Artist's floor installation is made of pencils

Give me Goya and Diebenkorn and I'll die happy.

I could be happier with some others added...

Please add Daumier, Picasso, Appel, Braque and Tamayo for me.

There is a background here, Stuh.

When JLN and I first started talking on the internet years ago, back when we could both barely type/send (well, I trust we could both type) any kind of message to a board, I sent him by real mail a copy of a large New Yorker article on Diebenkorn, after I noticed he liked him.

We don't mean to shut you out. We all have different ideas based on our experiences. You don't get too far being pedantic to us older pursuers of art.

We are capable of listening,

and being pedantic ourselves.

I'll have to think about that, JL. Daumier gets in the loop though.

I see, well thanks for explaining that, Osso. I don't feel shut out, though. About me being pedantic, well...I think that's just axiomatic for me! I think JL has figured that out too because he still seems to put up with me

This painting is a mess, and one of my favorites ever - The Actress, by Thomas Eakins

I was stunned by this in person. The appparent disjuncture re the arms - I didn't notice, amazing as that seems. It's a huge and glorious painting.


I've done swimming pool paintings... and they look different from different angles. Not sure about this arm thing, on this photo. I'll still like the painting in any case.





Uccello's Battle of San Romano - I have a photo of this with a bossy tour guide instructing people just in front of the painting, but can't get my own link just now..


This fellow had a lot to do with the advancement of perspective. I'll just nod - I also like Piero della Francesca, not sure which painter I like more.


The Uccello reminds me, natch, of Siqueiros.

Milton Avery...

I've more, but that's enough for now.

I suppose you are aware that Philly just "Nationalized" Eakins "Gross Clinic" to keep it from being "Sonderauftraggered" to some, as yet, unbuilt art museum being planned by the Walton family to be located in Arkansas.

The matched price ws 68 million (plus dealers commission) that went to the Jefferson Med SChool where the painting hung for 110 years in the lobby.

I love DAumiers "cartoon" style and his caricatures of the French legal, medical, and administrative professionals.
I do have a tendency to pass by the works of Rennaissance artists and early Flemish and most early mannerists.

I just got done reading "I was Vermeer" which was a biography of the life of Han van Meegeren as a supreme fake who "made up" entirely new works in Vermeers early style. He was so good that he was charged by the Nuremburg Tribunal for collaborating with the NAzis. He had to actually paint a "Vermeer" in front of the tribunal and by doing so, became an instant folk hero. He was never charged with commiting any crime because
1 He sold many works to Herman Goering and nobody really gave two jots

2 Some of his other works were never admitted to be fakes by their owners because they had letters of authenticity from "experts" , and since van Meegeren had made the equivalent of 40 Million dollars total from all his fakes, there were a lot of fakes out there.


I was amazed that some paintings that are now considered fakes include

1The Man in the Golden Helmet-"Rembrandts" most famous work

2 of all the Vermeers still out there, up to half are now considered fakes or are questionable due to modern forensic techniques .

3 Many works of modern artists (like a number of van Gogh's) are considred fake.Otto Wacker had painted a bunch of van Goghs that, by spectroscopy and EDAX analyses were shown to have been painted with Titanium white, which was not available to van Gogh.

I love the story of fakery in fine arts.

PS, as to the original work (the pencil installation) Its almost a random version of a depiction of a Mandelbrot series. Theres kind of a chaos extension about it when viewed from above. Its ok , I always wonder about how"installations" are marketed. I know one environmental Installation artist who gets grants to make the work and then displays it as it rusts, melts, decays, molds, burns or otherwise disappears as part of an (pardon the use of a 70's term) art "happening". You dont see many of these nowadays ever since hyper realism came back into gallery fashion..

I do not see the disjuncture of the arms you speak of. Although, the hue and specularity of her arms makes them look like that of a mannequin to me. The angle of the foot seems wrong, and the entire torso and lower dress area look flat. I would expect it to be more stunning in person as you say because these sorts of criticisms are only visisble from a far distance. The expression and pose are interesting though (but I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the artist?).

I hate to like just a part of a painting, but the left arm's shape (including, of course, the negative shapes around it) is magnificent. It brings to mind what I like so much about Daumier's PAINTINGS. His figures, like those of Goya and the great poster-painter Toulouse-Lautrec, have such strong (outlined) shapes, something that has always appealed to me.

Well, to me, one of the arms is longer than the other, no matter that one shoulder is lower, but so what? The gesture is there. (What would Bacon say?) I remember a teacher showing us an Ingres painting...

In person - I saw The Actress on that one visit to NYC in, oh, fifty years... spending something like 2.5 days at the Met, and kept looking at that painting, which was in the Manet Velasquez show. That langour, the ennui, the exhaustion, the glory of the dress (incredible color in real life) - the actress after the show.
There were many better regarded paintings at that show; even I better regarded them. It is hard to explain attachment sometimes. Not, to me, by numbers of brush strokes, minimal or maximal.



Heh, spellcheck (which I used to see about langour, which I think is spelled wrong) told me Ingres is better spelled Ingress.


Farmer, yes, I did see that about Eakins getting nationalized.

which brings up, has anyone seen his photographs? I seem to remember incredible photos..

Eakins was a master of foreshortening, his poses were usually in some different leg extension or arm movement.

Osso, do you mean pix by Eakins or OF EAkins. He was quite an exhibitionist and posed nude for his classes and there are a bunch of these rather funny pix .

Didn't he get in trouble with the "excessive" nudity?
By the way, I'm sure we have outgrown the need for mimetic accuracy. I would always welcome, or prefer, a "contorted" limb if it enhanced the aesthetic value of the image. Wasn't that, in part, the freedom sought by "modern" art?

A2k is driving me crazy tonight, except of course I love it.

Eakins, I think it was photos by him, but this may be from two decades ago that I remember, and don't trust myself. Maybe they were the ones with him. I suppose they were in some NYT article, but I'm just blowing smoke on that. I remember nudes of women more than (if) him.


Lord, won't you buy me.... a mimetic benZ..

Osso, you pray for a counterfeit car or for an upper?

Eakins genius wa in his ability to cook up a new way of expresssing hiw study's life through the work. He ws a stickler on the rules of perspective and anatomy so , like Wyethe, his departure from academy painting was in breaking the mold wherein his subjects would be dirty and /or tired or , involved in a genre scene that became the rage when the ashcan school picked up where Eakins stopped.

Yes he was drummed out of the ACademy when he was caught in sexual encounters with some of his female students. He was a letch. His wife, Susan Mcdowell was supportive and patient because she knew that, she being a pretty good artists herself, that Eakins was someone who comes around only a few times in a century.

As I see it leches are everywhere, all the time.