Because without it, we wouldn't have this?
ogged- have you ever seen it in person? I haven't, but am told it's breathtaking. (By people who I don't think would say that just because it's so famous they think they're supposed to like it.) An uncannily lifelike, 3-dimensional quality.
Before looking it up on the internets, I assumed "sfumato" was some clever internet-y acronym that began "Shut the Fuck Up..." and I couldn't figure out the rest.
Now that I've established myself as an art historian of the first degree, I'll tell ya, I've seen it, and I really just thought "Huh. That's the Mona Lisa. Cool." My example of a very-well-known work of art that is truly breathtaking in person? Michaelangelo's Pieta. Thought I'd have the Mona Lisa reaction, but nearly cried instead.
Naw, I saw it in person and thought that it was a nice enough painting. (I'm totally willing to say that I am an ignorant savage, but still maintain that it isn't so spectacular that it reaches the ignorant savages.) I don't know why it is so special either.
I've seen it in person (with some difficulty, as there were about a hundred people in front of it. And it's a pretty small canvas). I don't see what the big deal is either.
Isn't that the one that super-villains are always rigging up extraordinary mechanical devices to evade the laser beams criss-crossing the room it is stored in and using their anti-gravity outfits to crawl across the ceiling so they can cut through the glass that's protecting it and steal away with it to their secret lair? Reckon it's got to be pretty special if they would go to all that trouble for it.
I found the Pieta in person, in practice, to be profoundly depressing (especially as it's always been one of my favorites in photographs), because these days you can't get anywhere near it. It's behind bulletproof glass, and so not only is there always something between you and the sculpture, your ability to see it from a variety of angles is severely compromised as well. David in person, on the other hand, is an excellent experience.
Bulletproof glass? Is there really that big a risk that someone's going to take a shot at it?
I think someone hacked a toe off in the last decade or so.
A guy attacked it with a hammer in the 70s.
agreed. This is not the cat's meow.
And I have had very strong reactions to direct encounters with works of art--never seen the Pieta, but some Vermeers, some Greek sculpture, has brought tears to my eyes--so it's not like I'm incapable of being moved.
But this one doesn't move me.
Laszlo Toth.
You can tell by her enigmatic smile that she isn't wearing panties. I thought everyone knew that.
5: You know what I didn't get? The people videotaping it. WTF? Do they think it's suddenly going to sprout legs and walk away?
You can't take a picture of ML because it's too dark without a flash and the glass reflects your flash- so I took a picture of the room full of idiots trying to take a picture of it.
Oops! i messed up my link in no. 1. Here's the right link: http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/7050000/7053060.jpg
13: Whenever I see tourists videotaping something, it is guaranteed that that thing is immobile. A building, for example.
It's the most photographed barn in America. No one sees the barn.
I saw the Pietà up close and personal years before the Toth attack. It made me cry, which is very odd, because I'm a confirmed non-believer. I think it's the most emotionally powerful piece of plastic art I've ever seen.
As I recall, Toth struck at the Madonna's arm and face, causing significantly more damage than "hack[ing] off a toe".
The half-smile, the soft gaze, the ambiguity. The artistic self-consciousness of the background being non-contiguous behind her head (imagine taking her out of the picture, what would you see?)
But yeah, the Pieta made me cry more.
the most emotionally powerful piece of plastic art I've ever seen
Uh, listen... don't take this too bad... but I think you've been taken in. Those plastic Pietas are mass-produced in Taiwan and easy to find on the street. The original is made of stone.
For the people who've seen the Mona Lisa (who I'm going to arbitrarily assume have seen it more recently than I): is it still in a dumpy little corner of the Louvre?
I'll toss my vote in with the Pietà crowd, except that there's another different, non-famous Pietà that I happen to think is even better. It was done near the end of his life and is both unfinished and intentionally much rougher and more abstract in style, but it's absolutely amazing.
Has everyone here cried while looking at art? I don't think I ever have.
A friend of mine sometimes gets hard-ons while looking at art. Not the naked-lady kind either.
1 is close, but not quite right.
I was lucky to see the Pieta right before they put it behind glass. The decision to protect it that way doesn't make much sense to me — the toe story actually relates to the David, although I believe someone came after the Pieta with a hammer, too. I'm pretty sure that the solution to the David problem was to put a replica on public display. I'm not sure why they can't do the same for the Pieta.
Speaking of the replica: Armsmasher, doesn't this mean I should've won that drunken argument at Cue Bar last week? Or do you believe that the publicly-displayed David is meaningfully different from the original?
You Mona Lisa haters suck. Doctor Who stole six of them. Six!
I have never cried while looking at art.
Not the naked-lady kind
This confuses me -- I would think the point of saying you got hard-ons looking at a work of art would be to demonstrate that you responded to it powerfully, as powerfully as you do to the prospect of getting down. But if it's some other type of hard-on, then what is intended? Is it of the "woke up in the morning needing to go to the bathroom" sort? I don't see how that would be relevant to the experience of looking at art.
I have not ever cried looking at paintings or sculptures (or really at any non-art experience in memory) -- perhaps strangely the closest I can remember coming to crying has always been at the movies.
I believe "not the naked lady kind" was intended to modify "art" rather than "hard-ons."
I'm pretty sure that the solution to the David problem was to put a replica on public display.
I think the deal is that the original used to be outdoors. That one has been replaced by a replica, but you can still see the original indoors, at a small museum called the Accademia, or the Accademia Something.
27: I don't know the answers to your questions, Clownae, but this guy has strange physical reactions to certain experiences. He also becomes very flatulent in bookstores for some weird reason.
My general position on crying at art would be that it's a terrible affectation. But there are probably inexcusable people who go around hoping to prove something by being overcome all over the place, and then there's the rest of us who are suddenly taken off guard and reduced to weepiness, and we should be forgiven.
28 resolves my confusion, and makes me laugh at myself for having gotten that mixed up.
BTW -- I hate to pull a thread off track but I just say this, and was mightily impressed. Be sure to click on the photo for a larger copy.
I've mentioned this before, but for some reason I cry, or almost cry, as a reaction to poetry. Not so much to the emotional impact of the poetry, but some kind of odd reaction to something with a strongly rhythmic meter -- like, Kipling will often do it to me, silly as the poetry is. It's something about the rhythm. If the subject matter is also affecting, I'm gone.
I think Susan has it right in 31. It's also ok to cry if your new cell phone is accidentally smashed, but that's as far as I'm willing to go, what with our testosterone already in danger. I've been heartily moved a couple of times, but I've never shed tears over a painting.
A friend of mine sometimes gets hard-ons while looking at art. Not the naked-lady kind either.
I thought da meant he was gay.
I found the Mona Lisa to be underwhelming, although I was only able to see it for 3 seconds because of the crowd.
This Van Gogh left me verklempt; the original is quite...disturbing.
Who is yoyo and why is it pretending to be me? ["Oops! i messed up my link in no. 1."]
DuChamp's Mona Lisa L.H.O.O.Q. is more fun than all that Dan Brown stuff.
In this head, whoever wished to see how closely art could imitate nature, was able to comprehend with ease; for in it were counterfeited all the minutenesses that with subtlety are able to be painted, seeing that the eyes had that lustre and watery sheen which are always seen in life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the lashes, which cannot be represented without the greatest subtlety....And, indeed, it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant craftsman, be he who he may, tremble and lose heart.
This Van Gogh left me verklempt; the original is quite...disturbing.
This is way true. Reproduced Van Goghs are pretty and funky, but in person, they're electric.
Also, everyone had to say they liked it because Leonardo "with his right hand...twisted the iron ring of a doorbell, or a horse-shoe, as if it were lead", and he might have beat them all up.
He also becomes very flatulent in bookstores for some weird reason.
This happens to me sometimes. I just walk through the aisles, trailing napalm.
Furthermore, no one is astonished by this kind of realism any more because you are all ruined by photography.
43 wants me to chide Chopper with a reference to the farting-on-the-tennis-court passage in Infinite Jest, but Maurice never returned my copy that I lent him.
The Mona Lisa isn't tucked away; it's got a wall to itself, under glass, surrounded by viewers so you can't really look at it. I found Da Vinci's Man with Glove and looked at that instead--it's a really gorgeous painting. I also really like the Lady with the Ermine.
That said, surely one reason the Mona Lisa is so great is the ambiguity and liveliness of her face combined with the repose of her figure. And, like most of Da Vinci's stuff, there's an absolutely luminescent quality to it, which is the more striking because it isn't the background that's dark; it's her hair and clothing. Her face, bosom, and hands simply glow. All of that together, the ambiguity, liveliness, repose, darkness, and glowing, give her a really remarkable sense of transcendence; the painting serves as a fabulous synechdoche for that whole Renaissance humanism thing.
35: Boy, have I got the book for you.
44: Ahhh, but now we can be astonished by the sfumato! Can't we?
The Litta Madonna at the Hermitage has always impressed me more. Nursing Madonnas were unusual til Rembrandt, I think. I just like bright and pretty.
I think the landscape background, and the relaxed and revealing posture of the Mona Lisa is part of the appeal. Kinda elevating the average person to the sacred through pure art? As if the David were just a guy. Or Raphael's girlfriend.
"Has everyone here cried while looking at art? I don't think I ever have."
Fuck yes. I am crying now.
There's a very frustrating book about people crying in front of paintings (with a smart and amusing review here.)
I'd say that the Mona Lisa is fine for what it is, certainly a very good painting by an obviously important artist. I've never seen it in person, if the experience one can get of it these days can be called seeing, but I don't think I'd come away overwhelmed if I did--there are plenty of more impressive works out there, to my mind. I don't think one can underestimate the role of Vasari's account of the painting in his life of Leonardo in singling it out and beginning the process of building its reputation. Add to that the efforts on the part of the Louvre to promote it, and you've got some very powerful forces at work. It's the similar to the Venus de Milo, if not as extreme a case. There are any number of statues of the Capuan Venus type to which the statue belongs, including more distinguished examples, but French hype over the importance of the find (not coincidently, only a few years after they had to return the art and antiquties taken over the years by Napoleon, leaving the Louvre lacking in significant ancient sculpture) made it a household word.
29 is correct, at least as of 11 months ago, and the difference between the replica and the real thing (other than height) is inexplicable but obvious. I generally am totally bored by sculptures and fully expected to not get it, but the David was really extraordinary. There was a particular vein on the back of his right hand, right above his index finger, that got me. I don't know why.
As for my own favorite work of art (this is weird, because we're only mentioning paint and sculpture--what about everything else, like the scourge of comment 44), I am completely in love with The Old Guitarist.
Is this whole "the Mona Lisa's not so great" your attempt, Ogged, to just keep up the hot or not threads in a higher vein? Because I'm feeling a really strong urge to pull the "yeah, like you wouldn't be *thrilled* to date someone half that good-looking" thing on you.
1: Of all the takeoffs on the Mona Lisa, only this one truly surpasses the original.
The interior of Chartres Cathedral made me weep.
Ahhh, but now we can be astonished by the sfumato! Can't we?
Not without getting banned, you can't.
53: Okay, I cracked up hard at this one.
I've never cried at a painting, but I have similar reactions to a lot of poetry, LB. Also, I've known several people who say they mysteriously have to poo every time they go in a bookstore, almost immediately upon entering.
53: Yeah, I wouldn't kick it out of bed.
almost immediately upon entering.
Bookstores hate that sort of person. ("If you could at least make it to a corner, behind something. You're squatting in the doorway!!")
Why not cry? I mean I am labile and all, but what is this shit about having emotions under control, and taking genius and beauty for granted? Or injustice and suffering or whatever? Why be cool?
I rage and laugh and withdraw and cry all day long.
People can't stand to be around me, but I am still around after 55 years of it.
If you can't cry at the Litta Madonna or Hey Jude or children in the street...ya know, my cat was named Seymour, not by me, and that was way cool. Because of the Salinger story. The little girl turns the doll's head, and Seymour starts crying and can't stop til he shoots himself. Life is perfect. Life is hell. What it ain't is bearable.
mona lisa makes for a good viewing experience if viewed on december 24th when nobody is in the louvre. you can take as much time as you want. also get up close and personal with the stone pillar of hammurabi's laws (ahem, who was that in 51 saying the louvre is lacking in ancient art??)
ahem, who was that in 51 saying the louvre is lacking in ancient art??
Ahem, that was me saying the Louvre was lacking in ancient art in 1820, when the Venus de Milo was discovered.
you say "sfumato," you're banned
"you're banned" s/b "I say sfumahto"
57: This friend says the same thing -- he gets flatulent and has to poo. I also know someone else who says the same. What is going on here?
And JL, thanks for the link to the review in 51 -- it's really interesting reading so far.
I've got an eerie feeling this thread is building toward a Seinfeld episode reference. OTOH 63 pwns.
I don't get flatulent, but bookstores do make the peristalsis start with me too. Also libraries, usually, although not as reliably. It's weird and I have no idea why. Is book dust laxative?
Also -- I'm watching "Top Chef" right now, for the first time -- did you guys realise w-lfs-n is one of the contestants this season?
Theory: do bookstore poopers regularly read on the toilet? Is it a Pavlovian thing?
certainly crying should not be treated as a touchstone for artistic sensibility, anymore than waving your finger in time is a sure sign that you are a true connoisseur of music.
(The crying thing is used as movie short-hand, right? Julia cries at the opera in Pretty Woman, and this signals to us that she is a True Aristocrat or a Woman of Delicate Sensibilities or whatever; not a Heartless Mercenary Trull. Thanks. Message received.)
but, yeah, like mcmanus I often find I tear up at artworks, or architecture--yeah, thanks for reminding me about cathedrals, J McQ.
Mostly, though, I respond to representations of people. I used to like to walk around the National Portrait Gallery in London and look at all of those clever, open, scrutinizing faces. Johnson and Reynolds and the whole Kit Kat club, looking down at me with amusement and saying "well, young man? And what do you have to say for yourself?". Not me anymore than the next person in the room--they just look at everyone that way.
Anyhow--yeah, really good art is for me the shock of personality distilled. Astounding to me how the Apollo of the frieze in Olympia (the centauromachy), which I had seen in reproduction hundreds of times, was a completely different experience in person. Holy shit, there's a god up there.
Gotta say I totally don't get abstract, which my wife digs. I can only barely get landscape, and that when it's pretty realistic (e.g. Constable).
This bookstore thing is so a question for Cecil Adams.
62 - that's not at all arcane of you. really.
still, if you want to tell me when they picked up all those sumerian gates, statues, & figures, while you're at it, that would be nice.
"Who is yoyo and why is it pretending to be me? ["Oops! i messed up my link in no. 1."]"
1. what information am i withholding 2. to reveal the dark side of your post
There was a particular vein on the back of his right hand, right above his index finger, that got me. I don't know why.
Not to be completely reductive, but I've always figured that the disproportionately large hands are responsible for a lot of the statue's appeal. Cadavers' hands and feet (and faces and genitals) are kept wrapped in gauze when they're being worked on (or at least when they're being shown to kids at Virginia Governor's School bioscience summer programs) because those are the parts that tend to elicit the greatest reaction. It's much easier to be around them without getting upset if those bits are taken out of the equation.
the difference between the replica and the real thing (other than height) is inexplicable but obvious
I don't know -- I think it's totally explicable. The replica outside the Palazzo Vecchio has been exposed to the weather and diesel fumes and pigeon shit and who knows what else. And it's not properly lit, or as elevated (if I remember correctly), or in as fancy a setting. I think that an indistinguishable replica could be made and be just as satisfying as the original.
71: The French excavations at Lagash started in 1877, so presumably around that time or later.
that's not at all arcane of you. really.
Given that I referred to the discovery as happening "only a few years after they had to return the art and antiquities taken over the years by Napoleon," no, it's not, I'd say.
As for the Sumerian works or what-have-you, why not check yourself? The Louvre has extensive online collections databases. I'm seeing stuff from the 1880's through the 1970's. The Code of Hammurabi was acquired 1901-2. To get back to Greco-Roman stuff, the Nike of Samothrace was in the 1860's, I think. Which is not to say that had nothing, just that France had been recently forced to give up a significant number of the most prestigious works of ancient sculpture it had amassed, and so the Louvre was inclined to overhype its new statue.
69:Portraits, yeah. Besides, well, Sargent came up at the CT thread, and I was going to mention Alexander and Chase and Boldini. But also Morisot and if you can get to the hundreds of Renoirs wife, sister-in-law, maid, kid sketches. Don't quite get Cassatt as well as I should.
But if you like Reynolds and Ingres...Copley was a revelation to me.
Y'all don't have to cry, folks. I just like having that part accessible to me, have it possible, even easy. I indulge myself, I spose.
Roches are making me tear up right now.
an indistinguishable replica could be made and be just as satisfying as the original
tom, am I correct in assuming this comment is similar to your position in the drunken argument back in 23? If so, what was the counterargument—that it mattered that the artist actually worked on the original?
Roches are making me tear up right now.
Well, just stomp on them. And then clean your place up, or next thing you know you'll have mice and rats too.
Roches are making me tear up right now.
I really, really like the eponymous record but have not ever sought out any of their other music. What is good?
Speaking of bands, there are at least three named sfumato. I have no idea what they sound like, but pretentious emo would be my guess.
The Mona Lisa had a stronger effect on me when I first saw it, when I was 14, than it did this past spring when I went back (though this could be because the crowd the first time, early in the morning on a rainy weekday, was much smaller). There's another Da Vinci just outside the Mona Lisa's room (I think of Bacchus) that I thought was at least as striking.
The Winged Victory is very impressive and moving in person. Though this last visit, I spent the most time looking at this sculpture for some reason, it was one I just happened to stumble across. Something about it was oddly captivating; I probably stood there for close to an hour initially, and kept coming back to it throughout the rest of the day.
79:I think there is one weak album, but the rest are good. The first may be the best, tho. There is also a Maggie & Terri album from the 70s that is closer to the McGarrigles than their later trio work.
It is just the voices, the harmonies, the bemused sadness. Lyrics and melodies seem less important, I just get moods and personalities. So I don't remember songs well, just albums and artists.
Big playlist, but Iris Dement came up and grabbed my attention tonight.
77: this particular edition focused on whether a work of art could ever be digitized accurately enough that satisfactory replacements could be produced. But Kriston may have been a little preoccupied with the end of the World Series, and I got distracted by arguing with an aspiring audiophile who insisted on the superiority of analog media without understanding much about digital audio. So I'm not sure if I can fairly characterize Smasher's counterargument. I was sort of hoping he'd show up and yell at me.
audiophile who insisted on the superiority of analog media without understanding much about digital audio
I've talked to that guy before, I think. Or at least a close relative. Early on, he characterized himself as an audiophile. Later, he said something like, "Some of this music is really, really powerful. I mean, have you heard … Enya?"
spent the most time looking at this sculpture for some reason
Wow, that is powerful. She seems so real and vulnerable, modest and strong.
I should take this opportunity to note that w-lfs-n is gay.
Early on, he characterized himself as an audiophile. Later, he said [Enya rubbish]
There's no contradiction here. Audiophiles care about the presence or absence of enough pixie dust in the high-resolution soundstage preamplifier, or alternately, the thickness of the varnish on your volume knob—of which the relation to actual music has yet to be determined.
More thoughts on varnish thickness.
Also -- I'm watching "Top Chef" right now, for the first time -- did you guys realise w-lfs-n is one of the contestants this season?
"realise"?
The Mona Lisa now stands almost in the middle of a salon. It hangs on a roughly 15 foot wall. There is nothing on the back side of the wall. On the Mona Lisa side, there is a bullet proof glass covering and a limit to how close you can get.
Yeah, when i was there there was a huge mass of people around a tiny picture. i figured there were better things to do with my precious in-paris hours.
geez, Ogged, you know you can just look this shit up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_LisaWikipedia?
The Mona Lisa is said to be the best painting ever.
there.
"better things to do with my precious in-paris hours"
Like spend as many of them as possible in Sainte Chapelle. Talk about something that photos do not do justice to. It's like standing inside a sapphire.
82: It's because the Crouching Venus is totally hott.
It's probably safe to reveal that I hardly like the Mona Lisa at all. I also don't like Leonardo or the other Italians as much as I'm supposed to, and I generally don't like portraits. I also am only interested in art that I like, and feel no responsibility to justify my negative opinions about the rest. And I have no more interest in the techniques of art than I have in the techniques of meatpacking. (Ogged: I think that sfumato is the real and only reason, except PR and the nopanties thing, but screw that).
It's primarily the neoPlatonist streak in the Renaissance (the physical form reveals the soul trapped within, or something) which caused the Renaissance people to foreground individuals so much. Plus working on commission to glorify patrons. Plus excessive Christianism and Jesus-Mary obsession. Pretty soon every goddamn person was doing the Imitation of Christ / Mary thing.
What would I put in place of Michaelangelo and Leonardo? Stuff I like. Breugel, Goya, Van Gogh, El Greco, and Chinese brush painting (as I mentioned a few days ago at Crooked Timber). These guys put the human figure / individual into a context rather than glorifying it. You don't have the impulse to say "What's the big deal about this Mary person?" or "Come off it, Jesus, the Romans crucified thousands of people every year". I think that the Jesus-Mary focus made the culture of narcissism possible or even inevitable.
Leonardo's backgrounds, as here, always seem pointless and overdone -- he really works them up, and they're really pretty, but the humanism is too overwhelming. (The contrast is Breugel, especially, but also the others.)
You're welcome. you're welcome. Always glad to share.
P.S. There seems to be no standard spelling of the name I write "Breugel" even today. Don't even try.
Gotta say I totally don't get abstract, which my wife digs.
To continue the "you have to see it in person" vein, I'll throw in that I thought Rothko and the like was total nonsense until I saw No. 14, 1960 at the SF MOMA. I still kind of think that it's total nonsense but I have to admit that that thing did something to my brain.
Late to this, but I have this feeling I've had this bookstore/library/flatulence/poo conversation before. Maybe it was already covered here? I often have to poo when I talk to my mother on the phone. I try to figure out what it might mean, but I also don't want to know.
The bookstore-poo comes over me only in used books stores. I have secretly theorized that the spores growing in old books act as a natural laxative.
yeah, even if you think you don't like abstracts, rothko is the shizznit. cry about paintings a lot, but I don't suddenly have to take a crap when I walk into bookstores. thankful for small mercies, I guess.
I should add that I have never read on the toilet.
Annie, I had the same feeling. Maybe we're both thinking of this MetaFilter thread, which I assume w-lfs-n must have linked at one point.
John,
You aren't really saying that Van Gogh portraits (and self-portraits) don't make an awful big fuss about individuals? Or do you just like his landscapes?
annie,
From the MetaFilter thread, Lynsey reports
Not libraries and bookstores for me (thank goodness, because I work at a library!) but when someone calls - usually a family member who I know I'm going to have a long conversation with.
I've never felt overcome by a specific painting, but I've felt that way about big collections of paintings, like when a museum does a retrospective of an artist's work, so you can see the sweep of their life. The first time it happened was at a Dubuffet exhibit at the Hirshhorn many years ago. Didn't cry, but felt dizzy enough to have to sit down and recollect myself.
The last time it happened, Roberta and I were on our honeymoon and one of the museums in Rome had a big Miró retrospective that really was breathtaking. No individual painting was overwhelming (spectacular and beautiful, yes, but not overwhelming), but the collective effect was.
Peep: Pretty much yes. Almost all of VG's portraits were self-portraits, at least if the link below is a fair sample, and the other-portraits don't seem that great to me. (Most seem to have been of humble people too, and lacked the flattering / grandiose dimension.)
I guess I'd give a break to self-portraits in general, because of their self-reference kink, though maybe just for VG.
This notion that appreciating art is synonymous with crying at it leads to misunderstandings about why such-and-such art work is considered valuable, especially works from eras in which the value and patronage of art worked in different ways. This one's the fulcrum of style as far as Western art goes—but I don't think it's beloved because along its way to fame, it was spackled with salty, emoted tears flung by the right set of opinionmakers.
If we're ruling out sfumato and the like, well, yesterday's positivist masterpiece is today's deprecated relic except this handful of works that have developed an immunity. I don't really know how that happens but I don't think it's because there's a code built in the painting that explains why it's better than the experience of it suggests. But I have not seen it myself, and I am not a symbologist.
I had that happen with a Mondrian exhibit once. I'm not much of a visual arts person -- I go to museums occasionally because I find them entertaining in a dimwitted kind of way (you know, the kind of thing where you stare at a Jackson Pollock for a while, and then say to your companion "Oh, I get it, it's a plan for a model ski resort." I do not defend this behavior as civilized or appropriate. I'm a Philistine, and I apologize to people who take art seriously.)
But something about looking at the trajectory of Mondrian's career from fairly conventional Impressionism to increasingly more and more abstracted stuff until you're left with blocks of color that somehow still manage to convey feelings similar to those conveyed by the representational work was very impressive.
Armsmasher really has missed the point. Crying is only one of several appropriate responses to art, farting being another.
I had a profound and indescribable reaction to Malevich's Black Square. The best word I could use to describe the feeling would be . . . yes . . . a fart.
OK, here's a question I've been wondering about for years, and have never asked anyone. THere seem to be enoughart experts here to maybe get an answer. In Judy Bloom's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge, the main character Peter has a friends whose parents get divorced. The father of the friend is a modern artist who paints abstract art, including a piece called Anita's Anger that consists of a splash that the wife threw at the canvas during a fight they were having. Anyone know if this was based on a real artist/painting? The books are set in New York in (I believe) the late Sixties.
What would I put in place of Michaelangelo and Leonardo?
Why put anything at all in place of Michelangelo and Leonardo? It's nice that you like what you like, Emerson, but why this need for hierarchy?
Hey, mcmc, I don't know, but I had to prove that I'm a constructive thinker and not just a nihilist.
I guess I should also say that Laszlo Toth went too far.
112: Dunno. It kind of sounds like Pollock/Krasner, though.
114: Yeah, I don't think there's really any ideological coherence to your tastes in Western art -- I just can't see how El Greco and Van Gogh don't fit in with what you call the NeoPlatonist tradition in Western art.
102: Yeah, that metafilter thread looks familiar.
104: Not libraries and bookstores for me (thank goodness, because I work at a library!) but when someone calls - usually a family member who I know I'm going to have a long conversation with.
I admit when I read this I thought, 'Holy crap! There's someone else!' I wonder what the connection could possibly be. Like this person, I'm glad libraries and bookstores don't have this effect on me bc I also work in a library.
I almost can't believe I'm going to admit this (hence the backward name), but I always feel a little more ready to face the day after my morning dump, like, 'Okay, well, that's out of the way for today.' Anyone else care to cop to that?
112, 115: Or any of probably dozens of quarrelsome art couples. Did Anita go on to create a performance piece that involved shooting at her husband?
118: Right, I just figured JP/LK because they're the most famous of them.
But something about looking at the trajectory of Mondrian's career from fairly conventional Impressionism to increasingly more and more abstracted stuff until you're left with blocks of color that somehow still manage to convey feelings similar to those conveyed by the representational work was very impressive.
LB, was this in New York, round about 10 years ago? If so, I had the same reaction to the same show; "Oh, so that's what he's up to." Very cool.
120: That was the one. Small interweb thingie, isn't it.
105: I remember that Miro retrospective! I saw it with my dad in Rome, Christmas 1998. Like LB said, small interweb thingy.
I was already pretty big into Miro at that time (at 16--yeah, having an artist father warps you), but that exhibit was just...wow.
Wow, that is powerful. She seems so real and vulnerable, modest and strong.
But she looks fat! And well over 16.
I remember that Miro retrospective! I saw it with my dad in Rome, Christmas 1998.
This one was in 2004.
Smasher is, of course, right about the fact that it's wrong to think that a crying-making painting is good because of its crying-making properties, because it leaves out a whole range of emotion. Some works make people angry, or are soothing, or happy-making, and that's calued too. But I might even be wrong that emotion's what it's about. I do know that I have a hard time communicating about art with people who don't feel any emotion stirred up by contemporary art.
As full disclosure, though, I am a crier when it comes to paintings, the most recent being one of Mondrian's lozenge paintings at the Phillips in DC. I felt like such an idiot standing there weeping at a painting that was literally white with a few black lines. Before that it was some Donald Judd boxes. Christ.
Oh. Well, they're getting lazy, then, cause they totally had a Miro retrospective in 1998. Maybe it was a different museum.
I felt like such an idiot standing there weeping at a painting that was literally white with a few black lines.
Seriously? Wow. (I don't at all mean that as snark.) That's remarkable.
Yo, Dr. B. Art project for you and PK.
B, I strongly recommend you not click on Apo's link.
El Greco and Van Gogh seem much less idealized, pretty and perfect than Leonardo and Michaelangelo. To the neoPlatonists apparently good looks were sacred.
And so we end up with all these tabloid madonnas (pun) and their boutique accessory kids. I'd prefer the necklace of skulls.
127: Yeah, seriously. It's remarkable—something about the way it's painted, such that when you look at it, different fields shift in and out of focus. It's almost like the lines are both simultaneously suspended above the fields they demarcate and cutting depressions into those fields. What I think moves me is how dynamic something so seemingly static can be, to someone willing to look closely.
But then, I think I'm particularly moved by work that has straight lines, mathematical precision. An example Donald Judd is here (not the one that make me cry, though).
I think my favorite art tends to produce in me something I would call an intellectuemotional response: something along the lines of "oh, wow, that suddenly makes me think of a lot of things and how they relate to each other, and also causes a funny stirring in my breast."
Visual, non-narrative art, that is.
130: Yes, I can see what you're getting at. El Greco does idealize -- but his ideal isn't the kind of classically proportioned figure as with the Italian Renaissance painters. Van Gogh in his portraits is trying to show the dignity of ordinary folk, and in his self-portraits is attempting to show his own psychological torment.
If it's really the idealization you object to, I'm surprised Rembrandt isn't on your favored list. What do you think of Rembrandt?
The Da Vinci around the corner from the Mona Lisa that seized my imagination is his Saint Sebastian. Same sfumato, same half-smile, but no nature backdrop. Since it's not covered by bullet-proof glass nor surrounded by frothing tourists, you can get up pretty damned close and peer at the technique. Fucker could paint, you know.
Representational art sucks. Except for Van Gogh.
Rembrandt: I'd like him, but too many portraits.
All the St. sebastians you will ever need:
http://bode.diee.unica.it/~giua/SEBASTIAN/#Painting
I have an irrational fear that my utter lack of knowledge of art and opera are the twin reasons that I will be unable to succeed in the academy, because I won't seem to come from the right sort of people.
Then I remember that most philosophers are nerds.
So I think 44 gets it exactly right. To me, it seems she is mid-smile or mid-smirk, and we'll never know which. Also, the reason it's so great is that Philistines like me go to see art only when we are on vacations, and the Mona Lisa's the only one we can name, and if we've come all that way, it better be the greatest painting evar.
No, no, no, sorry, I meant St. Jean-Baptiste. How did I screw that up?--I was obsessed with that painting for years.
Hey did any of you guys end up making it to that Rembrandt sketch exhibition I was telling you about, at the Pierrepont Morgan library?
(Because that stuff is representational and awesome. Also, R. Crumb.)
I like Judd. The Walker in Minneapolis has a few of his pieces.
125: True, crying-making is overrated compared to all the other emotions art can elicit. Remember that Calder retrospective that was touring seven or eight years ago? I saw that at SFMOMA, and left happy, happy, happy.
I myself prefer the stuck-full-of-arrows Saint to the head-on-a-platter Saint, but that's OK. Different strokes.
I sometimes have a jolly laughter reaction to visual, non-narrative art; I enjoy when that happens. Partucularly with modern representational art.
When it comes to methods of death, I prefer St. Lazarus or St. Catherine.
There's a Klee painting called "Pride of Lions: Take Note!" that had me and my mom giggling in the Tate once. We received disapproving looks.
John, I trust you've seen one of the better St. Sebastians of our time.
Hm, JM's Saint doesn't have the head properly detached, and there's more sfumato, and he has this impish, seductive look on his face..... Heresy!
Doesn't it look like he (or she) is saying, "Hey, I'll take you to heaven, baby?"
I find it amazing that so many people have had a response of crying to an artwork. Shouldn't that depend on a very rare combination of anticipation, context, unrelated mental turmoil, and other factors?
I've laughed once, at Miro's "Dog Looking at the Moon" or whatever it is called. Mostly because I had just come out of a room full of Suprematism and the contrast was quite gratifying.
The type of art I find most gratifying is the vague allegory that you have to know the title of the work to understand. (example here) But that may be because I don't trust my immediate emotional reactions to things.
146: You know, crying isn't the only appropriate reaction to art. Ho-hum; or hey another sunset, one after another, I think I'll kill myself; or How do you like children:barbecued are all valid.
Humanism:"A bit of the artist about him" is said about the sentimental little Jew. But said by street trash. Rilke, Joyce, Mann warped my febrile brain. Who are we? Where are we going? Insert Tahitian pretension here. Are we Chartres or Dachau? Or as Joyce taught me to my core, nothing more than ways for water to move from one place to another.
I do my part, with cues from my dogs. They can restrain their marking, letting out just a little at a tie. I am an inferior species, oversocialized and undercontrolled.
Emerson don't like portraits. Van Gogh did at least a dozen, from mailmen to Gauguin to Dr Gachet and his daughter. You don't like portraits you don't like faces;you don't like faces you don't like people. You don't like people, what's left to like?
You don't like portraits you don't like faces;you don't like faces you don't like people. You don't like people, what's left to like?
Worst syllogism ever?
The last work of art that really moved me was a painting of Charles Blackman's that I saw at the Ian Potter Centre in Australia. They had an exhibition of a series he did that were inspired by Alice in Wonderland and overall I thought they were good but not exceptional. There was one painting, though, (an image of which I can't find online) that was like a punch in the gut - it looked like Alice realizing she was no longer a girl anymore and was crossing into womanhood and mourning all that meant leaving behind.
It really spoke to me at that moment, after being around the kids at the tournament all week. They were all so full of an "I can do anything/be anything/have my whole life ahead of me" energy and at that moment, looking at that painting, I realized that wasn't as true for me anymore. I'm still young and have plenty of options but it hit me that as we get older, the list of things we'll never do in our life gets longer and doors do eventually close, cutting off choices to us. I was at the same time saddened by the fact that my brothers at 14 and 18 have more options ahead of them than I do and grateful that there are still so many open to me (thinking of my grandparents, who had always wanted to visit Australia but now never will be able to because of health problems, that door forever closed to them).
(God, just writing about that painting here at my desk, I'm tearing up. Ack.)
Jack, I suppose you know that the model for Leonardo's John Baptist was his boyfriend, right?
Someone mentioned Malevich. Kandinsky's response made me laugh out loud, but only because I knew the Malevish. Ya know?
157:Uh, which part doesn't follow? You can like people for their asses? In retrospect, seems a little tight. And I am not quite that short.
Bob, Bob.... Covet not thy neighbor's wife, nor his ass. His goats are ok.
I like people in context, but not on center stage. I'm pretty OK with Van Gogh's portraits and self-portraits, but most portraits glorify rich narcissists, Jesus, etc.
IIRC, Emerson loves that Breughel Icarus thing, cause Icarus is so small and unnoticed in the corner. And the background, all the little unambitious folk is foreground. Am I remembering right? Somebody else's essay.
Peter Breughel is fun, cluttered with people,oppressive with busyness. The Grandma Moses of his day.
Hey did any of you guys end up making it to that Rembrandt sketch exhibition I was telling you about, at the Pierrepont Morgan library?
I saw one a few years ago, not this one, and was blown away. Speaking of which, a long time ago I saw a collection of Leonardo's cartoons at the National Gallery in London, and I have to admit that I was more moved by them than by the Mona Lisa.
I like all of Breugel. It's Auden you're thinking of, but William Carlos Williams did a whole Breugel book. The Grandma Moses dig is not appreciated in the slightest.
RSA -- do you happen to remember a sketch called "The Monk in the Corn-field"? And, wow! I would love to see Leonardo's cartoons.
the model for Leonardo's John Baptist was his boyfriend
I hadn't known that, but it doesn't really surprise me. I wonder if the boyfriend had that androgyny in person.
What do you have against Grandma Moses? Only white males with proper academic training can be taken seriously?
as we get older, the list of things we'll never do in our life gets longer and doors do eventually close
If you'd like to see that list really expand, have a kid some time.
There are three Breugels. The misnamed Grandma Moses Breugel, the Hieronymous Bosch Breugel, and the one who did historical and biographical subjects. the third is my favorite, but if he were three different painters, all three would be in my top 40.
Breugel did Bosch as well as Bosch did, but Bosch gets the credit because that's all he did.
Breugel's biography is very skimpy and his affiliations and intellectual background our obscure. All there is is the painting. (Unless the untranslated Dutch books have some good stuff, which I doubt.)
RSA -- do you happen to remember a sketch called "The Monk in the Corn-field"?
Unfortunately, no, and I wish I could recall where the exhibit was; all I have is a collection of mental impressions (I sometimes think my appreciation for art would be improved if I could actually remember titles of pieces, not to mention where I'd seen them). What I took away from his sketches was mainly the realization that someone with Rembrandt's genius could create something important and evocative and recognizably his own, even working apparently very quickly and with the simplest media.
This has been a fun thread, but comments like 164 make me think that you're being serious, Emerson. From the preferences you've described, I'd bet you'd like West Coast realist-expressionist painters who work with the figure/portraiture themes. What do you think about Elmer Bischoff? Maybe David Park? There's good in you, Emerson, I can sense it.
"West Coast realist-expressionist painters who work with the figure/portraiture themes" s/b "the Bay Area Figurative Movement". The name wasn't coming to me.
What twentieth century? I'm a classicist.
Francis Bacon -- I do like his portraits. Also his name.
"The Grandma Moses dig is not appreciated in the slightest"
Pieter looks pointlessly cluttered to me
You got something against Granny Moses?
ARC is going all to hell;didn't used to be able to link to their stuff. As I thought, Ross just built up a huge website to increase the value of his pre-Raphaelites and Sargents and Bouggies. Worked like a charm. Probably a net-book there somewhere.
Bob doesn't like reality, because it's cluttered.
I love Breugal, but, weirdly, at that big Breugal show at the Met a couple years, what moved me the most were four or five drawings that had recently been de-attributed to him. The Master of the Mountain, whoever he or she was, fucking rocked.
176: Sure, I figured as much. You guys that hold your noses over everything but Bacon also tend to give Lucian Freud a pass. Am I right or am I right?
Seriously, I don't follow the XXc or the XXIc much. And art is the most casual of my interests. So maybe I'd like those guys.
I been at ARC almost from the beginning. I think it is one of the great Internet Scams. The Ross representional crew abstraction is evil Picasso caused Godward to kill himself ideology. Ross couldn't afford Motherwells and Stellas but late Sargents and Carrier-Belleuse were dirt cheap thirty years ago. Now a Sargent Italian that was 5 grand in 1970 goes for 50+.
But hey! This is what Fred painted.
You tell me what his plan was. Like I say, the power of the internet and how to manipulate the art market. Kriston could write a book.
The NJ Star Ledger recently ran an article about something you all might find interesting. Can't find the original article online, but this gives you the scoop. It's about a concentration camp artist forced by Mengele to paint portraits of gypsy inmates. Some portraits survived and she claims them as her property and wants them, but the Auschwitz museum says no.
Now a Sargent Italian that was 5 grand in 1970 goes for 50+.
Wait wait, what? By this do you mean a Sargent painted from Venice (like Sortie de l'église)? Much much more than 50K, if you're talking about those works.
If this thread winds down, we could go back to talking about poop.
He pwned you, Armsmasher. He could have said $5001+ or $100+ and he would have been right then too. McManus is cunning and ruthless.
I bought a print of this painting last night. I'm a nerd. And yes, I saw it on Boing Boing. I don't care.
It's okay, Chopper. I'm going to buy this Cory Arcangel print for Tommy.
Actually, I've been on a bit of an art spree in the last six months, mainly screen-printed posters like Kozik, Jay Ryan, and Derke Hess. This is my favorite poster ever.
Blame it on the Death Star
Blame it on the Walker (Sky)
Blame it on the satellite, the Ewoks' home
This is killing me
This is killing me
Poop!! Do we use that kind of language on this blog? I searched, wasn't able to find Ross talking about the Sargent market of 30 years ago, or the particular Sargent I was looking for, but I like this stuff:
Window in the Vatican
Now that seems to me to be Sargent moving toward abstraction, presaging the Russians or Cubists, and just impresses the hell out of me. Sargent for god's sake. "Architectural" doesn't really describe it, it ain't Canaletto.
WTF is this about? If I had bucks, I would pay bucks for this.
I don't know much about art, but I can't remember much that looks like 192. A Whistler or two maybe.
Some Orientalism like a few Weeks that are much brighter. 192 is fucking weird.
mcmanus, I'd tell you that you need to get to the District to see the Gilded Age-era American Impressionism show, but I'm afraid you'd blow up the capitol or something while you're here.
There are a lot of Gilded Age paintings like 192. On Wednesday I saw Sargent's The Sulphur Match, maybe my favorite of his works from Europe.
192 is a painter's version of Piranesi's etchings.
A Venetian loggia dated 1880-82 by Sargent went for about 5.6 million at Sotheby's back in May, 2004. His auction high seems to be about 23.5 million, for this painting. It's wonderfully done, but one wonders what a large, characteristic Sargent from his earlier years would fetch.
197 is the kind of pixelated image that makes me wish I were not looking at a pixelated reproduction.
To go back to the original topic of the thread -- can we talk about the cult of the Mona Lisa without mentioning Walter Pater -- "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. "
Isn't that what you all were thinking when you saw the Mona Lisa?
Speaking of art, here's some art that's apparently on the walls of Rev. Haggard's church.
Twenty-three M does seem like short shrift for Sargent.
194,195:If you say so
To me this seems even less about anything than a Monet Haystack. It just ain't human.
Gilded Age American Impressionism? Pre-California? Twachtman can be good. Metcalf? JA Weir? All landscapes. What did they call the Turner crowd, when he was doing the seascapes? Hell, I will go to Artcyclopedia and look stuff up.
Yeah—Twachtman, Metcalf, Sargetn, all those guys. From the Halff collection out of San Antonio.
The Americans in Paris show now at the Met has a lot of those guys (and some girls) as well. I liked it when it was at the MFA, even if it does have some minor stuff and too many works that are routinely gathered together when a show on that period gets done (which, after all, is pretty much constantly.)
The Virgin Mary, of course, is really Sophia:
"For those who were in the world had been prepared by the will of our sister Sophia - she who is a whore - because of the innocence which has not been uttered. And she did not ask anything from the All, nor from the greatness of the Assembly, nor from the Pleroma. Since she was first, she came forth to prepare monads and places for the Son of Light and the fellow workers which she took from the elements below to build bodily dwellings from them. But, having come into being in an empty glory, they ended in destruction in the dwellings in which they were, since they were prepared by Sophia. They stand ready to receive the life-giving word of the ineffable Monad and of the greatness of the assembly of all those who persevere and those who are in me."
Second Treatise of the Great Seth -- for those who are not afraid of the TRUTH!
To comment on the actual post :)
The painting isn't much to look at: when I went to the Louvre as a young art student in the 80's I was infinitely greatful for the Mona Lisa's popularity. It was housed in a fairly small gallery with a collection of stunning Leonardos, among them The Virgin of the Rocks , which is my favorite Leonardo. The other stuff was lovely, too: huge, magnificent, detailed canvases. I poured over them for about an hour, no joke, and I think I was the only person in the room who gave them a glance. Everyone was busy justling in front of the glass-covered Mona Lisa.
stupid.
By the way, when I was an art student, I was always told that the ML was popular because it was stolen in 1911. It already had something of a reputation, and the fact that it was important enough to steal cemented it.
"Virgin on the Rocks": actual, "of". No ice cubes.
That would be a nice picture without the human / semi-human figures.
The babies are really cute, though.
A lot of the mystique is because the ML was the one painting that Da Vinci kept with him as he traveled. He never sold it, never abandoned it, and many people have figured that was because either he loved the person or he loved the painting. I've always suspected that it was because a) the thing is comparatively small and b) for its size, it incorporates most of the techniques he was good at, so it served as a really bitching aide mémoire for him, if he needed one, and catalogue for prospective clients. Seriously, given that Da Vinci was famous for accepting expensive commissions and abandoning them after three years of preparatory sketches, he must have been really good at self-promotion.
Not that anyone cares at this point, but since I've been thinking about it: in regards to 23 and 73, I'd say that an indistinguishable replica of the David, or any other artwork, should it be possible, could be just as satisfying in aesthetic terms as we usually think of them, but that's so much the worse for aesthetics. The two statues would still be meaningfully different works.
#6: "And it's a pretty small canvas)."
IIRC, it isn't a canvas, but a board, which has created problems with preservation.
