Monday, June 22, 2015

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you; you’re so like the lady with the mystic smile


I’m kidding. This is obviously not the Mona Lisa.

It’s Madonna and Child by Renoir.

Water Lilies?

Starry, Starry Night?

Woman With a Parasol?

Something from Picasso’s blue period?

The really nice thing about abstract art (this is Number 8 by Jackson Pollock) is that it can be anything you want it to be.

Me? I see Atlanta at rush hour.

8 comments:

  1. I have never even got close to understanding Pollock daubs. To me they are both simplistic and boring. One dot I could live with but not this rubbish.

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  2. It's very obviously a blustery, Fall day in a deciduous forest. I should know, I had an omelet for breakfast.

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  3. I'm quite keen myself. I enjoy the colours and can see a great deal in there. I did some of my own during my degree and liked those a lot too. The wildness of nature is hidden within some of them I find.

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  4. Aw come on ... it's a masterpiece of Realism!
    A fine example of the Tarpaulin school of painting.
    I believe its actual name is Cleanup on Aisle 8.

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  5. We have his 'Blue Poles' (which he named No 11 of 1952) in our National Gallery. Interestingly he said that the name detracted from the painting because people were looking for the poles (which I cannot see). I don't like it much, but I don't need to. I love that art is there, and that is says different things to different people. And to the same people on different days or moods.

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  6. We have a famous Jackson Pollock called Blue Poles hanging in our National Gallery in Canberra that looks a lot like this only with blue"poles". I quite like it but it's hard to see why it is so valuable !

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  7. Thanks to all of you for your comments. My following may be small but it is faithful! Yorkshire Pudding is excused because he is schmoozing around the eastern Mediterranean with Shirley, but I'm sure if he weren't he would have left a pithy comment.

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  8. “My following may be small but it is faithful! Yorkshire Pudding is excused because he is schmoozing…”

    And I’m excused because I’ve gone bonkers?

    You like abstract painting?! I wouldn’t have expected it. Call me a silly fool—and you probably will—but I assumed that a person who—as I understand you—needs certainty, if not concreteness, in religion, would be drawn to the same in art. That said, part of what I love about you is that you don’t fit the Republican/evangelical stereotype that I try to frame you with (and that you tolerate—and even love—me, of course…I know a handful of bloggers whom I might never meet in person, yet can truly say that I adore, and you and All Consuming and Elephant’s Child are all on that list. If I have any complaint about any of you, it’s that I never feel that I give enough to equal what you give to me.)

    When I lived in Minneapolis, one of my compensations for putting up with the winters was the Minneapolis Art Institute, which I loved more than I can say, maybe the moreso since I had never had access to a good art museum. There was another notable art museum in Minneapolis. I think it was called the Walker, and it only had “modern art.” I went one day, and really don’t think I got all the way through. What struck me most was that some people create that kind of thing, and other people profess to enjoy it. I really don’t mean to be insulting, but I really don’t get it either. I don’t want to see what I want in a painting, rather I want to see what’s there—a person, a bird, a dead dog in the highway, but something recognizable. Anytime you want to write at length about what you enjoy in abstract painting, I’ll be here to read it.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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