Does art take away from life?

You have many who disagree with you it appears....but what if they agreed with you ? Would you be wrong then ?
More of a sense that he was in the bombing.
Esp when there are train smashes and finger paintings to sigh over.
I dont believe you really know the number of times you have stormed off in a huff....if you are going to bed, just go...that leaves the window open for a return but being the drama queen you are, that's not good enough...you need a grand exit....you need applause.

Have you seen "The Thousand Yard Stare"..?

No. And I had to consult Google & Wikipedia to understand what you meant by that term. If this is what you meant, then I wouldn't wish it on anyone. It sounds intolerable, almost unbearable.:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare

However, my comment (which you quoted) was related to an artwork (Guernica) which is a response to a savage military attack on a civilian population. As such, I believe it was an extremely powerful artistic statement. Innocent civilians should not have to bear such grief, horror & destruction, either.

MY goodness are you still on that stupid song? I didnt realize that I have to check in with you when its supper time or bedtime ? Unlike you, I have some other more pressing duties in life , like a family and a career and fishing and my garden. (Not to mention that we like to go out every so often).

Now when you go off to sleep, noone Ive talked to really notices.

There are several pieces of art that actually give me goosebumps. These are

The painting "Niagara" by F E Church

Guernica (the topic of this diversion in PQ's thread)

The STreets of Delft (Vermeer)

The Tomb of Pope Julius (Michelangelo)

Water Lillies I (Monet)

The Fighting Tamerere (Turner)

The Vietnam Wall Memorial

Each of these evoke some kind of strong emotion in me . Ive seen grown men just start crying in front of the Vietnam Wall, The Wtare Lillies take up a whole room and you can see Monets abilities even in his old age

Guernica shares its power wth the history of the night that first affected Picasso.All the supposed reactions he got from the NAzis and the Franco "book burners" made this work one of the best political cartoons of any age

The Turner just looms in front of you and evokes a sense of despair and honor on this old ship as it gets its "last" tow to be scuttled or broken up.

Niagara is another one of CHuchse magnificent giant works that were real crowd pleasers in te mid 1800's. His ability to paint the most magnificent landscapes made him a real rock star. Pope Julius Tomb is a great hulking pice of marble that has been crafted into a vessel that was to hold a pontiff. It is my favorite pice of Michelangelo's craft

The streets of Delft , I only saw when they brought in a small collection of Vermeers in the 1980s(I beleieve it was at the NAtional GAllery, I forget ). The piece just does a hard edge focus on a quiet street of brickhouses in the town where Vermeer (my favorite artist) lived and painted.


Do you have any works that move you ? Maybe this should be a subject of a thread that doesnt take away from PQ's

show me the monet

That's "Count de Monet"

Yes. Good idea, farmer.
Why not start such a thread?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand-yard_stare






THAT is shocking ...not a pile of badly painted limbs and other bomb damage by picasso.

I can see no reason why civilians who support a war in many ways are not guilty of killing enemy combatants and as such are a part of the war.

You are entitled to your opinion.
However (as a painting) it doesn't appeal to me at all, no matter what sentiments inspired it.
That's my opinion.

Just thought I could help. You seem interested in the horror and cruelty of war, and I know of none better than "The Thousand Yard Stare".
To me it has shocking reality...I dont believe in looking at torn limbs and death and seeing artistic beauty like you see in Guernica .

Actually I don't think war is much of a solution to anything, rather than being "interested in the horror and cruelty of war", as you suggest.

You are not obliged to have a favourable appreciation of Guernica. It's perfectly OK if you don't. However, I do.

TheTHe artists views of war can be broken into several camps

1Those who paint the acts of war as a celebration

2Those who use their art as a chronicle of war

3Those who find war repugnant.

Tom Lea was a well known "muralist" of the 30's and 40's (before he painted ".The 200 mile Stare") His work has often been compared to the Thomas Hart Benton STyle and much of his work had been commissioned under WPA artists projects for public buildings. I remember seeing one of his in Odessa Texas (Before Odessa became an oily shithole). I found it on AskART.

Heres a public building pice of art that is kind of presaging the Layout of Guernica.





Its interesting how much art goes around and around . And , while the style and subject is easily understood, it is meant to be appreciated more like a cave painting (much like Picassos idea in Guernica)

I read Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country in the fifties - don't remember it at all, just that my father liked it and I read it.

They made a movie of that and "The Brave Bulls" .(I just found that out in WIKI). Heres a mural from the ELPaso library where he gets closer and closer to abstract style that is like some works of Derain. Theres also a Lea mural in the UNM library. (since he dies in 2001 , I suppose that one was done after the WPA work)

In the hands of a master of colour like van Gogh, these would have been extraordinary paintings because of the subject alone. As is, they are very average without the vibration colour brings. This is the sort of art that takes away from life because of its sterility and lack of technical ability, my main points against modern works.

They were done by the same artist who painted the 2000 mile stare. So that helps settle another point about art and life . NO ARTIST HITS A HOME RUN EVERY WORK. You liked his "2000 mile") probably because it spoke to you on several levels. I feel the same way about much (not all)of Picasso(I dont like his pottery and his works on Cervantes, they are just too childlike and were, in my mind, made at a time in his life when he was only capitolizing on the value of his signature). Much like Dali at the end of his life, his wife had (reportedly) him sit and sign blank sheets of paper which were later just printed with monotypes done by some studio guys.
I love the work of BAch, yet I cannot listen long to the "Goldberg Variations" and one or two of his fugues. They just drone on like Irish music to me.

If an artist can have an area of art where he misses completely, I would argue so to can art as a whole. I wonder where the origins of your like of modern art comes from ?

(PS 1,000 YARD stare...)

Interesting question. WHen I was a kid, I used to judge art by such personal things as.
"He must be a great artist because he draws so lifelike"

or
"His art is done all freehnd"

As I got older, I began to really get into how art evolved from the early BAroque(where perspectives were flat and colors were limited) To Rennaissance-(Where art became life in its many poses, all to venerate God or myhtic figures in place of God)
Then I got The Romantics, the MAnnerists, The Landscape Painers and
THEN SOMETHING HAPPENED WHEN I WAS AROUND 15 or 16. I just got totally amazed by Monet , Pisarro,and a modern artist named PiCCABIA. I spent several years trying to become an impressionist painter (at that time being an artist was an easy way to meet girls and I was kind of a social idiot. I used to get girls waay out of my league and I say it was my being an artist in high school who was indifferent to studies). Then when I was finishing High SChool I first met the work of Picasso and started to read about his journey from being a very accomplished Realist painter when he was a kid to beoming the poster boy of this movement of modernism after a friend of his commited suicide when he was like 23.
I got hooked on how someone could

1 gradually remove aspects of detail so that we were left only with these "impressions" of light and form
to
2 How even impressionistic work could be abstracted into something that even bears no likeness or resemblance to the subject

3 Finally I made the journey all around and back. When I was teaching (science ) originally I availed myself of the "free credits" policy of the U and pursued a BFA in painting. (My life was falling apart as my first wife left me for some rich guy) My senior show was a two person show feturing a printmaker and me. WE both interpreted still life subjects in "trompe losile" style all the way to abstarction.

After this I began to paint my ass off everywhere, As my life came back together and I volunteered for overseas servive , I spent as much time painting as I did on my geology work. And, all the while my work swung wildly between ultra realistic and virtual abstraction of world subjects. One opf my stupidest works (IMHO) was an abstract of the pyramids of Giza where I was set up painting , perhaps the most abstract of of forms of human accomplishment and there I was doing it further in abstract. "Whats the point"? I asked myself Then I realized that abstraction needed some kind of a focus and theme, so I gradually went away from it for myself

As a result, Ive liked all kinds of art (especially in painting and pastel) But, I see that , for me, I especially love how someone can interpret a real subject by presenting us with the most spare impressions of that subject .

If you liked the 100 mile stare Ill try to find a copy of John Singer Sargents "GAssed". Its a hauntimg painting done in WWI of a line of soldiers wearing "do rags" over their eyes and walking in a line holding on to the man infront like a long Conga line. All this because the men were hit with mustard gas and were being moved to the rear.

I like various "genre" subjects like RAilroads, lighthouses, and sailing ships. In recent months Ive started threads on these subjects and how various artists and photographers have interpreted these subjects (All done in a realistic fashion).
Ill see if I cant post these threads for you to visit. I got a lot of input from A2Kers who all had examples of these subjects that they liked and shared with me on my thread.
Lemme see if I cn do this tonight (Ive got indigestion from a pizza supper and I cant sleep)

Heres that John Singer Sargent painting from WWI. Im not sure which army these soldiers are from but the subject and the composition and the way that Sargent interprets this makes it one of the most important pieces of art from that war