Your favourite or art you like

[Gloomy_Sunday44]

Joseph Karl Stieler's Gallery of Beauties. There are 36 but these are my favourites.

Joseph was quite a beauty himself I must say.

 

[gorgik9]

Painter of modern life: Edouard Manet (1832-1883)

Among the early impressionist painters Edouard Manet probably was the most important and the bravest. Why? Because he had the audacity to paint the modern life in Paris, France.

But WTF!?! How the hell can I say that it was audacious if a french painter painted contemporary life in Paris in the 1860-70s? If he painted bar maids, prostitutes, rowers, petit bourgeoise families and contemporary poets and writers like Stéphane Mallarmé and Émile Zola?

Because everybody with some kind of clout in the French art world in the 1860s knew, that art just wasn't about contemporary life in general and prostitutes and courtisanes in particular.

Art was about ancient mythology, ancient history and maybe about more contemporary kings, emperors, generals, dukes and earls.

But definitely not prostitutes. And the men who consortest with prostitutes.

 

[gorgik9]

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Another impressionist just about as influential as Manet.

 

[gorgik9]

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903): Post-Impressionism I

Today the most wellknown of Gauguin's art of course are his paintings from Tahiti, much of his characteristic style emerged already during his time in Bretagne, France, so let's start with some Breton pictures.

And then from Tahiti

 

[gorgik9]

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890): Post-Impressionism II

 

[Ioanna]

I stand corrected. As you say, they are close enough to be visited on a day trip.

Are you so sure about that Martinus?

 

[Martinus]

Absolutely. I lived in Belgium for many years. Of course, it depends on how much you wants to see in each place.

 

[Martinus]

How about Lowry (Pictures of matchstick men). Or Hockney as this is a gay site.

 

[smallsleepyrascalcat]

How about Lowry (Pictures of matchstick men). Or Hockney as this is a gay site.

This is about what people like, not about specific gay art.

 

[Ioanna]

Absolutely. I lived in Belgium for many years. Of course, it depends on how much you wants to see in each place.

Damn a compatriot!

 

[Otage]

Wassily Kandinsky



Salvador Dali

 

[gorgik9]

Eugène Jansson (1862-1915)

Among swedish painters working around the turn of the century 1900, one of my big favourites is Eugène Jansson, who became secretary to the board of Konstnärsförbundet (Artists Association, founded 1886) and also was a gay man, just like his younger brother Adrian.

The Jansson brothers became fatherless at a very early age and their single mother had tough times paying rent and putting food on the table alone for two young boys, and it didn't get any better when Eugène was hit by a serious disease that gave him a heart failure for the rest of his life and made him almost deaf for several years.

I think it's fair to talk about three main periods in Janssons painting; 1) early realism ; 2) the blue paintings; 3) male nude painting.

Early realism

Blue paintings

Jansson's "blue period" started in the mid-1890s and went on for about 10 years.

Jansson's self portrait

It isn't partitularly difficult to discern from whom Jansson got the deepest painterly inspiration for his blue period - obviously van Gogh!!!

Male nude painting

Jansson painted his last blue painting in 1904, and stopped painting for a couple of years. But then came something totally different...

And then in 1907 one of Jansson's best and most intimate sailor friends Knut "Knutte" Nyman. This is one of Jansson's paintings I love the most; look at and think about this painting! Look at how Knutte stands in the doorway in front of three Jansson blue period paintings hanging on the wall in the next room - what's the meaning?

Navy open-air swimbath (Flottans kallbadhus) on Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm was a place were Jansson loved to be for hours and hours in the summertime - swimming, doing athletics and looking at very handsome nude young men and boys. Originally it was an open-air swimbath catering to the sailors and solidiers in the Naval base, but it soon became a very popular place for swimming, sunbathing and hanging out for working class men and schoolboys, since the entrance fee was very low, just a few cents.

Another self portrait, 1910.

 

[gorgik9]

American Regionalism, 1920s-1940s.

To be frank, America definitely didn't like the kind of abstractionism in visual art that had become in vouge in Europe between the wars.

The most influential american school of painting those years - Regionalism - were fiercly hostile toward abstractionism, and the painters mostly had their roots in the Mid West.

Thomas Hart Benton 1889-1975

Grant Wood 1891-1942

John Steuart Curry 1897-1946

Paul Cadmus 1904-1999

It isn't particularly difficult to recognize, that Cadmus was the student of Thomas Hart Benton, but Cadmus was an openly gay man, which Benton - as far as I know - definitely wasn't.

In an article on American painting in the 1940 edition of Encyclopedia Britannia it says about Cadmus, that he would probably be a bright shining light in American art for years to come. Well that prophecy failed miserably. Something came in between from the mid-40s on, that would consider anything that had some connection to Regionalist art as worthless kitch.

The thing that came in between was - Abstract Expressionism!!!

Cadmus didn't get back his rightful place in American art until the late 1970s, now explicitly as the Great American Gay Artist.

 

[gorgik9]

On the importance of painting with your own balls...

...or: A few things on Abstract Expressionism and what came after...

I've already made a post on three of the most important Abstract Expressionist painters (Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko) working in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, but it's necessary to talk a bit about this artistic and critical movement as a whole, and also what was against Abstract Expressionism and what came after.

The Abstract Expressionist painters had powerfull allies in a group of extremely influential art critics, and in particular Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) and Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978).

Greenberg changed american art and art history. He "made" Pollock in the late 1940s (but of course you could say, that Pollock "made" Greenberg) and the color field painters in the 60s. He was jewish and a Trotskyist communist, fundamentally hating Stalin and the stalinist view on art. He also was a fierce homophobe, and he tended to take for granted that a homosexual artist necessarily must be a baaaaad artist, making only worthless kitch.

Homophobia and masculinism were among the central tunes in the Abstract Expressionist music - but it also gave a point of departure for some early critict of this artistic movement.

To be able to discuss this it's necessary to show a couple of images from another Abstract Expressionist painter:

Willem de Kooning 1904-1997

De Kooning was showing himself off as this very ultra masculine painter, making lots of really agressive images of women. But he also was made
an object of agressive wit, pranks and practical jokes from two younger painters in the neo-dadaist movement, who also happened to be gay lovers.

Their names were Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns!

Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008

Rauschenbergs first claim to fame came, when he bought a de Kooning drawing, erased it and - exhibited it as his own work! That's some kind of balls, gay balls!

So here I give you Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning"!

The following assemblage is one of his "artistic balls"-work, made in dialogue with his friend/lover/partner Jasper Johns.

Jasper Johns b. 1930

Here we have Johns' take on the balls-theme!

...or the articulation of gay identity as a target for arrow shooting at you / Saint Sebastian.

 

[gorgik9]

Masculine queers & effeminate faggots: Andy Warhol 1928-1987

So we had gay artists critizising the masculinist/homophobic Abstract Expressionism, but we nowadays tend to forget, that there were distinctions as important or more important than gay/straight.

For example - to use the dichotomy coined by writer William S. Burroughs - Masculine Queers versus Effeminate Faggots. In literature and the visual arts, this dichotomy was of fundamental importance in the 1950s and 60s.

In literature you had William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, Frank O'Hara and John Rechy in the masculine queer camp, while of course Truman Capote was the great effeminate sissyboy.

In the visual arts we had Rauschenberg, Johns and Larry Rivers as the masculine queers... (Masculine young Rauschenberg)

...but who was the swish sissyboy? Of course - Andy Pandy, Andy Paperbag, Andy the Red Nosed Warhola...

Andy Warhol was the youngest son of working class immigrants from Slovakia living in Pittsburgh. When his father had died in 1940, the Warhola family became really dirt poor, but his dad understood his great talent for drawing and painting, and had funded some capital for his youngest son so he could go to art school in Pittsburgh.

After finishing art school he went off to New York to work as a commercial artist, and soon became the most well paid ad artist in New York. He had become a wealthy young man before his 30th birthday in 1958.

Warhol as a commercial artist in the 1950s.

Some favourite themes in Warhol's private drawings in the 1950s:

Cats !

Shoes !!

Boys !!!

There were two things you just couldn't do in 1950s America, the Art Critical empire of Emperor Clement I Greenberg: 1) you just couldn't explicitly express homoerotic emotions in art; 2) you just couldn't jump the fence between fine art and commercial art. Warhol tried both at the same time and utterly failed. When he had a small exhibition in N.Y. in 1960 with his beautyful and naïve drawings of young men and boys, he was viciously ridiculed and taunted. The art critics behaved just like bullies.

But Warhol came back with a new artistic strategy. It was baptized "Pop Art". It made history.

 

[gorgik9]

Hieronymus Bosch 1450-1516

 

[gorgik9]

Hans Holbein 1497 -1543

 

[Otage]

Zdzisław Beksiński

Zdzisław Beksiński was a polish painter. I just recently discovered him personally, and I've been fascinated by his surrealistic, post-apocalyptic paintings I love his style and use of colour, and also the gloomy subjects with hints of other emotions are interesting. The fascination of how somebody draws all that out of their mind, and puts it on canvas:heart:









Would love to post them all! They just make my imagination run wild:dreaming:

 

[Ioanna]

Fishermen by Cornelis van Haarlem.

 

[Ioanna]

De fall of Phaeton by Cornelis van Haarlem.