Art History Guide

Today I had a hard time getting out of bed. My body was a sack of bananas that didn’t want to move, but there it went — lurching over the floorboards and wading through the humidity to start the day. Still, the bed was like a whirlpool trying to bedride me. Or. Trying to get me bedridden. It was also like a whirlpool dishwasher, in that it tried to wash me: a banana sack. Look, I’m sure some of you have gone through this before. I know Matisse has.

Matisse was bedridden toward the end of his life, but that didn’t stop him. At one point he drew figures on the ceiling above him, by attaching charcoal to a fishing pole. But what he mostly did, was cut shapes from paper of bright colors and glued them into huge collages, and covered his bedroom walls with them. He said, “Now that I don’t often get up, I’ve made myself a little garden to go for a walk in.”

This Matisse, he had the right idea.

Oh and, don’t forget, those who live in the bay area: sfmoma has a Matisse exhibition going on right now.

Matisse

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez. What can one say about the man who had a Shark Week!-like run? I’m guessing a lot of things — I checked Amazon.

He put Spain on the map during his time; inspired many artists after him to pay tribute to him, from Picasso to Bacon; was voted in the 80s as producing the world’s greatest painting.

With the idea of Baroque forming from visiting Rome, studying the masters, and merging the drama with the technical mastery and emphasis on light, I wonder how our modern culture would interperet this approach. Does John Currin count? Here is a piece entitled “Honeymoon Nude”

Velazquez, Shark Week!, Baroque, John Currin

Diego Velazquez’s work was part of the Spanish Baroque movement, which had its own distinctness from other European regions during the era. In 1625-60, Spanish Baroque mostly emphasized dignified court portraits, painted realistically, and supported by the monarch. I’m sure at the time there was that one fanatic with the tacky gift shop capitalizing on all things Baroque. Mugs and keychains clogged up the store, with an aisle of T-shirts for purists, wearing catch phrases like “If it Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It!” graced the chests of out of towners. If that store didn’t exist then, they truly missed out. Just like we shouldn’t miss out on the exciting movement known as Baroque!

From 1600-1750 artists from all over Europe came to Rome to study the masterpieces of the High Renaissance and Classical, going back home to give it their own cultural style. They managed to merge the technical mastery of the Renaissance, and the dramatic intensity of Mannerism. Each regional style had the common thread of mastering light for dramatic impact. It also brought the role of art into daily life and nourished greats like…

…Rembrandt

…and Caravaggio.

Obviously good on T-shirts and keychains.

Velazquez, Baroque

Artists and critics around the world polled in to vote Diego Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” as world’s greatest painting in 1985. Wow, what a Velazquez week treat.

This painting, done in 1656 in Prado, Madrid, means “The Maids of Honor.” It consists of a five-year-old princess named Margarita, a few ladies in waiting, two dwarves, a dog, a mirrored reflection of the king and queen, a full-length portrait of a court official, and the artist himself.

The composition might seem a little messy, but he uses a structure of over lapping triangles. The upper half of the group portrait is filled with a range of shadow and light, creating the illusion of depth and space. He also uses verticals and horizontals to keep the eye steady.

So what were the nine runners up in this poll? 2) Vermeer’s “View of Delft“; 3) Giorgione’s “The Tempest“; 4) Botticelli’s “La Primavera“; 5) Frencesca’s “The Resurrection“; 6) El Greco’s “The Burial of the Count Orgaz“; 7) Giotto’s “The Lamentation“; 8 ) Grunewald’s “The Isenheim Altarpiece“; 9) Picasso’s “Guernica“; 10) [tag]Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son”

Velazquez’s, Las Meninas, painting, dwarves, Vermeer, View of Delft, Giorgione, The Tempest, Botticelli, La Primavera, Frencesca, The Resurrection, El Greco, The Burial of the Count Orgaz, Giotto, The Lamentation, Grunewald, The Isenheim Altarpiece, Picasso, Guernica“; 10) [tag]Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son

Velazquez influenced many a painter. For Sargent–technique, color, and the casual arrangement of multigroup figures. Goya, glowing highlights and subtle gradations of color. “I have found in him,” Manet once said, “my ideal of painting.” And then there is Bacon.

“Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X”

From 1949 to the mid 1950s, Francis Bacon, a British painter (and one of my favorites), did a series known as “The Screaming Popes” where he did several “nightmarish” versions of Diego Velazquez’s “Portrait of Pope Innocent X“.

Here are a few:

“Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef”

It was suggested that he was suggesting that we were all carcasses. I think he was playing with the idea of his last name being Bacon. Also that cows have prizes inside them, if you consider popes to be prize-like.

“Study for a Pope III”

One of the things the Bacon is known for is his reformation and torture of the flesh. In “Study for a Pope III”, a steamroller to the hand was his choice of torture.

“Study of Red Pope”

One of Bacon’s reoccurring elements would be portraits of those close to him. “If they were not my friends,” said the Bacon, “I could not do such violence to them.” “Study of Red Pope” I believe contains a George Dyer.

More exciting than sharks you say? Good. Let’s trek along this week for our next Velazquez find.

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660)—one of Spain’s greatest offerings to art—is like the topic of sharks. Why? Because much like Shark Week, Diego is getting a Velazquez Week.

His friend Ruben once told him to go to Rome to study Classic and Renaissance masters in the Vatican collection. During the visit, he happened to paint one of his greater portraits: Pope Innocent X.

In the portrait, Innocent X has a sharp look to him. It was lifelike and almost predatory. The pope himself said of it, “troppo vero,�? which means too truthful. To me it looks like he’s getting defensive about his clothes.

“Nice garb, sir Pope, it looks expensive.”

“Oh, no it wasn’t. I got it at Century 21. Very humble prices.”

“Yeah? Let me see that receipt you’re holding.”

“NO! It was not expensive! I am Innocent! Innocent X!”

Or maybe he’s simply just trying to say that it was his mom who dressed him. That’s one of the great things art with depth has. You could find a story beyond the surface, and often what you see is a reflection of yourself. I don’t like being accused of buying expensive church clothes, and I also don’t like it when my mother dresses me.

Tomorrow, a certain painter’s reference to Mr. Velazquez’s Innocent X!

This morning I had the kind of stomach illness that had me writhing in a coat of sweat, and after several trips to the restroom, there was still a snarling beast rumbling in my digestive system. But forget about this morning’s digestive fiasco. Let’s talk about what art movement my stomach feels like.

Romanticism!

Romanticism came in 1800-50, pretty much as a rebellion against Neoclassicism and the Age of Reason. Romanticism was intense and based on the gut instinct and essence of the subject, instead of rational objectivity. From then on, French art became more about emotion than intellect.

This is another painting that reminds me of my stomach.

Delacroix painted this violent piece based on Lord Byron’s poetic verses about the Assyrian emperor, Sardanapalus. In it, the emperor faced military defeat, and in response, he ordered everything he owned to be destroyed, including his harem girls and horses. Afterwards, he immolated himself on a funeral pyre.

If you look at the contorted and strained body language, you almost get what happens to me after a night of too much pizza slices. In essence at least.

My Boston friend was visiting me here in Brooklyn, and he mentioned an Edward Hopper showing at the Museum of Fine Arts. “Oh yeah?” I said. “Most of his work doesn’t attract me, but one of my favorite paintings is his ‘Chop Suey‘.”

“Really?” he said. “That’s like, their featured piece. It’s on all the billboards.”

I then went to Boston for the day, to hang out, walk my friend’s dog, and see some shows he’s involved in. I also considered going to see the painting, even though I’d only have 15 minutes to see it. Not only that, but it would have cost around $30.$30 just to see the only painting I liked of Hoppers (well, I also liked his Automat), for a rushed 15 minutes? Now, I thought long and hard about this and after consulting others (who said I should go for it), I decided against it and went on my merry way.

I still wonder if I should have seen it. Should have I gone?

My current love interest has the deadly combination of beauty and intelligence. Of strength and grace. In these multi-faceted ways she is lovely, but along with the loveliness she also has a fascination with blood. There’s something about the deep reds and viscosity of it that she’s attracted to.

When she told me this over the phone, I immediately thought of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), who is often known as one of the first feminist painters. She was an Italian follower of Caravaggio, lighting her feminist subjects in plain, dark backgrounds.

Gentileschi has a dark background where, as a student she was raped and subjected to much pain and humiliation because of it. As a result, much of her work depicts women violently lashing out against men. When my love told me she liked the look of blood, the Gentileschi piece I first thought of was, “Judith Beheading Holofernes”.

Now, my girlfriend doesn’t have that dark a past, but I worry that if I were in the kitchen and lost a hand in the garbage disposal, instead of calling for help, she might run and get the camera.

In eighteenth-century America, a girl was expected to grow up, get married, have children, and take care of a home. Because of the limits of her sphere, a girl received a very different education from that available to a boy. Indeed, before the advent of public education in the mid-nineteenth century, in order to receive any education at all a boy or a girl had to be born into the middle or upper classes and have parents who valued education enough to pay for it. Usually, a boy would be taught traditional academic subjects, while a girl might be tutored in the barest rudiments of reading and arithmetic. Instead of academic studies, girls were usually sent to schools that taught an assortment of skills considered “female accomplishments”–music, watercolor painting, comportment, manners, and sewing.

For More Information:
American Needlework in the Eighteenth Century
American Embroidery as Art
Case 1 Introduction: Early American Needlework