Monty by Jim Meddick for May 18, 2012

That’s a no brainer: Time machines

sunrises

how can you even paint clouds? they never stay still..

This is how Impressionism got started. The Impressionists were fascinated by natural light, but it keeps changing, so they started painting their more lasting “impressions” of a scene. Little by little their styles turned farther and farther away from what was in front of them and more and more to their own emotions. That was the start of the slide to the worst of modern art, cut off from any concern with actual reality. (Class dismissed.)

Uhh, Monty? There’s a new sunset to paint from every day. You should not expect to finish off a painting in just one session! But then you are kind of in the dark….

Photograph.

Actually, all those other paintings were of sunRISES (that’s how they do it!)

Interesting movie. Great actors.

This is how the idea for “The Scream” came up.

When you see a painting or a photo of a “Sunrise” how do you know that it isn’t really a “Sunset”??

Guess only the artist or photographer knows for sure.

Comicnut — You can tell by whether it’s facing east or west, silly!

And pschearer, my sweet… I know I can always count on you… Sigh.. :)

pshearer, You’re correct. The Impressionist’ loved the bright vivid colors the new oil based paint allowed them to use. But the used it to paint nature. They loved “the way light falls on object”. The were not shy about using them, either. They knew the scientific theory behind the way colors compliment each other…One day Kandinski was looking at one of Monet’s Hatstacks, when he became obsessed with the bright color of orange Monet had used for the sunset. He figured the colors don’t need to form anything to be beautiful. Which led to Pollock just pouring cans of paint on the canvas. Shoot, didn’t even need any skill..

I know that, at least Monet, would take several canvasses along with him, and he would switch canvasses once every hour. He felt the light changed too much as the day moved on and would change the picture too much. Then he would do the same canvases at the same time the next day, until all the paintings were finished. Unless of course he got pissed at himself and burned them all. He had a bad habit of doing that. They say he burned hundreds over the years. Every one of them would be worth at least 50 million dollars today….

JohnnyDiego, as silly as it sounds, new art after that was called Post Modern Art.

For my money, the French Impressionists are a key to understanding art. At their core, they they were traditional representational painters. You can draw a line from them to all the art that came before, all the way back to cave paintings… But by the same token all art that came after them can be traced back to them. They had a foot in each world. Rinnnnng! Class over…

Susan, why did Camille’s cat get thrown out the door? He clawed Monet….

Monty, the sun will come again tomorrow. You can bet your bottom dollar!

Gotta love his French beret and neckerchief.