Monday, February 23, 2009

Breathe in Some More Art

I said I was going to do a follow-up art post and by golly, I meant it. Now that I have all of my images in front of me I don't know how I shall choose my favorites! Perhaps this will just have to become more of a regular feature. Anyhoodle, let's look at some art!




Don't you just love Roman sculpture? I can never get enough of this guy (Augustus). His breastplate! His left leg! That drapery! And don't you just love how his ears stick out a bit? A good bit of sculpture just blows my mind all to pieces.











Desolation, by Thomas Cole as part of his "Course of the Empire" series (all of which are good). I have a lot of love for a good landscape and Thomas Cole is brilliant. I just love American art, don't you? It's probably my favorite American thing, besides hot dogs. Just kidding.





The Incredulity of St. Thomas. I'm partly including this because one can never look at too much Caravaggio and partly as a treat for you LOST fans.
I really wish we had some Caravaggio in LDS churches.








Light of the World, by Holman Hunt. I don't care much for Hunt on the whole, but this may be my very favorite painting of Christ in the whole of this world. Isn't the lighting just so soft and lovely?
(Side note: I spotted this in a parlor in Jeeves and Wooster episode)











St. Sebastian Attended by St. Irene, by de la Tour. For some reason I never got into de la Tour while in school. Maybe I just didn't see the right painting or maybe I was too distracted by Caravaggio's and Bernini's in-your-face drama. At any rate, I ran into this one in a journal* recently and it's just gorgeous, isn't it? It's so still and so well lit. It looks so real and yet not at the same time. Oh, and there's an arrow in St. Sebastian.





Ah, the Colosseum. Can I even say how much I love this building? Just look at it! This was in fact the picture I was referring to in my last post. I'm a sucker for a blue and yellow color scheme, but also it's just a fantastic picture. This is my favorite piece (piece?) of architecture for so many reasons, but suffice it to say if there were no Colosseum, I may not have a degree in art history now. Such is my love and such is its draw for me.

I decided in the course of picking pictures for this post that the next art post will be devoted to illustrators. It was just too impossible to pick one or two this time. There is so much beautiful art in the world! How can one blog ever contain it?!

* I wish I could say I subscribe to the leading art journals, but really I just get my hands on them occasionally at work. Then I flip around and write down all the names of paintings that catch my eye. Such is my continuing art education.

PS: Vote in the poll! Let your voice be heard! Anonymously!

8 comments:

  1. I love pretty pictures!!!!!! I also quite like Thomas Cole - I took an art history class in college where the professor insisted on looking at "Course of the Empire" for a long time because he had written on it or something. I remember thinking at the time that there were other things I'd rather spend time on (France! and it's Franchy art!) but I was sold by the end.

    I also like de la Tour quite a bit - do you find that there is art that you just enjoy looking at, and then art that feels deeper to you? I think de la Tour is in the former category for me, but it is still lovely and eerie.

    P.S. The Colosseum in real life is quite exciting, even full of tourists.

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  2. Lovely choices. I really appreciate your inclusion of Ancient Rome.

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  3. Gotta love a post dedicated to art, especially as a classicist. I have to say, I'm a much bigger fan of the exterior of the Colosseum. While interesting to explore, the inside is pretty drab.

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  4. The play of light is so interesting, isn't it? I love looking at the light sources in paintings. Because of that, I think my favorites of the ones you show here are the Holman Hunt one--such pretty colors! And the Colosseum. Good choices!

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  5. Love love love the LOST shout-out. That Colosseum picture is really cool too. And yes, that left leg! So artful!

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  6. Augustus is good, particularly the drapery! My teacher really got me into what she called "wet drapery" in Greek and Roman statues. I believe she even started crying while talking about one on the projector one day!

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  7. NEW POST NEW POST NEW POST!!!

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  8. Anonymous1:42 PM

    This was really interesting. I loved reading it.

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