Art For Art’s Sake

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Art For Art's Sake

Place a photo of and write about any work of art that you like; that is important to you and why;
what it means to you, why you love it.  Personal perceptions being the main purpose of this,
so please use your own words to say why you chose the work.  Your comments can be as short
or reasonably long as you like; back it up with some basic looked-up details like dates etc.
but please, not ready-made stuff from the web.

(The intention is to complement other threads linked to art, this just being a little more specific –
perhaps encourage people to look up the larger images and further details which are not
possible on this forum)

Jan Porcellis (1580-1632)
Ships in a Storm on a Rocky Coast (1614 – 1618)

Rembrandt van Rijn owned the original oil of this seascape and hung it in his hallway
where he could see it everyday.  He was forced to sell it when he went bankrupt. 
I love seascapes and have an A4 photo of it stuck on my kitchen door so I can see
what van Rijn saw every day.  Daft I know, but so what?

[img]https://i.imgur.com/4lpeGOq.jpg?1[/img]

Tintoretto  –  Self Portrait

Jacapo Robusti .. his father was a dyer so Jacapo became known as Tintoretto. 
This self-portrait (c.1547 in his late twenties) simply strikes me with those big eyes
looking right out at you, almost cartoon eyes (cartoon was the name given to artists
initial sketches) …what's he thinking ?

[img]https://i.imgur.com/98aJm6l.jpg?1[/img]

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The Train To Heaven  Wroclaw, Poland

Just an incredible idea that comes off beautifully.

(It is a relic of the Nazi era in Poland
is 70 feet high and weighs 90 tons)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/IUtvpiq.jpg?1[/img]

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detail from The Marriage at Cana  by Veronese  c.1563

The detail of this painting is incredibly clear and the colours just brilliant …
the clothes of the man standing on the right have such fine details. 
The painter, Veronese, is the man seated dressed in white with fine
yellow leggings playing the stringed instrument.  His master, Titian is sat
next to him playing the bass and dressed in bright red.
The detail of this painting is as clear as a photograph. 

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ywCKoLV.jpg?1[/img]

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder  (c.1525-1530 – 1569)

Winter Landscape with Ice-skaters and Bird-trap (1565)

Bruegel's winter scenes always have ravens in them.

(He was in the first generation of painters not to make
religion the natural subject of painting & never painted portraits-
-from wiki)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/xsTKRif.jpg?2[/img]

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The Three Graces is a 2nd century AD Roman copy of the original Greek statue
and the French currently have it in the Louvre plundered by that tyrant Bonaparte.

The contours of the three figures are perfectly formed.  I know nothing about the
Three Graces (without looking it up) except that it's incredibly lifelike and that
one of them had a chariot drawn by lionesses which roared out in pain as she
used her whip on them.  (Maybe her name was Corina)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/eVo3Gky.jpg?1[/img]

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Emily Carr (1871-1945)

Wild Lilies painted when she was only 22
need say no more

(One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a
Modernist and Post-Impressionist style – as per wiki)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/nj8J96v.jpg?1[/img]

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Piet Mondrian's Trees

The Red Tree  (1908-1910)

Always think of this as blue but the artist knows best
like most things you either see it or you don't

[img]https://i.imgur.com/l5kV4UG.jpg?1[/img]

Trees on the Gein: Moonrise (1908)

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6hqfKNG.jpg?4[/img]

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Pietro Torrigiano broke Michel Agnolo's nose in a fit of jealousy
at the academy of Lorenzo dei Medici in Florence when both were
students of art (Michel Agnolo was anglicized to Michaelangelo). 

Torrigiano went into voluntary exile while Agnolo went through life with a broken nose.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6RD4afM.jpg?1[/img]

Torrigiano arrived in the London of Henry VIII and succeeded in winning
a contract for £1500 to make the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. 
The contract read to “make and work well, cleanly, surely, workmanly, curiously
and substantially a very special artwork”.

Torrigiano conceived and designed a work of white marble and cast bronze
and introduced for the first time concepts of modern style to a largely medieval Britain.
Cherubs made their first appearance and Torrigiano's work slowly started the British “renaissance”.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ho0wRof.jpg?1[/img]

[Soniaslut]

Something has always drawn me to things Scandinavian, possibly from a book I found on a shelf at home when I was around 6 or 7 years old filled with tales from Norse mythology. I think maybe this sparked an interest that has stayed with me since, my interest being drawn beyond the deeds of the Allfather and Thor to exploring the culture and history of the region, especially (since I'm a lover of music) to the folk songs and the music  ultimately inspired by that.

Arne Vinje Gunnerud was a Norwegian sculptor born in Oslo in 1930. He drew on early Scandinavian/Viking artistic tradition for several of his works.
He also created the War Memorial 'Pax', situated near the Lindesnes lighthouse in Norway, to commemorate the sinking of the MS Palatia in 1942.

The sculpture below, which I used to have as the background on my computer and have a small framed print of is titled 'Fenris Will Break Free' (Fenrisulven Vil Bryte Seg Løs) and is located in Tokyo.

                        [img]https://i.imgur.com/gGGPzUe.jpg?1[/img]

[Soniaslut]

The pendant pictured below is similar to one that I have and is of a style of Viking art called 'Jellinge', named for the animal decoration found on a cup in the burial mound of King Gorm from approx. AD 958.
The Jellinge style is characterised by S-shaped animals with their heads in profile and with ribbon-shaped bodies, spiral hips, “pigtails” and curling upper lips.

                          [img]https://i.imgur.com/QcaFbZ3.jpg?1[/img]

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Quseir 'Amra

(a desert castle in Jordan built between 723 and 743 and is important
for having the earliest examples of Islamic art – wiki)

Islamic art is based on geometric patterns which is halal i.e. permissible. 
Portrayals of real life subjects were forbidden but a few early frescoes survive
at Quseir 'Amra of deer and a semi-naked dancer

[img]https://i.imgur.com/0hR3RrG.jpg?1[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/udRcBFk.jpg?1[/img]

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Lisbon Street Art

Following the revolution of April 25, 1974 there was an explosion of political murals,
and today artistic graffiti is sponsored by the City Council.

There are dozens of murals .. take a look through the link …

https://www.lisbonlux.com/magazine/lisbon-street-art.html

This fox and racoon were created combining painting and sculpture,
using old tyres, bumpers, computer parts and other discarded stuff by Bordal II.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Skc30aZ.jpg?1[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/T8iIGfP.jpg?1[/img]

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                                [img]https://i.imgur.com/tHsF1ap.png?1[/img]
                                              [img]https://i.imgur.com/yaUcAXT.png?3[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/JlITGxr.jpg?1[/img]

  [img]https://i.imgur.com/666HcoB.jpg?1[/img]

  [img]https://i.imgur.com/OfHazBi.jpg?1[/img]

The above piece, “Confetti Death”, was created by a Miami contemporay artist, Typoe.
His work most often focuses on the tension and differences between the darkness of the urban underground and the glittering, shimmering 'bling' of celebrity.
Evoking humour, pathos and gravitas his work has sometimes been described as “memento mori with a smile”.
His work spans many different disciplines and often includes diverse materials such as gunpowder, fire, plastic, spray paint and found objects.Perhaps a good description of him and his work is on his own site : “”the messenger that while laughing, points to hypocrisy and excess while announcing the melancholy of time lost”.

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Frances I of France (reign 1515-1547) was a great patron of the arts, best known
for bringing the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini to work for him.
The most well known of these works is a gold salt cellar that Cellini describes
in his autobiography which is best known for being full of fiction except for his
descriptions of the creations of his major works.  This is how Cellini describes his work:-

“… it was oval in form, standing about two-thirds of a cubit (12 inches)
wrought in solid gold, and worked entirely from the chisel. …it represented
Sea and Earth, seated, with their legs interlaced …  The Sea carried a trident
in his right hand, and in his left I put a ship of delicate workmanship to hold the salt.
Below him were his four sea-horses, fashioned like our horses, from the head to the
front hoofs; all the rest of their body, from the middle backwards, resembled a fish,
and the tails of these creatures were agreeably interwoven.  Above this group the Sea
sat throned in an attitude of pride and dignity; around him were many kinds of fishes
and other creatures of the ocean.  The water was represented by waves, and enamelled
in the appropriate colour”.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Mp4v3ue.jpg?1[/img]

“I had portrayed Earth under the form of a very handsome woman, holding her
horn of plenty, entirely nude like the male figure; in her left hand I placed a little temple of
Ionic architecture, most delicately wrought which was meant to contain the pepper. 
Beneath her were the handsomest living creatures which the earth produces; and the
rocks were partly enamelled, partly left in gold.

The whole piece reposed on a base of ebony, properly proportioned, but with a projecting
cornice, upon which I introduced four golden figures in rather more than half-relief.
They represented Night, Day, Twilight and Dawn.”

[img]https://i.imgur.com/OlSI00T.jpg?1[/img]

“When I exhibited this piece to His Majesty he uttered a loud cry of astonishment
and could not satiate his eyes with gazing at it.  Then he bade me take it back to my house,
saying he would tell me at the proper time what I should have to do with it.  So I carried it
home, and sent at once to invite several of my best friends; we dined gaily together, placing
the salt-cellar in the middle of the table, and thus we were the first to use it.”

(This last sentence should be taken with a pinch of salt)

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A detail from the fresco of Original Sin by Michaelengelo on the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel which looks suspiciously like the guy is about to have or
has just had a blow job.  Someone commented it's quite a small cock for that
but just think  that such an artwork was allowed to remain on the ceiling of the
chapel for so long without  painting over or the ubiquitous fig leaf.  The other
frescoes like the Creation of Adam get far more attention than this but it's good
to see the master's sense of humour remains in tact.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/zTFgamP.png?1[/img]

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