My wife said one of the things that told her I was worth pursuing was my “Starry Night” windshield screen. Van Gogh rocks!
I’ve been to Amsterdam twice and I’m still kicking myself for not getting around to the Van Gogh Museum.
I have a problem with manifestos. My reaction is, “Shut up and paint!” The exceptions are the Dada Manifestos, which I believe were intended to be the primary creations of the Dada Movement, everything else being there to give it something solid Normals could connect with.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dada_Manifesto_(1916%2C_Hugo_Ball)
http://singlenesia.com/eris/dada/manifesto1
And you should. I had no idea of the greatness of van Gogh until I went there. Here’s a guy who was an artist for only ten years, and in that time went through so many different styles and genres that it seems like at least ten different people. They’ve got a section where they juxtapose his work with the work of artists in the genre he was pursuing at the moment, and they had to include dozens of other artists just to cover him. Amazing.
His felt hat self portrait is my favourite (I have a feeling Starry Starry Night will overtake it if I ever get to see it in reality), and one that really suffers in reproduction.
I appreciated your take on Mondrian–he does these other-worldly hyper-controlled patterns–almost mechanistic–but then he gets just a little bit daring and the pattern’s not perfectly repetitive. It’s like watching someone who’s really shy and repressed working up the courage to talk to a girl at a party.
Yes, it makes quite a bit of sense. I still don’t like it on an aesthetic level, but I can see the rationale for it and its place in art history. Thank you.
BTW, I’ve seen Van Gogh’s work in person. He had an exhibition at MOMA (I think) when I was in high school. Blew me away. In person, it’s so textured and alive, full of feeling. I have been a fan of his ever since. Prints do his originals no justice-- the color is enhanced by the depth and movement of the paint on the canvas. I’m no art scholar, but Van Gogh really reached me on a visceral level. That’s what art is supposed to do, right? Grab you in your gut. VG does that.
When I saw the Mona Lisa my first reaction was, whoa, that’s a small painting for all the hoopla. Also, it’s behind bulletproof glass, all cordoned off, so it’s hard to tell if she’s really impressive. I think DaVinci is pretty subtle in his use of color, unlike Van Gogh, so that goes back to aesthetics in what you like.
That’s all well and good that they’re nice and have standards and stuff, but anyone who spraypaints someone else’s property without permission is still a hoodlum in my book (using the informal definition of the word, even if the dictionary definition is inappropriate), and deserves to be punished. And frankly, anyone who would do that doesn’t seem too nice to me either.
Back to the topic at hand. I’ll either like art, or it’ll just leave me cold – rarely does something I dislike bring out enough emotion in me to make me “hate” it. That said, I’m usually left cold by portraits (yes, even old Dutch ones), and by still-lifes. Call me a philistine, but I like my art to have a bit more action, more “story” than either of those subjects. And I’m slowly beginning to hate portraits of the Madonna and Child – after seeing seemingly thousands upon repetitive thousands of them in European art museums I can hardly stomach them anymore.
The one art form I may actually hate is modern, brutalist architecture – for its aesthetics, for what was often paved over to build it, and for what I think it has done to the souls of our town and cities and universities.
I kind of like Mondrian. It doesn’t really matter that his art is easy to reproduce. He’s the guy who first did it, and it is instantly recognizable. One could easily say the same thing about Lichtenstein, who is one of my favorite pop artists.
You might appreciate Mondrian a bit more if you observed his progression as an artist. This site shows the evolution of his style. As you can see, his early work was fairly impressionistic and grew increasingly abstract, culminating in the works that he is so well known for (orthogonal stripe and rectangle with white, black and primary colors). I really like the way his tree paintings evolved.
It will blow your mind. Make sure you go and see the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum while you’re at it.
And while we’re bagging on art that we don’t like, there’s quite a bit of modern art that I think is pretty crappy. These guys are critically acclaimed and I think they’re really mediocre. I just can’t remember who the artists are, but I could certainly make a list the next time I stroll through MOMA. I just can’t be bothered.
I’m in graduate school, getting a master’s in English, and this semester I’m taking a Modernist Lit course. The professor declares that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is the greatest novel ever written.
First, it’s not really a novel; second, it’s the greatest piece of crap ever written. Somewhere along the line, some pretentious twit, who had fooled everyone into thinking he was the most ironic critic of all time, took a liking to “Ulysses” (probably because it was banned, which give it cachet) and every pretentious twit since then (including my professor) has perpetuated the myth.
If you ever see someone carrying “Ulysses” around, you can be assurred they don’t understand a single fucking word; if you see someone actually trying to read it, walk up to them, gaze intently at the cover and say, “Ulysses, huh? It’s not bad, but Joyce is no Michener!” and then just walk away.
Now, Starry Nights is spectacular–I always thought is was ok, but kinda weird, until I saw it in person at the Art Institute a ways back. I felt the hairs on my neck rise–it was a very moving experience for me.
Then again, while I really liked most of the Monet exhibit I saw years ago at the AI, Monet’s paintings of turkeys were just that-pics of turkeys. As were his haystacks, which I still say look like huge muffins in a field…(yeah, I know–all about the play of light–but to me it looks like the play of light off a huge muffin. I did like his cathedral series, though).
Mondrian-I thought there was some sort of geometric balance within his pictures–he put it there unconsciously, but it was later worked out by mathematicians or something. Also, wasn’t it one of his pics that a museum had hung sideways? That may be apocryphal.
Let’s see here…famous works of art that I hate:
Dali–although I really like Thurber’s comparison to Dali’s childhood I once read a long time ago…
Picasso–ok, so he’s great. That doesn’t mean I have to like him. I like some of his early work-after the seasonal affective disorder or suicidal guitarist (his “blue” period), I said, blech.
Gaugin-he was a bit of a shit to Van Gogh, and I don’t like his native women-aren’t they sensual and purple…
Degas-he really didn’t like women, much.
Renior-colors are too pretty; they make the pics seem shallow. That said, watching the movie, Amelie-with the old guy who is obsessed by Renoir-- was illuminating. I see that picture differently now.
Visual art is a different language and anyone can benefit from instruction-myself included. But what I tire of is being told that if I dont’ like an artist, it must be some failing of mine, instead of the artist (not saying this is the tone of the thread, just speaking generally). I admit that the artist and I may not be communicating, but why is deficit solely mine? (this attitude is seen in literature and in classical music, jazz, opera, and rock.)
I have to agree. When I saw Winged Victory it made me cry. I was 13. I was previously familiar with the work in a “meh, that’s nice” way.
Here is my “artwork I hate” submission: Cheese Chair
I like the first two paintings on the site you linked to. That Red Tree is cool. Then, in 1912, he goes all cubist and then he loses me. I can’t dig Cubism. Ah well.
I was an English undergrad. I confess, I never got through Ulysses. I don’t get it, it’s far too dense for me. However, I simply cannot believe that the work has no merit–I sincerely doubt a coterie of academics got together one day and simply decided to foist a great ruse upon the English reading public and declared Ulysses to be the greatest novel ever written.
It’s happened with me before–I didn’t like T.S. Eliot very much at first–thought he was a saint for all faux and wannabe intellectuals. Then, after taking an Eliot, Auden, and Hopkins class, I became more immersed in his work, understood his references and context of when and why he was writing, and, while I still think he comes off as a pretentious twit at times, I see there is very good reason he is hailed as a genius. He was one.
I suspect if I became better versed in Joyce, I would also appreciate him and understand his genius. I think it’s stupendously ludicrous to suggest that he’s some sort of perpetuated academic ruse. I don’t think he’s hailed as one of the greatest writers in English simply because of inertia or academic groupthink. There must be something valuable in his work–I simply can’t access it at this moment.
(Regarding Nava’s claim about “Guernica” in post #10):
I’m sorry that I missed your post at first, capybara; you were indeed the first of the Doper bulls to notice the red cape that Nava was waving – wonder if there’s really a sword behind the cape or if it’s a whoosh? I hope that the Naked Lightbulb of Truth[sup]TM[/sup] will shed some light on the issue…
[In case anyone’s still interested, here are further descriptions (with images) of The Dream and Lie of Franco, the print series that were contemporary with, and thematically related to, Guernica. The prints are clearly negatives, and have dimensions of 12" x 16.5", which makes a lot more sense for a printing process than 25ft x 11ft! More images of this series, with reversals, here (scroll down). I’m still unclear on one thing however – if the Wake Forest collection is of prints rather than plates, why are the prints negative?]
I’d often seen prints of Van Goghs paintings in various art books and wondered what all the fuss was about until I saw "Sunflowers "in the National Gallery in England and also “Butterflys in Long Grass” and I was totally gobsmacked.
It is his vibrant use of colour that makes such an incredible impression on the viewer and made an instant convert of me.
I know a little about art and enjoy some art but I am by no means an "arty farty"type, just an ordinary person who knows what he likes .
I’d think that someone with your username would be required to like Van Gogh.
Betrayed by my own user name 
Oh no! I love that! Anything that makes me react that way (You know, with milk shooting out my nose.) is good art in my book. This work was my inspiration to paint my PBJ Mona Lisa. It worked out quite well, and if I knew how to post pictures I’d post a link (once I figure out what hard-drive it is on.) Besides, I love cheese.
My reaction was instant nausea, not anything resembling amusement. Directly following the nausea was the irritation of having food wasted in such a stupid way.
Right, and the silliness comes from believing that there is some sort of objective difference between the two, in either case. What makes the gourmet meal better than a MacDonald’s burger? Nothing. If you like the gourmet meal better, great for you. If I like MacDonald’s better, great for me. Let’s just be clear that it’s just opinion, neither one is “better” in any sense other than what any individual might believe. There’s no way that the phrase “the gourmet meal is better than MacDonald’s” is true in any context outside of a person’s opinion. You like the gourmet meal better, maybe I don’t. You like the Sunflowers better than the barn, maybe I don’t. You’re not “right”, and neither am I, we just each have an opinion.