Searching for Bouguereau

[Peter Dransfield]

No! Said with such certainty. Have you polled every living artist working today? I guess early 20th Century artists such as William McGregor Paxton, Edmund Tarbell, Joseph Rodefer DeCamp, Pietro Annigoni, and John Koch didn't really exist. You continue to make ridiculous broad sweeping assumptions, parroting the old party line. If you repeat it enough will it actually come true?

Never heard of them Marvin and I have studied art history - I presume they are minor artists who might have a local influence but hardly world shakers.

We all have our gods and their influence is seen perhaps in our work and values artistically and that is the beauty of this place. I am challenged by you Marvin and by Thomasin and Ilaria just to mention three and how more stimulating or different can you get.

[Michael Georges]

So I will encourage us to keep this as a "thoughtful" discussion rather than taking each other to task or making personal snips.

That said, Peter, I don't see much "message or content" in the work of Monet, rather I see a lot of beauty, and a lot of classically trained skill. His work shows an artist who knows what rules to break (complementary analogous color) in order to make water lillies appear to float off the canvas at 9 feet...but message? Not much that I can discern. Much of his work is a classic example of art for the sake of beauty. I see Bouguereau the same way - he just had more fantastical visions and was inspired by allegory and fable rather than what he saw in the real world. Now mind you, Bouguereau certainly used the real world to create his visions, as did Monet, just in different ways...but for similar ends - beauty.

[Peter Dransfield]

Are there any elements in B that had not been done countless times before? Monet on the other hand had many new things to say about colour in the world and the beauty in the seemingly insignificant haystack or lilly pond. Don't you look at lilly ponds and haystacks in a different way after Monet? Can you really say the same after B?

[David Draime]

Originally Posted by Peter Dransfield

Don't you look at lilly ponds and haystacks in a different way after Monet? Can you really say the same after B?

After seeing a B painting, I certainly look at my own work in a different way: it sucks!

[Michael Georges]

So this piece is called Laocoon and his Sons. It was likely sculpted before 100BC. It was unearthed around the time of Michelangelo's birth and toured around europe - it is likely that Michelangelo and many of the artists of his time saw this sculpture which was regarded to be the pinnacle of artistic endeavor...1,500 years before...

Now imagine if someone had taken Michelangelo to this sculpture and said to him,

"This has been done before. Perfection has already been achieved and you might as well not even try to tread this old ground again."

Can you imagine our world without the Pieta? Without the David?

Perfection in stone had already been achieved 1500 years before Michelangelo was even born...

I think you are painting with too broad a brush here Peter. There is merit in many artistic paths, and each path has its own challenges and rewards. Granted, each will speak to different people as they view the works from those artists.

[Christy Talbott]

This argument fascinates...

My favorite painting (at the moment) has terrible technique and is loaded with idyllic fantasy and sentiment. I love it anyway! Chagall's Promenade.

Hope you all wrap this argument up soon, because it interests me and I keep checking my computer. And I've really got work to do!!

Later,
Christy

[Peter Dransfield]

Originally Posted by Christy Talbott

This argument fascinates...

My favorite painting (at the moment) has terrible technique and is loaded with idyllic fantasy and sentiment. I love it anyway! Chagall's Promenade.

Hope you all wrap this argument up soon, because it interests me and I keep checking my computer. And I've really got work to do!!

Later,
Christy

Have you visited the Opera House in Paris?

[Michael Georges]

You know, and it is wonderful that a group of artists were able to make the leap to impressionism and succeed at it. But just because Beaugereau did not hear that particular call in -his- art does not make his work unworthy of appreciation, and certainly does not warrant dismissal, IMO.

I for one see in his work, a focused lens of perspective that I think no painter in history had before him. It is expressed not only in his facility for creating incredible visual illusion that stops you dead in your tracks, but also in his ability to create freshness in allegory, fable, and the fantastic.

[Peter Dransfield]

Michelangelo was an artist of the renaissance during which artists were breaking from the conventions imposed by the Catholic Church and rediscovering the naturalism of the Greeks and Romans not only in the visual arts but following the capture of Islamic libraries in Cordoba and Seville of Philosophy and theatre. It was new to them after centuries of conformity and limitations regarding how the human figure could be portrayed following the disaster of the Iconoclasts. B lived several unbroken centuries after Michelangelo and chose to build nothing new and that was precisely the point that artists from Courbet to Monet were making.

[Chris Saper]

Peter,

Healthy discussions and debate about art are more than acceptable. That you have decided that your opinion of any of our members' work - in this case, Marvin's- has a place in this discussion is clearly misplaced.

Since you have been reading the forum posts for two years, it should be pretty clear that if Marvin, or any of our other members, wanted to hear opinions about their work, they'd have posted in the critiques section. Even in that venue, critiques are expected to offer constructive, helpful input, not relate to personal tastes of the viewer.

And I agree, this thread has reached a point of pointlessness.

Surely you understand the notion of ad hominem argument.