Category Archives: Paintings

Without paintings we are nothing

Francis Bacon

Paintings

A dark modernist.

No painters used photography more than Degas, David Hockney and Francis Bacon (1909-1992). For the last, it was the source of much of his output of dark, brooding, tortured canvases, familiar to all. I doubt that his personality was captured better than by the expressionist photographer Bill Brandt in this powerful portrait:

Bacon’s foundation has just released a free e-book on the painter, his studio and his use of photography, well explained in the first of the two included videos. You can read more about it here, whence you can download it to your iPad at no cost. The book is an example of where art publishing is headed and is beautifully done.

Hubble

Paintings, Photographs

Beautiful images.

Needless to say, once America comes up with an invention of genius, the small minds pervading the corridors of Congress see to it that the modest cost – and hang the benefits – becomes a political football and the project is mothballed.

I’m talking about the Hubble space telescope of course, perhaps the costliest camera ever made. Look at this image of the red spot(s) on Jupiter:

Jupiter from Hubble. Early 21st Century.

Vincent Van Gogh would be proud.

Van Gogh. Starry Night. June 1889.

The Hubble book is from National Geographic and you can buy it from Amazon by clicking the picture below. I get no click-through dollars if you do that; it will be a cold day in hell before I resort to that disingenuous and pathetic ‘business’ model.

Click the picture to go to Amazon US.

I bought the paper copy as no one at National Geographic has yet realized that interactive iPad books are what the consumer wants. Al Gore’s outstanding Our Choice is the standard here.

A quick Facebook rant:

Sadly, PushPop Press, the maker of the app for Gore’s book, has been acquired by Facebook, sponsor of the largest crime against privacy and the individual in the history of the world. In totalitarian Russia the KGB at least had to search you out. With Facebook, the innocent masses volunteer their most private information at no cost, no threats, no torture, no truth serum, whereupon it is resold, without their knowledge, to law enforcement, prospective and current employers and any advertiser with a check book. Careers are ruined by a single, childhood indiscretion, in a medium that can never be erased, but can most certainly be subpoenaed.

Meanwhile Facebook pays ever-increasing amounts for inventions which threaten its very existence – like the $1 billion just paid for the nonsensical Instagram – in an attempt to maintain its hegemony. A business doomed to fail as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, with minimal barriers to entry and subject to the whims and wants of a fickle, youthful consumer. Too bad PushPop Press will likely go down with it. Why Apple did not acquire this business beats me – the book publishing app, like the Hubble, has been mothballed.

No more cover-ups

Paintings, Photography

Too funny.

This has to be one of the funnier examples of the overreach of regulations.

Could it really be true that cosmetics makers use the one ten thousandth of one percent of the world’s most stunning women, heavily made up, superbly coiffed, expertly lit, photographed by top dolllar image makers, to sell their make-up to the rest who are really largely beyond help?

Surely not?

What is even funnier is that the companies making these products feel they have to further enhance the results in post processing. Photoshop may be a no-no when it comes to news reporting, but in anything else I say “Have at it”. If the result sells more product or makes for a more striking picture, why not? What happened to caveat emptor? Every painter in the history of art has been a putative Photoshop user by editing at the creative stage. These modern digital artists simply do it in post production, just like Ansel Adams did it in the darkroom. (“Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships”, though what God had to do with it beats me).

You really think that Raphael was telling it like it was to Julius III?

Raphael. Julius III, 1512.

My, but the old boy aged well. No liver spots on his pristine white hands, no syphilis sores.

Raphael wanted to get paid just as much as the photographer, art director and Photoshop maven responsible for the Cover Girl number.

Google Art Project

Paintings

Exceptional.

I make no bones about my dislike for Google’s ‘anything for a buck’ raison d’être but its Google Art Project, which has been around a couple of years now, is really special. You can wander through the halls of many of the world’s great art collections, manna for photographers and the visully inclined everywhere, and examine these at a level of detail and in simply stunning definition that no docent would ever permit, lest your nose make contact with the hallowed canvas in question.

Here’s a perfect example, Holbein’s extraordinary portrait of Thomas More in the Frick Collection in Manhattan:

Click the picture for the interactive site.

The extent to which you can zoom in, with the image refreshing for ever greater detail, is breathtaking.

MOMA NYC, The Met, The Uffizzi, The Frick, Versailles, The Hermitage – they are all there. Sadly, the Louvre is not.

And you want to feel Van Gogh’s passion in his vase of gladioli? Look no further than his eponymous museum in lovely Amsterdam.

For many viewers these picture are simply too remote to be seen in person. You might argue that the Google Art Project experience is superior. You need Flash to view, so iDevices will not work.