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Art frees our spirit to soar
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Thank you Jung. A nice story about the origin of the song “Roll over Beethoven”. I didn’t know that Chuck Berry had a sister. Apparently many sisters have had a strong influence on the musical development of their brothers (see also: Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia and Mozart).
Pictures of an exhibition. Very beautiful Jung. Maybe an idea for a future topic?
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I like your analogy of comparing the Duo Sessions to art exhibits. At least here we don’t have to worry about parking.
Scrolling through this thread I am reminded of my inability to choose a favorite Duo Session. They are all so moving that it’s almost impossible to rank them. The live stream felt like a private Duo Session. We were witness to true art. A lot of artists rely on so much post production that their true voice disappears. MLT adds just enough reverb to make their natural voices just a little more clear.
If pressed, I would say the next Duo Session I click on will be my favorite…for a moment.
JP
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As this is all about artists and their art, here is some more great art to admire. How many do you recognize? I was surprised by how many I knew that I didn’t even know I knew! ????
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Hi Jung, thank you for the entertaining walk through the world of arts. Your little private exhibition grows constantly. Imagine only some of the pictures would be in your private property, then you could immediately go into retirement.
How many of the pictures I have recognized, I can not say exactly. At least I have seen some of these at exhibitions. I personally found the portrait of the Mona Lisa quite unspectacular. But this is also due to the fact that you have to stand in a queue and then stop just before the picture only a short time. The portrait is not particularly large and behind the thick glass screen it does not come out particularly well. But I have seen some very impressive huge murals in the Louvre. Some of them were 7 or 8 meters wide (maybe 26 feet). The people on these pictures were painted almost in life size (the people of earlier times were not particularly tall either). 🙂
The frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel I found very impressive. But this is where my expertise as an art connoisseur ends. Yes in life you sometimes know more things than you think you know.
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Hi Jurgen. I’ve heard people mention that despite the fame, the Mona Lisa is a rather small and unspectacular painting. It looks like there is a combination of artistic merit in the great innovation that went into the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, and events in history that also made it even more famous and a household name. Here are the two best explanations I’ve found. One that drills down on it’s innovation and the second more on the historic relevance.
Innovation of the Mona Lisa painting that made it so special:
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Historic relevance of the Mona Lisa painting that made it so famous:
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Sometimes great art can be found in very small details
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Jurgen, wow this is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this before, sculpture art on the tip of a pencil. The graphite/lead of the pencil is so pliable, it’s amazing the detail in the artwork that is possible. It is so delicate, you would have to have the tip sealed to protect it. Thanks for sharing that.
For me in the arts, music always moved me the most, but there have been a few paintings that I’ve encountered over the years that really captivated me. A feeling or mood it could evoke from me that no words ever could was very special. One modern one that come to mind is this one, which is also listed in the video of the 100 greatest of all time. This one evokes feelings of loneliness in the city. A kind of late night melancholic mood. Painting is called “Night Hawks”
Another artist that always appealed to me was Thomas Kinkade. His paintings always portrayed it’s subject in a fairy tale light where it feels more life like and colourful and dramatic than reality. I like his light effects, especially of buildings and homes, viewed from the perspective of the cold outside, where you can feel the warmth and coziness of home. Evokes a feeling of longing for that warmth.
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Hi Jung, thanks for the videos on Mona Lisa. What I meant is this: When you stand there in front of the portrait in the Louvre, you have very high expectations, precisely because the picture is so famous and there is so much information about it. I don’t know exactly what I expected to see there, but this rather inconspicuous painting clearly did not meet my high expectations. If I had known nothing about the painting, had more time to look at it, and had been allowed to get closer to it, it would have had a very different effect on me. That’s the problem when certain things are hyped too much.
I know the picture Night Hawks well. It always looks very cool and sober to me. Maybe because the white surface in the middle of the room is so dominant. The figures in the big naked room seem lost and somehow lonely, as you so rightly said. The people exist simultaneously in the room but they do not exist together. But that’s the way it is with art: one and the same picture can have a completely different effect on every viewer. That’s why I always find it very difficult to analyze and interpret pictures or paintings. One can agree on whether a picture belongs to a certain epoch, whether it corresponds to a certain art style and whether it fulfills certain formal criteria. But in my opinion that’s all. In this context I always have to think of the Rorschach test: put a complex inkblot in front of ten different people and you will get ten different interpretations. None is wrong or right. Each point of view expresses the experiences and feelings of a particular person. It is the same with art.
I don’t know the artist Thomas Kinkades by name, but I’ve certainly seen his paintings before and I like his pictures very much. Thank you for sharing. They radiate a lot of warmth, the colors and shapes seem soft and harmonious. Sometimes he drifts for my taste almost a little bit into the kitschy without really landing there. Some pictures somehow remind me of Tolkiens Shire from the movies. The cozy little houses with the round doors, the rolling hills, the lush green of the landscape and the beautiful gardens full of flowers and vegetables. An oasis of peace and security in the wild and threatening Middle Earth.
I personally like pictures with a photorealistic effect very much. These images are frowned upon among so-called art connoisseurs, because they simply depict reality. But it is difficult to paint or draw realistically what you see, and I find pictures fascinating that look as if you could walk straight into them. Otherwise, I like pictures that consist only of shapes and colors. So non-objective or abstract art.
Sometimes I also really like comic art. I am a self-confessed Donald Duck fan. As a child I devoured these comics. As you probably know, the Duck Clan is not an invention of Walt Disney, but was designed by Carl Barks. This man not only drew comics for Walt Disney, but also created oil paintings. His stories about the Duck Clan were full of bizarre characters, funny situations and sometimes politically motivated. Most of the time, old legends have been brought back to life. I liked that a lot when I was young. For example, I learned something about Jason and the golden fleece, went in search of El Dorado or explored the Seven Golden Cities together with the Duck clan and was able to experience the Klondike gold rush first hand. A bit like Jules Verne, only in pictorial form, sometimes Indiana Jones with ducks.
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Thanks for those videos about the Mona Lisa, Jung. Count me among those who had always wondered why that painting was considered such a masterpiece. It’s never seemed all that spectacular to me, but given what an improvement it was on the techniques of the time, I can now see why it would have made a huge splash. Then at some later point it entered the category of “famous for being famous”. I’m guessing that the reverence shown to Shakespeare has followed a similar trajectory.
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Hi David. Agree. In the arts at the time when someone creates something completely new, revolutionary, that has never been done before, and changes everything from that point forward is quite the big deal. Decades or centuries later when so many have followed suit, that initial spectacular splash may have faded, but it’s greatness will always prevail. Leonardo Da Vinci, Beethoven, Beatles etc…all pioneers who changed their art forever.
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