Art

[Marnoot]

While I like plenty of traditional art too, I often like stuff that's just a little... off. For instance I have a large print-on-canvas in a nice frame of this in the family room:


"Kohler's Pig", by Michael Sowa

I'm thinking of this one for the living room:


"Fowl with Pearls", Michael Sowa

[RoadKingLarry]

I base my "Is it Art?" opinon on whether or not I could do it. If it is something I could have done, it ain't art. :)

[K Frame]

I have several artists whose work I truly admire...

Georgia O'Keefe





Albert Pinkham Ryder (Unfortunately, due to his painting techniques, much of his art has suffered irreversible damage over the years).

This painting, one of his most potently allegorical, is now virtually gone..




Amongst the Europeans I admire Maurice Vlaminck




And, there's an American illustrator, a contemporary of Pyle and N.C. Wyeth, whom I admire, Haskell Coffin

This WW I Victory Bond poster hangs in my living room. I have probably 30 other illustrations by him, as well, including a VERY nice litograph.

[Balog]

Marnoot: that pig one is great.

Mike Irwin: I'd never heard of Ryder. I'll have to look him up, that's looks very interesting.

[Gewehr98]

Art's in Terlingua, TX.

This is probably what's hanging on his living room wall:



We have several Owen Gromme and David Lorenz Winston works hanging around our humble abode.

I do like Kohler's Pig, though.   

[Werewolf]

You're not... serious about Vallejo, are you?

He may not be but I am.

Never seen a boring Vallejo picture...

Ever...

Vallejo's art is exciting and always tells a story. Plus the babes he draws are seriously HOT! 

Art as the saying goes is in the eye of the belholder.

What passes for and has passed for art over the ages is IMO proof that there have always been those around with the skill to fleece the rich out of their hard or not so hard earned money. (Which really means if I don't like it I don't consider it art  which probably invalidates what I've written below but I'm bored, have little else to do right now and am a ramblin' kind'a mood).

I imagine most would call the Mona Lisa fine art. Ever seen the thing in real life, actually seen the framed canvas hanging in the Louvre? I have. It along with most of the stuff around it is pure drecht. Why it is worth millions is beyond me.

That's not to say that some of the stuff considered art isn't good. Rembrandt's Night Watch is kind'a cool. Rodan did some good stuff. Whistler, Rockwell and Remington are pretty darn good among others. I can appreciate some, not all, of the stuff painted by the naturalists in the 1800's. Not sure who did it, Michelangelo maybe, but I stood and stared at the Pieta in the Vatican for over an hour and had to be dragged away by my Navy buddies.

That said:
IMO, most of what is considered art - like what that whackjob Picasso did is just trash and I'd bet that the artist(s) knew/know it and laugh themselves silly all the way to the bank and on the way home marvelling at the gullibility of some people.

Of course the rich folk that got fleeced, the art critics and the fleecers would just write my opinion off as that of an uneducated, uncouth, bufoon. I may be uncouth at times but I'm far from being uneducated and definitely no bufoon.

[Gewehr98]

I may be uncouth at times but I'm far from being uneducated and definitely no bufoon.

Ahem.

It's spelled buffoon.

Just tryin' to help, there...

[K Frame]

Marnoot: that pig one is great.

Mike Irwin: I'd never heard of Ryder. I'll have to look him up, that's looks very interesting.

Back in the early 1990s the Smithsonian had a Ryder retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery.

I went with some friends and my ex.

I was REALLY connecting with the pictures in a way I never had before.

My friends and ex decided to wait for me in the courtyard. Very pleasant day.

A few minutes later my friend is asking me if I'm ready to go.

"Come on, Chuck, we just got here. I thought you guys were going out to the court yard?"

"Mike, we've been sitting out there for THREE HOURS."

I had spent over three hours immersed in the exhibit and never even realized it.

It was then that I realized what John Hughes was trying to do with the scene in the Art Institute of Chicago when he showed Cameron's character becoming totally immersed in Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

What I really enjoyed about that exhibit was that there was virtually no one there. I could look at the paintings from any distance and angle that I wanted. The O'Keefe and Vemeer exhibits? Had to get tickets to those, and they were so jammed packed that it wasn't even funny.

[Nitrogen]

I like the Potter Stewart definition of art.

One of my favorite museums was the Field Museum in Chicago.  (One of the few redeeming features of that city)

I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the mideval monumental art, for instance.  You could tell that God and Jesus meant a lot to those folks.
I spent almost a whole day there when I went.

Then there are "Museums" (notice the quotes) like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
There were a few things there that I liked. but a majority of it I'd consider crap.

They had an exhibit there that was a small canvas just painted blue.  Basically it looked like a pantone sheet (Blue 072 C)
There were some neat things done with video and other multimedia, but most of the "art" there did very little, if anything for me.

[Strings]

Art should create an emotional response in the viewer. By preference, that response shouldn't be disgust...

[Perd Hapley]

About that first one, it seems like some of you haven't seen it before.     I think the image I used just wasn't the best reproduction.   

Also, I refused to be ashamed of liking the dogs playing poker, or other canine works by that particular artist whose name I can't recall.  I need that one hanging up in the study, here.   

[jackdanson]

Klimt:
http://images.google.com/images?q=klimt&ndsp=18&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en-us&sa=N&imgsz=huge

Modigliani:
http://images.google.com/images?imgsz=huge&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en-us&q=modigliani&btnG=Search+Images

tehehe boobies!

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Ever seen the thing in real life, actually seen the framed canvas hanging in the Louvre? I have. It along with most of the stuff around it is pure drecht. Why it is worth millions is beyond me.

My sentiments exactly.

Wiki has this to say about it:

The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose expression is often described as enigmatic.[2][3] The ambiguity of the sitter's expression, the monumentality of the half-figure composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the painting's continuing fascination.

Sometimes, people detecting deeper meaning in various paintings seems about as silly as over-analyzing a movie. "Wait, in this scene, Cary Grant's shirt has eight buttons showing instead of the seven in the last one. Can this be a reference to the eighth president, Martin Van Buren? Does this mean that Grant's character doesn't think Texas should've been annexed? Could that mean that he doesn't like Ian Fleming's Felix Leiter character, who is from Texas? Or that Cary Grant hated George W. Bush?" Though I should count myself lucky that I passed the course with an A, and that I don't have to do another. I hate writing papers on modern dance, FWIW.

[ramis]

I like the Regionalism style.

This is the most well known painting. American Gothic by Grant Wood.



Here's another.Young Corn by Grant Wood.




Robert Tabor’s Four Seasons on an Iowa Farm is nice.
http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/BALLAST/WPA.html

[Brrlgrrl]

Love the second piece by Waterhouse, and have that framed in the bedroom.  Another of my favorite Waterhouse pieces:

Half Sick Of Shadows


And this, another pre Raphaelite for the OP:

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt:

[Nitrogen]

Some of the art I like is really out there.  Like Kushi:

and Dali



And James Ensor

(you really have to see this one up close, this picture does the detail NO justice

But then again, there's perfectly good not-so-out-there stuff.  I always had a thing for impressionists


like Morisot



and Manet

EDIT: DARNIT I knew better

[cosine]

If I'm not mistaken, the first painting in Nitrogen's post is actually by Vladimir Kush.

[Nitrogen]

If I'm not mistaken, the first painting in Nitrogen's post is actually by Vladimir Kush.

You're right, and I know better, because I have one of his books.
Though I like the Kush one with the apple better.