# Help me appreciate one of your favorite pieces of art **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 22, 2006, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821 "2006-08-22T23:25:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/21 "2006-08-24T15:43:20Z")
I’m another fan of Edward Hopper. My favorite is [New York Movie](http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dedward%2Bhopper%2Bnew%2Byork%2Bmovie%26toggle%3D1%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3DFP-tab-img-t-t500%26b%3D21&w=619&h=500&imgurl=www.artinthepicture.com%2Fartists%2FEdward_Hopper%2Fnewyorkmovie.jpeg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.artinthepicture.com%2Fpaintings%2Fview.php%3Fnr%3D561&size=54.8kB&name=newyorkmovie.jpeg&p=edward+hopper+new+york+movie&type=jpeg&no=27&tt=96&oid=88ea528fecc2b854&ei=UTF-8). But that isn’t why I came here. My favorite painting is [Le Coquelicot](http://www.bertc.com/van_dongen.htm) by the Dutch fauvist Kees van Dongen. It’s just the most sensuous work I’ve ever seen. ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/22 "2006-08-24T16:41:29Z")
Okay, here’s something from Chapter 19 of Vladimir Nabokov’s **Ada**. > [@](#): > > A sort of hoary riddle (Les Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stop-chin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series): did the Burning Barn come before the Cockloft or did the Cockloft come first? > > Oh, first! We had long been kissing cousins when the fire started. In fact, I was getting some Château Baignet cold cream from Ladore for my poor chapped lips. And we both were roused in our separate rooms by her crying au feu! July 28? August 4? > > Who cried? Stopchin cried? Larivière cried? Larivière? > > Answer! > > Crying that the barn flambait? > > No, she was fast ablaze—I mean, asleep… > > “And do you remember, Van, how warm the night was?” > > “Eshchyo bï! (as if I did not!). That night because of the blink—” > > That night because of the bothersome blink of remote sheet lightning through the black hearts of his sleeping-arbor, Van had abandoned his two tulip trees and gone to bed in his room. The tumult in the house and the maid’s shriek interrupted a rare, brilliant, dramatic dream, whose subject he was unable to recollect later, although he still held it in a saved jewel box. Note the overweening artiness–French (untranslated of course) and Russian too. Note also the “who is the narrator” game. The main narrator is Van (one of V. Nabokov’s many names which are anagrams or cousins of his own) and the interjector is Ada, though what sounds like dialog is sometimes in quotations and sometimes not–it may be entirely recollection–and later in the chapter we step outside the narrative frame when Van talks about editing the memoir “he” is writing as “an old gray wordman while his bath overflows” (but of course the author of the book is Nabokov who is not the narrator in any 1:1 sense) and refers to “a dictionary of pet names that goes through many revised versions until its definitve edition of 1967” (the date of the book itself). Note finally the “Cockloft” sexual innuendo–the book is explicit and (as in Lolita) we have sexual leads who are not only 13 and 12 (or thereabouts) but are brother and sister (they thought at first they were cousins or half-siblings but documents in the “Cockloft” led them to realize they were full brother and sister). (Going the pedophilia of Lolita one better with incest!) Ada is set in “anti-terra” however so we don’t know all of its moral rules. Esoteric enough? Elitist enough? Offensive enough? It’s even worse–you should see the annotated version: [http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/ada/ada119](http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/ada/ada119) It reads like a dream (that’s a small pun in context because the chapter later notes that dream and read are the same word in French–so who is dreaming?–Van? Nabokov? His readers?). It is about desire and nostalgia and love. Like all of Nabokov’s stuff, it champions freedom of the imagination (art) without limits. (It does have a plot and characters too so it may not be the ne plus ultra (see? I can throw the French around too!) of attackable modern books (which is probably Ulysses, which Naobov loved) but it’s close.) ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/23 "2006-08-24T16:52:40Z")
I hope it’s not out-of-bounds to dispute in this thread–just giving you a chance to do more defending! [QUOTE=freckafree] I love David’s [Cupid and Psyche](http://www.clemusart.com/museum/collect/highlights/high03.html). The best part is that I can go see the actual painting!!! It’s a very large piece and, of course, this little reproduction doesn’t do it justice. I love the expression on Cupid’s face, those two beautiful bodies. [/QUOTE] I think Psyche looks like an inert plastic blow-up doll. Cupid is cool as a blusing adolescent, but the overall esthetic of the piece is unbalanced. I’m with you on the Frost and the woodthrusth, though. ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/24 "2006-08-24T17:00:02Z")
[QUOTE=Giles] [Angel of History](http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?81779+0+0), which again you can’t appreciate from a picture: it’s a 5 metres by 4 metres by 2 metres sculpture, in “lead, glass, and poppies”, of a bomber. [/QUOTE] **Giles** , could you try to further articulate what you like about this one? (and the link may be too small to see properly, but which parts are the poppies?) ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/25 "2006-08-24T17:18:41Z")
[QUOTE=Humble Servant] **Giles** , could you try to further articulate what you like about this one? (and the link may be too small to see properly, but which parts are the poppies?) [/QUOTE] Well, the poppies that you see in that picture are the bundles resting on the top of the wings. Presumably the iconography is that poppies are worn in Remembrance Day (November 11th, commemorating the end of World War I), so they are a symbolic contrast to the bomber as a war machine showering death on the people below. I did a Google search to work out what “Angel of History” might mean, and the [second site I found](http://mason.gmu.edu/~cforchem/oldsite/benjamin.html) had this quotation from Walter Benjamin: > [@](#): > > This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. which sounds really appropriate to the work, so doubtless Kiefer had it in mind when he gave the name. But, as I said, the picture doesn’t really do justice to a sculpture that’s 5 metres across: you do need to walk around it to appreciate it. ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/26 "2006-08-24T18:41:38Z")
> [@](#): > > This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. How lovely! The bomber has a faceless look and “wings” and so is a nice response to this image. Still, I think I like this better than the sculpture itself.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/27 "2006-08-24T22:21:28Z")
[QUOTE=Humble Servant] !I think Psyche looks like an inert plastic blow-up doll. [/QUOTE] Oh, sure. Criticize my taste with one of the funniest lines I’ve read lately. 😃 Get your butt to Cleveland and see it (the painting, not your butt) in person. It might change your mind. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2006, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/28 "2006-08-25T15:11:52Z")
[QUOTE=Beaucarnea] **MrDibble** , I have a couple reproduction Picasso nude sketches-. But I couldn’t live with _Guernica_ in my home. Too evocative of the nagging human shame I have been feeling since March 20, 2003. It makes me want to lower my eyes. Does it have that effect on you? [/QUOTE] Definitely (well, not just Iraq -all war). Yet I have it on a t-shirt. There’s some South African struggle art that is also very good, but I can’t find much online. If I do, I’ll post it here. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/29 "2006-09-01T17:21:39Z")
Okay, few people need to “understand” Pink Floyd, and my favorites have been mentioned in fiction and visual art (and _Ada_ and Bosch aren’t _that_ popular, especially _Ada_! [I will mention in passing, though, that the final “Floramor” scene made me break down and cry for literally ten minutes, as a commentary on the general decay everything undergoes].) But I’ll go over my second-favorite work of visual art: The cover of _Republic_ by New Order, including the stuff inside the CD case. It’s a montage of photographs, sometimes fading into each other. They include joyfully mindless beachgoers, a Marlboro-manesque pair of cowboys at sunset, a firefighter in action whose pose and gear obscures his body, and time-lapse cityscape at night, taken in the manner of viewing from atop a “lover’s lane”. When you first look at it it seems to be just a somewhat-over-the-top celebration of America, given the album’s title. But then you see that it seems to be instead of a fun mockery, a scathing indictment of the shallowness of American society, since everyone seems to be confident in their job and life but is really alone. But then you look deeper and, other than the front cover of mindless Ken and Barbie clones, everyone seems to be intensely devoted to their activities and aware of their loneliness. So I come off with a picture of America as being rough, hypocritical, and lonely, yet at the same time strong and full of hope. ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821/30 "2006-09-01T21:48:59Z")
[QUOTE=Ludovic] especially _Ada_! [I will mention in passing, though, that the final “Floramor” scene made me break down and cry for literally ten minutes, as a commentary on the general decay everything undergoes] [/QUOTE] In that vein, I like how each sex scene is not _quite_ as good as the prior one–first time is best (at least in memory) and can never come again. Very happy to meet another Ada fan; you are of course cultured, brainy and inherently fascinating. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-appreciate-one-of-your-favorite-pieces-of-art/369821.md?page=1)