Art

An entire article here with pictures of art in it. Story also about art hence I'm posting this here.

I'm sure y'all have heard of it by now. If you haven't well worth a read. Very interesting.

It shares the same title as a 1782 French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Explores themes of seduction, manipulation, and moral ambiguity. Forever closer to seeing what we want to, but unable to.

This portrait of the actress was painted by her close friend. Her demeanour was described as one of 'vulgar sensuality'.

The dog is a Russian Borzoi, raised for wolf hunting.

She epitomised queer culture and gender fluidity in her time and performed male and female roles to high acclaim!

Including Hamlet.

Her gaze is striking isn't it!

Teppei Takeda stands alone, having painted in obscurity for about a decade at his studio in Yamagata, Japan until he was confident enough in his work to present it to the public. The outside world learned of his talent in the summer of 2016 through his first solo exhibition at Kuguru, a multi-purpose space in the Tongari Building near Yamagata Station. There was no special advertising or publicity, but the ten portraits that he exhibited had such an impact on viewers that the news soon spread, reaching people who would travel to Yamagata from far away to see his works and collectors hoping to buy. Such a development starting in a small regional city was unusual for the Japanese art world, in which information tends to focus on the big cities.

Many people who wondered what was so attractive about Takeda’s art before actually seeing it face to face have found themselves riveted by its powerful presence, which far exceeds any expectations derived from a small photo in an art magazine and images uploaded to social networks. We have to ask exactly what is it that makes Takeda’s art so special in an age when painting has long been declared dead.

The subjects of Takeda’s paintings are people’s faces, so they would be considered portraits, the most standard of painting formats. However, each face being represented is turned into an abstraction through strong brush strokes, and the completed painting takes the form of something that is clearly anonymous, rather than the face of a specific individual. From a slight distance, viewers notice that his portraits are defined by the materiality of firmly applied paint, and then perhaps discern the vividness of the brush strokes, the traces of the flowing strokes of the paint, and the luster of the generous applications of paint that catch the light. This is the format of painting that we are familiar with, and, based on what we already know about painting, these are the sorts of things we expect to see from such a distance. The portrait is already giving off a strong message—the very simple message that one is currently viewing a painting. But then, as the viewer moves closer one step at a time, a deeper understanding emerges, posing the question of what it means to view a painting.

That is definitely not a conceptual issue. Instead, it is profoundly related to the artist’s methodology. Takeda produces his paintings using the following process. He begins with a preliminary sketch (esquisse). The underlying basis of the sketch is an enormous volume of references the artist has assimilated up to that point. That is accompanied by a straightforward, honest adherence to what he currently wants to portray, executed with a degree of extemporaneousness. The artist goes on to paint the same image some twenty to fifty times, but he accepts only one of those images as the subject of his final painting. In other words, a painting that he has produced becomes the subject of his painting. This practice sounds simple, but the process has come about as the result of the emotional struggle that Takeda has faced. This, I feel, is the secret of the strength that can be sensed in his works.

The subsequent creative process is not described here, but as a result of the artist’s long hours of grappling with the initial sketch, the eventual painting enables us to perceive the painterly system and beauty of form, together with the mechanism that moves the viewer emotionally. And through that perception, we come to realize that the aura we had interpreted from a far-off perspective as the texture of the painting was entirely a deliberate creation of the artist—something that should not even exist; created from zero. The final painting is completely different from the sketch, and as such it sheds light on how we relate to paintings.

This thirty-day exhibition presents about ten portraits that Takeda produced over a year and a half. In our post-truth age, these paintings provide a vital demonstration of the significance of taking a close look at what we see.

Text from Maho Kubota Gallery.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54763105

Oil on board.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54763039

Great eye for shapes and composition.

Oil on canvas. Painted: 1937/1938

Charpai is the bed she's laying on. Char meaning 4 and pai meaning foot.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54731748

Watercolour.

I hope ive introduced a few people to jamil naqsh today. I love his style.

I love the composition and use of color in this image.

Also the distinct portioning within the image. Not sure how to express myself here.

This is one of my favourite paintings ever. I know its very very niche lol. To the point that I could proooobably afford the original as an investment. Will need to check sometime.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54725292

Painted in 1932 by Indian/Pakistani-Hungarian artist Amrita Sher Gil. Oil on canvas.

Very influential and has a lot of beautiful stuff

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54724713

Naqsh's highly prized paintings of women, pigeons, and horses gave Pakistan's arts industry an identity of its own. Naqsh's entire life was devoted to art and painting.

Much of his work revolves around the female form that he had perfected over the years and pigeons. He painted women, often integrating it with the elements of horses, pigeons or children.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54725547

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54724640

An oil painting showing the sad condition of a mother and child during the 1960 famine in Pakistan.

This has been my phone wallpaper for a few months now.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/54692889

Painting, the emperor 'Alamgir with a halo, standing facing left, holding a long straight-bladed sword. Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Mughal, ca. 1700

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/13927401

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/13923304

Flavitsky's most famous painting is Princess Tarakanova, in the Peter and Paul Fortress at the Time of the Flood. "The work is based on a legend from Russian history according to which Princess Tarakanova, who said she was the daughter of Empress Alexei Razumovsky and laid claim to the Russian throne in Catherine the Great's reign, died in the Peter and Paul Fortress during the flood of 1777. Flavitsky depicts with great tragic power the suffering of this young woman facing certain death in a gloomy dungeon flooded with water, depicting her helplessness and despair most expressively."

As the first of his twelve labors, the Greek mythic hero Herakles was ordered to slay the monstrous Nemean lion. Since the beast's skin was impervious to spears and arrows, Herakles strangled him. He then skinned the lion, taking the pelt as a cloak and the head as a helmet. The lion skin slung over his left arm suggest that the figure on this weight is Herakles, although there is no obvious explanation for the charmingly tame lion that accompanies him. Two half-moon shaped indentations for gripping at the back (not visible) indicate that this object is an athlete's weight. Wrestler's Weight with Hercules and the Nemean Lion; Wrestling Scene (reverse).

I know I post a lot from Gandahara, but in my defense I have no defense

Female attendants and guards, one of whom holds a sword, surround Maya, who is sleeping on a bed that has turned legs and is covered with an elegant floral textile. Maya dreams of a six-tusked elephant that descends from heaven to enter her womb through her right side; originally a small elephant would have been depicted in the broken central disk. This miraculous conception marks the Buddha Shakyamuni's final rebirth and physical entrance into this world.

Permeated by anguished visions of humanity, Francis Bacon’s paintings embody the existential ethos of the postwar era. In his powerful, nihilistic works, tormented and deformed figures become players in dark, unresolved dramas. Bacon often referred in his paintings to the history of art, interpreting borrowed images through his own bleak mentality. Figure with Meat is part of a now-famous series he devoted to Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c. 1650; Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome). Here he transformed the Spanish Baroque artist’s iconic portrayal of papal authority into a nightmarish image, in which the blurred figure of the pope, seen as if through a veil, seems trapped in a glass-box torture chamber, his mouth open in a silent scream. Instead of the noble drapery that frames Velázquez’s pope, Bacon is flanked by two sides of beef, quoting the work of seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn and twentieth-century Russian artist Chaim Soutine, both of whom painted brutal and haunting images of raw meat. Framed by the carcass, Bacon’s pope can be seen alternately as a depraved butcher, or as much a victim as the slaughtered animal hanging behind him.

Pablo Picasso made The Old Guitarist while working in Barcelona. In the paintings of his Blue Period (1901-04), the artist restricted himself to a cold, monochromatic blue palette, flattened forms, and emotional, psychological themes of human misery and alienation related to the work of such artists as Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin. The elongated, angular figure of the blind musician also relates to Picasso’s interest in Spanish art and, in particular, the great 16th-century artist El Greco. The image reflects the twenty-two-year-old Picasso’s personal struggle and sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden; he knew what it was like to be poor, having been nearly penniless during all of 1902.

Symbolism is among the most complex art movements to define. Although it followed on the heels of Impressionism, whose imagery was accessible and bright, Symbolism’s dark and mysterious vocabulary is far less known.

Sita, c. 1893 Odilon Redon

While Symbolist artists were aligned in their embrace of the creative imagination, they used diverse styles and drew inspiration from the past, the future, and the interior self. Complicating the movement further was its lack of a single central hub; instead Symbolism was a loosely connected trend across Europe.

The Scream, 1895 Edvard Munch

Symbolism, in fact, began as a literary movement in France in the 1880s and later expanded to visual art in Belgium, Germany, Norway, and elsewhere. Reacting against rationalism, materialism, and Impressionism’s focus on the external world, Symbolist artists sought instead to represent the unseeable—ideas and emotions. These artists shared a general cynicism about the late 19th century’s moral decline, technological advancements brought about by rapid industrialization, and the rural flight to urban centers.

Medusa, 1893 Jean Delville

In response they made art that invented alternate realities. Some artists t urned to the past, transposing mythological and religious subjects onto the present moment; others turned to the future, imagining anarchist or idyllic worlds; while still others sought meaning by examining and excavating the self.

Moonlight, Örebro, 1897 Gustaf Fjaestad

This exhibition features works on paper by iconic Symbolist artists such as Norwegian Edvard Munch, as well as lesser-known figures like the Austrian Emilie Mediz-Pelikan, the Belgian Léon Spilliaert, and the French Gustav Adolf Mossa. Drawn from the Art Institute of Chicago’s rich and historic collection of drawings and prints, including the largest collection in America of the French Odilon Redon and Paul Gauguin, this display features over 85 works that capture the beauty and strangeness of a mysterious generation of artists.

This is an exhibition at the art institute Chicago till the 5th Jan.