Tag: painting

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why art has no color. It has no color, it has no silence, it is one howling voice in the wilderness. Art doesn’t care what you are, who you are, only that you give your voice to the need within you to create.

*twitch* The background of this painting is more interesting than the subject and that’s a travesty, because I’m sure the poor dear was probably very pretty if she wasn’t treated like she wasn’t anything at all.

It’s a brown and blue semi-photo-realistic painting of bridges and the River Arno. It’s pretty standard stuff, but the use of direct light v. indirect light (which was more favored at the time) makes it a bit more unique in the way it’s presented. However… it’s still nothing overly groundbreaking. American art of this particular time period is pretty pedestrian – it’s just a few years before the Impressionists really get going.

I’ve always thought that this painting looks like ye olde stereotypical Victorian drawing room: overloaded with dark colors and brick-a-brack and nick-knacks and such. It’s not very inviting.

This looks like the beginning of an excellent horror movie. Let’s sit and watch for a while, yes?

This might have been one of the things that began my lifelong love affair with New York City. I remember seeing this painting as a tiny thing and marveling at how lovely it was, and then recreating the modern equivalent view on my first visit to Manhattan. (Yes, I am a nerd. No, I will not apologize for it.)

The difference between this more impressionistic style of painting and the old Dutch masters is… COLOR. The subject matter is the same, the church setting is the same, the exploration of light is similar, but this is colorful where the other is dull.

THIS PAINTING, Y’ALL. This painting glows, quite literally. It is the fucking bomb dot com. It is utterly unique within the art world, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. It is in my roster roll of favorites, sandwiched between Klimt’s Morte e Vita and Caravaggio’s Penitent Magdalene, if that gives you any indication of just how insanely important this piece is to my art worldview. It’s a pity that more people don’t know about it.

I like this style – thick slabs of paint in an abstract, aimless manner that all come together into a coherent whole. It speaks of peaceful revolution, of subversion and just a touch of anarchy in a carefully ordered world. It breaks barriers and brings down the status quo without doing anyone or anything any harm.