Aiming Below The Belt. Artistically!

[wizzard890]

+Finals are done. So is my sanity, I think, but that is not news. I don't know how I did. Frankly, I don't really care. These were, without a doubt, the two worst and most stressful academic weeks of my life. Thank you for bearing with me, especially you folks who had to watch me self-flagellate on Twitter. Life has been a bit of a roller-coaster,

Comments

[kerosenos]

Edward Hopper and Romaine Brooks both do this to me. Works like Hopper's The Nighthawks and Early Sunday Morning or Brooks' Peter, a Young English Girl and Self Portrait 1923 get me with their isolation. It's pausing outside that cafe on a cold night, alone, expected nowhere, wondering if you should spring for a cup of coffee. It's strolling down the street on that Sunday morning before anyone else is up and taking much more joy in the way the light's coming down the walls than you would were the sidewalks filled with people. It's not sociopathic, or loneliness, necessarily; it's a gentle, cold isolation.

It feels like...you're the spectator, and you watch and take pleasure in observation. You're a ghost.

It's hard to explain, haha.

[mieva_r]

I completely understand where you're coming from with this. I actually enjoy ending up in that state of mind (so long as it doesn't last too. Especially in winter. Winter is so good for that...

(*shares no link, gets chased away T^T*)

[wizzard890]

Dude, I forgive you. XD

[wizzard890]

Those are all beautiful, and God, Hopper totally captures that feeling of stillness that can set into a place, and sort of...into you, by extension. And you know, I don't think I'd ever really looked at Peter, a Young English Girl in that light of...self-containedness before.

[wizzard890]

FUCKING. LOVE. SIDNEY. SIME.

Not as grotesque as Beardsley, and thus not as dear to my heart, but yes yes yes.

AND YOUR RHYMES. MY GOD. THE RHYMES. Kill me. XD

[wizzard890]

You should see how shitty the National Geographics in Heaven's waiting room are.

[catgirlprime]

I had to suffer through a semester-long art history class taught by a cranky old British lady. I can't seem to find excitement in looking at paintings and whatnot anymore. They don't have the same impact as they did before it was a grade.

I do find more impact with art work like Jenny Holzer's Truisms or the 60s/70s performance art. Those can still really grab at me, but the paintings have been reduced to pretty pictures.

I dunno if you've seen this or not, but it seems like something you may enjoy.

=^..^=~

[wizzard890]

The paintings have been reduced to pretty pictures.

I am...so incredibly sorry. That's exactly the opposite of what any class on art is supposed to do. ._.

But that youtube video is...man, that's nuts.

[catgirlprime]

I used to love looking at classic paintings and finding my own meaning and story in it, but the dissecting...literature classes did the same thing to me. It was too much THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS. PERIOD.
Maybe my teachers just weren't teachers and were simply lecturing. It's depressing, regardless.

I was thrown when I saw it for the first time. I recognised so many of the scenes, and it was piece together so perfectly.

[fannypeaches]

I had an English teacher begin to do that to me with literature. It became so much more about disecting what was wrong with my favorite works, it made me sad. I'd rather be blissfully ignorant and enjoy what I love :)

I don't know how long ago the class was, but I hope it fades away! And for some reason your picture didn't load on my computer but I'm definitely looking up Jenny Holzer!

[wizzard890]

Yes. It is so easy to discount portraiture, but like. Nngh. That first one, of Charles Burney? His eyes are breathtaking. I mean...you know, you're exactly right, he really does paint from the inside out.

[byzantienne]

Well, you know.

There's this one.

[wizzard890]

Oh shit, de Goya. Yes. Just. He terrifies me.

Also this particular painting always reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth. For obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.

[fannypeaches]

Yes! And also The Road. The cannibals they encountered in that book gave me nightmares.

[shizuka_indigo]

/shiver
S-seconded.