Serendipity
Bill Cleere
can do in the Bay Area if you want to look at pictures,
when you've looked at the few good ones a thousand times.
Contemporary works are fine, but sometimes nothing will
do but an old master, and the so-called Rembrandt in
San Francisco just can't fill the void one more time.
So....I didn't have time to look at the Sunday paper, but my
wife was good enough to save the Entertainment section
because it had some articles on the JFK assassination in movies.
Complete bullshit, of course, including the usual warmed-over
crap about Oliver Stone's "inaccuracies".
But on the back of one page, which she hadn't noticed, was
a notice for an exhibit at the Stanford University Art Museum,
which is not only nearby but *free* and *never crowded*.
I could not have ordered anything better: a show from the
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, one of the world's great
"little" museums, of Hudson River School painting.
Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt.....yummm!
And some Frederick Church, too...Check this out (and
be sure to enlarge it with the Image Viewer):
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/church/twilight_wilderness.jpg.html
You really have to stand in front of these pieces for a while to
let the almost two centuries since Turner roll away. If you
do that, the paintings stop looking like the all-too-familiar
genre of "realistic landscape" and hit you as a breathtaking revelation
of what America looked like when it was *brand spanking
new*. That's what those guys painted, and it was largely
because of their painting that we see what we see when we
go to a National Park.
I can't wait till Saturday!
-- Bill Cleere
don wheeler
Bill Cleere wrote:
There used to be a Rembrandt in the Palace of the Legion of
Honor that you could walk right up to and touch.
Is that the one you meant. ?
Before he died, my brother told me that when he and some others
who were hired as consultants on the film advised Stone about factual
misrepresentations that Stone just ignored them.
I love that View of the world the Hudson River valley boys saw.
It is a mood as well as a view.
I call it the adam and eve look. or just plain old paradise.
They said that at the time the Europeans came to the plains, one could walk
across the country
on the tops of flowers. Well, they did , didn't they. over, and over, and
over..
There is a not to old film version of Coopers "Last of the Mohicans" , that
I think was shot in the north east, that contains some spectacular views as
well.
georg
> http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/church/twilight_wilderness.jpg.html
>
> You really have to stand in front of these pieces for a while to
> let the almost two centuries since Turner roll away. If you
> do that, the paintings stop looking like the all-too-familiar
> genre of "realistic landscape" and hit you as a breathtaking revelation
> of what America looked like when it was *brand spanking
> new*. That's what those guys painted, and it was largely
> because of their painting that we see what we see when we
> go to a National Park.
>
> I can't wait till Saturday!
>
> -- Bill Cleere
>
>
My favorite museum in London was the Tate, with whole Annex devoted to
the work of Turner. It's what inspired me to start painting in the first
place.
-georg
Jazz
Now THASS wut I'm talkin' bout, dog!
I love realism in paintings, sadly a thing of the past. How long did it
take a person to paint a vista that broad in such detail? Weeks? Months?
Nothing slapdash going on there, like abstracts, or that curly haired
phuck on PBS who shows you how to paint waterfalls by smacking the
bristle tips of your brush point onto the canvas.
I still recall some pieces at the Munson-Williams art museum in Utica,
New York, which were from the 1800's. We went there when I was a
teenager. (My family and I, that is.) One piece, sadly I can't recall
the artist's name, was a simple picture of a dusty table in a dark room
lit by a single candle on the table. Also there were a stack of hard
cover books, and one book lying open.
If you got up close to the painting, you could read some of the words on
the open page of the book, and see the individual cracks in the bindings
of the others from where they had been previously read. The rest of the
room, (some sort of personal office) was almost but not *entirely* in
darkeness. It was there, but it was visible only in the way that a
single small candle can light a musty room full of non-reflective
surfaces. Almost completely black, but the more you looked, the more you
could see the "slightly lesser shades of black" that were the desk, the
chair, paintings on the walls, bookcases full of books, an unbrella
stand, etc.
The most remarkable thing about that painting wasn't the highlighted
table with books and candle in the foreground. It was the shadowy world
in the background which was done in every bit as much detail, except
entirely in blacks and grays.
Staggering. I wonder if anyone paints like that anymore.
--
jaZZ
-"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,and I'm
not sure about the former. "
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Jazz
There was a painter who followed Teddy Roosevelt on one of his earliest
trips deep into the west (where he worked as a cattle rancher for a
time) and did paintings of his horseback visits to various scenic areas
of the plains. I wish I could recall the name and find some of the
images to share here. They were spectacular.
Peter J. Xemblonsky
Cleere" <bcl...@philipkdick.com> weenie:
did you realize that i, biff mull... er... peter j. xemblonsky hace
put the "dip" in serenDIPity?!?!1
>-- Bill Cleere
>
**
beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
don wheeler
>
> There was a painter who followed Teddy Roosevelt on one of his earliest
> trips deep into the west (where he worked as a cattle rancher for a
> time) and did paintings of his horseback visits to various scenic areas
> of the plains. I wish I could recall the name and find some of the
> images to share here. They were spectacular.
>
> --
> jaZZ
>
> -"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,and I'm
> not sure about the former. "
> Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Charles M.Russell, FREDERIC REMINGTON, Maynard Dixon, Louis Akin, Thomas Moran
, Moran, William R. Leigh, Elliott Daingerfield (1859-1932), Gunnar Mauritz
Widforss (1879 - 1934), Edward Potthast , Samuel Colman (1832-1920) , William
Henry Holmes (1846-1933), and Asher B. Durand, are but a few western artists who
might fit your description.
Bill Cleere
news:z8Jub.111176$ji3....@twister.nyroc.rr.com...
There's some great rooms in museum, but no, there's nothing quite
like that one. The only problem with it for a tourist who can't keep
coming back is that it's just too overwhelming.
-- Bill Cleere
Bill Cleere
"don wheeler" <birds...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:3FBB2581...@optonline.net...
Yes, they moved it to the De Young. Trouble is it's either a
knockoff from his studio or something he did with a hangover.
> Before he died, my brother told me that when he and some others
> who were hired as consultants on the film advised Stone about factual
> misrepresentations that Stone just ignored them.
That may be, but many of the so-called "inaccuracies"
are reasonable director's license or not inaccurate at all.
> I love that View of the world the Hudson River valley boys saw.
> It is a mood as well as a view.
> I call it the adam and eve look. or just plain old paradise.
> They said that at the time the Europeans came to the plains, one could
walk
> across the country
> on the tops of flowers. Well, they did , didn't they. over, and over, and
> over..
Yes. We all knew what came next. But that's one reason why
it is good to see the original vision.
> There is a not to old film version of Coopers "Last of the Mohicans" ,
that
> I think was shot in the north east, that contains some spectacular views
as
> well.
Sounds *very* vaguely familiar.
-- Bill Cleere
±
Beautiful.
>
> -- Bill Cleere
--
http://www.geocities.com/snuhsite
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Bill Cleere
news:3FBCAEF9...@hotmail.com...
No doubt I shall rant and rave some more after that.
(aside to jaZZ -- I put aside your fine post until I have
some time for it. Made me feel like I was in that great
little museum in Utica, or wherever you said it was.)
-- Bill Cleere
"I prefer the pleasure of writing bits of nonsense to that of
wearing an embroidered coat which costs 800 francs." (Stendahl)
Jazz
It's the Munson Williams Proctor in Utica, New York.
Very near where I grew up. The piece I made reference to is part of
their permanent collections, some of which can be seen on their web site.
Bill Cleere
"Jazz" <js...@stny.rr.com> wrote in message
news:vrrtv3j...@news.supernews.com...
Very nice! I notice that they have Peto and Harnett. One of those
two is probably the painter of that piece you described in your
other post. You can see their stuff at
www.artchive.com
-- Bill Cleere
Bill Cleere
I can *see* it. Thanks.
> Staggering. I wonder if anyone paints like that anymore.
People can, but the good ones don't because it's been done. I would not
like to be a serious, ambitious artist today. There's no movement
to join and none to rebel against. What the hell would you paint?
-- Bill Cleere
Jazz
What a great link! Thanks! Looking them over quickly, I would say that
Harnett's "Munich Still Life" is of such a similar style to the one in
the Munson that it's very likely his.
I'll be spending part of a pleasant sunday browsing that site.
:-)
--
jaZZ
Bill Cleere
You're welcome. Harnett and Peto both painted "trompe l'oeil"
still lifes. Do Google image searches on them too.