select one "image" from art history...

wanderlust

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 6, 2002
Messages
3,755
re the wishlist thread-
i thought this might be a somewhat useful point.
post an image/link to an image
something from the history of art that you find
-an image/drawing/photo/buliding/dance/painting/graphic/sculpture that you find fascinating
-exceptional
-far ahead of its time
-in excellence of quailty technical or emmotive
-or just one of your favorite images from earlier stages of art
-a combonation of any and all of these, just tell us why you posted it
include medium, period, date(s), artist, and your own comments
this is the one image that in all stages of my life i have loved and found to be inspriational:
228gcd02.jpg

larger link
c.1485-86
temprea on canvas
172.5x278.5 cm
sandro botticelli
renaissance era
commisened by a member of the powerful medici family.
this images represents venus rising from the sea, also a symbol of mystery through which the divine message of beauty came into the world. the rennaissance was an era when many artists were commisioned to look back to the glory days of rome and pay homage to the myths of the greeks and romans.
even though the painting has its realistic imperfections, such as the unnatural lenght of the body of venus, the angle of her shoulders and the akward way her left arm is shown, this is overpassed by the sheer beauty she portarys. her features are truely harmonious.
being i like the naked figure, this painting is held dear to me. the incorperation of her into a scene around her is archaic in some ways (since it is reverting to illustrations of a myth, done before) but also forward thinking (for an age where the female form was portrayed lounging, or naked in a inside setting where the background was not important, as in many portraits)
the gesture of venus relays calmness and beauty. her look is serene and yet wistful. so much is brought to mind by just the simple hand on her chest and the flow of her hair in the wind.
just wanted to add:
in the photography and film area-
joel-peter witkin
"true perverts are born, not made"
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interesting interview
witkin
cindy sherman
the first is in her "film stills" era, the second more recent, as seen at moma
sherman_56.jpg

her growth to
horrificimage.gif

*sorry to anyone with a slow connection for this thread
[ 10 December 2002: Message edited by: wanderlust ]
 
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It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement... created by the twentieth century's most well-known and least understood artist. But the mural called Guernica is not at all what Pablo Picasso has in mind when he agrees to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair.
For three months, Picasso has been searching for inspiration for the mural, but the artist is in a sullen mood, frustrated by a decade of turmoil in his personal life and dissatisfaction with his work. The politics of his native homeland are also troubling him, as a brutal civil war ravages Spain. Republican forces, loyal to the newly elected government, are under attack from a fascist coup led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Franco promises prosperity and stability to the people of Spain. Yet he delivers only death and destruction.
Hoping for a bold visual protest to Franco's treachery from Spain's most eminent artist, colleagues and representatives of the democratic government have come to Picasso's home in Paris to ask him to paint the mural. Though his sympathies clearly lie with the new Republic, Picasso generally avoids politics - and disdains overtly political art.
The official theme of the Paris Exposition is a celebration of modern technology. Organizers hope this vision of a bright future will jolt the nations out of the economic depression and social unrest of the thirties.
As plans unfold, much excitement is generated by the Aeronautics Pavilion, featuring the latest advances in aircraft design and engineering. Who would suspect that this dramatic progress would bring about such dire consequences?
On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.
By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches Paris, where more than a million protesters flood the streets to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration the city has ever seen. Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of Paris papers. Picasso is stunned by the stark black and white photographs. Appalled and enraged, Picasso rushes through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketches the first images for the mural he will call Guernica. His search for inspiration is over.
From the beginning, Picasso chooses not to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms. Key figures - a woman with outstretched arms, a bull, an agonized horse - are refined in sketch after sketch, then transferred to the capacious canvas, which he also reworks several times. "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance," said Picasso. "While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it."
Three months later, Guernica is delivered to the Spanish Pavilion, where the Paris Exposition is already in progress. Located out of the way, and grouped with the pavilions of smaller countries some distance from the Eiffel Tower, the Spanish Pavilion stood in the shadow of Albert Speer's monolith to Nazi Germany. The Spanish Pavilion's main attraction, Picasso's Guernica, is a sober reminder of the tragic events in Spain.
Initial reaction to the painting is overwhelmingly critical. The German fair guide calls Guernica "a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted." It dismisses the mural as the dream of a madman. Even the Soviets, who had sided with the Spanish government against Franco, react coolly. They favor more overt imagery, believing that only more realistic art can have political or social consequence. Yet Picasso's tour de force would become one of this century's most unsettling indictments of war.
After the Fair, Guernica tours Europe and Northern America to raise consciousness about the threat of fascism. From the beginning of World War II until 1981, Guernica is housed in its temporary home at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, though it makes frequent trips abroad to such places as Munich, Cologne, Stockholm, and even Sao Palo in Brazil. The one place it does not go is Spain. Although Picasso had always intended for the mural to be owned by the Spanish people, he refuses to allow it to travel to Spain until the country enjoys "public liberties and democratic institutions."
Speculations as to the exact meaning of the jumble of tortured images are as numerous and varied as the people who have viewed the painting. There is no doubt that Guernica challenges our notions of warfare as heroic and exposes it as a brutal act of self-destruction. But it is a hallmark of Picasso's art that any symbol can hold many, often contradictory meanings, and the precise significance of the imagery in Guernica remains ambiguous. When asked to explain his symbolism, Picasso remarked, "It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them."
In 1973, Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, dies at the age of ninety-two. And when Franco dies in 1975, Spain moves closer to its dream of democracy. On the centenary of Picasso's birth, October 25th, 1981, Spain's new Republic carries out the best commemoration possible: the return of Guernica to Picasso's native soil in a testimony of national reconciliation. In its final journey, Picasso's apocalyptic vision has served as a banner for a nation on its path toward freedom and democracy.
Now showcased at the Reina Sofía, Spain's national museum of modern art, Guernica is acclaimed as an artistic masterpiece, taking its rightful place among the great Spanish treasures of El Greco, Goya and Velazquez. "A lot of people recognize the painting," says art historian Patricia Failing. "They may not even know that it's a Picasso, but they recognize the image. It's a kind of icon."
Taken from pbs.org
 
:( dont know how to do links but van gogh's "Caffe di Notte" (all night cafe) ((the pool table one)). For me, it doesnt get any better than this. the color, the movement, just the all around vibe you get from this painting, i believe it is still ahead of its time.
 
Conceptual Art
"The idea is a machine that creates art."
-- Sol LeWitt, American Conceptual Artist

Conceptual art is based on the simple but revolutionary premise that art should be mainly about ideas instead of objects. In other words, artists should focus on what they think, not on how things look. Conceptual artists usually set aside the traditional processes of art like painting or carving. Consequently, their work can be baffling because it does not fit conventional definitions of what art is and often it doesn't fit comfortably into the spaces we associate with viewing art, such as galleries or museums.
Conceptual art is really more an attitude toward art making than a movement defined by a single style. The term can be applied to a seemingly infinite number of artists and approaches.
...
concept2.jpg

Marcel Duchamp
Bicycle Wheel
1964 version of 1913 original,
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Readymades
Artists of the late '60s were not the first to grapple with these issues. Marcel Duchamp, whose career began in France in the 1910s, was one of the first artists to reject the optical nature of art. In an interview, Duchamp explained that in France when he was starting out, it was common to devalue the painter's work with the expression 'Stupid like a painter.' Duchamp wanted to make art that was smart. One of Du******* important contributions to modern art was the creation of the "readymade." Readymades were mass produced objects, selected by the artist and elevated to the realm of art by virtue of having been chosen. Bicycle Wheel, a bicycle wheel installed upside down on a stool, is a clever commentary on movement and stability. Duchamp created this in 1913 and had it in his studio where he likened the movement of the wheel to the soothing flicker of a fire in the fireplace. He was emphatic that readymades were not selected for their visual appearance or out of any sense of good taste. They were picked based on chance and indifference.
 
I was lucky enough to see this exhibit in nyc over ago... it was simply amazing. one of the most impressive installation works ive ever witnessed.
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Hiro Yamagata has been exploring ideas related to nature, particularly the inexplicable forces of the sun, and its effects on one's environment for over a decade. "Underlying my work as an artist, and in particular my experimentation with laser beams and other light sources, is my longtime concern with the fundamental forces found in nature. I am especially focused on the elemental force of light as manifested by the sun. By working with artificial, man-made beams generated by lasers and other advanced lighting systems (including fiber optic beams, color rays and Intelbeams), I believe that we can better recognize those elements of the sun which we would not otherwise perceive, or attempt to understand."
The unifying element within the diversity of effects and experiences is the refractive holographic panels covering all surfaces of the gallery ­ walls, floor, and ceiling. These multiple refractive surfaces disperse and transform white laser beams into scattered spectrums of color. In addition, most of the rooms are filled with thousands of spinning, mirrored cubes suspended from the ceiling. The laser/lighting systems are run by an intricate series of computer programs designed to generate various rays of light, which travel across and between various galleries, bouncing and refracting off of mirrors and holograms. The viewer is immersed in a vast display of ever-changing lights, unlike any natural phenomenon but perhaps indicative of it. While the lasers emphasize the technological potential of light, commonplace light sources, such as mirrors or floodlights, represent an anchor to reality, albeit with its constantly changing impressions.
Yamagata's installation provides the viewer with layers of visual information, a space age landscape of materializing and dematerializing surfaces. As the artist notes "it makes you re-recognize your own consciousness for dimension and depth". One becomes highly aware of the physical, and emotional effects of Yamagata's installation.
It is commonly accepted that one's environment can alter one's moods, and that light (or lack of it) can seriously affect one¹s state of mind. Here, the variable shades of color, the different textures of light, and the continuing movement and modifications of the installation, produce a compelling sensory experience.
The exploration of object, light and space is not new, nor is the inextricable link between science, art and technology. Yet, as architect Frank Gehry stated in the preface for Yamagata's recently published catalogue, The Solar System Installations, "Hiro Yamagata has commandeered the most advanced technologies available to the science of light . . . ."
http://www.hiroyamagata.com
[ 20 December 2002: Message edited by: ~*JungleFaerie*~ ]
 
I'm so jealous of you Chrissie. I went with a friend of mine to see it and apparently missed it by 15 minutes. They closed. :( I think it was like the last day of the exhibit too. The worst part is, I was so excited that they had extended the time it was showing because I had already missed it the first time. Then that crap. ::sigh::
 
hopefully he'll do another exhibition in the northeast. not sure how likely that will be though :(
 
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