Art With a Capital F

Letty, if you don't like 'Nude Descending a Staircase', please dont look at 'The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors'!!!

I am fascinated by the depiction of motion in NDAS, the complexity of the image and the compositional arrangement of the moving image. Also, the
translation of the figure from realism into those cubist shapes.

I think it is very moving.

I don't like Duchamp (but that is one of his better pieces). Sorry I can't defend him!

Shepaints..you paints<smile> Perhaps in that respect you have a perspective that I do not. I appreciate your interpretation, but often I think an artist has fun at the expense of the general public. Guess I am that "general public."

Vivien, I have often wondered about rebels in the world of creativity. Often I appreciate the fact that they don't melt in the mould, but sometime we can't see past the eye of the thinker. I love Ezra Pound, but I think it's because he has a fantastic sense of the ridiculous. Duchamp hold no emotion for me.

I'm mostly annoyed by modern art and those copying it,

but you have picked one of the best examples of the best of modern art.

How can I argue against this painting? It is intellectually stimulating and has a pleasant monochrome gold color scheme. Taking notes from cubism, it shows not an object's circumference all at once but a persons movement all at once within a single frame.

If weighed within the entire history of art, I don't know if it would make the top ten cut. However, it is a triumph for its time and within its movement.

Portal Star, explain a little more about "intellectually stimulating."

I simply cannot remember the artist - but there is a painting of a woman's feet and a dog - a blur of movement???? I like that much better than Duchamp's nude. Does anyone know the one i mean?

There is also a fantastic sense of movement in The City Rises by Umberto Boccioni

Both are an attempt to show movement in a single image, the passage of time as something/somebody travels throught space - but Duchamp is cold and unemotional and really chills me.

I think he is grossly over rated - sorry Portal! we'll have to agree to differ on this one.

Imagine that you're living in a time when pictures are nearly always (99.7%) simulations of three dimensional space.

These pictures do their best to encapture light, shadow, and color in a way that best emulates this space.

The impressionists start to break up the image a bit, but don't leave the image. They are sill catching a moment in time and trying to sculpt it onto flat canvas - like a photograph.

Then you have Duchamp, who (and I'm not trying to give him singlehanded credit for these ideas, but for the sake of argument I'm speaking only of him) introduces a painting that is not a single moment in time. You have never seen anything like this before. It is radical - not only is it not a clear depiction - it is not a still depiction. It shows in one still frame a figure in motion. This blows your 19th-20th century mind.

A new element has been introduced into the frame - time. It had been eluded to, it had been symbolized. But it had never (as far as I know) been pained into one simultaneous moment. This is intellectual because it shows an awareness of time which may now, in out time, seem trite - but at the time was revolutionary.

Sometimes you simply have to look at paintings in their historical context.

The history of art isn't one of progress - it isn't a linear path, but it is steps of action and reaction.

wow! that was quick! and very well put

Indeed it was, Portal Star, but I simply don't see what you see in spite of the eloquence with which you expressed it. Now here is my take on NDAS. Had it been a sculpture in metal, I would have felt the magnetic pull.

Thanks, Viv!

Letty, that's okay. People have different tastes. What kind of artwork do you enjoy/respect?

Hmm... -was- there a sculpture of the nude descending a staircase?

Portal Star, I have just been advised that the best way to view any art is to study the painting. That was good advice. You see, as usual, I tend to say and write things impulsively. If I were to see Duchamp's actual painting, it might be a different story. I mentioned the metal sculpture because it popped into my mind that the angles would clank nicely in the flesh(so to speak)

I tend to like the old masters, I guess. I once did an oil called Little Boy Eating Watermelon on a Hot Summer day. It was a joke, of course, and I gave it to a friend of mine as a birthday gift. He looked at it for a long time, and just said, "hmmmm."

Not quite Letty;

I would advise that you examine the entire body of work, and put it into the perspective of the importance of the work, considering timing, and departure from the 'status quo' of the milieux of its creation.

Under these criteria (and, in my opinion, any other you would care to bring up), Duchamp's work stands as a break in the stream of art, leading to a wealth of subsequent experimentation that has broadened and enriched the world immeasurably!

[looking at the work in detail, be it the actual work, if possible, or a reproduction, failing that, is for personal enjoyment, and growth.]

Well, my goodness. There's my art appreciation 101 advisor. Yes, I do need to look at it all. When I first saw El Greco's Don Quixote painting, I wondered why the depiction was so narrow and elongated. Seems to me that I read somewhere that he had eye problems. I hate it when people give logical explanations to the creative mind.

Now I'm off to try and find that El Greco painting.

Vivien, the painting with the leg and dog is named here -

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=297815#297815

Hey, osso. I couldn't find no leg and no dog, neither.

How about your critique of Duchamp!

Letty, imho I believe it is entirely coincidental that El Greco's painted elongated figures AND had astigmatism. Otherwise, by that logic, what ailment would have induced Modigliani to use those oval shapes ? What affliction could possibly have caused Giacometti to make those long, skinny figures? What sickness enabled Duchamp see one many-faceted figure walking in multiples down a stairway?

To me NDAS is a superb tour-de-force. I would hang it over the couch in a heartbeat and with incalculable delight. Perhaps I am suffering from some strange malady? I understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Heh! Heh! shepaints, hold your head back; open your mouth, and let me check your pallet. Hmmm. It does look a little coated.

I always identified Modigliani by his long-necked women. Since I'm not familiar with Giacometti, I can only assume that he had me in mind when he did those long skinny women.

Actually, shepaints, I have no idea what any artist has in mind when he paints. The colors often dictate to me what I get immersed in.

One of my favorite pieces is a tray done in mosaic egg shells that a young friend of mine gave me for Christmas. Who would ever think that artsy craftsy stuff would have appealed to me. It is breathtaking-- bronze, gold and darkened shades of green.

As for Duchamp, I must quote a musician friend of mind who said:

That's the kind of "off-the-wall' stuff that you quit likin' and go to appreciating, Letty.