What do you see?
What do you feel?
What do you wonder about?
What is the name of this painting? The Connoisser
Who is the artist? Norman Rockwell
When was it painted? It was painted for Saturday Evening Post cover January 13, 1962
What is the man thinking? Feeling?
What is going on in the space between the man and the painting?
Is the painting on the wall? Or in the man’s mind?
A painting is a “thing”, but could it also be an “event”?
If a painting is an event, is it still there after the lights go out?
Is Rockwell painting a parody of, or an homage to, modern art?
Can an everyday, ordinary person, like the fellow in the business suit, really be a “connoisseur” of art? If so, what are the qualifications one needs?
Stephen Spielberg, about this painting, said, “The Connoisseur is a fascinating painting for me. …Rockwell actually had to do a Jackson Pollock. He had to get that drip effect on that canvas. That means he had to completely change the paradigm of his style to accomplish a Jackson Pollack and a very convincing Jackson Pollock, before going back to his sort of conventional human characters. For me that represents how an artist can suddenly change his style and be unrecognizable in one form in another medium and then return to the style that we’re familiar with.”
Here is another interesting pondering on The Connoisseur : Kristin Kasuhova
What do you think?
What do you see? Ceci n’est pas un cheval.
What do you feel?
What do you wonder about?
What is the name of this painting? Whistlejacket
Who is the artist? George Stubbs
When was it painted? About 1762
From the National Gallery website: “Stubbs excludes any reference to a rider, riding equipment or location, painting the magnificent rearing horse against a neutral background of pale gold. Despite suggestions that a rider was originally planned, Whistlejacket was always meant to be unmounted. Free from human control, the riderless horse is the embodiment of unrestrained natural energy, a free spirit that prefigures Romanticism’s celebration of nature.”
To read more about the painting, visit: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/george-stubbs-whistlejacket
and click on “in-depth”.
What do you think?
What do you see?
What do you feel?
What do you wonder about?
What is the name of this painting? Guernica
Who is the artist? Pablo Picasso
When was this painted? 1937
How big is this painting? 11′ 5″ tall by 25′ 6″ across
Picasso painted Guernica at his home in Paris in response to the 26 April 1937 bombing of Guernica, a town in the Basque Country in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion and Fascist Italy. Upon completion, Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting soon became widely acclaimed, helping to bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War that took place from 1936 to 1939.
There are very many images, and possibly symbols and interpretations, in this painting, but about that, Picasso said, “…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”
For further discussion about the images and symbols, refer to this great Wikipedia article here and here.
What do you think?
After reading about why Picasso painted this, What do you feel about the event?
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