Art

Jul

2021

Netflix Pix 1

A lot of us are streaming Netflix shows, but the sheer volume of choices on Netflix makes it hard to choose. Here are some shows we have watched recently that we have really enjoyed. Maybe you will too. These are in no particular order and none of them are suitable for children. I’ll have the second half of the list tomorrow.

Giri/Haji

Created and written by Joe Barton, “Giri/Haji” is a story of cultural cross-pollination. The show is in both English and subtitled Japanese that also cross-pollinates genres – mixing cop show, yakuza thriller, love story, anime and hokey family melodrama, all spiked with bits of offbeat comedy. “Giri/Haji” is unlike anything else on TV. There are so many subplots and so many sudden narrative shifts that surprises can happen anytime. The characters are very well drawn and the cinematography is outstanding. Patrice and I both loved it!

Babylon Berlin

Babylon Berlin tells complicated stories about police officers solving twisty, noir-inflected cases driven by strange and hidden conspiracies in 1929 Berlin. The German democracy is on its last legs, about to be swept aside by Hitler and the Nazis. Crucially, the audience knows this already, while the characters think their system of government is shaky but fundamentally salvageable. Unlike a lot of stories set in Germany during this era, it takes several episodes for Hitler to even be mentioned (and only once across the first two seasons!), and then a seemingly eternal stretch of time after that for a swastika to show up.

And yet the overall sweep of the show is vintage film noir: The heroes, Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), take down the bad guys they can capture or sideline, all the while being forced by those above them in the chain of command to let the real villains walk. Broadly speaking, Babylon Berlin is about the challenge of ever stopping the slow slide into fascism, because the full picture is often hard to see, and those who scream about it are written off as paranoiacs. But even Gereon and Charlotte do awful things in the name of their own self-interest.

The show moves like lightning, there are few dull moments. Liv LIsa Fries is absolutely amazing as Charlotte and there’s some great choreography. We really liked it and I think you will too.

Snabba Cash

The main character is Leya (Evin Ahmad), a single mother of Middle Eastern descent, who is desperate to find seed money for an A.I. company she has created. Like many others in the largely immigrant housing projects where she lives, Leya has limited options. She decides that her only choice is to borrow the money from her drug-dealing brother-in-law (Dada Fungula Bozela), which ends up compromising her future when he makes himself a partner in her firm. Things go downhill from there and, as Leya tries to sell part of her company to an investor, things get complicated as well.

The Netflix series is dubbed in English and is a fun watch that we enjoyed.

The Serpent

“The Serpent,” may seem unbelievable — but the creators actually had to temper the bizarre real-life history of con man and serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Set in 1970s Bangkok, the series, which first aired on the BBC earlier this year, follows Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) as he investigates the disappearance of a pair of Dutch backpackers. His pursuit leads him to Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim) and his accomplices, including Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) and Ajay Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera), who have been drugging, robbing and killing tourists on the so-called Hippie Trail.

It’s an amazing, and sometimes infuriating story, that kept us intrigued right to the end. It gives a nice flavor of Thailand, Nepal and India in the 1970s as Sobhraj lures his victims into believing and trusting him…before he kills them.

Waco

The story of the siege in Waco, Texas, in 1993 is such a fundamentally American one—such a charged and tragic conflict between dogmatic believers and overbearing authorities—that it’s hard to grasp how it hasn’t been dramatized into a television series before. It’s a tale of men bearing arms, of charismatic and damaged hucksters, of lost souls putting their faith in a man who promised them both joy and the end of the world. It ended, as most epic American stories do, with a gunfight, drawn out over two months. But no one won. Not the Branch Davidians, around 80 of whom lost their lives, including more than 20 children. Not the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, whose raid on the religious community led by David Koresh at Mount Carmel was characterized by an impossible number of blunders, and a profound—and entirely unnecessary—number of dead bodies on the ground.

The mini-series tries to tell the story of that siege and the people involved. The adaptation—created and directed by John Erick Dowdle (No Escape), and written by his brother, Drew—is based on two definitive interpretations of the Waco siege, Thibodeau’s book, and Gary Noesner’s memoir, Stalling for Time. Waco is largely defined by these separate narratives of what went wrong, both inside and outside of Mount Carmel. There are some subtle parallels between the storylines of Steve’s growing disaffection with Koresh’s abuse of power and Noesner’s increasing discomfort within the FBI, which is still reeling from a disastrous standoff with a white nationalist in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

It’s frustrating to watch the mistakes and misunderstandings on both sides that lead inexorably to the disaster at the end. We enjoyed watching it and it kept our attention. The talented cast does a great job of telling the story.

May

2021

National Gallery of Art

I was pleased to see recently that the West Building of the National Gallery of Art has reopened. As many of you know, I was fortunate enough to grow up in the Washington DC area and enjoy the many treasures there. As a young boy, my mother frequently took me to the museums and galleries and often to the National Gallery of Art, which she called the ‘Mellon Art Gallery’ after the man who made the initial contribution to the collection. I thought I would share some of the paintings that I really like there.

You will note that I have not included any recent paintings and that is simply because, due to copyright restrictions, it’s hard to get a high quality image. All of the images below are in the public domain and many are provided by the NGA as a part of their open access program.

Cuyp was one of the Dutch Golden Age painters. I love how he catches the morning light in this painting.

Vermeer was another Dutch artist who lived mostly in Delft. This is a rather small painting and is a part of the original collection donated by Andrew Mellon. Again, the light…and the expression on the girl’s face.

I like a lot of Mary Cassatt’s work. She was an American painter who lived most of her life in France and was a friend of Edgar Degas. A lot of her paintings are images of women in private and social settings and particularly with children. This painting was a part of the Chester Dale collection.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Cassatt_Mary_Children_on_the_Beach_1884.jpg — Cassatt Mary Children on the Beach 1884

Judith Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter whose work was highly admired while she was alive but who was almost forgotten after her death. Most of her work was attributed, until recently, to Frans Hals. This particular work was attributed to Hals until it was acquired by the NGA in 1949. I really like the sense of closeness in this painting.

I love so much of his work. This is about the time he became most famous as an artist.

One of his many Moilin Rouge paintings.

Childe Hassam was an American Impressionist painter. He did a lot of flag paintings and I like this one. One of his others is in the White House permanent collection.

This is apparently one of many paintings of Mary Magdalene that he did, but the only one I’ve seen. I really like the chiaroscuro effect with her features brightly lit by the candle and the rest of the painting dark.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Auguste_Renoir_-_A_Girl_with_a_Watering_Can_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg — Auguste Renoir – A Girl with a Watering Can 1876

Finally, for today, this wonderful work by August Renoir. It was apparently painted at Claude Monet’s garden at Argenteuil. This just seems like a wonderful painting to me and I admired it when I was a six-year old boy. I think this is enough for now. I might do more later.

Mar

2021

Rosa Bonheur

This past week saw the birthday of Rosa Bonheur (16 March 1822), primarily a painter of animals but also a sculptor and widely recognized as the most famous female painter of the 19th century. She was born in Bordeaux, Gironde and was the oldest in a family of artists. Her father was a landscape and portrait painter and her siblings include the painters Auguste Bonheur and Julliette Bonheur and the sculptor Isidore Jules Bonheur.

The Bonheur family adhered to Saint-Simeonism, a political, religious and social movement which, among other things, promoted the education of women alongside men. As a very young child she loved to sketch and her mother taught her to read and write by asking her to choose and draw a different animal for each letter of the alphabet. After a failed apprenticeship with a seamstress at age 12, her father began training her as a painter. He allowed live animals into the family’s studio for her to study. At 14 she began to copy paintings in The Louvre and she studied animal anatomy and bone structure in the abattoirs of Paris and dissected them at the National Veterinary Institute.

In 1849, she received a commission by the French Government and the result was the painting ‘Ploughing in the Nivernais’ which received a first class medal at the salon.

The focus of the painting is almost entirely on the dozen Charolais oxen, the farmer behind them is almost invisible. It is similar to some Dutch painters in its clarity and light. This painting, together with ‘The Horse Fair’, above, are her two most famous paintings. These works led to fame and recognition and she traveled to Scotland where she met Queen Victoria, who was an admirer of her work. While she was more popular in England than in France, she was decorated with the Legion of Honour by the Empress Eugénie.

Women were often only reluctantly educated as artists in Bonheur’s day, and by becoming such a successful artist she helped to open doors to the women artists that followed her. She was fairly openly a lesbian; she lived with her first partner, Nathalie Micas, for over 40 years until Micas’ death, and later began a relationship with the American painter Anna Elizabeth Klumpke.

Rosa Bonheur broke boundaries by deciding to wear pants, shirts and ties. She did not do this because she wanted to be a man, though she occasionally referred to herself as a grandson or brother when talking about her family; rather, Bonheur identified with the power and freedom reserved for men. Bonheur, while taking pleasure in activities usually reserved for men (such as hunting and smoking), viewed her womanhood as something far superior to anything a man could offer or experience. She viewed men as stupid and mentioned that the only males she had time or attention for were the bulls she painted.

With the advent of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Bonheur and her naturalism fell from fashion but has since recovered to some extent. She was certainly a remarkable woman and paved the way for many women who came after her. She died on 25 May, 1899 and was buried in Paris. Here is a photo of her taken in the 1890s followed by some of her works.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Bonheur_psd.jpg

Mar

2021

Dark Monday

It’s dark outside but these amazing sugar flowers will brighten your day! Michelle Nguyen is an award-winning Australian confectionery artist who created these amazing flowers.

Artist Makes Amazing Realistic Sugar Flowers That Are Hard To Believe Are Not Real

or check out this embroidery art by Anarudha Bhaumick…

Embroidery Art of Daily Life by Anuradha Bhaumick

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Laugh!!

Note to my fellow old people. Do not sit on a floor without a plan on how you will get up.

Felt uncomfortable driving into the cemetery. The GPS blurted out ‘you have reached your final destination’.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

A truck carrying Worcestershire sauce crashed.Dispatcher: What’s the situation?Deputy: It’s hard to say.

The four horsemen of procrastination…NappingSnacksSocial MediaNetflix

Interviewer: We’re looking for someone who can do the work of two men.Female interviewee: Oh, so the job’s only part-time?

I fired myself from cleaning the house. I didn’t like my attitude and I got caught drinking on the job.

It’s getting close…

Today is the birthday (in 1941) of Mike Love! Here he is with some other guys.

Feb

2021

Pierre Auguste Renoir

This past week saw the birthday of Pierre Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841), one of my favorite artists. He had a very long career and was a prolific artist with thousands of works. While there is no way I can do him justice in this little blog, I’ll try to show some of his work that I admire.

Renoir was born in Limoges but, when he was very young his father, a tailor, moved the family to Paris. Tellingly, the location of their new home, in proximity to the Louvre, would have a major impact on Renoir’s future.

He had a talent both for drawing and singing but, at age 13, the family’s financial circumstances forced him to withdraw from school and work in a porcelain factory. He was good at his work but found it boring and often wandered away to the galleries of the Louvre. The owner of the porcelain factory recognized is talent and Renoir started taking lessons. While studying he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille and Claude Monet. At time he didn’t have enough money to buy paint. Nevertheless, he began showing paintings at the Paris Salon.

One of his first successful paintings was of Lise Tréhot, his lover at the time.

Renoir Lise in a Straw Hat.jpg — ierre-Auguste Renoir – “Lise in a Straw Hat (Jeune fille au chapeau de paille)“. 1866

Renoir’s early work was influenced by the colorism of Delacroix and the realism of Courbet and Manet as well as their use of black as a color. Another example of Renoir’s early work is this painting of Diana, which shows the influence of Courbet’s realism. Lise Tréhot is again the model.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_020.jpg — Diana – Pierre Auguste Renoir 1867

The bright green colors and red accents are considered to reflect the impressionism that Renoir would become associated with a few years later.

In the late 1860s, he and his friend Claude Monet, through painting light and water en plein air, discovered that the color of shadow is not black or brown but reflects the color of the objects around them. The worked side-by side frequently and often painted the same scene. I like the contrast and similarity in their styles as shown in these two paintings.

His impressionist period was prolific. One of his most famous impressionist paintings is Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette which depicts an open-air dance garden close to where he lived. It’s full of action, color and light.

In 1881 he took a trip to Italy and saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance painters which convinced him he was on the wrong path. He began painting in a more severe style trying to return to classicism. He painted works such as ‘The Large Bathers” which emphasized line and form.

Notably (to me at least) two of the models for this painting were his lovers at one time or another. Suzanne Valadon on the left was a long time model for him who became a noted painter in her own right and Aline Charigot on the right who modeled for many of his paintings and became his wife.

After 1890, he changed direction again and his work showed dissolved outlines and thinly brushed work. You can see the contrast of styles between The Large Bathers above and ‘Girls at the Piano’ below which he painted in 1892.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Auguste_Renoir_-_Young_Girls_at_the_Piano_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg — Girls at the Piano – Pierre Auguste Renoir 1892

In the mid-1890s, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. in 1907 he moved his family to the south of France to take advantage of the warmer climate. He continued painting during the last 20 years of his life even as the arthritis severely limited his mobility. Renoir died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on 3 December 1919.

The love of his life was Aline Victorine Charigot who was a dressmaker. She met Renoir when she was twenty and he was nearly forty and started modeling for him. She gave birth to his first son, Pierre, in 1885, and married Renoir in 1890. They had two other sons, Jean born in 1894 and Claude in 1901.

She modeled for Renoir over a long period, 1880 to 1915. She cared for her husband as his arthritis became severe. After Claude’s birth she developed diabetes but hid this from her husband. Pierre and Jean were drafted into the army during World War I and both were injured, Jean seriously. Aline died of a heart attack in Nice after a visit to Jean in the hospital in 1915.

Charigot appears in many of Renoir’s paintings. In ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’ at the top of this post, she is the woman playing with the dog on the far left. Here are some more of his paintings that include her.