ART APPRECIATION THREAD--Vatican tour (the magnificent Bernini altar)

Sweet Briar College ^ | 23 April 2003 | Gwen M. McKinney

[Sam Cree]

OK, you are on the art ping list, thanks.

[Sam Cree]

"Don't forget Elvis on Black Velvet and dogs playing poker."

I actually kind of like the dogs playing poker, for their irreverance toward Art with a capital A. Not that the Bernini doesn't deserve the capital A, it deserves everything.

But I've come up with a new classification for some art, it occurred to me at an art fair in Ocala while lookins at some ghastly glass and painted little corny statues. I was calling it rifle range art, anything that would be fun to take to the range and use for target practice.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Rifle Range Art would cover a lot of work. Especially anything by Andy Warhol (sp).

[Joe 6-pack]

My primary mentor in college was an ethnically Greek art professor who dabbled in illumination, but whose primary passion was religious icons. He would crank out pieces of art that look like they were looted from Balkan monastaries...

One of the poplar panels he was aging warped and rather than discard it, he went ahead and did an Elvis icon...complete with gold leaf background. It was so technically perfect and yet so anomalous that the overall effect was hilarious.

I've always been fond of the dog paintings...but then I've always been a dog guy.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I love dogs too !

[iceskater]

Sorry to be late in responding. I had a skating competition this weekend so I am getting caught up now.

I haven't done much painting in the last few years so getting back to it was my New Year's resolution.

An FR art gallery sounds like a cool idea!

[Liz]

Man, how did I know you were gonna post that? LOL.

[FourtySeven]

I know absolutely nothing about art, but the stuff here sure does look a lot better than the crap that passes for "art" today!

[Liz]

......Rifle Range Art----anything that would be fun to take to the range and use for target practice....

Clever, very clever.......would make a fun thread.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I guess I'm predictable in some respects.

[Liz]

Greek art professor .....would crank out pieces of art that look like they were looted from Balkan monastaries...

I am very much in awe of art forgers and their ability to duplicate virtually any work of art---the Old Masters----even down to the unique brush strokes of say, a Seurat.

There's several books written about forgers......one of the most famous is David Stein.

[Liz]

Predictability----an admirable trait, to be sure.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I'm only predictable in some areas. In others I purposely defy logic, (for security reasons).

[Sam Cree]

"Rifle Range Art would cover a lot of work. Especially anything by Andy Warhol (sp)."

The art I'd really like to pattern my shotgun on is the work of Terry Redlins. Never heard of the guy 'til this week, but he's made so much money on his fake and maudlin Americana framed by sunsets that he's become a philanthropist. He has skills, but for a reason that I can't put my finger on yet, his art is kind of nauseating. Same goes for that guy that calls himself the artist of light.

I have 5 dogs, all strays. One is actually a hound dog that we found as a puppy in the woods alongside the road in VA.

[Conspiracy Guy]

I only have one dog right now. But I will have more in time. Never heard of Redlins. I'll check it out!

[Joe 6-pack]

If you like the forgery stuff you have to get a copy of "The Dossena Deception," by David Sox...an incredible story.

Van Meegeren also fascinates me....

[Liz]

Salvador Dali and the Metaphysical School (derived from Giorgio De Chirico's rejection of Futurism and Cubism). Would be at home in the Vatican.

Salvador Dali Christ of Saint John of the Cross 1951. Oil and canvas, 205 x 116 cm. Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum

LEGEND By far the most popular of all Dali’s religious works is without a doubt his Christ of Saint John of the Cross, whose figure dominates the Bay of Port Lligat. The painting was inspired by a drawing, preserved in the Convent of the Incarnation in Avila, Spain, and done by Saint John if the Cross himself after he had seen this vision of Christ during ecstasy.

The people beside the boat are derived from a picture by Le Nain and from drawing by Velázquez for The Surrender of Breda.

At the bottom of his studies for the Christ, Dali wrote: "In the first place, in 1950, I had a ‘cosmic dream’ in which I saw this image in color and which in my dream represented the ‘nucleus of the atom’. This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it ‘the very unity of the universe’, the Christ ! In the second place, when thanks to the instructions of Father Bruno, a Carmelite, I saw the Christ drawn by Saint John of the Cross, I worked out geometrically a triangle and a circle, which ‘aesthetically’ summarized all my previous experiments, and I inscribed my Christ in this triangle."

This work was regarded as banal by an important art critic when it was first exhibited in London. Nevertheless, several years later, it was slashed by a fanatic while was hanging in the Glasgow Museum, proof of its astonishing effect on people.

Dali relates that, when he was finishing the picture at the end of autumn in 1951, it was so cold in the house in Port Lligat that Gala abruptly decided to have central heating installed.

He remembers the moments of terror through which he then lived, fearing for his canvas on which the paint was still wet, with all the dust stirred up by the workmen: "We tool it from the studio to the bedroom so that I could continue to paint, covered with white sheet which dare not touch the surface of the oil. I said that I didn’t believe I could do my Christ again if any accident were to befall it. It was true ceremonial anguish. In ten days the central heating was installed and I was able to finish the picture in order to take it to London, where it was shown for the first time at the Lefevre Gallery."

When it was at the Biennial of Art in Madrid, along with other works of the painter, General Franco asked that two of the oils of the master of Figueras be brought to the palace of El Prado - Basket of Bread and Christ of Saint John of the Cross.

[Quix]

Certainly there is that!

I was most struck and amused, in some respects . . . perhaps you've seen--the inside of the main Dome in St Peters is so magnificent with all the mosaics, gold leaf etc.

And then in the stairwell on the other side of all the majestic surfaces of the inner dome was plaster with all manner of grafiti from all over the world.

I wonder how many people realize from below that the words around the base of the dome are in letters 6 feet or so high.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Just went to his website. I was not impressed.

[Liz]

In his book, "Making the Mummies Dance: Inside The Metropolitan Museum Of Art," Thomas Hoving wrote extensively about the Etruscan artifacts purchase----the three statues of Etruscan Warriors actually created in Italy some 70 years ago and the "Curious Spurious Kouros" at the Getty, as well as the dubious model for Michelangelo's David.

Hoving also discusses the confusion caused by the "Grand Master" of forged Renaissance drawings, Eric Hebborn, and the remarkable forgeries of Han van Meegeren, the "Vermeer Man."