The Scream - Edvard Munch, 1893
Reading about semiotics. It’s been that kind of day.
(via dreamwithinanightmare)
“So once again I am obliged to speak to you about yourself. I must do my best to demonstrate to you your own value. What you ask for is truly stupid. People are making fun of you; pleasantries set you on edge; no one does you justice, etc., etc. Do you think you’re the first to be placed in this position? Have you more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? And did people make fun of them? They did not die of it. And so as not to make you feel too proud of yourself, I shall add that these men were exemplary, each in his own genre, and in a world which was very rich, while you, you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art.”
Baudelaire, consoling Édouard Manet after the reception of his Olympia in the 1865 Paris Salon. (Quoted in T. J. Clark’s The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers.)
This made me LOL so hard. I’m going to have to remember to read this the next time I let criticism get me down. (Also hilarious: Baudelaire later talks about seeking an eyewitness account of Manet’s pictures. “I wanted the personal impression of Monsieur Chorner, at least insofar as a Belgian can be considered a person.”)
GÉRARD, François
Madame Récamier
1805
Oil on canvas, 255 x 145 cm
Musée Carnavalet, Paris
Had to reblog because I just turned in a paper on this painting last week! (It was a comparison with David’s portrait of Madame Récamier.) I’m always amused when stuff I’m studying pops up on Tumblr.
Salon at the Rue des Moulins (1894), oil on canvas | artwork by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
“A good painter has two chief objects to paint — man and the intention of his soul; the former is easy, the latter hard, because he has to represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs.”
Leonardo da Vinci (via porziuncola)
One hour at the Louvre, Paris, France.
Budapest: History through Sculpture
Beyond the architecture, another big visual draw of Budapest was all the statuary that seemed to bring the city’s history to life. You can hardly pass an intersection in Budapest without running into some kind of statue, from the benign to the truly ferocious, like the Magyar warrior above in Heroes Square. We also spent a morning at Memento Park, a dumping ground for old Communist-era sculptures with a museum about the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
The park and museum offered a fascinating look at a period of history I didn’t really know much about before visiting. The story of the revolution was truly moving, especially looking back and realizing that most of the people involved were my age, or even younger. (The picture of the flag at the bottom is actually from a memorial outside the Parliament Building — it originally flew during the uprising after protestors cut the Soviet coat of arms out of the center.) Artistically, it was also interesting to get to see a sculptural style completely different than anything on display in Western cities. All of the Soviet sculptures were rendered in this bulky, rough-hewn style — I wonder if that’s just the result of a closed society, or a conscious rejection of Western artistic ideals? It’s something I’d definitely like to learn more about.
