William Orpen

William Orpen (1878-1931)

There is a foreboding beauty about William Orpen's paintings that rings true for me.  In his figures especially there is a haunting poetry.  They are full of the tensions and struggles of life that make it mysterious, frustrating, and ultimately worth living.  In his brand of naturalism is a mythicized reality that  makes the mundane feel epic.  Of course he did not invent this, but it is a temperament that runs through many of my favorite painters from Caravaggio to Carriere.

Quite an androgynous self-portrait.  I like it.

An obvious reference to Rembrandt's "Hendrijke Wading In a Stream", but a unique take on his motif.  There is a poetic futility in the cascade of sad black hair that throws the eye into complete shadow.

Rembrandt still rocks the mike.

Orpen's female nudes are lumpy. They're always homely, often oddly shaped sometimes even grotesque, but there is an almost aloof modesty in there attitude that give them a tragic saintliness.  Their melancholic sensuality is ultimately endearing and forcefully defies what academics had rigidly defined as beauty.   

He was obviously obsessed with Rembrandt.  This one brings to mind a baker's dozen of Rembrandt's Susannas and Bathshebas.

There is no beauty to me like the human figure disheveled in a state of some kind of hopeless toil.  In art misery can bring comfort and suffering can bring consolation.

I'm speechless here.  It doesn't get more touching than this.

I'm a sucker for wife portraits and things that blow in the wind.

Mighty strange.

Norm Quotes Mike: An Obvious Oversight

After posting the last entry about Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter one of my students pointed out on facebook that he has directly borrowed from Michelangelo's "The Prophet Isaiah" from the Sistine Ceiling.  Good eye Logan!

But did you know that Raphael grabbed the pose from Michelangelo first?  The story goes that when the ceiling was still under wraps in 1511 the architect and painter Donato Bramante snuck Raphael into the chapel to sneak a peek.  Raphael's "School of Athens" still in progress at the time, he is said to have scraped off the fresco to start it over again inspired by Michelangelo's style.  His figure of Heraclitus is said to be modeled after his rival Michelangelo who hated Raphael as a plagiarist.   

Rockwell's Riveting Rosie.

A recent blog post by a friend of mine blogging as Flannery O' Kafka  posted an image of J. Howard Miller's Rosie the Riveter (1942) remade in jellybeans by a contemporary artist.  This reminded me of the other Rosie I love by Norman Rockwell done a year later in 1943.  Rockwell was in his own class as an illustrator, and this is a great example.  

With a little research I was simply giddy to discover that this piece is in the permanent collection of the upcoming Crystal Bridges Museum, scheduled to open this November in Bentonville, Arkansas!  The museum will house one of the largest collections of American art in the world.  I actually feel some kind of beetle-mania, and have to suppress a scream when I think about it.

 Rockwell's beefier Rosie portrayed here as a 1940's begoggled punk rocker (down to the buttons!), slings a riveter across her lap like a pieta.  The "S" curve originating in the stars of the upper left corner runs straight through the bicep down through the busted old power cord, making her feel monumental.  Even the meat on the sandwich dances and her flexors and brachioradialis are to die for.

To top it off this is one of the most beautiful heads I've ever seen.  Tough as a jackhammer and yet so delicate and charming.

J. Howard Miller's Rosie.  Not bad but probably improved with jelly beans.

What I think of Picasso's Blue and Rose Periods

I like them.

These are all to me very emotionally powerful.  The background there looks straight out of Redon.

During the time my parents were working in a realty office in New Jersey we often spent a lot of time coloring in a conference room.  A reproduction of this painting either sat on a shelf or hung on a wall there, but I remember being inwardly flabbergasted and embarrassed that the boy in it was not wearing clothes, and nobody seemed to mind the picture.

This is one of my favorite mother and child drawings.  It's all about the gesture in that top hand.

 I find the perfectly melancholy that I want in these compositions.  So full of love and anxiety.

This is my favorite Picasso piece, and one of my all time favorite paintings.  I feel that in many of my own paintings I have unwittingly referenced it and continue to.

Great links to free on-line and pdf scans of classic art books

Many of the great classic books on drawing and painting are difficult to find or out of print.  Recently I got an iPad which is beautifully comfortable to read on, so I'm re-enjoying some and reading some for the first time.  I discovered that if I email myself a pdf book I can read it in ibooks on my iPhone or iPad. Many of the books on these archive.org links are google books and can be downloaded directly to the google book app.  My desktop somehow  actually automatically puts the google book downloads on my iPad though, which is nice.  If you can possibly get the ibook version I find that this is recommendable, since you can highlight, bookmark, and take notes in the margins, but google books is still nice.  For you Kindle-readers, many of the oldies are available in that format too, and there are even some audio classics from Librivox, my favorite source for free audiobooks.   

If you're not a mobile device person, though, these are perfectly readable on your desktop or laptop, although it's harder to lean back in a chair or recline in a bed with a desktop.

There are actually scores of these old books, but I have chosen links to the ones I have personally read and enjoyed.  I'd love to know what you find on there too, though.

The Human Figure

John Henry Vanderpoel

http://www.archive.org/details/humanfigure00vanduoft

Landscape Painting

Birge Harrison

http://www.archive.org/details/landscapepainti02harrgoog

Also a wiki-format of this book.  This is easy to find in several formats online.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Landscape_Painting_by_Birge_Harrison.djvu

The Practice and Science of Drawing

Harold Speed

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=harold%20speed%20drawing%20AND%20collection%3Aamericana

The Painter In Oil

Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=daniel%20Parkhurst
This book can also be downloaded in electronic form on artrenewal.  http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/On-Line_Books/Parkhurst/parkhurst1.php

Seven Discourses On Painting

Sir Joshua Reynolds

http://www.archive.org/details/discoursesonpain00reynuoft

Lectures On Landscape (audiobook)

John Ruskin

 http://www.archive.org/details/lectures_landscape_librivox

Interesting Study On the Effect of Painting on the Brain

This was originally posted on Gawker here, but I found it amazing.

Gawker

6,184 views, May 8, 2011 4:26 PM

SCIENCE

Art Can Provoke Same Brain Response as Being in Love

 Max Read — Gaze upon this painting—Le Grande Odalisque ("The Big Odalisque"), by the French artist Ingres. What do you think? Is it as fun as looking at your boyfriend? No? It doesn't matter what you think! Your brain loves it.

A recent study found that Ingres' art—along with that of British Romantic John Constable and Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni—provoked a near-10 percent increase in blood flow to the part of the brain associated with pleasure, the highest of any artists included in the study. This is, The Daily Telegraph informs us, "the equivalent of gazing at a loved one"; in other words, looking at paintings you find beautiful can be as joyful as nearly any other experience. (I already knew that, you might say; but no, you know nothing until science has proven it.)

What does this mean for Art, with a capital A? It means that those three artists are, scientifically, the best artists of all time. But wait, you're asking. How can I be sure that the study subjects weren't unduly influenced by current tastes and the fashionability of the artist? Fret not:

The test was carried out on dozens of people, who were picked at random but who had little prior knowledge of art and therefore would not be unduly influenced by current tastes and the fashionability of the artist.

Yes, there is "taste" and "fashion" — and then there is Art, eternal, neutral, and unchanging. And its greatest pracitioner is John Constable.

Richard Thomas Scott

If you're Nerdrum's right hand man you've got to be good.  Richard Thomas Scott not only paints well but does a great job articulating exactly what it's all about. He is a contributor for Art Babel, a great blog on which he often writes about Nerdrum's process, which is always terribly fascinating.  Richard is a great painter in his own right, and has no shortage of skill and vision of his own.

My personal favorite.

Odd owns this one.

Wyeth and Odd Nerdrum