General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOh, hi there! Welcome back to your Friday Afternoon Challenge: Scene Stealers!
Here is your virtual walking tour to sites that were immortalized in very famous paintings by their artists. These photos show the same site (as near to the artists viewpoint as possible) today. Can you identify these sites, the works and the artists?
And, as always, we do not cheat here...
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5.
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6.
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rocktivity
(44,576 posts)CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Do you know where it actually exists?
Tansy_Gold
(17,855 posts)CTyankee
(63,903 posts)I found it to be staggeringly beautiful...magnificent...
elleng
(130,865 posts)first visit to Europe!
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Now THAT would have been the time to go to Barcelona. It is so crowded there nowadays...altho Gaudi's stuff is still there and the tapas are to die for...
Toledo wasn't too spoiled when I went there in 2008. There were no hordes of tourists...some, but not as much as what you find in Barcelona...
elleng
(130,865 posts)Did Madrid/Prado, and side-trip to Toledo; recall ElGreco's house, and painting in a church. May have been my earliest introduction to live ART, but for series/collection/portfolio we had at home. Music we did growing up, in/near NYC.
lapislzi
(5,762 posts)Grrr. You stump me every week.
Artists, I know:
1. Van Gogh
2. Munch
3. Cezanne
4.Monet?
5. Stumped!
6. Turner
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)And which painting is #3?
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)I've got that poster hanging in my dining room, but can't remember the whole name. Van Gogh.
Sid
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)take a guess...
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)pictured by a lt of folks, but Renoir is probably who you're looking for (?)
Bierstadt for the mountain?
6 el Greco? Looacoan (I'm not going to look up the spelling)
It is pretty specifically just one...
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)See... you probably don't want Dean Cornwell!
Is #6 el greco. I assume it's toledo.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)#6 is right. It is View of Toledo...
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)I'm not sure what you are saying with "Looacoan"?
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)(If I had googled the spelling it would have brought up a picture of this, and that would be cheating... hence the appalling spelling. Having looked up the name of this picture I probably know know which painting you want, but via cheating, and will not speak to that.)
I was thinking of this one bacuse I've seen it so often (in the National Gallery) and it's famous for using Toledo as the backdrop for a classical subject, but I assume it's a different el Greco, that matches the photo, since this Toledo isn't lined up the same way
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)BTW, if you haven't visited Toledo, I strongly recommend that you do. El Greco totally missed the boat on portraying this fabulous town. But, then, I also don't care too much for Mannerism and this is a good example why I feel that way. Ugh...
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)I am assuming Maynard Dixon (my first thought) is too minor to be right. Same for Payne.
Moran is major so I'll guess Moran.
Tansy_Gold
(17,855 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Tansy_Gold
(17,855 posts)Shows what a dunce I am when it comes to art!
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)I think yours is the one that depicts the restaurant's owner, with whom some said Van Gogh had an affair.
And nobody beats me for the title of Art Dunce here.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I was once accused of having a thin veneer of good breeding over a blue plate special.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)But, if you are hard of hearing, at least you have a good view.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)And my wife in front of the Leaning Tower of Delft:
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)I will tell you that I completely understand why Salvador Dali sank to his knees in front of this work! It is nothing like the reproductions you see in photos. What you see is the "glistening" of the scene. Then you realize that there has just been a sudden shower...
Unfortunately, the Mauritshuis is now closed for renovation until 2014. "Girl with Pearl Earring" will be at the Frick in NYC in 2013. "View" and "Girl" are currently in another museum in The Hague.
Did you happen to ever read the essay entitled "Vermeer in Bosnia" by Lawrence Wechsler? He interviewed the Italian judge at the trial in the World Court of a war criminal in that war. He asked the judge how he managed to keep it all together after hearing day after day about war atrocities that were committed. The judge said he would just walk over the the Mauritshuis and "sit with the Vermeers." Wechsler's point was that to Vermeer, all of Europe was Bosnia and he made his own "peace" with "Girl"...
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)CTyankee
(63,903 posts)The poor lamb...
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Full Fathom Five, by Jackson Pollock?
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Hidden meanings now revealed right here on DU! Call MoMA right effin' now!
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)CTyankee
(63,903 posts)are you a fan of his, Pinboy?
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Then I ran into a bunch of those different versions. I picked one version from 1885 that has the correct perspective--though it's not the only one.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Cezanne had this fascination with the "cylinder, cube and cone" in his later years, so he actually broke down concepts in art to those shapes and was hugely influential in the art world as a result. So many artists just flocked to Provence to be in on the latest thing. Braques and then Picasso in short order moved in on the concept shortly after Cezanne's death and that was that.
who knows if Cezanne really knew he was to give birth to cubism?
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Any guesses?
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)But I could be under a mis-impression.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)Iterate
(3,020 posts)It must be, though my memories of the walk are a bit overwhelmed by the shock of walking into traffic at the end of it. And that's when we turned around to go back into the garden and just sit.
I'm not sure of which painting this would be. There is one by Manet which I know of only because of a Friday Challenge some months ago. It was an early painting by Picasso as it turned out, but it reminded me of Manet even though it had to have been painted long after. That set me off on a three hour query about how the impressionists, especially Manet, had influenced the artists 30 to 50 years later.
I never did answer that quiz. But see there, you never know what influence you have.
ETA, here's the painting I was thinking of, Music of the Tuileries.
I couldn't understand the point he was trying to make with this: dark and broody foliage, with an unreal, almost oppressive, density of people. Of course, it might not even be the painting you had in mind.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)"everyone" who was anyone(in his artistic circle) was in this painting. It is certainly a large gathering but since it's alternative title is "Concert in the Tuileries Garden" I can understand why there are so many people in it and I don't find that at all unreal or oppressive. They are just outdoors and not in a concert hall...
Picasso (it is said) visited the Louvre every day back when he was a new talent in Paris. He slavishly copied Delacroix, painting 100 versions (cubistically of course) of "Women of Algiers." He also painted his version of Manet's "Dejeuner sur L'herbe." I think that was the one I used in a Challenge to which you refer. I never did "Concert" before...
So glad you visit my challenges, tho! I'm glad you like them, and I'm impressed that you did so much research on artists' influence on later artists. Seems it is quite common for artists to do this, all throughout art history. The discovery of those copies is a lot of fun...
Iterate
(3,020 posts)This is the challenge I was thinking of, "When they were young":
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002295138
That thread also led to my thinking about what happens when a generation feels the ideas that have been handed to it are exhausted and they reach back to mine the past. I'm now in a revisit of Athenian democracy.
Now this has led to another long tangent, how one place, this garden, was seen over time by so many artists. In the span of little more than a century it goes from the massed OTT triumphalism of the revolution to indistinct individuals (I'm looking at Vuillard) who are out of context from their surroundings except for private spaces. Much more than I bargained for. Thank you.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)There is a beautiful, large book recently out on Les Nabis entitled "Beyond the Easel." Have you seen it? Not sure I know what you mean in referencing Vuillard and "out of context from their surroundings except for private spaces." I think I can see that a bit in Bonnard (a fascinating artist, IMO). But I'd have to study up more on Vuillard...If you have other reads on this, I'd love to know about them...
My guess is that photography revolutionized traditional ways of looking at representational art that new ways of seeing the world had to be explored. A real BFD in art history. The Nabi have a role there as well, promoting the aesthetics of the decorative arts, another way of seeing...
Iterate
(3,020 posts)In fact, before today I knew little of either of them. As a good teacher you've left a trail of shinny objects. I can't resist.
With little art history background, I was looking more at the social, sociological, and historical content. The path to Vuillard came only from looking at more images of the garden. Here are two that have stayed with me today:
The first is by Albert Edelfelt.
Pariisin Luxembourgin puistossa
This was the Luxembourg Garden, painted in 1887. It's more literal, but it's also socially complex. It's of a time and place, and the people portrayed are connected to it even more so than in the Manet.
And there is the intriguing work by Vuillard. It could be a mother-daughter or any two women, women who do not belong in any garden, and the social interaction is mostly limited to controlling the unoccupied chair. I would not ask to use it.
In the Tuileries Gardens
So I must learn more of Vuillard. Well, he was nothing if not prolific. And, with some exceptions, that same kind of disengagement and anonymity he portrayed in this painting doesn't extend to his scenes of private spaces. That's all I meant by the phrase.
If anything, now late in the day, the painting seems to be a prophetic indictment of the self-absorbed consumer. That, and I'm still getting a giggle out of the sash that's carelessly draped to the ground. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just an awkward little girl with an overbearing mother, but it seems like the 19th century Parisian equivalent of painting someone with toilet paper stuck to their shoe. That might mean there are touches of humor in his other works.
Here's another. I just can't help myself today.
CTyankee
(63,903 posts)the little girls hair! As a mother and grandmother of 3 girls I see that so well! And you are right, Adelfelt humanizes the scene so much more than Manet, ever the flaneur...
Well, I am no teacher really. I am as much as student as you are. I go into the library and pull books out of the shelves and read and read. That is my only expertise and there is no academic rigor to it (and there should be because I have a Masters degree in Liberal Studies and I know the value of academic rigor).
Your last two examples move us into the sphere of impressionism. Which, if I read art history right (as a total amateur) the Nabis found themselves in, was another place to break out of eventually. Didn't people just get tired of the "effect of light" on any subject and want to move on to new substantive ideas? Or perhaps just relate to how the decorative arts could enrich us (even in the face of photographic realism)? I do wonder even as I see the impressionists touch and how much it means to us, even today in our modern world of alienation...