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| Lawrence Alma Tadema A Favorite Custom, 1909 |
We often assume that all we have to do is look at nature to see it as it truly is, but in fact our perception of reality is even now bound by our culture. Given that our visual culture includes such things as movies that we can stop-frame, YouTube videos, selfies, and paintings of all sorts, our idea of what looks right keeps evolving, shaped by all these artistic forces.
“When these worthies went down to the stream that runs glitteringly and playfully just outside the Academy of Art and really used their eyes in an unprejudiced way, they saw and admitted that young Zorn was right. It was a blow to the old formula for reproducing the motion of water. Zorn often had in his time the power of remolding people's way of looking, of exemplifying Wilde's paradox that 'life imitates art,' that is if art is the fresh product of a conception realized by the eye of genius.”
The use of photos versus not using photos?
ReplyDeleteIts an interesting phenomenon in modern landscape painters as well to see the influence of photos even on painters who refuse the use of them.
As a matte painterI have to paint photoreal, when sometimes it feels better to do it painterly, thats the dilemma today. If you look at Ellenshaw mattes for Mary Poppins he used an impressionistic style in complete contrast to his photoreal work.
ReplyDeleteThis is true nowadays with the human body and Photoshop. We are so used to seeing photos that are airbrushed and clone stamped, normal human bodies with wrinkles and hair seem weird and unatural.
ReplyDeleteI've long been a fan of Mr Zorn, especially his watercolours. There's another of his paintings, which is easy to find, of two young children sitting on a jetty, looking towards a couple of rowing boats. It's almost monochromatic, but the effect of water is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteImagine being able to paint like that and then have someone tell you 'this isn't how it looks'.
That is interesting...how had these people never noticed the distortion when...wait how often did people actually bathe back then?
ReplyDeleteThis Lawrence Alma Picture somewhow looks funny. The bathing ladies at the forefront lightly clad in some strange veiled and watered-down stuff called "water" ha ha..
ReplyDeleteThe "below-the-water trick" must have given businessman Lawrence Alma a widespread appeal, considering the censoring habits at Vicorian times; when even a bare footed woman would have been considered half naked:-)
It's interesting to see some of Zorn's etchings and paintings and the photographs he worked from (some examples of the original sources still exist).
ReplyDeleteHe was an artist who had enough life experience that he could use photography for reference, when it proved more practical, without it being particularly evident.
Great blog.
Nice read, but I can't believe that even though it's from a 1921 book from a completely different author, my Gardner's Art Through the Ages book quotes it word for word. I just lost a lot of faith in my textbook lol
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ReplyDeleteHA! So in one week I have heard "selfies" referred to as a mental disorder and now, an artistic force. Interesting...
ReplyDeleteNaturalism vs. aesthetics. Da Vinci and other classicists knew cool shadow tones existed, they just preferred warm shadows. The same mindset is probably behind Tadema's depiction of water,and I thnk his choice is right for this picture, although he pursued a greater naturalism than they.
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