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Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2023 9:40 am
by Tiredretiredlawyer
https://www.openculture.com/2023/04/dis ... inter.html

The video at the top of the article is a must watch because it contains her artworks. It is transcribed later in the article.
Discover Leonora Carrington, Britain’s Lost Surrealist Painter

In some ways, Surrealist Leonora Carrington’s story is a familiar one, given her gender and generation.

A creative young woman, stifled by her conventional upbringing, escapes to Paris, falls in love with an older male artist, gains a degree of recognition destined always to be smaller than that of her celebrated lover’s, suffers hardships, continues working, lives a very long time and is the subject of nearly as many exhibitions in the decade and a half following her death as in the 70 years preceding it.

Certainly, Carrington, who died in 2011, would be deeply rankled by this, or any attempt to condense her narrative into an easily-grasped package. Witness the brusque way she rejects her younger cousin Joanna Moorhead‘s invitations, above, to describe the inspiration behind various canvases:

You’re trying to intellectualize something, desperately, and you’re wasting your time! That’s not a way of understanding to make …a sort of mini logic. You’ll never understand by that road.

The story of how Moorhead connected with her notorious cousin is a fascinating one.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 6:13 pm
by Tiredretiredlawyer
https://www.openculture.com/2023/04/an- ... hills.html

An Introduction to the Painting That Changed Georgia O’Keeffe’s Career: Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills


Public recognition is an all too rare reward for many artists, but it carries with it a risk of being widely misunderstood.

Georgia O’Keeffe gained renown for her large-scale flower paintings in the 1920s, selling six images of calla lilies for $25,000.

Her husband Alfred Stieglitz, an influential photographer and gallery owner 24 years her senior, created a sensation when he exhibited these floral images alongside his sensuous nude portraits of her, fomenting an erotic association that has been near impossible to shake.

By the time she began work on it [Ram's Head, White Hollyhock - Hills], O’Keeffe had forged a deep, spiritual connection to the New Mexican desert. Its alien landscape offered respite from Stieglitz’s extra-marital affairs and the mental health issues that had plagued her in New York.

The Southwest provided abundant fresh subject matter. She drove her Ford Model A for miles across the desert, stopping to collect the bleached bones of animals who had perished under drought conditions. Unlike Farm Security Agency photographers such as Arthur Rothstein, O’Keeffe was not interested in using these bones to document the catastrophe of the Dust Bowl, or even to meditate on mortality:

The bones do not symbolize death to me. They are shapes that I enjoy. It never occurs to me that they have anything to do with death. They’re very lively. . . .They please me, and I have enjoyed them very much in relation to the sky.

“I’ll tell you what went on in my so-called mind when I did my paintings of animal skulls” she told the New Yorker’s Calvin Tomkins in a 1974 interview:

There was a lot of talk in New York then—during the late twenties and early thirties—about the Great American Painting. It was like the Great American Novel. People wanted to ‘do’ the American scene. I had gone back and forth across the country several times by then, and some of the current ideas about the American scene struck me as pretty ridiculous. To them, the American scene was a dilapidated house with a broken-down buckboard out front and a horse that looked like a skeleton. I knew America was very rich, very lush. Well, I started painting my skulls about this time. First, I put a horse’s skull against a blue-cloth background, and then I used a cow’s skull. I had lived in the cattle country—Amarillo was the crossroads of cattle shipping, and you could see the cattle coming in across the range for days at a time. For goodness’ sake, I thought, the people who talk about the American scene don’t know anything about it. So, in a way, that cow’s skull was my joke on the American scene, and it gave me pleasure to make it in red, white, and blue.
The video has wonderful interviews with O' Keefe.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 6:37 pm
by AndyinPA
I love her work. That was a great video. Thank you.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 10:39 am
by Tiredretiredlawyer
Then there's Mr. Bean.

https://mymodernmet.com/rodney-pike-mr- ... ipulations
Mr. Bean Hilariously Inserted into Historical Paintings
Illustrator and caricature artist Rodney Pike shows off his superb photo manipulation skills with these hilarious insertions of the beloved character Mr. Bean into historical portraits. It's an amusing surprise to discover the British man's expressive face peering out from underneath a feathered cap, a head of long golden hair, or the recognizable coif of George Washington's.

Pike expertly matches colors, lighting, and texture in order to seamlessly incorporate the face of Rowan Atkinson's character into the traditional portraits, making sure that the Photoshopped portions share the same painterly quality as the original works of art. In addition to his effort to make each image as convincing as possible, Pike also adds extra details to make each digital manipulation even more delightful, such as the sneaky appearances of a pair of panties and Mr. Bean's trademark teddy bear.
OwijTPVRfKrXBNDaykXX_rodneypike4.jpg
OwijTPVRfKrXBNDaykXX_rodneypike4.jpg (128.31 KiB) Viewed 2481 times

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2023 11:18 am
by RTH10260
:thumbsup: :rotflmao:

Mr Beans iconic faces make him a good origin to insert into different things :lol:

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Mon May 01, 2023 6:17 pm
by Uninformed
“Maurizio Cattelan: Banana artwork eaten by Seoul museum visitor”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-65446331

“A South Korean art student ate a banana that was part of an installation by artist Maurizio Cattelan, saying he was "hungry" after skipping breakfast.
The artwork called "Comedian", part of Cattelan's exhibition "WE", consisted of a ripe banana duct-taped to a wall at Seoul's Leeum Museum of Art.
After eating the banana, the student, Noh Huyn-soo, taped the peel to the wall.
The museum later placed a new banana at the same spot, reported local media.”

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Thu May 04, 2023 7:24 am
by RTH10260
Did you really know what you did see?

(images in the article)
Italian historian claims to have identified bridge in Mona Lisa backdrop
Bridge painted by Leonardo da Vinci is the mostly destroyed Romito di Laterina bridge in Arezzo, says Silvano Vinceti

Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Wed 3 May 2023 15.37 BST

A small town in Tuscany is revelling in excitement after it was claimed that the bridge painted in the backdrop of the most famous portrait in the world – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – belongs to the town.

The Italian historian Silvano Vinceti said he had no doubt that the Romito di Laterina bridge in the province of Arezzo was what Leonardo had painted into the countryside landscape behind the enigmatic Mona Lisa, which would end a mystery that has fuelled countless disputes over the years.

Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence in the early 16th century, and the identity of the woman featured in the oil painting – widely believed to be Lisa del Giocondo – has triggered as much speculation as the distant backdrop.

Theories in the past have identified the bridge as Ponte Buriano, close to Laterina, as well as Ponte Bobbio in the northern Italian city of Piacenza.

Using historical documents and drone images, and by making comparisons between the painting and photographs of the area, Vinceti said it was “the Etruscan-Roman bridge, Romito”.

The most telling detail, he told reporters at the foreign press association in Rome, was in the number of arches: the bridge in Leonardo’s painting had four arches, as did the Romito. Ponte Buriano, on the other hand, has six arches, while Ponte Bobbio has more than six.

Only one arch of the Romito, which stretched across the Arno river, remains, as do the foundations of the bridge on the opposite side of the riverbank.

Documents belonging to the Medici family that were found in Florence’s state archives showed that between 1501 and 1503 the bridge was “a very busy, functioning bridge”, Vinceti said. He added that it was precisely at that time that Leonardo was in the Val d’Arno area, first at the service of Cesare Borgia, a cardinal from the most notorious noble family in Renaissance Italy, and then for Piero Soderini, a statesman of the Republic of Florence.



https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... a-backdrop

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 12:43 pm
by Chilidog
So the other day we went by the Habitat for Humanity ReStore store in my area. Ostensibly to look for replacement mini-blinds (at $1.00 each, you can't beat the price, the problem is the size selection isn't the best)

Anyway. Whenever we go out thrifting, I like to poke through the artwork.

90% of it is "decor art" I.e. mass produced oils of mundane Italian vilages, prints, posters, etc. General dreck.

9% is amateur stuff of various quality and skill level. Interesting to poke through.

<1% is what I would consider worthy to buy. (My wall space is filling up)

Anyway. I spotted the following and I was "Damn, I like it." I did a bit of research, and went back there yesterday and it was still there. It's hanging by my front door now.
► Show Spoiler
It's a mixed media print. I was able to track down the artist. It was produced ~1985 or so.

According to an e-mail from the artist "This piece was done based on the feelings that followed a broken dream or hope. It is a hand colored etching with gold ink and collaged papers in red."

Not bad for $50

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 1:39 pm
by johnpcapitalist
Chilidog wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 12:43 pm It's a mixed media print. I was able to track down the artist. It was produced ~1985 or so.

According to an e-mail from the artist "This piece was done based on the feelings that followed a broken dream or hope. It is a hand colored etching with gold ink and collaged papers in red."

Not bad for $50
I see your hand-colored original artwork $50 thrift shop find and raise you my $50 thrift shop find: a curly maple genuine Stickley slatted Prairie chair (not vintage, made 1992) with aniline-tanned leather cushions.
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SWMBO was out shopping one day and called me from Goodwill. She said "I just texted you a picture of a chair that you might be interested in." I looked at it, and it was obviously a genuine Stickley. I told her, "I'm on my way. Sit in that chair and do not get out of it for any reason unless the building is on fire." When I got there, I verified that it was indeed a genuine Stickley, and snagged it. My better half reported that there were several people looking at it intently in the 10 minutes it took me to get there, but she scared them away. Score!

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 6:37 pm
by AndyinPA
Both look like great buys. Gorgeous chair.

Me? I'm looking to get rid of stuff, some of it really nice, some not. But I want rid of it.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 7:07 pm
by Tiredretiredlawyer
Great buys, guys!

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri May 05, 2023 8:29 pm
by sugar magnolia
My best score from thrifting has been a dozen obscure-artist painted plates for $5 for the lot. I loved the weird little people on them so I bought them for looks. Finally got around to looking them up and I can sell them for $125 each on replacements.com or whatever that website is. My conundrum now is that I still love them so I don't want to get rid of them, but I know how much they're worth and don't want to risk using them!

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2023 11:37 am
by bill_g
Call them money in the bank Sugar. Keep 'em until you need the money.

(and people thought cryptocurrency was new!)

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2023 11:47 am
by bill_g
Though not fine art, I did get paid a small sum to produce a series of propogation plots for the Antelope Mine in Wyoming. Here's a sample. I think it would look good 10ft across and 5ft high on a great wall at the airport or such.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2023 12:48 pm
by Annrc
Love this! Is this the Navajo Mine? I imagine this is for reclamation? Cool!

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2023 1:15 pm
by bill_g
Annrc wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 12:48 pm Love this! Is this the Navajo Mine? I imagine this is for reclamation? Cool!
Yes, it is for NTEC (Navajo Transitional Energy Co). How Navajo it is I don't know, but it is a very active mine. The exposed coal face is almost two miles wide and 100ft tall. "Reclamation" occurs concurrently. The overburden is removed and placed in closed areas. Here's a Google Earth screen capture from July of 2022. The satellite was overhead at the moment they blasted in the West Pit. That's about one half square mile.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sat May 06, 2023 2:27 pm
by Annrc
bill_g wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 1:15 pm
Annrc wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 12:48 pm Love this! Is this the Navajo Mine? I imagine this is for reclamation? Cool!
Yes, it is for NTEC (Navajo Transitional Energy Co). How Navajo it is I don't know, but it is a very active mine. The exposed coal face is almost two miles wide and 100ft tall. "Reclamation" occurs concurrently. The overburden is removed and placed in closed areas. Here's a Google Earth screen capture from July of 2022. The satellite was overhead at the moment they blasted in the West Pit. That's about one half square mile.
Nice. I’ll show this to my husband. He once received a commendation for his reclamation work at a mine outside of Middletown, CT where he was the Plant Manager. I looked up the mine you did this work for. Interesting.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2023 7:09 am
by northland10
bill_g wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 11:47 am Though not fine art, I did get paid a small sum to produce a series of propogation plots for the Antelope Mine in Wyoming. Here's a sample. I think it would look good 10ft across and 5ft high on a great wall at the airport or such.
Data art. :daydreaming:

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2023 8:49 am
by bill_g
northland10 wrote: Sun May 07, 2023 7:09 am Data art. :daydreaming:
It is. I am always amazed at how beautiful of these are. But, they are intended as decision making tool, or in this case - a bad decision. It's a mine, a big mine, with lots of talented and capable people, and they do all of their own engineering including their radios used to communicate across the project. They have to. They are in central Wyoming, 65 miles or more in any direction to population, and at least a day's travel from any support organizations. So, they do it all. They get the broad strokes right, but the wizard's work, the finesse, is sometimes missing.

They are all about brute force. If you want to acheive something, just add lots of energy. But, they added too much. They had coverage issues. They added more transmitters. That didn't fix things. They added more. Still not fixed. After a couple whacks at the pinata they called in a contractor to review their work. This is what I've come up with so far.

I've overlaid the basic coverage on to Google Earth. Green is guaranteed success, red is guaranteed failure, and yellow is the coin toss area where the probability of success varies based on a number of factors that are constantly changing. Weather, man-made electrical noise, batteries, and equipment maintenance are the most common contributing factors. The plot shows the entire mine has excellent coverage. The predicted model says there is sufficient energy for success everywhere. Barring missing information making my assumptions wrong, they shouldn't have any problems.

The second overlay shows the contributions of the five sites displayed as distinct colors. Now the problem becomes evident - the sites are too close together and it is confusing their radios. The radios in the field cannot get a good signal because there is too much signal. It's the same problem people have in a room full of other people talking loudly. You can hear someone close to you, but not someone across the room.

The mine in the north with the light blue plot has very few problems. Terrain masking is keeping the other sites out giving it an area to itself. As you move south beyond the ridge, you run into four transmitters beating up on each other. The violet is intended for the admin building. It needs to be turned way down to just cover the building itself. The dark green is their main transmitter, but it is getting hemmed in by the new transmitter that didn't solve anything (in Crayola flesh tone) and the south area transmitter (in fuscia) where they lay down the spoils. They need to turn the new one off, and turn the south one down so the main one has a chance.

They claim that will negatviely effect the coverage in the NW which I agree is possible. So, we are in the process of finding a suitable location over there. It's their land. They can put anything anywhere without an outside approval process. It's just a matter of planning and execution.

So, engineering software becomes art.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 11:59 am
by AndyinPA
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... christies/
Two exceptionally rare Rembrandt portraits long forgotten by scholars of the Dutch master have been rediscovered after almost two centuries by a British auctioneer, who stumbled upon the works during a routine valuation of a family’s private art collection.

The oval-shaped oil portraits, signed and dated by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1635, depict a wealthy elderly couple in Leiden, Netherlands. The two were linked to the painter through their son, who had married into Rembrandt’s family.

“The pictures were completely absent from the Rembrandt literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, which was extraordinary,” Henry Pettifer, an expert in Old Masters at Christie’s auction house, said in announcing the find Monday. “They have intimacy about them, a dignity. They’re extraordinary.”

The original paintings were last seen by the public in 1824, the year they were sold to the ancestors of their current owners, who Christie’s said were unaware that both were confirmed originals.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue May 16, 2023 8:41 am
by Tiredretiredlawyer

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue May 16, 2023 3:19 pm
by johnpcapitalist
What I remember about Nagel's works more than the artistic value was the massive industry he built. When he was hot in the early 1980s, I had neighbors who were extremely passionate collectors. Every wall had a Nagel something on it. You could never tell whether something was an original one-off piece, a limited edition, a serigraph, or any one of numerous semi-mass-produced pieces that had some varying degree of exclusivity and a correspondingly varying price point. The appeal was to less-sophisticated collectors with a certain amount of money but not well-developed tastes of their own who wanted something that their friends would recognize, and which would afford them a certain amount of cachet.

I put Nagel in with other art empires like R. C. Gorman (Southwest art), Thomas Kincade (schmaltzy Old English country and Christmas scenes) and Dale Chihuly (glass art). Kincade's exploits in opening up a chain of galleries to sell his stuff were rife with financial fraud that brought the wrath of the SEC down on the company in the 1990s. I was also amused by Kincaid's targeting of the evangelical crowd, when he tuned many of his works to incorporate angels and other religious symbolism. Other than his philandering, alcoholism and financial misbehavior, he was a perfectly upstanding man of God.

Gorman just cranked out so much stuff that his $5,000 paintings never appreciated in price while he was alive (not sure it's gone through the roof after his demise, either). It all looked the same after a while. While I liked SW art in the 1980s, I'm glad I didn't save up for one of those. Instead, I bought one original Southwestern themed work from a lesser-known artist that I enjoy every time I walk in my front door.

Chihuly is a special case. He more or less singlehandledly rescued the practice of studio glass art in the country from the brink of death in the 1960s with extremely innovative forms that nobody else was doing. Virtually everyone in studio glass today owes him a massive debt. His early stuff is (appropriately) highly coveted by collectors because of its importance in the history of the movement. However, he turned into a complete commercial whore and has countless apprentices cranking out huge volumes of product within carefully prescribed guidelines, which he signs and charges lots of money for. My sister has met him and confirms that he's a thoroughly unpleasant human being with a mammoth ego. I abhor his years of rampant commercialism, but I have to honor who he was in the early days at the same time. Tough cognitive dissonance there.

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Tue May 16, 2023 3:28 pm
by Tiredretiredlawyer
Thanks, JPC!!!

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Wed May 31, 2023 4:15 am
by RTH10260
‘Mad and offensive’ texts shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society
The Heege Manuscript which ‘pokes fun at everyone, high and low’ is among the earliest evidence of the life and work of a real minstrel

Sarah Shaffi
Wed 31 May 2023 06.00 BST

From mocking kings and priests to encouraging audiences to get drunk, newly discovered texts at the National Library of Scotland have shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society.

Containing the earliest recorded use of the term “red herring” in English, the texts are part of a booklet known as the Heege Manuscript. Dr James Wade of the University of Cambridge, who discovered them, said echoes of minstrel humour can be found “in shows such as Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick”.

“The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British standup comedy,” he added.

Throughout the middle ages, minstrels travelled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories. Although fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature, references to real-life performers are rare, and the Heege Manuscript is among the first evidence of the life and work of a real minstrel.

Dr James Wade: ‘To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting.’ Photograph: University of Cambridge
Wade, from Cambridge’s English faculty and Girton College, said that most “medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost”.

“Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art,” he continued. “This is something else. It’s mad and offensive, but just as valuable. Standup comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”

The texts consist of a tail-rhyme burlesque romance entitled The Hunting of the Hare, a mock sermon in prose and an alliterative nonsense verse The Battle of Brackonwet. They were copied circa 1480 by Richard Heege, a household cleric and tutor to a Derbyshire family called the Sherbrookes, from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border.



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/ ... al-society

Art: I know it when I see it.

Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 5:09 am
by keith
johnpcapitalist wrote: Tue May 16, 2023 3:19 pm
What I remember about Nagel's works more than the artistic value was the massive industry he built. When he was hot in the early 1980s, I had neighbors who were extremely passionate collectors. Every wall had a Nagel something on it. You could never tell whether something was an original one-off piece, a limited edition, a serigraph, or any one of numerous semi-mass-produced pieces that had some varying degree of exclusivity and a correspondingly varying price point. The appeal was to less-sophisticated collectors with a certain amount of money but not well-developed tastes of their own who wanted something that their friends would recognize, and which would afford them a certain amount of cachet.

I put Nagel in with other art empires like R. C. Gorman (Southwest art), Thomas Kincade (schmaltzy Old English country and Christmas scenes) and Dale Chihuly (glass art). Kincade's exploits in opening up a chain of galleries to sell his stuff were rife with financial fraud that brought the wrath of the SEC down on the company in the 1990s. I was also amused by Kincaid's targeting of the evangelical crowd, when he tuned many of his works to incorporate angels and other religious symbolism. Other than his philandering, alcoholism and financial misbehavior, he was a perfectly upstanding man of God.

Gorman just cranked out so much stuff that his $5,000 paintings never appreciated in price while he was alive (not sure it's gone through the roof after his demise, either). It all looked the same after a while. While I liked SW art in the 1980s, I'm glad I didn't save up for one of those. Instead, I bought one original Southwestern themed work from a lesser-known artist that I enjoy every time I walk in my front door.

Chihuly is a special case. He more or less singlehandledly rescued the practice of studio glass art in the country from the brink of death in the 1960s with extremely innovative forms that nobody else was doing. Virtually everyone in studio glass today owes him a massive debt. His early stuff is (appropriately) highly coveted by collectors because of its importance in the history of the movement. However, he turned into a complete commercial whore and has countless apprentices cranking out huge volumes of product within carefully prescribed guidelines, which he signs and charges lots of money for. My sister has met him and confirms that he's a thoroughly unpleasant human being with a mammoth ego. I abhor his years of rampant commercialism, but I have to honor who he was in the early days at the same time. Tough cognitive dissonance there.
I liked Gorman, but never enough to actually buy any of his stuff.

R.C. Gorman Official Website store

The guy I got good and sick of was Ettore "Ted" deGrazia. His faceless indian first nations children paintings were reproduced EVERYWHERE: post cards, keychains, toilet seats, fridge magnets, you name it. He hated it (reportedly) but once he'd given the rights to UNICEF, they just went with it.

Its a pity, because his other works are really quite good and he hung out with Diego Rivera in his younger years while doing interesting stuff. But faceless children is what he's remembered for - that and burning an estimated 1.5 million dollars worth of his paintings so his children wouldn't have to pay estate tax.

Ted DeGrazia biography