do counted cross stitch. My problem is, I'll start doing it, get involved and then suddenly put it down for months at a time. This is not helpful if one is wanting to finish it by Christmas as a gift.

 

[inkspot]

Tiff, you are doing a tremendous job here! Thanks for the links to the photos. I didn't like Dying Gaul painted at all, but everything else I thought looked better with paint. The gossip about the artistic rivalries was great -- who knew? Ummm, one of the links has a "no hot linking" restriction on it. I forget which. But anyone, they were very cool.

OK, before you link us to the beheading painting, give us all the background on the artist and how the painting came to be so we can be ready for it. This is quite interesting stuff.

 

[bruiser]

I do counted cross stitch. My problem is, I'll start doing it, get involved and then suddenly put it down for months at a time. This is not helpful if one is wanting to finish it by Christmas as a gift.

Me too. Except my problem is that I'll get started and then I can't put it down.... I just haven't done many in a while. My mother however has done a big cross stitch project of the 23 Psalms with the scripture in it and a herd of sheep grazing by a river in a beautiful meadow in the background. It was really pretty, but she gave it to a church for their auction. So it is no longer in our possession.


I always loved the arts of the Renaissance. I guess it was the reality in what the artists sculpted and drew that I liked.