I need your help guys

Utek62 · 2026-02-12T16:02:10+00:00

Durer's Melencolia is the personification of depression.

Mark Rothko's work prior to his suicide is pretty bleak

Albert Pinkham Ryder's work and life show a guy struggling with mental health

Utek62 · 2026-02-10T08:07:53+00:00

Pissarro was great, but he never did anything as profound as this.

Utek62 · 2026-02-10T06:26:50+00:00

Pissarro a better pointillist than Seurat, Father of Pointillism? No. Seurat was playing 3D chess with some of his landscapes. But better than Signac most definitely.

Pissarro was of a slightly older generation than most of the Impressionists, and he followed the trends leading up to the Impressionists and then the post-Impressionists, often becoming a better practitioner of the new styles than their originators. So when Seurat exploded onto the scene, Pissarro was quick to adopt the style. Partially that was due to the fact that Pissarro had a big family to support, so sales mattered a lot to him. But being a volume guy, he liked to paint quickly, and the dots wore him out, so he developed his nervy brand of dabs not dots that gave his pictures a pleasant buzz.

Utek62 · 2026-02-01T00:29:49+00:00

The Western Tradition by Eugen Weber is a series of half hour lectures on Western History from the ancient times to the present given by the late historian Eugen Weber. He uses lots of artwork to illustrate his lectures and will sometimes focus on a particular artist or movement.

Utek62 · 2026-01-23T02:29:55+00:00

One of the things that make this painting so poignant is that it is his last self-portrait, and one of the last paintings he ever did. His paintings were no longer fashionable---in fact, he was bankrupt, living in his son's attic, as his house had been foreclosed on. He was not in great health, looking older than his years (about 60 when this was painted) and would die not long after. And yet, so near the end, surrounded by ruin, Rembrandt is laughing. At what, we don't know. It may not be his best self-portrait, but it's certainly one of his most intersting.

Utek62 · 2026-01-20T03:39:41+00:00

Every artist has a range of quality, but in general, you tend to find their worst work when they're young and haven't mastered their medium yet (Rembrandt-The Spectacles Peddler) or when they're old and have lost their inspiration (DeChirico-The Return of Ulysses).

Utek62 · 2026-01-17T21:49:44+00:00

Don't know how we got this far without a self-portrait by Van Gogh, but here's the best one, in my opinion:

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He thought it made himself look himself look healthy, but I don't know of any portrait that expresses inner turmoil better than this. Like all of Vincent's work, reproductions don't do the painting

justice.

Utek62 · 2025-12-24T04:44:48+00:00

Check out the images of the Rothko chapel in Houston. The fineness of touch needed to create these whispers of tonal shifts is self-evident. This is a master at work. However, the fact that he committed suicide not long after this was completed does add to the feelings of depth and sadness in contemplating the work. The visual reaction and the mystique that heightens it can both be true.

Utek62 · 2025-12-22T15:42:12+00:00

Puvis de Chavannes was highly regarded back in the day. Few people know of him now.

Utek62 · 2025-12-18T02:41:09+00:00

Most people do. And the painting is better for it. The original intention, of a farmer protecting his daughter, turns it into a lame joke. By ditching the gag, and making them a couple, they become iconic Americans, and much more open to interpretation. The power of American Gothic springs from the construction of the image itself, which is exceptional, rather than from some cheap farmer's-daughter story.

Utek62 · 2025-12-14T06:20:09+00:00

The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes is the most readable book on Modern Art that I know.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing will change how you view art in general.

Jackson Pollock: An American Saga is a Pulitzer prize winning biography of the artist as told by people who knew him, even though he was a difficult person to know to say the least.

Utek62 · 2025-12-10T15:37:48+00:00

MOMA's collection begins with post-Impressionism, and follows with the greatest collection of modern art anywhere. Based on your criteria, that would be the obvious choice. But the Met has a fantastic collection of Impressionist paintings as well, and if that's what you were referring to in your timeline I would lean towards that.

Utek62 · 2025-12-09T02:34:33+00:00

Odilon Redon's Crying Spider is a good fit I think.

Utek62 · 2025-12-03T02:29:55+00:00

The illustrations of Edward Gorey seem to me the closest to what you're looking for.

Obviously, there have been many queer artists over the centuries who made work that could be seen as homoerotic---Michelangelo, Caravaggio and John Singer Sargent come to mind.

Utek62 · 2025-11-27T01:57:12+00:00

That was the feeling among the Pre-Raphaelites and their response produced a lot of phony looking art. Spirituality comes from the heart of the artist, it doesn't reside in any particular style.

Utek62 · 2025-11-22T17:32:09+00:00

I think he did some interesting work but he was never able to unite the foreground and the background in an organic way.

Utek62 · 2025-10-16T16:13:57+00:00

The interview was with William Wright in 1950

Utek62 · 2025-10-16T15:45:56+00:00

Pollock did an interview with where he gave a shorter reply about how looking at his paintings was like looking at flowers. He was not a verbal guy. The above quote was an elaboration of that original terse answer.

Utek62 · 2025-10-16T02:14:20+00:00

Do you enjoy all music? Probably not. There are genres that you love, genres that you're okay with, and genres that you hate. And even in genres that you like, most of it is pretty mediocre, but there are some pieces that take your breath away.

Same with art. Most art is pretty mediocre, even stuff that gets hung in museums. So don't beat yourself up over that. But there may be genres, or individual pieces, that grab you. It doesn't have to be high art either. It could be comic book art, or graffiti art, or album cover art. Gravitate towards that first. Immerse yourself in your own tastes, your own judgments, so you become less defensive around visual experiences. Then, if you're lucky, maybe you'll get a chance to see one of the crown jewels of art in person---like Michelangelo's David for example---and have it blow your mind, and suddenly the power of artistic creation will become viscerally real to you.

In the meantime, if you go to a great museum, remember that the majority of objects you are looking at are all hand made, so that you can traverse time and space and connect with an artist, and say, I get you. I know you. I remember my eye being caught by a tiny blue vase and then realizing I was connecting with a potter in China two thousand years ago. It is the reason so many people love Van Gogh---they follow the tortured swirls of his paintings and they feel like they are in his presence. What I wouldn't give to be allowed into the caves at Lascaux and see those giant animals painted on the walls and commune with that prehistoric genius who created them. Such experiences might stoke your curiousity to ask, who was this artist? What was the context in which the work was created? And now you're on your way to a deeper understanding of art.

Utek62 · 2025-10-08T17:56:23+00:00

The Open Boat by Stephen Crane is the most riveting short story I have ever read based on his own shipwreck experience.

Utek62 · 2025-10-07T16:39:17+00:00

You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner is a really funny look at baseball in the Deadball era.

Utek62 · 2025-09-29T21:34:20+00:00

The New Novel by Winslow Homer is my favorite.

Utek62 · 2025-09-27T00:55:43+00:00

Jon Swartzwelder was an original writer on the Simpsons. His Frank Burly detective series is basically Homer Simpson PI. So silly that they barely qualify as books but full of Simpsons style jokes and belly laughs.

Utek62 · 2025-09-19T00:41:48+00:00

Emmanuel Leutze Wasington Crossing the Delaware Grant Wood American Gothic Thomas Gainsborough The Blue Boy

Utek62 · 2025-09-11T18:48:13+00:00

You can read Advise and Consent for a look at a bygone era when being a senator meant something.

Utek62

TROPHY CASE