Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales.
Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales.
Las Meninas
Diego Velasquez, Prado Madrid.
I think this is an example of too-high expectations......
.........I've been looking forward to visiting the Prado for at least fifty years. When I was a teenager I used to visit the Central Library in Manchester (they had what seemed to me to be an endless supply of great art books) and I noted many paintings and many art galleries that I wanted to see in the future. One museum was the Prado, particularly for the Velasquez's and the Goya's. I've spent the intervening years visiting many galleries but not yet that particular one. Well a fortnight ago I went at last with Mari on a Madrid visit, with the Prado as item number one on the must-see list. And, difficult as it is to admit, I have to be truthful and say that I found it somewhat disappointing. There are of course some ageless masterpieces which I expected and was not disappointed by, but nevertheless some of the things I was looking forward to did not match up with expectations.
Take Velasquez for example. Las Meninas is the great painting hanging in the very large room devoted exclusively to his work, and is a brilliant stand-out masterpiece which alone was worth the visit. However, the rest of the room was filled with many portraits of the Spanish royal family, and, at the risk of sounding like a total berk, I confess that I thought they were somewhat over-rated. I obviously expected too much. They were paintings which were commissioned, which had a specific function, and which Velasquez and his assistants carried out in a professional capacity and manner, and which helped to establish his fame and reputation. But for me, twerp that I am, I found them boring.
Philip IV
Diego Velasquez, Prado Madrid. 1624-27
However, to restore my faith in the genius of Velasquez I simply had to think back to the last time I saw this...............
Old Woman Frying Eggs
Diego Velasquez, National Gallery of Scotland. 1618.
Diego Velasquez, Prado Madrid.
I think this is an example of too-high expectations......
.........I've been looking forward to visiting the Prado for at least fifty years. When I was a teenager I used to visit the Central Library in Manchester (they had what seemed to me to be an endless supply of great art books) and I noted many paintings and many art galleries that I wanted to see in the future. One museum was the Prado, particularly for the Velasquez's and the Goya's. I've spent the intervening years visiting many galleries but not yet that particular one. Well a fortnight ago I went at last with Mari on a Madrid visit, with the Prado as item number one on the must-see list. And, difficult as it is to admit, I have to be truthful and say that I found it somewhat disappointing. There are of course some ageless masterpieces which I expected and was not disappointed by, but nevertheless some of the things I was looking forward to did not match up with expectations.
Take Velasquez for example. Las Meninas is the great painting hanging in the very large room devoted exclusively to his work, and is a brilliant stand-out masterpiece which alone was worth the visit. However, the rest of the room was filled with many portraits of the Spanish royal family, and, at the risk of sounding like a total berk, I confess that I thought they were somewhat over-rated. I obviously expected too much. They were paintings which were commissioned, which had a specific function, and which Velasquez and his assistants carried out in a professional capacity and manner, and which helped to establish his fame and reputation. But for me, twerp that I am, I found them boring.
Diego Velasquez, Prado Madrid. 1624-27
However, to restore my faith in the genius of Velasquez I simply had to think back to the last time I saw this...............
Old Woman Frying Eggs
Diego Velasquez, National Gallery of Scotland. 1618.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
What is this, and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
by John William Waterhouse, 1903, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
_____________________________________________________
. . . . and now, a Recommended Read . . .
The Painter and the Photograph
(from Delacroix to Warhol).
Van Derren Coke
This is quite an old book (published in 1972) which was one of the earliest to seriously address the question of the many uses of photography by artists. It was preceded by another very interesting book by Aaron Scharf (a very respected Art-History lecturer of mine at St. Martins School of Art, London) called 'Art & Photography' which covered largely the same area.
Artists have always had a tense relationship with the use of photography, but what may have sometimes been regarded as 'cheating', (and therefore tended to be used surreptitiously by artists), is now openly used in many fruitful and creative ways by artists from many fields of art, such as Gauguin, Picasso, Bacon, etc, etc. This book documents some of them. It's worth buying or borrowing if only for the many fascinating images.
Published on University of New Mexico Press
_______________________
_______________________
To subscribe to free email notifications
of my newest blogs, please go to the pull-out menu (on the right side of the main screen).
'Select 'SUBSCRIBE' and input your email address.
'Select 'SUBSCRIBE' and input your email address.
When you receive the email, you can go to the site itself by clicking on the blog title.
You can un-subscribe at any time.