Mark Rothko: Blue, Orange, Red - 1961
Dude! Hop on the train, and go to the Stedelijk Museum! They have a bunch of Piet's paintings there that span his career. It's really enlightening to see the evolution of his work from bad ripoffs of impressionism to the brilliance that it things like the above.
Mondrian is my favorite artist! I've been trying to find his essays for a little while now, but every copy I come across is ridiculous expensive.
Wow! Are all of those in Dutch? I've been wanting to learn Dutch for some time.
Those are in Dutch, yeah. I also found some English and German books.
You're the best! I'm gonna look up on these when I get a chance.
Oh man, if anyone ever reading this ever goes to Houston, one of my absolute favorite places on earth is a little, non-nondescript building called The Rothko Chapel. Looking at images of it on the internet does not do it justice. It should be on more people's bucket lists, honestly.
I went to Rothko chapel on MLK Jr. Day! It was such a moving experience. They played his I Have a Dream speech and you could hear it echo around the room because everyone was so quite. It is just such a beautifully powerful room.
Goddamn I miss the museums in Houston. Swing by the menil too, while you're at it, its just across the lawn.
Yeah, I've never been to the Menil Collection-- I'm not sure why. I've been to the MFA like seven times. Don't know if you're still in Houston, but did you happen to catch the Singer Sargent exhibit this year? It was utterly wonderful.
Nah, I've been in Oakland for a couple years now, and the SFMoMA has been undergoing construction and won't be back up and running until 2016, and the art scene otherwise is pretty dreadful. There's a lot of focus on cheesy commercial art stuff or some typically bad tech-based art. The few who do good work (Holly Herndon, for instance, the noise scene here is great) typically are busy in LA or overseas. I have been been meaning to go to a Codame event, but I'm still skeptical. I'm coming back to Houston for the holidays to visit and am so looking forward to actually going to something worthwhile, it bums me out sometimes not being able to just go for a bike ride and see something really compelling, really relevant, and well curated. The Menil is fantastic, though, they work really well in conjunction with the other museums nearby.
Incidentally, I caught the impressionist exhibit -- it was a series of about a hundred paintings Monet did along different parts of the Seine. Included his classics from the winter of 18-whatever when the whole thing froze up. Really an amazing 90 minutes.
This album of dronescapes/minimal electronica entitled 'Five Panels' by Monty Adkins was inspired by the works of Mark Rothko. If you have a spare 50 minutes I wholeheartedly recommend a full listen, it's a multi-part work so it all blends into each other. The textures, timbres, and sounds are simply beautiful.
What about Yves Klein? He was a colorful fella.
That's either an incredibly uniformed opinion or a joke. Millions of artists, art and art history students, teachers and academics aren't being duped by hucksters who have no talent, that's more like what Thomas Kinkade did. "I could have done that," no you couldn't have, you just don't understand the degree of difficulty. There is a ton of technical skill in the Klein and the Rothko. I'm pretty sure they made their paint. And Rothko's are huge. So are Jackson Pollack's, posterboy for art that requires no talent to millions of lay people. It's not just paint dripped on a surface, the act of him painting is part of it and if you see a Pollack you can see his cigarette butts and other parts of the process. I, having seen many drip paintings and attempting a couple, it's not easy to leave more than a mess with zero visual impact or interest. Not convinced? Try to make your own modern art. You might notice it's lacking somehow. There are technical aspects to any good art that you're oblivious to. Line, composition, color, hue, tone, value. If you just want to look at pretty pictures that's fine and there are many working artists today who just paint pastoral scenes and still lifes and animals, the kind of stuff that makes me want to vomit blood onto middle aged women when I look at it. But being flippant and dismissive and demeaning to what is still a powerful cultural expression to many is a bit like saying "I only date supermodels. I'm only interested in superficial aesthetics. People who can appreciate anything less than ideal beauty are a complete mystery to me."
There was nothing violent about it. Don't assert your opinion on something you don't know anything about just because it has a level of subjectivity to the evaluation of importance within the field. And don't mistake a takedown of a comment that offers no insight for something insensitive. Thanks!
C'mon now, we value civility here, and it will get you far. You are being confrontational and not conversational. While obviously this is a personal issue for you, and flag has his opinions and states them tersely, he is a rather knowledgeable person, so I typically think there is a better underlying reason for his opinion. Perhaps even asking him why he said what he said and then diverging from there would be even more helpful. You've made some brash assumptions, and that's understandable, considering on most websites, everyone is just shouting into the cacophony of the void. That doesn't fly well here, and I definitely think that is a good thing. No one thinks you offered a succinct takedown of his comment, but that you responded (probably correctly) to an issue that had nothing to do with said comment.
This is something I know a lot about and his opinion is ignorant and toxic to working artists. I can make assumptions because I hear this attitude casually all the time, on the internet and in life, and my response is based more on that history. Maybe the onus is on him to be engaging and understand why I spent so much time typing that instead of waltzing into a thread and just saying, 'I don't like this thing.' I'm old enough to know when to pick my battles so when I'm abrasive it's because I have a good point to make.
You will not find any Thomas Kinkade fans here. As a matter of fact, we celebrate the original work of many of the contributors to this website. Post your own work, if you feel like you want to, it will not be out-of-place, and will definitely not be met with toxic opinions. If you're a working artist, please, please do, there aren't a whole lot of ya'll here, so it would be great. You did not hear that here, tho. Literally, if you look below this, flag just stated his intention to go visit an Impressionist exhibit in at the MFA. so the crowd you are throwing his hat into the ring with (which by the way, is the actual problem here) simply doesn't apply. You're making this about your experience rather than the person you're responding to. That's not nice. Flag was not lobbing a thought into the void, hoping to provoke, he was literally responding to kleinbl00. They have a history, this is a community, it is not random thoughts bumping uglies. Most of the time. You are making a good point at the wrong time. you are attaching cultural baggage to the wrong person. I'm not trying to just simply be right nor say anything about your opinion, which I agree with. I am simply trying to help you understand why he said what he said, because you seem to be missing the point. I'm old enough to know better than to pick internet fights, and I'm not. I'm straight-up, truth-be-told, doing exactly what I would do with any of my friends, IRL or otherwise. I highly recommend apologizing, not because I'm coercing you, not because I want you to "admit you're wrong" but just simply because it's decent. You misspoke and lashed out at someone who didn't deserve it, and they deserve an apology. It's a kind gesture and it will be reciprocated. I repeat: this is not the void.This is something I know a lot about and his opinion is ignorant and toxic to working artists.
I can make assumptions because I hear this attitude casually all the time, on the internet and in life, and my response is based more on that history.
... just saying, 'I don't like this thing.'
I'm old enough to know when to pick my battles so when I'm abrasive it's because I have a good point to make.
You're really not saying anything that means anything to me and you're not following me well, but that's probably my fault. I'm targeting an attitude, not a person. I set up some arguments that might seem like they were directed at him personally. I wasn't assuming anything except that he thinks "abstract" art is kinda not good (low hanging fruit). I might do a text rundown of the past 150 years of art over a few text posts. I might write a book about it but that doesn't seem like such an original idea unless I can do it better than the other people who've tried.
I am utterly following you, I do not see how you could think otherwise, unless: a) you sincerely cannot see that I'm reaching out and trying to say "we can totally be friends, but you did something misplaced that isn't conducive to functioning communities of people with varied opinions" like, as in these words are totally incomprehensible to you b) you cannot read my posts or do not have time to. sometimes i get long-winded and tangential, and plenty of people do not have enough time to read my barrage of nonsense. I do not hold this against them. c) you don't believe me. I cannot help you there, nor do i blame you d) you have your head so far up your pretentious ass that you think the world is brown. Like, you think you're at a podium somewhere, when you're actually just blasting spittle all over one person's face on the street. guess which one I'm leaning towards Like, jesus, I'm not writing some tacocat's Tuesdays with Morrie here, but I am at least a small amount self-aware enough to know when I'm authentically trying to be empathetic and not just lash out with rabid generalizations (which is what you did), and be, well, polite. Until now, tho. in summation:
hush.You're really not saying anything that means anything to me
I want to hush. But you're clearly not following my intent. |I am utterly following you, I'm telling you that you aren't. I wrote it, I know what I meant. I like to throw a little mock outrage in my writing for my entertainment and the reader's. Everyone's acting like I'm going to start running over puppies on purpose and I'm not even mad.
For better or for worse, Hubski is a community which generally believes (hopes) they're talking to a real person acting in a genuine manner. So throwing in 'mock outrage', which is near impossible to detect in this context, will only serve to make people think you're genuinely outraged. For the most part, it will not entertain or serve to improve your point. You don't have to feel the need to tart up your opinions for the reader's benefit. If you've got something you're passionate about, simply express it in a constructive manner and people will be interested and respond accordingly.I like to throw a little mock outrage in my writing
I'll retract my flippant response if you'll retract your assumptions about what I know and do not know about so-called modern art, in which I expressed interest in this very thread. Moving on.
NO IT DOESN'T. CLEARLY YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. IF YOU DON'T TAKE BACK WHAT YOU SAID, I'M GOING TO FIND OUT WHERE YOU LIVE, POOP IN A PAPER BAG, LIGHT IT ON FIRE AND LEAVE IT ON YOUR STUPID, 8BIT DOORSTEP. -SO THERE!