Art Lovers discussion
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Sorry I can't find your polls. :(
Ruth wrote: "https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/1... You have to scroll way down to #16"
You're right, Ruth! It's poll #15 how did that happen! Wow and how will anyone ever find it? Well.... anyway...
The questions was simply:
I am in the process of creating a new background picture. In the meantime I have changed the current one a couple of times. Right now the one displayed is Magritte's 'The False Mirror'. Before that one, I had one by M. C. Escher and before that our original was Picasso's 'Guernica'. What do you think of the current background painting?
I already have something in mind for the background picture. The one up there for now is probably temporary. But I am curious as to everyone's thoughts about this one so thank you everyone who has voted.
And if you haven't voted, or can't find the poll, the options were:
a) Cool! I could go for this one as the background for the group.
b) WOW! Don't look at me again! I don't want a huge eyeball looking down at me in the group. No thanks!
c) I don't have an opinion about this, I don't quite know, but I don't think I would want to be in a group with an eyeball looking at everyone
d) An eye behind van Gogh... Hmmm, I don't know how I feel about this. But it doesn't influence my activity in the group
e) (one write in so far) This isn't something I worry about overmuch. If we change it every few months or weeks, I would be just as happy as if we spent a lot of time and energy choosing or developing one image to use all the time
There is another poll out there somewhere....I got a notification on my phone of someone who voted on the poll and when I went to it, it took me to a totally different poll. But being on my phone, I couldn't copy and paste the link. Does anyone have the link to that poll? I think others are voting there... And I can't get to it from here (my PC).
This link has 17 voters:https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...
But I cannot find it in the list of polls.
If you use the link posted by Ruth and scroll down to 16 that poll has only 6 votes.
Thank you, Dirk. That’s the link I need and couldn’t find. Yes, I have no idea how they both came about and I haven’t invited half of the group yet! I will do the rest of the invites today and see where all those votes go.Tomorrow I will continue with what we were planning. But this is good information to know, thank you everybody who has voted!
Well, from the polls I think I have more or less an answer to what the majority of the group would prefer. Thank you to everyone who voted and participated in the poll! Your vote is heard!
To whoever wrote in that suggestion, great idea! And it seems to be the most popular vote, myself included. Thank you!There is a New Year background that I just barely figured out how to post so I'm sorry it's now 10 days after the new year. Dirk did a great job of creating the scene!
I'll keep this one up for awhile then I will post a picture of various movements every few months. I will try to cover a wide variety and hope to accommodate the tastes of everyone, or almost everyone in the group.
As always, YOU'RE AWESOME!
Hello everyone!I don't know if you've even noticed but I have changed the background picture again. So we've had three now this year. We had the one Dirk created for the New Year, we had that up for a couple months.
So in this thread, whenever I change a background picture, I will post the name and artist here just in case anyone cares. IDK. Anyway, and if there is something interesting to say about the piece I will also add it. Just some tidbit of information.
The second background picture that I had, the black and white one that I just changed and is no longer there, I had it up for about 2 months, was
M.C. Escher Floating Keys
The problem I am having with finding background pictures is the size is SO small! There are hardly any pictures on the net that fit into the masthead specifications to upload for the background. So I don't really have much of a choice for pictures. I kind of think of an artist and browse the images. I save several and try them all until one fits. It's more trial and error. But I will do my best to cover a wide array of genres in order to cater to our wide variety of artistic taste in the group.
The current background is
Vasily Kandinsky Blue Painting
1924
And the background usually doesn't show the whole painting, either so I will also post the whole thing here so you can see what it really looks like.
Guggenheim Museum
So, until I change it again...Ciao for now!
Heather wrote: "Hello everyone!I don't know if you've even noticed but I have changed the background picture again. So we've had three now this year. We had the one Dirk created for the New Year, we had that up ..."
Love it!
Heather wrote: "Thank you Carol!"Like it too!
Good choice Heather!
Dirk wrote: "Heather wrote: "Thank you Carol!"Like it too!
Good choice Heather!"
Thank you, Dirk :)
You can see I changed the background picture once again. And again it was a matter of choosing many different pictures, trying to upload them, and seeing which one would 'take'. This is the first one which would actually 'fit' the dimensions specified. I think it goes without much explanation.
The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo
Ceiling Sistine Chapel
I will add a little information I found while looking for a picture that would fit:
"Of all the marvelous images that crowd the immense complex of the Sistine Ceiling, The Creation of Adam is undoubtedly the one which has most deeply impressed posterity. No wonder, for here we are given a single overwhelming vision of the sublimity of God and the potential nobility of man unprecedented and unrivaled in the entire history of visual art. No longer standing upon earth with closed eyes and mantle, the Lord floats through the heavens, His mantle widespread and bursting with angelic forms, and His calm gaze accompanying and reinforcing the movement of His mighty arm. He extends His forefinger, about to touch that of Adam, who reclines on the barren coast of earth, barely able as yet to lift his hand. The divine form is convex, explosive, paternal; the human concave, receptive, and conspicuously impotent. The incipient, infecundating contact about to take place between the two index fingers has often been described as a spark or a current, a modern electrical metaphor doubtless foreign to the sixteenth century, but natural enough considering the river of life which seems about to flow into the waiting body.
Genesis tells how the Lord created Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. This story is never illustrated literally in Renaissance art. Usually, as in Jacopo della Quercia's beautiful relief on the facade of the church of San Petronio in Bologna, which must have impressed the young Michelangelo deeply, the Creator stands on earth and blesses the already formed body of Adam, read together with the ground, since his name in Hebrew means earth. Michelangelo's completely new image seems to symbolize a still further idea - the instillation of divine power in humanity, which took place at the Incarnation. Given Cardinal Vigerio's reiterated insistence on the doctrine of the two Adams, and the position of the scene immediately after the barrier to the sanctuary, at the spot where the Annunciation customarily appeared, and after Ezekiel with his vision of the Virgin Birth, this would seem natural enough. The scene recalls the famous verses from Isaiah, "Who hath believed our report ? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground . ..," invariably taken by theologians to foretell the Incarnation of Christ, shoot of Jesse's rod. Two striking visual elements make clear that this was one of the passages actually recommended to Michelangelo by his probable adviser, Cardinal Vigerio. First, the mighty right arm of the Lord is revealed, naked as in no other of His appearances on the Sistine Ceiling, nor anywhere else, as far as I have been able to determine, in all of Christian art prior to this time. (The left arm is clothed, at least to the elbow, by a white sleeve.) Second, directly under Adam, the arm of the veiled youth to the left above the Persian Sibyl projects into the scene - a matter that involved considerable advance planning - coming as close to touching Adam's thigh as the Creator does his finger. This hand holds a cornucopia bursting with Rovere leaves and acorns, appearing to grow from the dry ground, as full of potency as Adam ("ground") is empty of it. Such an image is characteristic not only of Michelangelo, who insofar as possible preferred to show male figures, including that of Christ, completely naked, but of the Roman High Renaissance and of Julius II himself, whose language as recorded by his astonished contemporaries overflows with boasts of his own physical strength and potency."
https://www.michelangelo.org/the-crea...
I like your choices too ,Heather.. something to learn from all of it..
Heather wrote: "You can see I changed the background picture once again. And again it was a matter of choosing many different pictures, trying to upload them, and seeing which one would 'take'. This is the first o..."Good choice Heather!
Hello everyone! If you've noticed, which I don't know if you really do, but some of you do, I have changed the background picture of the main page. Like I've said before, it takes forever to find a picture online that will fit the specifications required for this background picture!!! Like, NO images are these specs! So I've been looking at literally a hundred or so images of art and I'm really tired though I know it's not that late. So I will work on this more tomorrow. I am NOT through with this background! This will not be our current background picture for the next few months. BUT, from the little bit that you can see, I bet you can still guess the artist!
This is just for fun! If you do want to play, go ahead and post your guess of the artist in a comment here but please make it a spoiler so as not to alert the others who may want to play! But this is rather easy. :)
I will adjust the background photo tomorrow. Goodnight!
Me, I like it!Jungle green and apes!
Dirk wrote: "Me, I like it!Jungle green and apes!"
I don't know if you're being facetious or not, Dirk! But as for my life right now, it might have to suffice before I can fix it. So, I'm glad you like it! haha!
Heather wrote: "Dirk wrote: "Me, I like it!Jungle green and apes!"
I don't know if you're being facetious or not, Dirk! But as for my life right now, it might have to suffice before I can fix it. So, I'm glad yo..."
It was certainly not my intention to make fun of your effort Heather!
I recognized the painting and the artist, and I don't mind it it's only a part.
But to be honest I hardly use the homepage, so I had not noticed the change.
I'm sorry to hear life is not going so well for you.
We are suffering a heatwave at the moment, most of Europe.
Started yesterday and will last probably till Wednesday.
Our newest background picture. I think I have figured out how I can post some of the pictures I find. But they have to already be ones that are somewhat wide and flat. This one was the easiest so far! So this is, if you can't guess, Mr. Roy Fox Lichtenstein 10/27/23-9/29/97.
Roy Lichtensten is one of the most recognizable pop artists, due to his bright, vibrant and unique style. He uses only lines and dots in his pieces, and uses only red, blue, yellow and black. This creates a simple, basic image, but by using a mixture of coloured and black dots to create shading, can also create complex, detailed pieces.
Sunrise
Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting". His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lic...
I want to thank everyone here for participating in the poll. I was pleasantly surprised at how many people voted! It's great to have this many votes to give me more of an idea of what kind of art is most popular and what is least.As for the current background, I changed it from the Sunrise of Lichtenstein because I just thought that wasn't interesting. Impressionism got the most votes so I started there.
I said in a previous post that I would post here the whole picture and information about it. Well...
I copied and saved this picture which was a background picture of a museum site. So I actually don't have any information about it, but I'm willing to bet it's impressionistic so I chose it, and it fit!
Hope you enjoy it for a few months. :)
It could be this one by Monet, although the colours differ a bit.(Happens a lot with digital reproductions)
Floating Ice on the Seine
1880
oil/canvas
Shelburne Museum VT
Dirk wrote: "It could be this one by Monet, although the colours differ a bit.(Happens a lot with digital reproductions)
Floating Ice on the Seine
1880
oil/canvas
Shelburne Museum VT"
I just now saw your comment. Yes, it could very well be that one. It looks a bit different when you see the whole thing, they took the middle part only, I guess. But I think you're right. Good find!
Okay, regarding today's change of background, or masthead photo, It's not a famous 'find art' but it is known as a famous tapestry by Guido Borelli.Here is what the whole thing looks like. You know, of course I have to squish it and elongate the sides to make it fit. Luckily I did find something to go here!
by Guido Borelli
I think it's beautiful! I was looking for famous fine art with a sleigh or bells or horses, when I have time, I might still look for something like that. OR if you have a suggestion of a painting for me, I'll be happy to try to use it!
Heather wrote: "Okay, regarding today's change of background, or masthead photo, It's not a famous 'find art' but it is known as a famous tapestry by Guido Borelli.Here is what the whole thing looks like. You kn..."
Looks good, but it is indeed a bit better when you see the whole picture!
So it's cool where I found this picture! It's a website that of course, sells tapestries, but they also sell masks. And I bought this mask!
Alright, I didn't like what I posted just yesterday because we could hardly see any of Florence in the picture, not enough to do it justice. So I picked a different one today. I hope this is better, it is nothing like what the whole picture looks like, which I will post below, I cropped it to try to capture her lips. I did try to capture their eyes, but didn't succeed. I don't know if this artist is too famous, she is of the 60s and still alive at this time.
Here is the piece:
I couldn't find a title for this piece. I put the url into the search engine and all that came up was her biography showing many more of her works.
So I'll introduce her:
Françoise Nielly, 1960 ~ Palette Knife painter
Françoise Nielly is a French knife-painter who is famous for painting vibrant and colourful closeup portraits of people such as Barack Obama. She was born in Marseille, brought up near Cannes and Saint-Tropez and is now living in Paris.
Per più informazioni leggi qui: https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoe...© Tutt'Art@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica |
What I found interesting was I looked at this and two other sites and they are all written in Italian! She is a French artist, she lives in Paris, yet all the sites I saw were written in the Italian language. Luckily I could read it and understand it, but I'm not so good as to be able to translate to share what I learned. I'll just paste the little bit I learned that was in English.
For more of her works: https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoe...
I thought it would be time for another picture. Did we see enough of our famous Last Supper? The one I posted is also a more famous one. "A leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a large canvas, it is a founding work of the neo-impressionist movement" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunda...
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Georges Seurat
1884-1886
Seurat painted A Sunday Afternoon between May 1884 and March 1885, and from October 1885 to May 1886, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original and completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He sat in the park, creating numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on issues of colour, light, and form. The painting is approximately 2 by 3 meters (7 by 10 feet) in size.
Inspired by optical effects and perception inherent in the color theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and others, Seurat adapted this scientific research to his painting. Seurat contrasted miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colors that when unified optically in the human eye were perceived as a single shade or hue. He believed that this form of painting, called Divisionism at the time (a term he preferred) but now known as Pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brushstrokes. The use of dots of almost uniform size came in the second year of his work on the painting, 1885–86. To make the experience of the painting even more vivid, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited today at the Art Institute of Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunda...
Here is the full picture. I could only post the top half as I have to make it fit a strange very wide but very short image. Here you go!
Heather wrote: "I thought it would be time for another picture. Did we see enough of our famous Last Supper? The one I posted is also a more famous one. "A leading example of pointillist technique, executed on a ..."
Good choice! I've always loved this picture.
Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "Heather wrote: "I thought it would be time for another picture. Did we see enough of our famous Last Supper? The one I posted is also a more famous one. "A leading example of pointillist technique..."
Thank you, Carol! I was just going to come back and add some more info about the painting. :)
Dirk wrote: "Looks good Heather!"Thank you, Dirk!
Well, it has been a little while since I changed the background picture and I thought it was about time. I originally wanted to choose a painting that included all or most of the colors that people all over the world use for their festivals during December but as of today, nobody has commented. :(
So I thought of Mondrain and his squares and I just looked for red, white and green. It looked like he used all similar colors for the majority or about all of his works and none of them contained just those colors. So that was out.
I have a folder in my own computer labeled "Art" where I collect pictures and paintings that I like or find particularly fascinating.
For the background picture I try to pick one that is by a famous artist but also switch up the movements so I can accommodate everyone's taste in art.
I admit, I am pretty technostupid and it is difficult anyway to fit any picture with 970pixels width and only 245pixels height. That is a huge width and very small height. Thus I have to crop exceedingly every picture. So you only get, what I consider, the most relevant part of the painting.
To crop and adjust and upload from my computer (NOT the net) takes time and effort for me. It usually takes about 2 hours to change the background picture! This is one reason why I don't do it very often.
Anyway The current picture was saved in my Art folder on my computer. It was called Reprise. For the life of me, I have no idea how I found it! I couldn't find it again although I searched and searched. It did lead me too "search in Fine Art" so maybe it is by a famous artist. Or maybe it's something I found on Pintrest. IDK. I'm sorry!
This is the whole picture:
Reprise
Unknown
Beautiful colors on your newest background picture, Heather.
I think I found the artist Heather: could it be Terry Winters?http://www.stephaniebuhmann.com/febru...
That a it indeed, Dirk! Great job, thank you! I don’t know how in the world you found this, I don’t know how to look, I guess. Lol but glad you did.Thank you, Connie! These are actually my favorite colors and I liked how it was displayed so I was really attracted to this work. Since Dirk found out some info about it, I’ll summarize it below.
Had to change the background today. I really did like the background that we had before and we only had that one for a month, which is less time than usual. So I might just put that one, or one similar to that up again. But, Happy New Year to everyone in the group. You can't miss it (I hope). It's posted in two different threads and now as the background on the group front page.
So here is the whole picture. I had to play with it to reduce it to 970px wide and 245px tall. That is very wide and very short! It doesn't show much! Here it is total:
Heather, your group home picture shows everything we wish for in 2022--happiness, love, friendship, good health, peace, etc. Have a Happy New Year!
Connie wrote: "Heather, your group home picture shows everything we wish for in 2022--happiness, love, friendship, good health, peace, etc. Have a Happy New Year!"I just saw your message, Connie. Yes I agree that it does incorporate everything we wish for instead of just saying "happy New Year". I especially liked this one. Thank you for commenting on it!
And a Happy New Year to you! I hope it has started out well for you and yours!
New Background Picture March 2022Yes, you will see I had to alter it a little (lot). The dimensions for this odd wide screen are 970 pixels wide to 245 pixels high which almost NO paintings fit that. But abstract art can still be aesthetically pleasing for our background nonetheless, although it doesn't honor the artist as well. This is why I will do it here:
Fighting Forms
Franz Marc
1914
In Marc's very final works before the outbreak of the First World War, it is extremely difficult to identify any animals, since non-representational form and abstraction have taken over. One of his final major paintings is Kämpfende Formen (Fighting Forms)...
Painted at the start of the Great War, Fighting Forms (1914) is clearly the product of a country at war. We see in Marc's painting two opposing forces that are very obvious. This mentality was very common during World War I because of propaganda. Propaganda drove a wedge between good and evil, right and wrong. Fighting Forms perfectly expresses this belief. As Marc explains:"Objects speak: objects possess will and form, why should we wish to interrupt them! We have nothing sensible to say to them. Haven't we learned in the last thousand years that the more we confront objects with the reflection of their appearance, the more silent they become.
Franz Marc actually participated directly in World War I. Marc enlisted as soon as the war started in 1914. However, in an effort to keep protect the future of German art, many prominent artists of the time were taken out of action. Before the order reached Marc, he was killed near Verdun, France on March 4th, 1916.
Fighting Forms shows the influence of color symbolism, a technique that had been pioneered by Vincent van Gogh. While Van Gogh used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic colors to express subjective emotions, Marc use colors to humanize natural forms in the landscape, emphasizing his own interest in pantheism. Fighting Forms was Marc's last painting, which clearly indicated that he had abandoned figural painting.
https://www.franzmarc.org/Fighting-Fo...
(I just want to add that I think could be applicable in the world now)
Dirk wrote: "Good choice Heather!"Thank you, Dirk!
Definitely timely! Wonderfully expressive image for then and now!
I agree with you about how it’s so expressive, Zoe. I just love how he can evoke emotion and get his point across just using color and some abstract brush strokes.
To the first person who reads this comment. Would you mind posting a link to the poll here in this thread please? Because for some reason, I can't see it. When I click on 'Polls' at the side, it doesn't show my recent one.
And...I'm afraid I created two polls, and I'm afraid I invited people twice. The first time I sent the invites, it timed out on me, then when I tried to find my poll, as I said above, I couldn't find it. So I just kept clicking back-page until I got to my poll, then saved it. But did it save twice?
Someone has to answer these questions for me because right now I'm blind to the whole thing! I'm sorry!