The Evangelical Universalist Forum

The Secular and Sacred in Human Communication

Practices Christian Living
#21

Thanks, Paidion! I had forgotten about that link!

Yes, I am paying for this. :laughing: I try to think of it as, not a lecture about crap on a canvas, but rather just another thing to grin and bear before I get my degree to be an art teacher, so then I can do things my way. (And even in my youngest grades, no one will be allowed to use poo as art – I don’t care how nice they consider their work on the porcelain throne. :laughing:)

:laughing: :laughing:

Dick, your Elvis lyrics are great! As for still life paintings, I like them very much, especially when they tell narrative of some sort, too. Pierre Bonnard is cool – I like his swirling colors with soft but vibrant hues. They feel very “French.” :slight_smile: Some of my favorite painters are Vermeer, Van Dyke, and Caravaggio. I also like Dutch still life paintings, because they seem so real and yet not entirely.

#22

I have a lovely postcard of a Still Life by Cezanne of a bowl of apples. I always go away looking at it full of the sense of the appleeyness of apples – the texture the scent and the variegated colours, the flavour. The composition is iconic – there is stillness in it – no sense of anything else going on especially to the right or the left of the composition.

It remind me very much of Orthodox icons. These are Platonic in the positive sense of New Platonism – which posits a ladder of ascent from matter to spirit. You see material things in their true essence and you see the world transformed – at least a glimpse. Some of the Dutch Masters mixed allegory with the still life- referencing the Book of Ecclesiastes about Vanity; in with the fruit and flowers you have a skull as memento mori, the unread book , the silent flute or lute, the fallen and decayed flower etc But in the Still Life of ‘direct seeing’ something more pure and deeper than time is happening IMHO.

I note that Still Life was originally the most humble of the genres of paintings. The hierarchy of the French academicians was as follows (from the top)

History – that is narrative painting in the high style from the Greek myths and the Bible

Portraiture

Landscape

Genre – that is narrative painting in the low style from everyday life

Still Life

He has put down the mighty from their seat!

#23

Do you mean this one, Dick?


If you look closely, you can see that the left half of the table and the right half of the table don’t align properly at all. That was Cezanne’s way of stickin’ it to the man. :wink:

Still life was on the lowest end of the totem pole, and Dutch still life was even worse. The Italians often criticized Dutch painting as irrational and purely observation, with no mind to the rules of art. Thus, they deemed it “feminine,” because to them, only someone as irrational as a woman could appreciate such an irrational painting.

And I like genre paintings a lot, as well.:slight_smile: In fact, they might just be my favorite.

Well, I best sign off here. I am attending Evensong with a bunch of Anglican nuns at 5:00. More on that later! :laughing:

Bis bald!

Kate

P.S. No, I’m not thinking of becoming a nun – but this visit should be plenty interesting!

#24

That’s not the one I was thinking of - actually the composition here has a narrative in that it raise questions about the table - but I love this one too :smiley: and the apples are very similar to the ones in the more iconic composition I have a postcard of. Because I love it, does that mean I’m a woman? (don’t tell Mark Driscoll or the Jesus Hipsters :laughing: )

Genre paintings at first took the mickey out of the stupidity and cowardice of common people (they were commissioned by haughty aristocrats). Thus a common Genre theme would be a peasant having a tooth drawn and shaking with fear in his greasy fustian, as opposed to the History genre where you would have a muscled up and semi naked noble person dying with heroic and controlled dignity (in a very posed way that can strike us as comical and ridiculous - the battle dead are always ordered and tidy in their symmetries in a History painting). But when the mercantile middle classes became collectors genre came into its own. the aristocracy celebrate the ideal - the middle classes celebrate the marketplace. Is it Vermeer and Rembrandt that you love Kate?

Look forward to hearing more about the Anglican Nuns :open_mouth: :laughing:

And everyone - do check out Sister Wendy Beckett’s History of Painting on You Tube. She’s a Christian universalist; she’s funny, goofy and gorgeous!

#25

Well, since the apple painting is French, you’re safe for the moment. (It was only Dutch art – of any kind – that the Italians scorned as “womanly.”) As a general rule, I think it’s always best to hide from Mark Driscoll and Jesus Hipsters. :laughing:

I can’t remember who it was, but a later artist painted ordinary peasant scenes on a large canvas – typically reserved for “heroic” subjects – as a way to stick it to society. I liked the idea!

I emailed you about the Anglican nuns (who are adorable, by the way, everyone). If anyone else would like to know about how I spent this Friday night at a convent, I’ll share. :slight_smile:

And Sister Wendy is da bomb!

#26

Yes, yes! I think it probably even deserves a special topic so everyone (not just the art nerds) can enjoy. :slight_smile:

#27

Gustave Courbet - he was the artist who did genre paintings on the history painting scale (I guess Soviet Realism is a less happy example of the same - the message in both is the dignity of ordinary people of course) I can tell you that even though I refuse to speak on matters of religion here until and when and if things shift (and who would seek windows into my soul anyway).

Its’ funny what a shock religious paintings in genre mode rather than history mode first made in the nineteenth century (since Christ and his followers were common people and our lord’s birth was indeed humble and lowly it seems a tad ironical). the Pee Raphaelites in England were seen as deeply shocking for placing the life of Christ in ordinary time for example. I remember reading Charles Dickens’s review of Millais’ ‘Christ in the Carpenters Shop’ - surprisingly for Dickens he was and old fuddy duddy about this painting. He preferred his Christ in the classical style. He was most uncomplimentary about Millais.

Kate - I second Cindy - so let the world known about the contemplative nuns. I once stayed at a contemplative community. The evening meals were always held in silence. There was a very stately and authoritative women in the community full of fierce dignity. She blew off loudly with fierce dignity at one of the evening meals. Oh dear :laughing:

#28

Gustave Courbet is the one I was thinking of, specifically his “Burial at Ornans.” As I told you before, Dick, you’re a walking Google. :wink:

I really like “Christ in the Carpenter Shop.” I wish a modern painter would make a point of depicting Christ in a more realistic manner though. (Something tells me that he did not have the Protestant choir boy look, and I equally doubt He was an Italian supermodel. :laughing: ) I would love to see a portrait of Christ as a 5 foot 4 Middle Eastern man, with calloused hands, a weathered face, and a loving smile of overcrowded teeth. I also picture Jesus having a mass of dark hair that never quite fell in the right place – but He wouldn’t have been concerned about such little things. :slight_smile:

I suppose having a portrait of Christ that is “too real” runs this risk of us focusing on the physical and losing real sight of our Savior. But now you all know how I picture Jesus, anyway. When I was in my Catholic grade school, I would always color Jesus orange. (Since we used crayons, the only options for skin were white, orange, or brown.) I knew Jesus wasn’t paper-white like me, so I settled for making Him orange. :laughing:

:laughing: That’s one of the best stories I’ve heard in a long, long time! How on earth did you make it through the meal?! I would have, indeed, been excommunicated on the spot, because I would not have stopped laughing!

I’ll share some nun stories tomorrow after attending their Morning Service. Until then, I’ll tell you, Cindy, that I am visiting them for a black-and-white film photography project, so I’ll hopefully have some photos to share, as well, after I develop my film in the dark room later this week.

I’ll leave you all with this: I messed up my first roll of film while attempting to remove it from my camera. Wondering at how I could have been so stupid, I let out a disgruntled, “Crap!” The nuns were nice enough not to say anything – and I could have said a number of things much, much worse. :blush: :laughing:

AND there was a universalist among them! (Turns out, we universalists aren’t that hard to spot – maybe it just takes one to know one!)

And luckily I didn’t hear anyone fart – else I would have lost it!

Good-night, Dick, Cindy, and anyone else reading this little nerdy art thread.

Kate

#29

Oh Kate! You poor thing! I can so see myself doing something like that. :frowning: But I’ll bet you get lots of good shots all the same. I can’t wait to see them!

#30

What’s nerdy about an Art thread? :imp: – sci fi, fantasy games etc… now they are nerdy. Art is not nerdy – it’s for the connoisseurs :laughing:.

Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop – funny you should say that Kate about the choir boy. Yes he does look like one – Millais pulled himself away from realism when it came to Jesus. Dickens’s thought his Christ child a sickly child in a kiss with an ugly old woman. But the painting and its reception does tell us something about the pull and tug of Incarnation – when is a painting too sacred, when too secular (a particularly Christian conundrum)?

Although the painting is in genre it does have lots of allegorical and prefigurative signs in it. The Christ child has cut one of his feet on the wood shavings from the shop’s floor (or perhaps no a discarded nail) – prefiguring the crucifixion – and this is why the Virgin looks old and distressed as she will do at the foot of the cross. (There is a type of Orthodox Nativity icon where the Virgin is not full of serene joy but instead full of shaken distress when holding the Christ babe – the reasons for this are the same as those in Millais painting).

Christ at four feet? Well I understand that it is unclear whether Zaccheus had to climb a sycamore tree to get a view of Jesus because Zaccheus was little or because Jesus was little and dwarfed in a crowd. I’m glad the text is ambiguous – it saves me from having to picture Jesus as a Charlton Heston type all of the time. And the Charlton Heston type is very much from the History painting recipe – and not at all from a Genre recipe. These History people – even if they are old and dying and poor they smell fragrantly of oil and spices (aftershave perhaps?), and they’ve always taken time out to do a work out to muscle up their pecs and six pack their torso before any public engagement (even if the pressing engagement is their public execution).

BTW - my favourite film about the life of Christ is Passolini’s Gospel according to St Matthew (he used real peasants as actors and I find it incredibly moving - but it’s all a matter of taste). I think my least favourite is…well I’d better not say in case it’s special to someone else. But I do remember reading a book I was otherwise greatly enjoying - 'god of Surprises by Gerrard W. Hughes - and of a sudden begin asked to mediate on Salvador Dali’s crucifixion after St John of the Cross. I did try - but I simply don’t like the painting because it’s too high baroque for me with a touch of flashy surrealism - it’s not earthy enough for me and its too prescriptive to be heavenly enough. But I know the paring has given much comfort as a focus for others.

An Orange Jesus – and why not? It is a tricky one portraying Jesus. It’s easy to make him in our own image in a petty way instead of stressing his humanity. There was a forgery widely believed to be an eyewitness description of Jesus during the Middle Ages named the Epistle of Lentulus. Of course he looked like a perfect medieval King with vair/grey eyes, flowing blonde hair, tall in stature and noble in his bearing. Quite so. Each age, each culture, each race, each person needs it own take on the universal Christ And I can well see the point in the stylised portraits in icons that encourage us to look beyond the particulars and rest in the universal.

How did I cope with the Benedictine fart? Well the dignified lady fixed me with a haughty stare as if to say ‘And what? may I not frat in this place – fie for shame young Sir!’ So she terrified me :laughing: . Also I’m a gentlemen and would be loath to laugh at the fart of a lady who I was not on familiar terms with :laughing: .

And wash your mouth out with carbolic for saying ‘crap’ in front of the good sisters :laughing: (nuns are often paradoxically very broad minded people actually – because they often act as confessors and spiritual counsellors to the laity)

#31

Ack – I want to share nun stories, but there is just too much to be done before break begins! I’ve been at homework all day! :open_mouth: :nerd: :frowning:

Almost free.:slight_smile:

Love to you all,

Kate

#32

Good nuns?

#33

Yes – good nuns. I’m baking them thank-you cookies for their being so kind to be the subjects of my photography project.:slight_smile: And they invited me to breakfast and let me play with their dog, so they are all good in my book.:slight_smile:

#34

:smiley:

#35

:laughing: Very true!

How interesting! I wish a modern director would perhaps shoot a film after this similar manner – I think it would be quite refreshing.

Yes, in the end, I suppose it’s best to not focus on Christ’s physical appearance at all. I mean, the Bible only gives us the clue in Isaiah that “there was nothing beautiful nor majestic about Him.”

:laughing: :laughing: Terrified or not, I doubt I could have restrained from laughing. And I suppose if I ever come to England and let one go, it’ll merit a giggle then? (But that’s alright, because I’d laugh, too. :laughing: )

#36

As long as you laugh too that’s OK :laughing:

Well what do you think of the portrait and landscape genres. I’m always rather taken with the sub genre of Pastoral - which is a cross between the landscape and history genres. IT seems that landscape was initially looked down upon. So if you were a painter interested in landscape you’d shove some nymphs and shepherds in somewhere and perhaps a classical temple – and certainly an allusion to a classical myth or a bible story. But the figures would be small and the real purpose of the painting would. Any work being done would look effortless too – the milkmaid would not be straining under the milk pot yoke – that would never do.

I have a painting on my wall at home – the Death of Icarus by Peter Brueghel (the Flemish painter who was part of the proto universalist sect The Family of Love). It was Icarus who with his Father made some mechanical wings held together with wax with which he flew. But he flew too near the sun and fell from a great height and drowned in the sea. He was seen as a Classical type for Adam during the Renaissance (pride come before a fall). Now this painting is large and taken up with a ploughman ploughing the field with a horse drawn plough on a cliff top in the foreground; and behind this in depth perspective is a seascape with a galleon sailing – and of course the noonday sun above in the sky. Bottom left is a tiny pair of legs sticking out of the sea. AND that’s how Breughel justified his landscape as ‘The Death of Icarus’.

But yes - landscape and portrait? Sacred and/or secular? Painting or photograph?

#37

That puts a good context to Pastoral paintings. I think critics also took Pastoral works less seriously, because they were painted from direct observation. That is, landscapes and pastorals did not require the rigorous study of proportions and artistic rules, on which the Italians placed great emphasis. And since female artists couldn’t get easy access to male figure models, they often resorted to nature drawings, I believe. Once again, this gave art critics the notion that landscapes drawn from observation were thus “simple,” “unguided,” “irrational,” and “feminine.”

At least that’s what I learned on the day my art history class spent talking about pastorals. :smiley: (I am an impersonator on this thread – I have almost no knowledge of art history, although I do find it interesting. I am taking a Renaissance Art class next semester though, and I’m excited. :nerd: )

I like Peter Bruegel.:slight_smile: I think his painting, “Christ Carrying the Cross,” really epitomizes what the Italian critics would have scorned as irrational Dutch art. Jesus is far from central to the piece. But I think Bruegel’s rendition really captures humanity’s response to Christ – indifference to God even as He walks among them.

Hmmm… That’s tough…

  • Portrait: They just fascinate me, because every portrait is so different. I really love historical portraits, such as Van Eyke’s “Jan de Leeuw, Goldsmith.” I find it fascinating to see that the human face – and society’s perception of it – really hasn’t changed that much over the centuries. I mean, de Leeuw could pass me in the supermarket in jeans and a tee-shirt, fitting in quite nicely. I can’t quite explain it, but for some reason I find that really fascinating.

  • Sacred in the secular: My favorite type of paintings are those rare works that I feel show God interacting among the ordinary. I think that’s why I like Vermeer so much. His paintings often have a subtle religious allusions, I think, of ordinary people attempting to make sense of life.

  • Painting: I love photography, but painting really fascinates me. I love the rich colors of oils and the slight feeling of fantasy that most paintings have – even the most “realistic” ones. I’ve really come to like film photography, because it seems like film photos have the same air about them. That is, they never capture “reality” in the sense that a digital camera would – The artist is always in the picture – even if just a bit – and the photograph is more open to outside interpretation.

I’m in the photography lab at the moment, actually. I’ll post a few nun photos and maybe some others when I get home.:slight_smile:

And so I pose the same three questions back to you, good Sir (and Cindy, too, if you’re reading this, Cinders!:))

Bis bald!

Kate

#38

Alrighty – here’s two nuns and a puppy (cause I can never resist showing off my furry baby :smiley: )




#39

Those are fantastic, Kate!

Would love to see a Van Eyke portrait of them…(and the nuns, too) :laughing:
Seriously, though, nice work. :smiley:

Steve

#40

Thanks, Steve – I would love to see a portrait of them, too, but alas, I am no Van Eyke. :slight_smile: