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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

The Painting Discussion Thread.

  
  

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Benny the Ball
08:38 / 16.04.05


I think that it's called Satan's Treasures, by the Belgiun artist, Jean Delville.

oh, just found this about it;

"Delville also emphasized the perils of materialism and sensuality in an image of souls ensnared by the tentacles of Satan: The Treasures of Satan, 1894, Royal Museums of Art, Brussels. In this work the voluptuous sinners are not so much being punished as they are being trapped at a low level of spiritual evolution. The depths of the sea corresponds to their low development. They are trapped by being fixated on material treasures: jewels, pearls, and sensuality. They are also the "Treasures of Satan," being trapped by him. Satan, although handsome and graceful, is himself a low-level being, as revealed by his tentacles. His physical form reveals his spiritual nature."

I saw it while in Brussels recently, and was totally amazed by it, the most beautiful, bright painting I have ever seen, just really gorgeous colours.
 
 
andrew cooke
01:40 / 21.04.05
couple of comments:

on the smartarse comment earlier about the bed in the van eyck indicating that it was a bedroom - the notes in dunkerton et al point out that beds were common in most C15 rooms.

saying that you admire renoir because it reminds you of the struggles of feminism is a pretty cute line. seems to me you could use the same excuse when you're caught peeking at porn mags. fact is, that painting appeals to a lot of young men (appeals to me too)...

anyway, best thing i've seen recently is this photo mosaic by hockney:



(hoping the getty allows deep linking)

just because it takes everyday junk and makes it so damn beautiful. and i admire the modesty - it looks like a triumph of taste over technical ability, but try doing this yourself (and watch the video linked above).
 
 
jeed
13:47 / 21.04.05
I'm glad someone brought this one up.

I almost see it as a step on from the swimming pool paintings. Stylistically its obviously very different, but my impression is that the dream of LA from the earlier works has either turned a little sour, or he's just up for something new. It really strikes me, in both its style and imagery (big sky, open road), as the start of a new beginning for him (or us, as observers to his work).

And it's got a real sense of what I really enjoy about Hockney, in that he's playing and trying new styles and techniques on for size. It's almost the antithesis of someone like Dali, who picked his style and reiterated it throughout his career. It's fun, without being trite.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
00:21 / 24.04.05
I saw it while in Brussels recently, and was totally amazed by it, the most beautiful, bright painting I have ever seen, just really gorgeous colours.

The composition of the painting is damn hott, you're led straight up the bodies to the central figure. Benny, did it invoke an emotional reaction in you? And how do you feel about the religious subject of the work?
 
 
Benny the Ball
06:15 / 24.04.05
I didn't really think about the religious side of the painting, until much later - it is just so bright when you see it. I thought about Paradise lost, and felt a little saddened by the central image of lucifer or satan being pulled back towards hell or being trapped by something - his own pride? - but the overall feeling was that it was just a huge, amazingly bright picture which I could have looked at for hours, and the more I looked at it, the more the image appeared.
 
 
Bed Head
11:36 / 25.04.05
B the B: it’s Jean Delville, isn’t it? Yer proper spooky Symbolist type. Looked like this,



And this brooding hunk was also the author of something called ‘Dialogue Among Ourselves. Cabalistic, Occult And Idealist Arguments (1895)', apparently. Also founder of the Salon d’arte Idealiste. I don’t know *anything* about all this occult stuff, not like the Temple kids, but I’d say that the cliche of uptight 19th century gents getting into this ‘revival of teh genuine Ancient Mysteries’ scene as a means of unleashing their pent-up sensuality is a pretty immediate and obvious reading of that picture.

At a first glance, that is. But, wow, if you’re really into this painting, there’s an awful lot there that you can research and get your head around. I mean, he's got a specific and singular worldview, which is all over his painting. If you're interested.


Also, y’know, used as a cover for the Savoy Books edition of A Voyage To Arcturus. Has anybody here read that/care to tell us about it?
 
 
Shrug
20:28 / 29.04.05


Gustav Klimt-Forest of Beeches

I'm really attracted to Gustav Klimt paintings in general because of their attention to detail, the tension that seems to exist in so many of them but admittedly, properly and probably most of all because they're pretty and it's easy to let your eyes wander over them.
Further to that litte confession (I like some art because it's pretty, and sometimes I feel like you shouldn't that it should just be because it's affecting, arresting, challenging )
Part of it is the fact that the theme (for me) is somewhat nebulous it could almost be alien, a close up on follicles and microscopic hair growth, maybe many things, almost surreal but totally grounded in reality.
Anyway, anyone else?
 
 
Delicatesseract
05:03 / 01.10.05
Back to Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding, I've been captivated by this painting since I first saw it in a book some 16 years ago. I think I had a great paintings address book or something. This is one of those paintings where the more I learned about it, the more I loved it. It wasn't like having the rainbow dissected, it was like learning the secrets of anatomy. That room is this self-contained private world, a totally unique place and time, and yet we are all invited inside for a close look whenever we choose. The amount of information available at just a glance is staggering. If I remember correctly, because of Van Eyck's self-portrait and signature on the pier-glass mirror, this painting stands as a valid legal wedding certificate. The couple's status is indicated by the fabric and by the expensive pigments used in the painting (which they commissioned). I could write a book about this and I won't because it's been done. But I could probably stare at this painting for the length of time it takes to write another one. There's just that much going on.
 
 
Bed Head
21:57 / 01.11.05
Shrug, if you’re still interested, that Klimt you like was painted in1902. Which was the same year as Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, which is, like, about the most ambitious and important work of his career. It’s huge and complex, ie he was kept rather busy that year, and it raised lots of public noise in Vienna at the time, as he found himself being widely attacked for the obscene/morbid/morbid and obscene elements of that piece.

Whereas his landscapes were painted for relaxation, I think. I’m pretty sure Klimt said something along those lines. If you see any silence/tranquillity there, I’d guess that’s maybe what they were painted for. I see all his landscapes as having that kinda effect - all surface. When he paints a lake he sets the horizon right high on the canvas and actually paints *the lake*; when he paints a forest it’s up close and in our face - as your comparison with hair follicles suggests. There’s hardly any distance or empty space. No room for any loose or unpredictable movement.

Er, which is to say, I like them, too.


Okay, mine. Clicky link for your viewing convenience:



Nocturne in Blue and Silver - Chelsea
1871; Oil on wood, 502 x 608 mm;

I *love* Whistler. Really, picking one was difficult, I could have chosen any one of many. So: this is pretty much one of the first nocturnes he did; in fact, Whistler didn’t even start calling them ‘nocturnes’ until several years later - and when he did, the name was someone else’s idea - with the original title for this painting being ‘Harmony in Blue-Green - Moonlight’.

But, really, just to have a different kind of abstract in this thread, after the Rothko and the Malevich and the Klien. Because I really enjoyed reading the earlier discussion about abstraction, and there’s lots out there about Whistler’s attitude to ‘representation’ in his art. This painting could *almost* be considered as a colour field painting: on a formal level, it’s little more than a series of blue stripes - which is a quality that's consciously reflected in the ‘Harmony in...’, ‘Arrangement in...’ titles that W plays about with throughout his career. But there *is* a subject here, and what this painting shows, I think, is how very little you need to make that subject sing if you’re brilliant enough to select the right elements. There's almost nothing there, but you can still feel the temperature of the air, the dampness on the breeze. You can smell the river. You’re there. He’s taken that night, stripped almost every detail away from it, but what he’s chosen to keep is enough to call something up over a hundred years later. I mean, wow.
 
 
Shrug
20:44 / 18.12.05
Whereas his landscapes were painted for relaxation, I think. I’m pretty sure Klimt said something along those lines. If you see any silence/tranquillity there, I’d guess that’s maybe what they were painted for. I see all his landscapes as having that kinda effect - all surface. When he paints a lake he sets the horizon right high on the canvas and actually paints *the lake*; when he paints a forest it’s up close and in our face - as your comparison with hair follicles suggests. There’s hardly any distance or empty space. No room for any loose or unpredictable movement.

Er, which is to say, I like them, too.

WHIMSICAL POST ALERT:
not only that but possibly silly and over-enthusiastic too.
(You have been warned)

I do find Klimt's landscapes to be relaxing, like you say they're void of extraneous detail meditative almost, all surface and all subject too (that's irrefutable).
But there's also a tension, a sensation of possible discovery by the way the picture is framed.

In Forest of Beeches the forest tantalizingly invites you in through that created apex of foregrounded trunks... after that the scene becomes so backed and packed that it's almost in its totality forest. Hues of reddish-gold/golden brown autumnal leaves, such a solid block of colour and subject that it seems near inescapable, leaving you with only a glimpse, a mere sliver, of that heavily obfuscated but invitingly blue destination.... It's almost because of this concept of entirely-too-much-forest that I strive for that ultimately unnattainable blue.


Island in Lake Atter ( and I'm so glad you decided to post that specific image) works that way too IMVHO (on the imagination and gut I mean). It's possible that if Klimt set up the pictorial elements more traditionally I wouldn't care what was beyond, but set as they are I can barely suppress an urge to tilt my head, vainly trying to recieve a fuller more complete view of the scene (the island, what lies beyond the island, the sky, the clouds, the sun) and I'm left with such a tangible expectancy about what isn't present, what I can't see, what I unquestionably must see that it's a bit overwhelming.

I can't help but feel, my reaction being so intense, that Klimt must have intentioned his landscapes to evoke this feeling.



And it's the same with this one (Park, 1909), my eye drawn to that blank space who's meaning eludes me, leaving me to meditate on what lies beyond and what essentially isn't of the painting.
Also in this, like in Forest of Beeches and Island in Lake Atter my thoughts strive upwards past the dense greenery to give them some sort of context (a sky, a framing). My wonderings for context,as always, are denied so I abstract them as something else which seems more tenable (follicles, a form of greenish stucco plaster) anything but simple greenery.
 
 
Shrug
20:49 / 18.12.05
(And sorry for ignoring Nocturne in Blue and Silver Bed, I like it too. And I'll by-the-by try to post something on it if/when I think of something beneficial to say.)
 
 
Bed Head
22:51 / 08.09.06
(Wow, what a wonderful post! And I hear what you're saying, Cat Room, but I think I’d still maintain that, to me, Klimt’s landscapes are like he’s nuzzling the scenery, pressing his face into it like a comfort blanket. Or a hand. The light in Park is like he’s peeking out between his fingers, maybe.)

(I think that might just say something about me, though, rather than anything about Klimt. Natural born nuzzler, me.)


Annnnyyway, *bump!* again. Just because I found something and thought, oooh, it's not reeeally a painting, strictly speaking, but that’s a bit like that thing I was saying that time on that thread and etc.

So, I’m reading a book about etching. A Victorian ‘how to etch’ book by Joseph Pennell, who was Whistler’s biographer, and friend, and student, and Pennell obviously totally wuvs Whistler; it’s actually pretty embarrassing and/or hilarious to read in places, because he’s so far over the top. Other great artists are mentioned only in order to show how they’re alright, but nowhere near as good as Whistler’s big sexy genius, and then they’re often put down in quite nasty, waspish terms.


But. Here we are, there’s two landscapes, the top one is by Rembrandt, and the bottom one is by Whistler; and Pennell - who’s been there, don’tcha know - asserts that both men might almost have been working back to back on the same spot, just outside Amsterdam.

- clicky! -


Now, I think the Rembrandt is pretty damn nice, as it happens, I think I'd be bloody happy if I could do that, but the interesting thing about sitting these two landscapes - virtually the same landscape, apparently - alongside each other is seeing just how little Whistler does by comparison. How much he takes away, and how well that actually works out.
 
 
Olulabelle
11:02 / 11.09.06
Yes the Whistler is lovely for precisely that reason. For me, the space that is left - what is not etched is what makes the second one so much more beautiful.

The Rembrandt is precise and neat but that's what makes it less interesting for me. It's the flowingness (that's so not a word) or the Whistler that catches me.
 
 
Olulabelle
10:05 / 13.09.06
I have just noticed that when you look at Satan's Treasures the picture that Benny the Ball picked at the top of this page, if you look for a while it starts to move. It kind of spirals left and down, which is weird, since hell is supposedly down and 'left' is 'sinister'.

Does this happen for anyone else?

I'm really beginning to think I've taken too many psychedelics.
 
 
Shrug
11:35 / 15.09.06
(Never did think of anything to say about Nocturne in Blue, still like it though).

The Rembrandt, in comparison to Whistler's rendition, suffers from a sort of visual immobility, I think, where as Whistler's, for all it's lack of detail, is pleasing just because of its blustery lines. It becomes a wonderfully vivid moving sketch but also sparse, perhaps, even a little desolate?

A lot could I suppose be to do with the weather portrayed in the sketch (Rembrandt's an oppressive still day, although, really it speaks very little of season) the other complete with slap dash cumulonimbus clouds; Autumn/Winter?
 
 
Bed Head
13:23 / 15.09.06
Yeah, absolutely. It’s all about the weather, good point. But then I think Whistler's got a whole line about how nature only presents the artist with the *elements* for his picture, which he must then arrange and order and select from. It's not necessarily intended to be a straight representation of the day when he was out sketching. I mean, getting the ‘flowingness’ (is so a word, Lula. Is now, anyway) could be more important than getting an accurate depiction of the scene that was in front of him. - And I love the way the W initially looks comparatively slapdash but then you realise he’s set up quite an ordered composition, with precisely (well, y'know, almost) equal space being given to the sky and the water, and a narrow stripe of ‘landscape’ positioned in the middle - and then he lets the printing process do a lot of the work, too; leaves a bit of ink on the plate and then the gleaming grey (I imagine) sky can be ever-so slightly lifted so the sky seems brighter and the foreground manages to give the impression of being dark-water-but-with-bright-reflections-on-the-surface. God, I love that foreground. Talented sod.

(Also, like I say, I don’t think this particular comparison was ever designed to flatter Rembrandt, it's not really fair on him, but I still think it’s an interesting example for the way it really shows the ‘less is more’ thinking that Whistler brought to both his paintings and his etchings. Or something.)

(And yes, ‘Lula - I also tend to linger on B the B’s Satan's Treasures picture every time I open this page, and yes, it does wriggle somewhat! Sinister, like. I’ve just looked it up, and apparently the original measures 2.58 x 2.68 m, so, jeez, that must be quite something to see. I think it must surely be wasted in a museum, 'should be hung above the bed in some perv-boudoir, really. If I had a perv-boudoir, I think I’d definitely try painting something like that to go in it, anyway.)
 
 
Tsuga
14:56 / 15.09.06
That Whistler/Rembrant juxtaposition is very cool. The Whistler is just so gestural and impressionistic in comparison to the detailed (but also expressive)rendering of the Rembrandt. As trick as they both are now, I suspect that for their respective times, they were that much more so.
If it's okay I wanted to revisit something Olulabelle talked about earlier in the thread, and over two years ago, which seems kinda weird. It was discussed a bit then, and while I may not have anything that interesting to add it's just something I'm very interested in, so if it's okay:

But with 2D abstract art, unless I am told the origins of the idea I find it almost impossible to align the end product with anything tangible; or that I can relate to.

Most abstract art that I see, I don't care about the origins, or any direct connections to reality; it seems the point of art is emotional impact more than cerebral impact (I guess that's personal, conceptual art is really more about the brain, and usually I'm not much into conceptual art. Too lazy to want to think, probably- just let me feel, dammit). Or I suppose it would be more appropriate to say, since thought and emotion are inextricable, that I want the thought stimulation to be more subconscious. I don't know why I like some of the art I like. Seeing some fucking crazy de Kooning or later Picasso, it might have some reference to something recognizable, but that often doesn't seem much more than incidental. But when I see them, it makes me excited. Just as often (probably more often)and also for reasons I can't explain I'll see something and it does absolutely nothing for me.
I remember being younger and seeing pictures of Jackson Pollack's paintings in books and scornfully thinking "Yeah. Wow. Paint splatters, how amazing." But the first time I went into MOMA, I walked into a room and on the opposite wall was a huge Pollack (I think it was this), and then I got it. What I got? I can't say, it just sucked me in, it made my head feel funny. One of the more intense feelings I've had looking at a painting. I've heard and read a fair bit of analysis of his and others paintings, but so often it sounds like bullshit, or at least over-complicated. I don't know if I'm selling the artists short, alot of times their own descriptions of their work or process sound like this; but to me it's all about how it makes me feel or makes my head feel funny. I'm sorry for just a grand elaboration on "I likes what I likes". But to me, it's like sound. Why do particular sounds put together make us feel particular ways? I think usually it is ineffable, so I apologize for trying to eff it. I honestly don't know if I'm being stupidly simplistic or showing my flair for the obvious, or what. Probably both. I should just say "I like the purty pictures". Gah.
I hope this posts right, I'm having some odd shit happening when previewing this...
 
  

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