I'm not an art student and pretty much clueless ftmp but the perspective in a lot of pre-Renaissance stuff is so strange — it's flattened to the point of there being almost no illusion of depth, but just geometric forms interacting on the same plane.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti: Effects of Good Government on City-Life (c. 1330)
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1367/602342310_945e025e77.jpghttp://i56.tinypic.com/2u5cils.jpghttp://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo4/NettieMuse/PompeiiWallArt.jpg
Ancient Roman painters showed a similar (mis)understanding of perspective, rendering objects stiffly in 3 dimensions without having them converge at a vanishing point. the technique didn't disappear in the Middle Ages, but artists (Western European ones, anyways) showed practically no improvement in their use of perspective until about the 1400s, mainly because they had less interest in one-upping each other in terms of realism than they had in upholding the highly stylized conventions of Christian art.
I'm not an art student either, so I'm really just stating the obvious here.
― lonely is as lonely does, lonely is an eeyore (unregistered), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 19:15 (thirteen years ago) link
Please note that there's a world of difference between, on one hand, re-reading artworks of a paradigm past through some sort of contemporary viewpoint/apparatus/whathaveyou, and on the other, finding evidence of hypothesized avant-garde lineage within those works.
For what it's worth, I understood the thread as some sort of combination of the two: though the title might have one believe that this is about finding concrete precedents that would materialize into later avant-garde works (thereby implying some sort of teleological account - something people worry too much about for a reason). Of course there's also the "anachonism" part of the title, which which I take as a kind of "let's find instances of subsequent avant-garde practices in earlier works, which may instance just plain old coincidences, along with a potential debunking of avant-garde claims to novelty, or again, just things that seem interesting today but wouldn't have been of note back then.
prefer because the whole (who did what first in what narrative is such a tedious approach)
― EDB, Tuesday, 30 November 2010 19:30 (thirteen years ago) link
let's find things that flatter our own worldviews pt 1,366,981,776
not that there's anything wrong with that, and this thread is great
but what about all the odd, outlier stuff in old paintings that DOESN'T jive with ourselves today? the stuff that might have rhymed with, say, the 1940s instead of the 2010s? the stuff that hasn't rhymed with anything else that we know of? is that of less interest somehow? i'd have thought it would be moreso actually, since it forces us to learn things we don't know, to try on a different mask
the thread starter and others have been quite chill about their remit tho so i'm finding it difficult to hold my grudge very tightly
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:02 (thirteen years ago) link
Ah THAT'S Millais? Ok!
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/m/millais/millais_ophelia.jpg
― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:15 (thirteen years ago) link
but what about all the odd, outlier stuff in old paintings that DOESN'T jive with ourselves today? the stuff that might have rhymed with, say, the 1940s instead of the 2010s? the stuff that hasn't rhymed with anything else that we know of? is that of less interest somehow? i'd have thought it would be moreso actually, since it forces us to learn things we don't know, to try on a different mask― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 8:02 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 8:02 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark
this seems a bit too complex -- maybe the stuff we find less interesting is actually more interesting *because* it doesn't interest us?
im caricaturing an argument to be sure
― rip whiney g weingarten 03/11 never forget (history mayne), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:19 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm perfectly happy to have this be a thread about old paintings that seem to speak to contemporary sensibilities, fwiw
― phish in your sleazebag (contenderizer), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:24 (thirteen years ago) link
srsly just post w/e. post some canaletto and some net art. compare 'l'origine du monde' and some .jp roach porn. just don't type some sophomoric shit abt ~ like, values every1 ~.
― lex eduction horror (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:43 (thirteen years ago) link
please don't actually post roach porn btw.
― lex eduction horror (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:51 (thirteen years ago) link
why has everyone adopted plax's iphone-speak for this thread?
― for the next throbbing minutes (corey), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 20:51 (thirteen years ago) link
Cabanel had his own Ophelia too (there's an essay in here, art people):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Alexandre_Cabanel%2C_Ophelia.JPG
― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 30 November 2010 21:07 (thirteen years ago) link
I'd say it has less to do with flattering ourselves and more to do with seeking comfort in the familiar. it can be tough to approach a 500-year-old painting as anything but a dead, alienating artifact, so it can be comforting to discover some strange, playful, and strikingly (albeit accidentally) modern detail that brings the artwork forward in time (so to speak) and within our emotional reach. it may be a contrived and inauthentic approach, but it's a rare way to engage with a piece as if we're contemporaries of the artist. bringing ourselves backward in time (by gathering historical facts and viewing the work through the eyes of the artist's contemporaries or some other bygone generation) doesn't tend to have the same familiarizing effect.
I'm not arguing against intellectualism. I see the "whoa, this is surprisingly modern" mindset as a complement to the usual research and context-setting, and people who can only engage with Bosch as a proto-surrealist or Sterne as a proto-post-modernist are missing the point entirely. if a work of art both forces us to learn things we don't know and unexpectedly echoes things that we're familiar with, then it's power is enormous on multiple levels.
― lonely is as lonely does, lonely is an eeyore (unregistered), Tuesday, 30 November 2010 21:13 (thirteen years ago) link
Bridget Riley and the Old Masters
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 1 December 2010 08:39 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.taschen.com/media/images/480/default_xl_matisse_covers_0907301203_id_279942.jpg
it's like Flash animation!
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 1 December 2010 15:54 (thirteen years ago) link
I'ma go through the rest of Crary's list here:
http://www.website.com/yourimage.jpegFriedrich Overbeck, The Painter Franz Pforr (yowsah!), c. 1810 (reworked 1865?), oil on canvasNationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
http://experimentiv.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/self-portrait-or-desperate-man-gustave-courbet.jpgGustave Courbet, The Desperate Man, 1844-1845, Oil on canvas, Private collection
Courbet pumped out a few paintings so naughty I can't post them here lest it turn into a NSFW work. But GIS his Origin of the World (which Lacan owned!).
http://fontdenimes.midiblogs.com/media/01/02/9e8f3ac346b6b0f2bbee5dc3482af206.jpgPaul Delaroche: La Jeune Martyre (The Young Martyr), 1855
Man, these dudes dug their Ophelia types!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ernest_Meissonier_-_End_of_the_Game_of_Cards_.jpgJean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, The End of the Game of Cards, oil painting, n.d. (ca. 1870?)
And Whoa! Check THIS out! Here's Meissonier's portrait of Leland Stanford, the bigwig who commissioned Muybridge's photo experiments! (Head spins)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Leland_Stanford_p1070023.jpgJean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Leland Stanford, 1881 Oil on canvas, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University
http://www.cnoilpainting.com/upimage/201003150827186971_s.jpgWilhelm von Kobell, Riders on Lake Tegernsee, 1824 (I think)
http://hereswhatsleft.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/cross_cathedral.jpgCaspar David Friedrich, Cross and cathedral in the mountains, 1812, oil on canvas
Could image bomb this thread with just Friedrich.
http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Gerome_Pygmalion_and_Galatea_c1890.jpg
Jean-Léon Gérôme also image bomb-worthy.
http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/Delacroix.skull.gif
Eugène Delacroix. Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard, 1835, Oil on canvas, approximately 39 x 32 inches. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Franfurt, Germany.
Again with the Hamlet!
― Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 2 December 2010 04:03 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.all-art.org/neoclasscism/overbeck01.jpgFriedrich Overbeck, The Painter Franz Pforr (yowsah!), c. 1810 (reworked 1865?), oil on canvasNationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
― Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 2 December 2010 04:06 (thirteen years ago) link
good stuff, dude
― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Thursday, 2 December 2010 04:08 (thirteen years ago) link
that cat is fukkin tiny
also
http://hereswhatsleft.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/cross_cathedral.jpg
\m/
inverting influence so that each act becomes anticipatoryGaddis' last book is partly about this.
disregarding the historical context and creating "weirdness" by mapping contemporary ideas of weirdness onto work which is coded with its own contemporary meaning.What if its contemporary meaning was "weirdness"?
I think people got this thread right away. they basically understood at least a few of the points you bring up.
― peacocks, Thursday, 2 December 2010 04:58 (thirteen years ago) link
I'm not well versed in art history, so can someone explain why all these realistic portraits are supposed to be examples of "avant-garde anachronism"?
― Tuomas, Thursday, 2 December 2010 08:06 (thirteen years ago) link
http://nedavanovac.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/aubrey_beardsley.png
― mo loko (cozen), Thursday, 2 December 2010 08:27 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't understand it either, Tuomas. But I'm also not well-versed in art history.
― Princess TamTam, Thursday, 2 December 2010 08:29 (thirteen years ago) link
neat thread. totally got what thread-starter was looking for even if the title was ripe for tearing into.
― circa1916, Thursday, 2 December 2010 08:29 (thirteen years ago) link
titles just get ppl thru the door
pretty retarded to cavil about it when ppl obv 'got it'
ilx thread and not curated exhibition etc
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:26 (thirteen years ago) link
friedrich is interesting....sometimes seems excessively lurid, sometimes justifiably so
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:28 (thirteen years ago) link
wow this thread is the best, more please!!
― yuoowemeone, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:37 (thirteen years ago) link
more satisfied customers
http://artinvestment.ru/content/download/news/20081219_aubrey_beardsley_the_platonic_lament.jpg
damn, never heard of aubrey beardsley before
thought cozen's post was some manga ish he posted for lols initially but no, ab died of consumption in 1898 at the age 25 ;_;
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:42 (thirteen years ago) link
I really like this thread and do see that people 'get it' as much as they need to get it, but I wouldn't mind those who are posting adding a bit of explanation for each picture, even if it's as facile as "surrealism before surrealism". For instance, I'm not sure how the Ophelias are avant-garde anachronism even in the looser sense - is it just that they come before the pre-Raphaelites or something? Also, there are a few that I get but can't think of the name of the school they influenced, as I'm not an art history buff, so would appreciate those who are more educated in the field to point me towards the answer.
― emil.y, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:43 (thirteen years ago) link
Also, nakh, WAHT? Are you joking about not having heard of Aubrey?
― emil.y, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:44 (thirteen years ago) link
Beardsley drew some quality porn iirc, friend of Wilde and other party guys
― absinthe of malithe (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:45 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah well obv it doesn't ~have to~ have anything to do with yr core 20th century avant-garde movements tho obv they predominate in the popular conception of things, i mean if you find a 200 y/o lithograph with a proto-lolcat then even better
i'm not sure what milais' ophelia suggests either....it's an early pre-raphaelite work and obviously influential within that movement....
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:50 (thirteen years ago) link
― emil.y, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:44 (5 minutes ago)
the name is familiar but nothing beyond that!
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:51 (thirteen years ago) link
I thought of posting Lowry's seascapes here but obviously they're après la lettre. Fascinating exercises in minimalism tho if you've not seen them.
― absinthe of malithe (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:53 (thirteen years ago) link
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bFFjCDvr2EY/Sw_jD0DrsxI/AAAAAAAAOg4/1qS6EO2huhI/s400/seascape+lowry.jpg
Not what you'd expect from the guy if you only have a passing knowledge. The one I've seen in real life was much more monotone than this, even.
― absinthe of malithe (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 December 2010 12:55 (thirteen years ago) link
Some outsider stuff might fit, eg Louis Wain (1860-1939), starts as Edwardian jolly Cat artist (so in fact an important ancestor of the poker-playing dogs school of art), goes mad, gets locked up, the cats become v 60s psych. These pics show the development (tho' there are lots of args abt whether the pictures & his mental state run parallel, I dunno, I'm not up on it).
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lblgadUUt61qae9wfo1_400.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/ims5f9.jpg
XP yes, also lolcat ancestor
― portrait of velleity (woof), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:04 (thirteen years ago) link
catowl? owlcat?
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:05 (thirteen years ago) link
http://storage.canalblog.com/68/96/119589/36314457.jpg
^ Theodore Gericault ca. 1818. This feels quite modern to me in the whole weird intense blankness of their doll-like faces. That one chunky arm makes me think of Fernand Leger too, and the tubular kind of way that he painted body parts (cubism I guess?).
― Krampus Interruptus (NickB), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:13 (thirteen years ago) link
also the lad on the right appears to be holding a gat
― absinthe of malithe (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:14 (thirteen years ago) link
on the left i meant. ow my head.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/AlexGraffito.svg/450px-AlexGraffito.svg.png
world's first MSPaint art
― .\ /. (dayo), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:26 (thirteen years ago) link
kinda cavilling at "it's just the internet, eh, don't get so wound up" tbh - you should know by now that this board will seriousify any attempt at silliness, and the other way round
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:46 (thirteen years ago) link
"lighten up" is just such a disappointing comeback for so many reasons
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:47 (thirteen years ago) link
how about "get a grip"?
― jed_, Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:49 (thirteen years ago) link
there has been a misidentification of the cohort that "gets" what is being discussed on this thread
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 2 December 2010 13:49 (thirteen years ago) link
Robert Lazzarini's sculpture of the anamorphic skull
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/42/124783383_1049751f2d.jpghttp://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/124783486_3f4bcb29a1.jpg
― (+) (+ +), Thursday, 2 December 2010 14:09 (thirteen years ago) link
<3
― nakhchivan, Thursday, 2 December 2010 14:10 (thirteen years ago) link
whoa
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 2 December 2010 14:44 (thirteen years ago) link
my brain hates teh way that looks
― shirley summistake (s1ocki), Thursday, 2 December 2010 14:47 (thirteen years ago) link
he's been mentioned already, but: piranesi's carceri - cf. escher, ico:
http://im-possible.info/images/art/classic/piranesi/carceri-xiv.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Piranesi9c.jpg
― e.g. delegates at a set age (ledge), Thursday, 2 December 2010 15:05 (thirteen years ago) link
(of course piranesi was an admitted influence on ico)
― e.g. delegates at a set age (ledge), Thursday, 2 December 2010 15:07 (thirteen years ago) link