I went with my 14-year old son whose current art theme is portraiture. Yesterday we went to see two shows also on this theme, Lucian Freud and Antony Gormley. More on these in a future post I hope.
Thanks Dan
I had a quick look at your sites too. Interesting art over the years. I grew up in Croydon too, where you found the stone head. You seem to be finding folklore in the urban setting, or am I missing the point?
I checked out the link… and I think I prefer your sketches to these naive zombie-like (I hesitate to dignify them by calling them ‘sculptures’) artworks.
Yes
I think I agree
Interesting little exhibition. Those figures in the middle and on the edge a couple of little Picassos. Elegant pieces. Your point in your blog on crap art is well taken. But I cannot help thinking Picasso genuinely a great artist. What people like me try to do, scratching away trying to find an image, a meaning, he could do like breathing.
Yes, but it was determined, he was destined, he necessarily, produced art, as a result of his formative education (in the broadest sense of that word). As Ms Nochlin points out, “young Picasso passed all the examinations for entrance to the Barcelona, and later to the Madrid, Academy of Art at the age of 15 in but a single day, a feat of such difficulty that most candidates required a month of preparation. But one would like to find out more about similar precocious qualifiers for art academies who then went on to achieve nothing but mediocrity or failure—in whom, of course, art historians are uninterested—or to study in greater detail the role played by Picasso’s art-professor father in the pictorial precocity of his son. What if Picasso had been born a girl? Would Señor Ruiz have paid as much attention or stimulated as much ambition for achievement in a little Pablita?” He was also in the right place at the right time, Paris. He changed his name from Ruiz to Picasso which seems more closely related to the art of painting pictures than Ruiz… what’s that theory that names relate to occupations? And being in the right place at the right time he was supported by the right people. Yes, I like his drawings, he was good, and of course when one is working all the time in whatever field one acquires great dexterity. He was very rich, and a Communist, do I espy an incongruity there? Yes, does Ms Pacheco fancy herself as some kind of female Picasso? The names are not that far apart linguistically?
So very strange… (k)
Thanks for the introduction to Ana Maria Pacheco. In searching the Internet I learned that she’s from Brazil and works in the UK.
https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/explore-art/items/2005.4962/man-and-his-sheep
I just found this link.
It’s currently on display as part of an exhibition on various approaches to portraiture.
https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/bmag/whats-on/thoughts-on-portraiture
I went with my 14-year old son whose current art theme is portraiture. Yesterday we went to see two shows also on this theme, Lucian Freud and Antony Gormley. More on these in a future post I hope.
Maybe a different cultural take on The Emperor’s New Clothes?
Here’s the link
https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/explore-art/items/2005.4962/man-and-his-sheep
To me it’s quite a powerful and complex statement on human relationships of power and compliance
Love her stuff, especially her sculptures…very powerful. My old english teacher knows her, so I was lucky enough to meet her (very briefly), once.
Thanks Dan
I had a quick look at your sites too. Interesting art over the years. I grew up in Croydon too, where you found the stone head. You seem to be finding folklore in the urban setting, or am I missing the point?
I checked out the link… and I think I prefer your sketches to these naive zombie-like (I hesitate to dignify them by calling them ‘sculptures’) artworks.
Yes
I think I agree
Interesting little exhibition. Those figures in the middle and on the edge a couple of little Picassos. Elegant pieces. Your point in your blog on crap art is well taken. But I cannot help thinking Picasso genuinely a great artist. What people like me try to do, scratching away trying to find an image, a meaning, he could do like breathing.
Yes, but it was determined, he was destined, he necessarily, produced art, as a result of his formative education (in the broadest sense of that word). As Ms Nochlin points out, “young Picasso passed all the examinations for entrance to the Barcelona, and later to the Madrid, Academy of Art at the age of 15 in but a single day, a feat of such difficulty that most candidates required a month of preparation. But one would like to find out more about similar precocious qualifiers for art academies who then went on to achieve nothing but mediocrity or failure—in whom, of course, art historians are uninterested—or to study in greater detail the role played by Picasso’s art-professor father in the pictorial precocity of his son. What if Picasso had been born a girl? Would Señor Ruiz have paid as much attention or stimulated as much ambition for achievement in a little Pablita?” He was also in the right place at the right time, Paris. He changed his name from Ruiz to Picasso which seems more closely related to the art of painting pictures than Ruiz… what’s that theory that names relate to occupations? And being in the right place at the right time he was supported by the right people. Yes, I like his drawings, he was good, and of course when one is working all the time in whatever field one acquires great dexterity. He was very rich, and a Communist, do I espy an incongruity there? Yes, does Ms Pacheco fancy herself as some kind of female Picasso? The names are not that far apart linguistically?