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Thread: I don't understand art (paintings)

  1. #1
    Forum Member rudutch's Avatar
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    I don't understand art (paintings)

    do I look like I know what I'm doing?

  2. #2
    Forum Member Rickenjangle's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    That's because you're a with a


    "I'm gonna find myself a girl
    that can show me what laughter means
    And we'll fill in the missing colors
    In each other's paint-by-number dreams..."

  3. #3
    Forum Member Kap'n's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Apparently you don't understand forum categories, either.



    Several guitars in different colors
    Things to make them fuzzy
    Things to make them louder
    orange picks

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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by Kap'n View Post
    Apparently you don't understand forum categories, either.




  5. #5
    Forum Member rudutch's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Hey!
    I'm sensitive, you might hurt my feeling
    do I look like I know what I'm doing?

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    Forum Member Fripperton's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    There was a man named Art who used to hang out on the corner.



    In the words of John Lennon, "Art is anything you can get away with."
    VM



    If aliens listened to our current top 40, they'd think that the entire planet was populated by sexually ambivalent robots with ethnic insecurity.



  7. #7
    Forum Member rudutch's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    I'll take "understanding forum catagories" for $100, Alex
    do I look like I know what I'm doing?

  8. #8
    Forum Member NeoFauve's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    So, what, did you try to sell this thread in the classifieds?


    "Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
    Elvis Costello

  9. #9
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Tamayo was a contemporary of Diego Rivera of the Mexican Muralist movement. If you watch the movie Frida, you'll catch some of Diego Rivera's story (albeit Hollywood-ized). Other notable names are David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.

    These three influenced an entire generation of painters who were to change the face of Mexican art forever inspired by a small but significant intellectual community. Three of its members: Antonios Curo, Alfonso Reyes, and Jose Vasconcelos established an institute called The Athenaeum. Cultured and highly educated men, they issued a manifesto on the one-hundredth birthday of Mexico's independence, "The community that terrorizes over man forgets that men are 'persons', not biological units".

    This was important, because Mexico in 1910 was a country in despair. Foreign domination had been replaced by the tyranny of President Porfirio Diaz. Two-thirds of the people lived in abject poverty and slavery was growing at a faster rate than in the days of the Conquistadores. On Independence Day in 1910, President Diaz kept the Indians off the street so as not to mar the joyous festivities.

    What's not to understand?

    .

    .

    .

    Now none of this has to do with the pretty colors in the painting, but it's significant all the same. And voila! A hefty price tag.

    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

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    Forum Member stratcat55's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    NT you're full of surprises. You not only do a beautiful job building amps, but you know art history! My regular job is a professional photographer.
    But I'm also a 52 year old fine art major at the local college. Great job explaining Tamayo. The art museum here in Philly, Pa. is going to have a
    Frida exhibit sometime soon I believe after the Renoir exhibit leaves.

    I think they're shortchanging the woman who found it. The cheap asses are only giving her 15 grand.

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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    She's also getting "a percentage of the sale price," whatever that means. That could be a good bit more than 15 grand, though.
    "I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg

  12. #12

    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Art is one thing, making money out of it belongs to the business category

  13. #13
    Forum Member rudutch's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    :...the face of Mexican art forever inspired by a small but significant intellectual community."

    no wonder I don't get it. Thanks for the enlightenment but I still think it be a bit over priced
    do I look like I know what I'm doing?

  14. #14
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by stratcat55 View Post
    NT you're full of surprises...you know art history!


    I'll admit, I had to do some quick research, as my info was hazy.

    I think once there was a discussion here on Dada that I got in. I think I gave my edumacashun away then.

    Quote Originally Posted by stratcat55 View Post
    ...I'm also a 52 year old fine art major at the local college.


    I have a BFA ('99) from U of North Texas in Communication Design. I think I had to have 18 hours of art history. Being in Texas, there was a whole section on Mexican Muralists in one of the courses. We also had studied a section on the iconographic Virgin of Guadalupe that is so prevalent around the hispanic community as well.

    I thank Dr. Larry Gleeson:



    A back-breaker of a professor. There was NO way you could fake your way through his class. To this day, things still spout from my mouth regarding art history that I didn't know was there when I was in his class!

    Quote Originally Posted by rudutch View Post
    Thanks for the enlightenment but I still think it be a bit over priced
    I know! Sometimes I'm amazed at what sells, too!

    Just keep in mind, it's not necessarily the aesthetics that makes the art valuable. It's the relevance to the time period and artistic period that the piece gets it's value.

    Then, there's the folks that will PAY those amounts... heh...
    Last edited by NTBluesGuitar; 11-22-2007 at 08:07 AM.
    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

  15. #15
    Formerly Tele-Tubby TT100's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Twenty years ago I sauntered through the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an art snob girlfriend during an Impressionist's display. Famous works by all the famous dead heavy hitters were being silently coveted by the crowd when I turned to girlfriend and said; "You know, I think they all had vision problems." I came to this conclusion by noting that each artist's style COULD be attributed to occular impairment and that what they painted was clearly what they saw. (Apparently the Dutch masters had much better opticians than the French)

    Well, she cut me off right then and there as she had been embarrassed beyond recovery by my loutish, ignorant comment. That was a long and quite drive from New York back to South Carolina.

    Fast forward 15 years and while driving around listening to NPR I pulled over and laughed when I learned I might have been correct. Recent research into specific eye diseases of western and central Europe at the time, due to heavy metal poisoning, medicines, viral or biological factors, the descriptions of how present day rural patients see, along with research into the common occular diseases during the time of the celebrated impressionists strongly suggested
    eye diseases were common.

    The Dutch master's realism might have been due to better health and environment?

    Who knows.

    TT
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    "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But That only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." Frank Herbert.

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    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Who knows?

    Anyone who has a basic understanding of the work of the impressionists.

    Writings of the day clearly describe the desire to paint only the "impressions" of what they were looking at. The science involved with breaking the light into fundemental shapes and how those shapes form what we know of the physical world.

    Some were very mechanical about it (Seraut, and others). Watch Ferris Beuller's Day off for a lesson in impressionism when his friend is staring at the seraut painting of the little girl detail.

    Other more obvious examples are like Vincent Van Gogh who struggled his whole life to design his odd style of painting and get people to understand it. The struggle is clearly illustrated in his famous letters to Theo, his brother, and otehr painters who he hung out with.

    I liken the painting (visual arts) and their varying forms of visual manipulation to music as well. One can choose to play a guitar cleanly, or one can distort the sounds with overdrive and phase shifting and whah pedals. What's the diff?

  17. #17
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    I did a thesis on that very Seurat painting; (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) That painting is huge. I saw it at the Art Institute of Chicago several times...massive. What an experience. Yes, I did the same thing as Ferris's friend when I was in front of it.

    Damn...I love that museum...one of my favorites.

    From "Sister Wendy's American Masterpieces":

    "Seurat's Grande Jatte is one of those rare works of art that stand alone; its transcendence is instinctively recognized by everyone. What makes this transcendence so mysterious is that the theme of the work is not some profound emotion or momentous event, but the most banal of workaday scenes: Parisians enjoying an afternoon in a local park. Yet we never seem to fathom its elusive power. Stranger still, when he painted it, Seurat was a mere 25 (with only seven more years to live), a young man with a scientific theory to prove; this is hardly the recipe for success. His theory was optical: the conviction that painting in dots, known as pointillism or divisionism, would produce a brighter color than painting in strokes.

    "Seurat spent two years painting this picture, concentrating painstakingly on the landscape of the park before focusing on the people; always their shapes, never their personalities. Individuals did not interest him, only their formal elegance. There is no untidiness in Seurat; all is beautifully balanced. The park was quite a noisy place: a man blows his bugle, children run around, there are dogs. Yet the impression we receive is of silence, of control, of nothing disordered. I think it is this that makes La Grande Jatte so moving to us who live in such a disordered world: Seurat's control. There is an intellectual clarity here that sets him free to paint this small park with an astonishing poetry. Even if the people in the park are pairs or groups, they still seem alone in their concision of form - alone but not lonely. No figure encroaches on another's space: all coexist in peace.

    "This is a world both real and unreal - a sacred world. We are often harried by life's pressures and its speed, and many of us think at times: Stop the world, I want to get off! In this painting, Seurat has 'stopped the world,' and it reveals itself as beautiful, sunlit, and silent - it is Seurat's world, from which we would never want to get off."
    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

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    Forum Member stratcat55's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    You guys are amazing. Some of my old equipment would go under the Dada category. I'm not an art snob, but I do enjoy it. I paint, draw, and do photography.

  19. #19
    Forum Member dirtdog's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Here's a link to a guy who is a blind artist and bassist ("met" him over at talkbass.com).

    http://www.bryanrtyler.com/

    I find his art impressionistic to my uninformed eye and it makes sense that he's blind. I like his stuff a lot.

    On the subject of "art", I had an argument with my boss today that she didn't "get it" when I presented drafts of some charts in a report we're working on. I'm from the Edward Tufte school of information design and look at my work as informative yet esthetically pleasing. My boss just wanted the stock Excel graphs. Oh, How I Suffer!!

    DD

  20. #20
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by NTBluesGuitar View Post
    the Art Institute of Chicago several times...

    Damn...I love that museum...one of my favorites.
    Just last spring was my first visit to the CHicago Art Institute. Awesome collection with some very famous and enfluential works including two (and more) of the most recognized and spoofed paintings in the world.

    "American Gothic" and Hopper's "Nighthawks"

    Just this last week I was in New York and went to the Metropolitan twice.

    I took lots of pictures of pictures (I'm such a dork)

  21. #21
    Formerly Tele-Tubby TT100's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by Wilko View Post
    Who knows?

    Anyone who has a basic understanding of the work of the impressionists.

    Writings of the day clearly describe the desire to paint only the "impressions" of what they were looking at. The science involved with breaking the light into fundemental shapes and how those shapes form what we know of the physical world.

    Some were very mechanical about it (Seraut, and others). Watch Ferris Beuller's Day off for a lesson in impressionism when his friend is staring at the seraut painting of the little girl detail.

    Other more obvious examples are like Vincent Van Gogh who struggled his whole life to design his odd style of painting and get people to understand it. The struggle is clearly illustrated in his famous letters to Theo, his brother, and otehr painters who he hung out with.

    I liken the painting (visual arts) and their varying forms of visual manipulation to music as well. One can choose to play a guitar cleanly, or one can distort the sounds with overdrive and phase shifting and whah pedals. What's the diff?
    Thanks for that Wilko. I'm not familiar with the letters and am curious to learn more.

    TT
    On SmartPhones:

    "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But That only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." Frank Herbert.

  22. #22
    Forum Member Plugger's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by TT100 View Post
    Thanks for that Wilko. I'm not familiar with the letters and am curious to learn more.

    TT
    I must admit I'm kind of surprised you didn't make reading up on Impressionism a bit more of a priority all those years ago after losing a gf over it!

    In general, I think it's fair to say that very little fine art of the past century and a half or so can be appreciated or understood without first acquainting yourself with at least little bit of the background of the history of ideas behind it, i.e. what various artists were trying to achieve in terms of various (and sometimes competing) aesthetic theories and movements of their time.

    Often when you look at a painting, the ideas behind it are often more interesting than the paint on the canvas in itself. And this isn't just true for so-called "modern" art.

    Going back even to the cave paintings in Lascaux, there probably isn't a serious painting that doesn't become more interesting with some understanding of the story behind it. Arguably, the ideas are ultimately what make it "art". It's why a urinal in a public convenience is just a urinal, but when it's placed in an exhibition in 1917 it's Dada.

    I think they should put a sign up to this effect near the entrance of every art museum. It would save a lot of misunderstanding, and on occassion perhaps might even help preserve an otherwise promising blossoming young relationship.

    -Mark

  23. #23
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by TT100 View Post
    Thanks for that Wilko. I'm not familiar with the letters and am curious to learn more.

    TT
    The real letters are at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam:

    http://www3.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/ind...rieven&lang=en

    there are books of them and many are online:
    http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Vincen...etters_to_Theo


    These guys were just like us in many ways. Trying to chase down the "perfect tone"--Cool painting effects and such

    The easy way would be to track down a few movies. Some are classics such as Kirk Douglas playing Vincent in the film "Lust For Life" (Title sound familiar?). Robert Altman directed Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction as "Ringo" robbing the diner) in a good film called "Vincent and Theo".

    Vincent (Starry Starry Night) was a great song by Don McClean (wrote "American Pie") that tells the story in emtional terms.

  24. #24
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    This thread needs Pictures!

  25. #25
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by Wilko View Post
    Robert Altman directed Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction as "Ringo" robbing the diner) in a good film called "Vincent and Theo".
    I absolutely LOVED that movie. Tim Roth's performance was so good it was scary.

    I caught the Van Gogh Haystacks exhibit at the DMA (Dallas Museum of Art) when it was here last. That was amazing.

    Oh...you want pictures...

    Seurat:


    Edward Hopper:


    Van Gogh Haystacks:


    Diego Rivera:


    Frida Kahlo:


    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

  26. #26
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Here's a Van Gogh Starry Night I shot in Paris a few years back:

  27. #27
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    I shot these all last weekend at the Met in NYC -- an example of how we know the artists had control of their media. These were all painted by the same guy:

  28. #28
    Forum Member Wilko's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    The painting that started this thread reminded me of Chagall's work. Here's one I shot at the Met:


  29. #29
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    That's quite a sample of Picasso! From the blue period right through cubism!

    I once caught a Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. That was a once in a lifetime experience. He's sort of the 'intellectual surrealist':





    Last edited by NTBluesGuitar; 11-23-2007 at 03:53 PM.
    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

  30. #30
    Forum Member rudutch's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    photography I get, abstract art is something I should learn to appreciate - in order to be a "well rounded dumass"

    or gain another 75#
    do I look like I know what I'm doing?

  31. #31
    Forum Member frank thomson's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    i can appreciate the art, but i can't appreciate the prices associated w/ it.

    same reason i can't appreciate someone paying $100k for a guitar
    Imanidiot.

  32. #32

    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    Quote Originally Posted by frank thomson View Post
    i can appreciate the art, but i can't appreciate the prices associated w/ it.

    same reason i can't appreciate someone paying $100k for a guitar
    That's exactly how I feel. Those high end prices are artificially inflated and moreover I can't see a practical difference between a $5k painting/guitar and a $100k one.
    _______________________________
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  33. #33
    Forum Member gibsonjunkie's Avatar
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    Re: I don't understand art (paintings)

    This is my favorite: The Red Stairway by Ben Shahn

    There is a song by Cat Stevens on his Catch Bull at Four album called Ruins that always makes me think of the painting.



    "We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness." Mark Twain

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