Islanddawn wrote:

Ferval's pic of a etched shell, why is it naturally assumed that a man did that? It could just as easily been a woman as this recent 'revelation' shows http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131008-women-handprints-oldest-neolithic-cave-art/

This automatic assumption that it must be men resposnible for prehistoric art, is it because history until recently has been mainly written by men? Always seemed a bit odd to me, considering woven baskets and mats, jewellery, beadwork, decorations on clothing, decorations for hair, pottery also show artistic tendancies and all would have been mainly done by women.

Many of those surely also can be regarded as "external secondary sexual signals"?

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

PaulRyckier wrote:

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-expressionism.htm
"The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation and judgment of art. Art was now meant to come forth from within the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external visual world, and the standard for assessing the quality of a work of art became the character of the artist's feelings rather than an analysis of the composition

Sorry, Paul, I really can't see it in that light. Apart from the fact that the multitude of religious subjects, and the mythological ones, that really cannot, in my view, be considered "a depiction of the external visual world", I'd invite you to consider Turner's most familiar work.


Point one - the sunset shown behind the scene did not occur on that day - it was a solid overcast sky.
Point two - even if there had been a sunset, the Temeraire would, in the finest cowboy tradition, have been being towed into, not out of it.
Point three - There were two tugs, not one.

Hence, I would contend, Turner was producing this image from within himself, not acting as a proto-photo-journalist.

Gil,

of course you are right. And yes I was to harsh when I said to Temperance "give me Van Gogh anytime".
It is that difficult to differentiate between "genres". When I did my first research for the ex-BBC messageboard I had to admit that I had difficulties to see the difference between Impressionists and Expressionists. After all the "artist" was moved by an impression and tried to translate that via his work and let the contemplating one be emotionally moved. And were the Expressionists that different? They too had an impression of the reality and tried to make a visual experience of it to move some public...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism
"Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles. The development of Impressionism in the visual arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music and impressionist literature"
And yes, the wiki article sees Turner and Delacroix as pre-Impressionists:
"Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix

And perhaps the "red thread" through the whole concept of art is the modelling by the artist of the perceived reality to please and move an eventual contemplator? And there I follow Ferval in hetr approach...

Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

All schools of style are exploration of a notion. But when wondering what  art is it is useful to question any act that might be styled artistic - why and how we arrange books, a display of 'objets' or even icing a cupcake. Any conscious effort to arrange to please oneself is a dedicated act of art. Bower birds have other things on their minds but nevertheless making an artistic statement.

Isn't attributing "an artistic statement" to the bower bird's display simply a case of anthropomorphism?

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Isn't attributing "an artistic statement" to the bower bird's display simply a case of anthropomorphism?

Not simply that, no. The human capacity to interpret any visual image as artistically aesthetic is disregardless of source. If however one tries to infer on that basis that the bower bird therefore intended its display as an artistic expression then this is most definitely anthropomorphism to a degree as it presumes way more than we actually know about the animal's intentions, aesthetic sensibilities and ability to control the process, the effect of which we are subjectively and perceptively admiring, this presumption being primarily that the animal shares the same motive as us were it one of we humans who had produced the same aesthetic effect. "Artistic" purely in the sense of an aesthetic perception which satisfies us therefore allows this subjective statement to make sense without inferring anthropomorphic attributation. Artistic in the sense of conscious creation of an aesthetic is however entirely anthropomorphic when applied to this source when the above false presumption is allowed to apply.

Priscilla, when asked to consider a "school" of painting as a particular stylistic form of artistic communication between painter and viewer it is almost always an invaluable rule of thumb, I think, to disregard the school's members with the exception of the artist who can lay claim to having founded it. So much of what follows that artist is imitative to a degree that complicates terribly an analysis of those artists' intentions, their honesty (in an artistic sense) and therefore the clarity of their communication. However if the style of that school can be traced back to an innovative originator then it is very well worth studying that person's motive, mindset and intentions when making this departure from whatever was the norm at the time. That is why, for example, I would willingly devote a large slice of my life to attempting to get into the head of JMW Turner whereas five minutes in Picasso's head, while undoubtedly fascinating, would be more than ample for me, I reckon.

Gosh. I wish I could spell anthropomorphism, Gil. Actually the appreciation is the female bower bird's.  I really not sure yet that so careful arrangement and choice of attractions is dedicated and not accidental. More so in fact than body rolling  'art' and unmade beds. Then    there is bird dancing - is that an art form ..or should I go and hoover the sitting room?

Priscilla :
I do admit to the use of a spell checker at times (would that Rowling had installed one at Hogwarts). Yes, we can watch the display "dances" of the Paradisea and gain considerable aesthetic satisfaction from them, as we can also gain a similar feeling from the song of a bird (or a whale?), or the form of a tree, a flower, or a mountain. That does not, to me, imply that a deliberate act of artistic creation is involved, though I would prefer any of those to much modern "art" or "modern dance", despite the avowed aim of its creator being "artistic creation".


Re vacuum cleaning - does not George Herbert's axiom apply to that?

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
        Makes that and th’ action fine.


edited - removed wayward formatting.

It all got very complicated when the notion that "art" not only no longer needed to communicate anything on the deliberate part of its creator but, according to many, no longer should at all. A typical expression of this view came from the literary and drama critic Kenneth Tynan in the 1960s, writing in the Times Literary Supplement;

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

What I like about this quote is not its appraisal of the role of the artist, one of which I am very sceptical since it appears to be a licence for every conceivable manifestation of mountebank, fraud and chancer to insist they are producing "art" purely because it communicates nothing intelligible at all. It is that Tynan, in making this statement and pretending it was his own revealed himself to be just such a fraud, at least in this instance, and this in itself highlights the era of artistic fraudulence into which we had entered at that time (and as far as I can see have yet to emerge from).

What he said really was a very selective slice, devoid of context, from a passage originally published in the 1918 "Dadaist Manifesto", and neither did he acknowledge his source nor his assumedly wilful twisting of the original sense of the phrase which in reality had been penned by Tristan Tzara. In full this read:

"Art is a private affair, the artist produces it for himself; an intelligible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment it strikes my fancy to combine this monstrosity with oil paints: a paper tube simulating the metal that is automatically pressed and poured hatred cowardice villainy. The artist, the poet rejoice at the venom of the masses condensed into a section chief of this industry, he is happy to be insulted: it is a proof of his immutability. When a writer or artist is praised by the newspapers, it is proof of the intelligibility of his work: wretched lining of a coat for public use; tatters covering brutality, piss contributing to the warmth of an animal brooding vile instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh reproducing with the help of typographical microbes.

"We have thrown out the cry-baby in us. Any infiltration of this kind is candied diarrhea. To encourage this act is to digest it. What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the thread of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers."

According to Tzara and the original Dadaists public recognition alone was enough to invalidate both the artist and his art, never mind using that recognition to actually sell the stuff. Putting aside the underlying anarchic sentiment which was very much a reactionary stance at the time, there is however a fundamental truth in Tzara's statement; unless the work is first and foremost a product of the artist's internal desires, needs, moods and thoughts (after all, "inspiration" is the drawing in of breath, not breathing out) then it has been produced with one eye on its public reception and is therefore the poorer for that. I tend to agree with this, and I find it instinctively easier to appreciate Van Gogh or Rembrandt, or for that matter El Greco  (who never made a penny while they were alive and painted in a style scorned and scoffed at by their peers) than I do Damien Hurst, the late Andy Warhol et al (who willingly court scorn and scoffing if it raises their quite profitable profile even higher but yet always give their public what they expect) - no matter how much I would wish to describe all their output as "art".

ferval wrote:

While wading through the festive tasks and even more during the resultant clearing-up, I've been mulling over the original question - What is art? - and I don't think we ever settled on a definition of 'Art'.

 Perhaps, Ferval, you can read this lengthy article that I already mentioned in one of my former messages.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/art-definition.htm#whatisart

Kind regards and with esteem, Paul.

Tristan Tzara wrote:

"Art is a private affair, the artist produces it for himself; an intelligible work is the product of a journalist, and because at this moment it strikes my fancy to combine this monstrosity with oil paints: a paper tube simulating the metal that is automatically pressed and poured hatred cowardice villainy. The artist, the poet rejoice at the venom of the masses condensed into a section chief of this industry, he is happy to be insulted: it is a proof of his immutability. When a writer or artist is praised by the newspapers, it is proof of the intelligibility of his work: wretched lining of a coat for public use; tatters covering brutality, piss contributing to the warmth of an animal brooding vile instincts. Flabby, insipid flesh reproducing with the help of typographical microbes.

"We have thrown out the cry-baby in us. Any infiltration of this kind is candied diarrhea. To encourage this act is to digest it. What we need is works that are strong straight precise and forever beyond understanding. Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong. It draws the thread of notions, words, in their formal exterior, toward illusory ends and centers."

God, and they send poor Ruskin to Pseuds' Corner. What is he on about? I can just see old TT sitting in some bar in Montparnasse, spouting this stuff, followed by hours of his diabolical poetry (surrounded by adoring women).

Although I do agree with "there is however a fundamental truth in Tzara's statement; unless the work is first and foremost a product of the artist's internal desires, needs, moods and thoughts (after all, "inspiration" is the drawing in of breath, not breathing out) then it has been produced with one eye on its public reception and is therefore the poorer for that."

And for the real artist - in whatever medium - that usually means agony and a lot of bl**dy hard work rather than anything else. But isn't that obvious? Perhaps not.



I bet he practised that intense look for hours in the mirror.

Yes, Tristan and the Dadas were a formidable band in their day, weren't they? Not a gang one would necessarily greet with a welcome smile if they came into your local, but since they objected on principle to buying rounds anyway their tenure in any pub was short-lived, I imagine.

However Dadaim was a very understandable phenomenon when it occurred. After WWI it must have been so tempting to simply give up on everything and declare a pox on all the houses that had contributed to that lunacy. Raising cultural lunacy to an exalted position was simply one way of coping with it all, I assume. Tristan & Co hated anything contrived (and I must confess a sneaking regard for that attitude), but once they started contemptuously dismissing as worthless anything that had been built by design they were on an extremely slippery logical slope. In the end they became a cultural niche in their own right, and even a profitable niche at that, so for the founders this must have been devastating. The only way of coping was to dive head first into surrealism which in many ways is simply a denial of reality rather than a sane way of coping with it. Poor buggers. I would have bought them a pint anyway. At least they were trying.

Here are two of TT's poems:

Vegetable Swallow

two smiles meet towards
the child-wheel of my zeal
the bloody baggage of creatures
made flesh in physical legends-lives

the nimble stags storms cloud over
rain falls under the scissors of
the dark hairdresser-furiously
swimming under the clashing arpeggios

in the machine's sap grass
grows around with sharp eyes
here the share of our caresses
dead and departed with the waves

gives itself up to the judgment of time
parted by the meridian of hairs
non strikes in our hands
the spices of human pleasures

I suspect the above was composed as per instructions given in the following:

To Make a Dadaist Poem

Take a newspaper
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility,
even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.



Mind you, David Bowie used to do this too - he wrote random words on bits of paper, tossed them up into the air and the resulting lyrics were usually much appreciated by us (very young) members of the vulgar herd.









I

Sounds very like the reputed design process for the Shagbat (Supermarine Walrus). "They took the components of an aircraft and threw them into the air. They assembled them exactly as they fell to earth". Hard to credit the same designer (more accurately perhaps "design team") with that and the Spitfire.

John Lennon was a great fan of that method too - as well as interspersing random sounds, lyrics and taped radio segments into some of his songs. Who, for example, can avoid quoting King Lear now when singing along faithfully to "I Am The Walrus"?

Quote:
Edgar: "I know thee well: a serviceable villain, As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire."
Gloucester: "What, is he dead?"
Edgar: "Sit you down, father. Rest you."
(King Lear, Act IV, scene vi)

Tim's Vermeer.

Didn't think I'd like this one but ended up absolutely fascinated by it and almost sad when it had to end. Amongst other things it raises the question of whether Vermeer's stuff is "art" if he "cheated" so much. Personally the ingenuity involved in his so-called cheating is artistry in its own right, and absolute genius in its time.



I watched it on the same day as I watched "Finding Vivian Maier", another surprisingly brilliant documentary that also raises similar questions regarding what qualifies the output, in this case her photographs, as "artistic".

That woman's photos were brilliant.

ferval - did you ever get to watch Museum Hours? We've got it on at the moment and I think it is just superb. If you've seen it, what did you think?

Thank you very much, Temp, for reminding me. I lent it to a friend before I even saw it and I'd completely forgotten. I'd also forgotten that same friend has two books of mine which I want back. To the telephone now!

ferval wrote:

Thank you very much, Temp, for reminding me. I lent it to a friend before I even saw it and I'd completely forgotten. I'd also forgotten that same friend has two books of mine which I want back. To the telephone now!

There are at least three copies of "The Epic of Gilgamesh" with my actual, not board, name inscribed in them somewhere - people really should understand the difference between "loan" and "p!$$ off with and keep".

Coming up on BBC 4, part of the 'Slow TV' season, looks worth a look but at 3 hours perhaps one for recording to facilitate tea making and comfort breaks!

National Gallery w/t (1x180 for BBC Four)
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes of the National Gallery in a journey to the heart of a museum inhabited by masterpieces of Western art from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Filmed in his characteristic style, his three-hour epic has no voiceover, no score and no added sound effects. The nearest thing to music is the drone of the polishing machines at dawn. In a richly detailed, beautifully nuanced portrait of the gallery’s working life, we are guided gently from board meeting to retouching workshop, from gallery floor, to seminar room; from the difficult financial decisions facing the charity’s executives to visitors’ awed appreciation of its blockbuster exhibitions. Combining a vivid sense of how vast the gallery’s many activities are with an eye for droll observational detail, the film reveals how the gallery works and its relations with its staff, public, and paintings.

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Many, many thanks for the Museum Hours recommendation - just a joy in so many ways.

The Florence Academy of Art has recently nominated this Caravaggio as the most erotic painting ever produced:



Just to bewilder non art aficionados further the above painting, Still Life With Fruit On A Ledge, is considered a sister painting of the following - The Sacrifice Of Isaac;



None of this was confusing to Urban VIII.

Now why did that make me think of this?


"He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health,
a boy's love, or a whore's oath."


D. H. Lawrence would not have been confused either, although fruit for him were female, not male:



The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.

But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic :
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female...


He goes on for ages about this, as always, but thought just a few lines appropriate here.


Lord, what a pretentious post.

Pretentious or not it, reminds me of a comment about Bruce Chatwin (author, explorer, historian and bisexual ... another T E Lawrence if you will) made by one of his many one-time lovers, Miranda Rothschild: 
"Bruce was a polymorphous pervert. He's out to seduce everybody, and it doesn't matter if you are male, female, an ocelot or a tea cosy."

How does one, I wonder, seduce a tea cosy?

Safer than an ocelot, I should have thought.

Though not necessarily for Bruce Chatwin. About their liason, Miranda Rothschild continued:
"He was lust personified. It had nothing to do with anything else. I was lacerated as if by a Bengal tiger."

Crikey.

To be serious again - this is an interesting article about sexual metaphor in late Renaissance art:

http://www.gastronomica.org/fruits-vegetables-sexual-metaphor-late-renaissance-rome/


In painting, the eroticized still life reached its climax around the year 1600 in a work recently attributed to Caravaggio, the Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge. An empiricist by nature, Caravaggio painted no fewer than a dozen pictures that contain seventeen different fruits and vegetables. Botanists claim these canvases offer a unique perspective on horticulture at the time, replete with identifiable insect predations and disease damage. The fruit carries minimal iconographic significance in most of these depictions, but the message in the Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge is undeniably sexual. In a dramatic composition as aggressive as any of his altarpieces, Caravaggio arranged the display of melons, pomegranates, gourds, figs, and other fruits to suggest sexual tumescence and receptiveness to penetration. Once one notices the stem of the central melon aimed toward a burst fig and the two meaty bottle gourds lying languidly over a pair of freshly sliced melons, is any other reading possible?


I cannot resist adding Miss Prism's remark to the startled, presumably celibate, Dr Chasuble: "I spoke horticulturally. My metaphor was drawn from fruits."


Then there's Cardinal del Monte's influence to consider, of course, that intellectually enlightened patron of the arts and sciences who was an important early patron of Caravaggio.

This is the Cardinal, painted by Ottavio Leoni.

I like his face: it is humorous and intelligent, I think.

There is some debate about whether Caravaggio painted all the stuff ascribed to him - mainly because he sold to several rather voracious collectors of fine arts who were often not quite fully honest when publishing catalogues of their possessions. One painter whose reputation has suffered as a result is El Spagnoletto (like El Greco but Spanish). His real name was Jusepe de Ribera and about a hundred of his works survive, though it is estimated that about two thirds of these have been erroneously attributed to his contemporaries in the past, often for less than aesthetic reasons (a Caravaggio at auction would always trump a Ribera by a factor of about ten, even when they were alive). However if you like Caravaggio then by definition you would simply adore Ribera's work - like Caravaggio he never went for cliched representations of established themes and always tried to inject a personal take on each subject (thankfully, as it has helped in belatedly but correctly attributing many paintings to him that otherwise were claimed as evidence for other men's genius and not his own).

I have several favourite Riberas but the one I just love is his portrait of Archimedes. Neither before nor since has anyone dared portray the man based on what we know and not on what we think we should know - and what a friendly chap Archie turns out to be too in Ribera's hand!

Thank you for digging out this one, nordmann. Temps ought like it - rather like a preview o Rylance in old age? Amusement is so rarely captured - and one also wonders what brought it on?

That's the most wonderful portrait, positively life enhancing. It radiates warmth and humanity, I've been gazing at it for ages.

I'm interested in the way the lighter area around the head, presumably a device to enhance contrast as my old art teacher used to tell us, hasn't been graduated into the background and so giving it almost the impression of a halo. That must be intentional surely? Or is his head illuminated by a shaft of light?

He's obviously just had a lightbulb moment.

ferval wrote:

That's the most wonderful portrait, positively life enhancing. It radiates warmth and humanity, I've been gazing at it for ages.

I'm interested in the way the lighter area around the head, presumably a device to enhance contrast as my old art teacher used to tell us, hasn't been graduated into the background and so giving it almost the impression of a halo. That must be intentional surelumanityy? Or is his head illuminated by a shaft of light?

Well yes, "Temps", as Priscilla calls me, does think it's a very good portrait, but she's still a little bit wary.

Humanity - yes, I give you that, but I am not so sure about the "warmth" being "radiated".

He reminds me very much of More and Erasmus - even Machiavelli: all lean, ascetic, hugely intelligent men, but sardonic too, and all too ready to be vastly amused by the folly and ignorance of mankind.

The "halo effect" you mention, ferval, is indeed interesting. Is it a humanist halo, awarded to a pagan intellectual giant whom de Ribera perhaps deemed more worthy of it than any Christian saint?

As ever, I wish I knew - and understood - more.

As ever, I wish I knew - and understood - more. Or More?

Sardonic? No, I don't see that at all, perhaps a little weary but to me that's a smile of recognition and pleasure.

Actually, in the cold light of day, I agree with you. Had you not responded, I should have deleted most of the comments I made last night. As you suggest, too much More. Sardonic is not the word for Archimedes.

But his obvious pleasure and joy is interesting. If it is not the folly of mankind that has so delighted him, what, as Priscilla asks, has? Perhaps it is just his mathematics - and the freedom he believes his calculations will offer? Freedom from the darkness of ignorance and superstition? I have no idea.

But he certainly makes a change from all the usual tortured religious figures of the time.

I still think his halo is a humanist one.

To appreciate Jusepe de Ribera's intentions you have to acknowledge his approach to almost all of his subjects and themes, which was very much a "cut the crap" one. One great example was the following, intriguingly entitled "A Sense of Taste". This was one of a set of five paintings he did during his short stay in Rome, each depicting one of the main senses, a theme which had just become popular in Northern Europe and which his contemporaries always approached as allegory, using established religious or classical subjects to illustrate their point. One imagines also that this is exactly what the commissioners of the works expected too. de Ribera on the other hand, whether with the agreement of his client or not (an ambigious Spanish gentleman about whom we know little else), went for the common man as subject - and just how radical that was at the time is very hard to visualise these days.

Nor is there much by way of allegory, or at least allegory of the kind expected by most patrons of the period. The man sitting down to enjoy his pasta and wine is neither handsome nor profound, in fact one could imagine him a glutton, waistcoat buttons straining to pop. As with Archimedes his expression is also enigmatic - some have said that it shows him defying the viewer to criticise his obvious enjoyment of a good meal, while others have detected a hint of remorse or guilt in his gluttony. Either way Ribera has managed to buck just about every trend in contemporary art of his period (and that's even before one analyses also his novel approach to pigment and application, one that he also shared with Caravaggio).



For art historians this painting, as much as if not even more than any of Caravaggio, represents one of those seminal moments in the development of classical art during the early 17th century and one of the first "modernist" paintings to be accorded worth and recognition previously reserved for more conventionally classical treatments.

It is a shame that Ribera has somehow fallen between the cracks in our inherited view of "old masters". As a result his works have ended up all over the place, with no physical or academic inclination ever to assemble them into collections for comparative study or even just simply to celebrate his obvious genius. At least the internet has gone some way to redressing this obvious wrong. I heartily recommend digging out and having a look at his stuff, especially people who already have discovered the joys of Caravaggio.

I should have guessed that the above was by Rembrandt.

Probably a stupid question, but was Rembrandt influenced by de Ribera?

Rembrandt appears to have arrived at a similar view regarding subject matter and theme quite independently of anybody else at all, or at least that is the widely held view of the man. It is said that if anyone could take the credit for influencing his style it might well be Hendrick Uylenburgh, a Mennonite art dealer who was a great help in securing commissions for Rembrandt at the time he was establishing himself as a portraitist in Amsterdam. Hendrick encouraged his friend to approach even the most staid and established subject matter highly subjectively, and this led him, like Ribera around the same time, to dare put non-classical subjects centre-stage even when the subject matter had traditionally demanded more classical treatments.

If anything it might be argued that Ribera was influenced by Rembrandt - though again thanks to the man having fallen through the cracks of popular art appreciation we just don't know. The big difference however in terms of defining either as radical is where they were operating. Rembrandt's Northern European clients, for various cultural and religious reasons, were open to humanistic treatments of biblical themes and similar artistic subjects. Ribera on the other hand was immersed in a Southern European market dominated by Catholic clients, many of whom had positions of real power and who could have made life difficult for him indeed if he offended their sense of decorum. I like to think he did, and that they even tried (it might explain his relative obscurity). However he ploughed on regardless and artistically as well as intellectually "won the argument". No wonder his Archimedes is so chuffed!

Thanks, nord. All very interesting. It's like our own Museum Hours here!

Here's another splendid example of Ribera's departure from the norm of his day. He didn't invent the subject matter - Magdalena Ventura was a real person. However rather than be treated as a "freak" Ribera has chosen to portray her and her husband using the conventions normally reserved for high ranking personages in portraiture. Not only that but he has included, chiselled out on stone, not only a description of her intriguing medical condition but his own and his patron's role in bringing the lady to the viewer's attention with the invitation to understand rather than mock.



The inscription on the stone reads:



Look, a great miracle of nature. Magdalena Ventura from the town of Accumulus in Samnium, in the vulgar tongue Abruzzo in the Kingdom of Naples, aged 52 and what is unusual is when she was in her 37th year she began to go through puberty and thus a full growth of beard appeared such that it seems rather that of a bearded gentleman than a woman who had previously lost three sons whom she had borne to her husband, Felici de Amici, whom you see next to her. Joseph de Ribera, a Spaniard, marked by the cross of Christ, a second Apelles of his own time, by order of Duke Ferdinand II of Alcala, Viceroy at Naples, depicted in a marvellously lifelike way. 17th February 1631.

There is practically no painting by Ribera that does not exhibit some portion of his own obvious intellectual curiosity. That is exactly the kind of curiosity that got people like Galileo into all sorts of trouble. You really have to admire the guy.

Thank you as well, nordmann, these are a revalation. I'm embarrassed to admit to being entirely unaware of any of them.

The diner is indeed ambiguous, sitting somewhere between taking pleasure in the gift of taste and the sin of gluttony. I can see where he could be thought of as exhibiting a measure of self-disgust but challenging the viewer to condemn him. Now, why is he holding the glass in such an odd and impractical way. It would be impossible to lay it down without using his other hand - or is that the point? Is the booze rather than the food that has piled on the pounds?  And the olives spilling out?  Looking for information I found this but I'm sure you can add to it.

OLIVE: The olive is a true Biblical tree, a tree 'full of fatness' which yields great quantities of oil. Its rich yield symbolized the providence of God toward His children.

Is that a bread roll in the foreground?

The second picture deserves much consideration but the initial response is just how humane it is. I think I'd loved to have met Señor Ribera.

ferval wrote:

Now, why is he holding the glass in such an odd and impractical way. It would be impossible to lay it down without using his other hand - or is that the point?

I think I've read that holding a glass like that was the custom/fashion in 17th century Holland ... quite a few other paintings show the same ... I can recall at least one Vermeer (I think it's a Vermeer) where the subject, quite naturally and un-selfconsciously, holds a long-stemmed glass like that (it's called something like two men watching a girl playing a clavichord).

PS:
Neither of these are the painting I was thinking of, but both 'The Wine Glass' and the very similar "The Girl with the Wineglass", both by Vermeer, show the subject holding the glass not by the stem but by the base:



as does the similarly composed, 'Woman drinking with Soldiers', by Pieter de Hooch:



.... that girl in the red dress certainly seems to have liked her tipple!

It appears you are correct, MM>

                                                                                 

On reflection, isn't that like what is supposed to be the 'correct' way to hold white wine? However, in this example one could uncurl the fingers below the the base and lay down the glass. In the Ribera and the Vermeer that would not be possible without taking the glass in one's other hand. I've tried it and it isn't.

                                                                                           

Now is the grip in the paintings just mannered, an indication of sophistication, or has it a more practical origin? Fragile stems perhaps?

ferval wrote:

Now is the grip in the paintings just mannered, an indication of sophistication, or has it a more practical origin? Fragile stems perhaps?

I dunno frankly ... but you are certainly correct that the fashion at the time was for ridiculously long and fragile stems for wine glasses. Here's a very long, but not particularly extreme example:



... which is a detail from from 'Young Couple at Breakfast' by Gabriël Metsu (a contemporary of Vermeer) ... and this time, despite the extreme delicacy of the glass - which stands out in stark contrast to the robust solidity of the coffee pot - she is nevertheless holding it by the stem. But it is breakfast, and I think she is handing the delicate glass to her husband ... who seems just about to take hold of it by the base, no?

Wine for breakfast? ... or is it a shot of dutch jenever ..... gin?

I've been looking at de Ribera's paintings and I must be truthful: I find them very disturbing, especially the religious paintings. Odd, because I love Caravaggio and most people would argue he is just as disturbing.

The darkness and cruelty in the religious work is terrible - I am oddly reminded of the Inquisition. On the other hand, I find his version of the Baptism of Christ cloying - although the experts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art disagree. I  probably just don't understand it.


http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/18/arts/review-art-scenes-of-cruelty-faces-of-dignity.html


I rather suspect now that my ramblings about his Archimedes were right off-target: I was actually surprised to learn that de Ribera was honoured by the Pope:


The 1630s and 1640s were wonderfully successful for Ribera: he was awarded with the Papal Order of the Vatican (the equivalent to a Knighthood)...


http://www.artble.com/artists/jusepe_de_ribera


I feel a dreadful Philistine, but there you have it. Byron's words are interesting:


"...and there the stories
Of martyrs awed, as Spagnoletto tainted
His brush with all the blood of all the sainted.”

Don Juan.


The Baptism of Christ. I do not like this at all.

I've been browsing through as well and many of his religious works are indeed terrible but in the original sense. He doesn't pull any punches but he doesn't glorify and wallow in suffering which so much Spanish religious art does, his martyrs are very much of this world, not the next. I find them moving and impressive but I don't think I'd want one on the living room wall.
I agree about the 'Baptism' - wishy-washy. His women are pretty rubbish too, sentimental and idealised, often sweetly pretty and rather unconvincing, but those lived-in male faces are fab.

This is dire - in my opinion of course.

                                                                                             


I like this one though.

                                                                                             

It seems to me that he was far more interested in two things, suffering and the models he chose to work with. At a guess he received papal honours because he depicted the sort of stuff that went down well - suffering for ones faith; the subject matter of the painting only being the vehical for his interest.  I suggest he sought models that he could use to convey excesses - almost addiction. The glutton - addicted yet  defiant - just as a chain smoker or alcholic recognises their own destruction but does not stop.

There are saints addicted to faith over suffering and that harrowing couple living with a physical singularity for which, belief in the  religious  author  brings Job-like acceptance. The tambourine girl, she's as lost in earthy joy just as the eyes of the girl in the annunciation  - I see the reflective sadness of acceptance there, ... and there's another pale halo there too; an artists thing about highlight  sometimes used in drawing. And here is an artist who can draw very well indeed.

But now to the one called Archimedes that we have all been taken with  because of the character in that face.
So who was his model? Why so dressed?  And why was it so named? That smile -  that expression of secret knowledge that no one else can fathom - I've seen it before in eastern streets where manic men roam at will; not harmful men but men lost in a world that they alone comprehend with an amusement that we cannot share. Dark are their eyes and weathered their faces and ragged too, they are uncaring. Thus it can be with genius also. 
Well, that's what I think. I'll get me rag and turps and be on me way, then.

Temps wrote:

I find them very disturbing, especially the religious paintings.

Well, he was an artisan, wasn't he? A specific commission got the commissioner exactly what he (or she, if one was the Duchess of Naples) wanted. He could do conventional if it paid enough, and often did.

However when left to his own devices he tended towards the demystification of religion (this was the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment after all) and, for example, a comic turn like Saint Onuphrius in his hands became anything but. Check out the "before Ribera" / "Ribera" images below for a comparison:





Nothing too terrible there - in fact Humphrey seems like the kind of naked wild man one would actually invite in for a cuppa and a chat.

And just to demonstrate that Ribera was anything but a shock and awe artist here's his take on cerebral palsy (mistakenly listed as "The Clubfoot" in modern catalogues thanks to the ignorance of a gallery curator in the 19th century). One doesn't have to "like" the artist's work (as you and MM seem already to have reached agreement on) to acknowledge that he was most definitely striking out in directions that his mentor-by-proxy Caravaggio would have been immensely proud of.

I know nothing of this man - apart from what I glean from his work , which is quite a lot - so about, say the above work - how come it was painted? Not commissioned, surely. I agree with ferv, there's not much   I could live with how ever touching or impressive.

A commissioned painting was rarely intended for decorative purposes so the logic behind why any subject animated the purchaser or the artist into producing anything can get very complex indeed. In the case of "The Clubfoot" the patron was Ferdinand Vanden Eynden, a Flemish art dealer who was especially interested in works then typified by Murillo and Velasquez (also Spanish painters) which depicted grand themes through impoverished subjects. Eynden exhibited Ribera's painting alongside Murillo's "The Young Beggar" (see below) until it was sold to the Duke of Medina de Torres, the viceroy of Naples who was assembling a collection of Ribera's work for reasons less to do with art appreciation and more to do with investment (Ribera was by then a well-established and reputable artist in Naples). Torres is also a big reason why Ribera's subsequent reputation has suffered so much - it was he who re-ascribed provenance when he thought he could bump up the value by crediting works to others.



Ribera and Eynden were wise to Torres' scams however. Note the signature on the "Clubfoot" painting. This was something not normally done at the time, except of course with works initially commissioned by dealers who were more interested in the value of a further sale than the ownership of a work. When Torres emerged as the buyer Eynden apparently had Ribera meet him in Rome just to sign the work, already three years old at that point.

Ribera was also having an affair with Torres' sister-in-law. But that's beside the point.