Category Archives: art

“AVANT-GARDE AND KITSCH”.

“AVANT-GARDE AND KITSCH”. I posted here about the influential belief that “kitsch” (bad art) was bad for society. In the article I referred to yesterday, Louis Menand writes about Dwight Mcdonald and his protege Clement Greenberg, who were influential in … Continue reading

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CORK.

CORK. Frank O’Connor tells a story about Joyce which gives an idea of why reading him leads into a world of word associations and symbols in which everything may represent something else. (O’Connor’s story is in the Viking Critical Edition … Continue reading

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SAND SCULPTURES AT DUBLIN CASTLE.

SAND SCULPTURES AT DUBLIN CASTLE. We visited Dublin Castle recently. Artists were just beginning to rough out some major sand sculptures, carving slices from large cubes of compacted sand. Apparently every August there is a display of large sand sculptures … Continue reading

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GREAT ARTISTS WITH BAD EYESIGHT.

GREAT ARTISTS WITH BAD EYESIGHT. Capturing the depth of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface is the classic challenge for realistic painters. As reported in an article in Colloquy by Janelle Weaver, Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard professor … Continue reading

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LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND SHADOWS.

LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND SHADOWS. I posted here on how flatness has been valued in art since around the 1920’s, with depth and a sense of space being less valued. In this way, contemporary art has returned to what babies and … Continue reading

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LEARNING TO DRAW.

LEARNING TO DRAW. Annalisa has been teaching art to children. She says that children tend to draw the same picture every time. A landscape might be a yellow circle in the upper right hand corner, often with a smiley face, … Continue reading

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SAND-CASTLE TECHNIQUES.

SAND-CASTLE TECHNIQUES. Instapundit linked to this article in Popular Mechanics about sand-castle techniques. The keys to construction, as you may well know, are wet sand and compaction. The article has some photos of some tools that are used for carving … Continue reading

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WILL 3D MOVIES CHANGE HOW WE LOOK AT THE WORLD?

WILL 3D MOVIES CHANGE HOW WE LOOK AT THE WORLD? I posted here about how modern art and modern architecture have valued flatness. In the post I quoted Greg Kreutz: “…from the 1920′s onward…Depicting light and depth became something like … Continue reading

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CHASING THE LIGHT—JOHN SINGER SARGENT.

CHASING THE LIGHT—JOHN SINGER SARGENT. For “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, there would be only a couple minutes each day when the light Sargent was trying to capture would exist. Sargent’s friend Edmund Gosse described how the painting was done: “Everything … Continue reading

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BALANCING JAPANESE LANTERNS AND THE LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN.

BALANCING JAPANESE LANTERNS AND THE LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN. The camera photographing the light in New York City shows how rapidly it changes. John Singer Sargent set out to portray the light at twilight in his painting “Carnation, Lily, … Continue reading

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