I’m ever so fond of this painting. I always stop in front of it and admire the realism of the asters. The rest of the painting seems unfinished or even haphazard in comparison to the care taken to present the flowers in such perfect light, but oh, what beauty. <3 (Sorry, I’m working overnights and my brain is a puddle of mush at this point.)
Tag: Impressionism
Tuesday
The muted colors of this painting really hammer home the truth of the pollution levels of London in the early 20th century. This isn’t just some allegorical reference to global warming: this is the muted palette of an impressionist who thrived on bright, inviting colors. So sit on that and stew on it for a minute or two.
Monday
This is another case of ‘small but mighty’. All in all, it is a series of haphazard brushstrokes that don’t even really make a complete picture, yet, the impressions of everything that they want to convey somehow come across. The colors aren’t quite correct, but they are close enough to approximate what your eye believes it wishes to see, and it fills in the blanks and the extreme contrast of the figure of the little girl seems to be stark, even harsh and alien to the rest of the scene.
Tuesday
This particular work reminds me of Mrs. Hughes from Downton Abbey for some reason. I don’t know why; it just does.
Monday
There is a lot of crossover between Rococo design and Victorian Impressionism; the repression of sexuality in public while glorifying it in private, all the while alluding to it in portraiture, sketches, etc., is very similar. Renoir’s palette of ‘girly’ pastel hues and feminine lines makes this painting flirty, fresh, and inviting in a borderline naughty way.
Saturday
This is another one of the paintings that I like to make a special visit to every time I’m in the museum. I enjoy the balance of colors, the simple childishness of the work, and how it makes me feel. I smile every time I see it, and that is a rare feeling in my life, so I will take it for all it is worth.
Friday
This piece is painfully evocative; it hits you like a swift kick to the gut. You know immediately what it is meant to portray and why. You know why you are meant to feel the way you do when you look at it. There is no wiggle room for interpretation. And yet, in the harshness, there is a delicate beauty of form and composition, of balance… and in the darkness, a tiny glimmer of hope.
Wednesday
We could talk for hours about the balance of the composition, about how the curves enhance the overall effects, of how the colors work to draw your eye from one part of the canvas to the next… Or we could just say that my favorite color is green and leave it at that.
Wednesday
Sooooo, I have feelings about this piece. Intense feelings, both positive and negative. And that’s part of the point of this blog, right? To talk about art in a way that scholars don’t necessarily talk about art because they think their credibility is on the line and whatever else, and so on and so forth and I digress.
Venus Victorious does not have any of the typical feel of Renoir’s works that I have seen – even his other sculptures. The modus operandi is not similar. The compositions are completely different, alien. It may have been directed and micromanaged within an inch of its life by Renoir, but I cannot reconcile it being a Renoir in my head. It’s like if Beethoven’s 5th was rewritten as death metal, recorded backwards, and deconstructed, then released under Beethoven’s attribution: it just doesn’t work.
The sculpture itself is insanely beautiful. You can walk around all sides of it and take in all of the details, marvel at the casting and the intricacies of the craftsmanship…
But dear lord, please stop calling it a Renoir when clearly its primary attribution should be to Richard Guino.
Sunday
Today’s work was by request of my niece, Charlotte, who is a wee dancer herself, and who recently had her spring recital.
Impressionist sculpture isn’t something that you really think of as a homogenous concept – it’s either realistic or abstractionistic, but as you look at what almost looks like brush strokes within the thumbworking in the original clay-casting, you get a feel for the impressionism that Degas tried to instill in his sculptures. There’s another bronze of his at SLAM that’s similar that I’ll cover at a later date that has similar working.
What I like most about this casting is that they aren’t afraid to go with the mixed media, adding in muslin and ribbon to add to the illusion of our little dancer being just as alive and bravely stepping out onto the stage as she would have been in her lifetime.
Truly, this is one of the prized pieces in SLAM’s Impressionist galleries, and with good reason.