I have always liked the photography of Ansel Adams. For those unfamilar with him: <A HREF="http://www.detnews.com/2001/entertainment/0108/05/c06-259890.htm">Ansel Adams centennial exhibit opens</A> <i> SAN FRANCISCO -- The first comprehensive exhibition of Ansel Adams' work since his death in 1984 reinforces his status as America's foremost nature photographer and secures a place for his work on museum walls. "The idea of the exhibition is to try to show Adams as an artist, not as a conservationist or a politician or a photography teacher," says John Szarkowski, who knew Adams and curated the show, which opens Saturday at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art........ Adams was born Feb. 20, 1902, the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. He may have been hyperactive or dyslexic when he was young, and did not do well in school. He was essentially self-taught, and his formal education ended with the equivalent of eighth grade. His first visit to Yosemite Valley was with his family in 1916. He took about 30 photographs using his new Kodak Brownie -- his first camera. "There was nothing very unusual in 1916 about a 14-year-old child of a middle-class family making snapshots on the family vacation," writes Szarkowski in Ansel Adams at 100, now available in bookstores. "Nor did the first snaps of the young Adams indicate any special genius, although one might say they were neatly framed. The snaps were memory aids ... Yosemite took hold of the child, and for the rest of his life he returned as frequently as he could." Adams did show early promise as a pianist, though, and by 21, he considered himself a professional musician. It wasn't until 1930 that he turned instead to photography -- and Yosemite. He moved from San Francisco to a home and studio overlooking California's Big Sur coast, south of Carmel in 1962. His phone number was always listed, his door was always open and he found himself spending most of his time teaching. Experts agree that the bulk of Adams' own best work was done in the 1930s and early 1940s. "Those are the years when he was really an original figure," says the museum's Phillips. "Later, he was interested in making his work accessible for very good reasons because the environment from which he drew inspiration ... was being threatened." But, as he put together the show, Szarkowski was struck by Adams' lack of productivity as an artist in his later years. "He had his finger in a million pies," Szarkowski says. "Whether those other activities took the energy that had once gone into photography or whether the fact that he may have felt that he lost that indefinable, intuitive awareness that a first-rate photographer lives from ... I don't know." Adams was a tireless proponent of photography as art, co-founding the world's first museum department of photography in 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "He stood up and said, 'This is a beautiful art medium on its own,'" Alinder says. While he long enjoyed fame, Ansel Adams only achieved financial stability from his work a few years before his death. The Ansel Adams Trust, which oversees the production of books, posters and calendars, sells more than 500,000 Adams' pieces a year, according to trustee William Turnage. "It's the most successful single artist publishing program in the country," he says. Adams' photographs have never been more in demand, according to Sotheby's auction house. Prices range from less than $10,000 to as much as $60,000. "That doesn't include prices that private galleries have gotten that may be a good deal higher," says Chris Mahoney in Sotheby's photograph department. And, artistically, Adams remains a strong presence among contemporary photographers. "All landscape photographers measure their achievement even today either by their rebellion against Ansel Adams or by their creative emulation of his work," says Robert Adams, best known for his photographs chronicling the urbanization of the Colorado Rockies, and no relation to Ansel. "If we feel uneasy in our love of Ansel Adams' art, it's because his art doesn't always seem adequately to acknowledge, much less to reconcile the unpleasant aspects of contemporary life." Many of Adams' contemporaries believed he was taking pictures of the wrong things at the wrong time and saw his work as irrelevant. He was accused of ignoring the Depression, World War II and many social issues. "He was criticized for taking pictures of rocks while the world disintegrated around him," Alinder says. "But he felt beauty can give something that nothing else can. He felt it was at the toughest time in the human condition that we need beauty to help get us through, to remind us of the great things in life that are beautiful." </i>
Great article. I am really new to art and have been looking for a few Adams prints for my beadroom, I just havent decided on which one. I also really like Savlador Dali even though he is kind of trendy
I love abstract art as well as folk art. Heres a really good little article explaing a bit of why Jackson Pollocks art is pleasing...at least to some of us! Jackson Pollock's paintings are aesthetically pleasing because they obey fractal rules similar to those of the natural world. So says Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, a mathematician at London's Imperial College. Pollock, a pioneer of 'abstract expressionism' and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, is well known for his technique of splashing lines of paint, apparently at random, onto a canvas. Yet the end results often have a haunting, naturalistic quality to them. This is probably because these lines have fractal properties, Jensen told the British Association for the Advancement of Science's annual festival in London this week. Jensen invokes the cauliflower to explain fractal geometry. No matter how many pieces you break a cauliflower into, all the pieces resemble a whole cauliflower. The same goes for many natural features such as forests, rivers, clouds and mountains as you home in on them. Since Pollock's paintings have a similar fractal nature, Jensen claims that they are not truly abstract at all. Consciously or unconsciously, Pollock was imitating the patterns of nature. Jensen contrasts this with the abstract work of Kadinsky, with its harsh Euclidean geometry of triangles, lines and other shapes confined in the frame of the painting. Pollock's fractal style makes his paintings open and 'frame-less', Jensen argues. Like walking through a forest, the viewer expects that the scene must be continued outside the field of view. Jensen ranks Pollack's immense canvases alongside other 'open' paintings, such as Turner's 'Snowstorm'. Scientists are also nearer to uncovering the techniques that Pollock used. Paint simply poured in a line makes a smooth streak that has none of the complex fractal edges and undulations of Pollock's work. Pollock was known to have swung his paint back and forth like a pendulum, using a can on the end of a string with a hole punched in it. Researchers have found that if a swinging pendulum is hit with a hammer at just the right frequency (slightly less than the natural rhythm of the pendulum), its motion becomes chaotic and the paint traces out very convincing 'fake Pollocks'. The artist had no idea of fractals or chaotic motion. Of course, none of this approaches the innate brilliance of Pollock's work. But what it does demonstrate, if nothing else, Jensen points out, is that maths is not just a boring matter of calculating numbers: it can be just as conceptual and abstract as art.
If we are posting interesting articles, here is one. Not really my interest/field, but that can come tomorrow.
James Turrell does some pretty amazing stuff. He designed the tunnel that connects Mies van der Rohe's section of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to Raphael Moneo's new building. I also like Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson. Unfortunately, I don't read much about art any more. Most of what I know is what I learned in school.
Oily, I'll take anyone's explanation of Jackson Pollock over Jackson Pollock's explanation of himself. I really like his paintings, but when he starts babbling about the subconscious and Native Americans I tend to drift. Way too much like Scientology.
I like fruits and vegetables with faces: <img src="http://www.scholastic.com/titles/peeling/images/morepgs.jpg" width="400">
lol mrsjb, the turtle is cute. I enjoy many of the colors in mexican art, including Frida Kahlo's paintings and Diego Rivera's schtuff. And I like nudes.
native american art, folk art, local art, abstract, cy twombly, dali, magritte, the surrealists, pop art, graffiti, basquiat, haring, mexican folk art, kahlo, rivera, the impressionists, van gogh, munch, sculpture, calder, ancient art, modern art, $5 art, free art... any kind really. I like a lot of stuff! Here's a current favorite!
American landscape paintings--Church, Cole, Moran, and Innes. Here's one from Moran of the Falls in Yellowstone that helped Congress decide to create the first ever National Park. http://www.nga.gov/feature/moran/yellowstonebig.html
I like fantasy art, with purple clouds and crystal towers and stuff. No unicorns, though. I also like those colored pictures from the Hubble telescope.
Artists in my small collection: John Mark Sager - assemblage piece (sculpture) Kyle Young - abstracted/organic painting Penny Cerling - organic-based print I have a fine art photograph - forget the name of the artist... I have two tapestries by an Indian artist - forget her name A silk Indian batik - more along the lines of "folk art" I guess (folk art doesn't really exist, by the way) an amber Tiffany lamp - OK, it is not a "real" Tiffany in that it was not made by him, but it has his name on it and it is damn cool I tell ya. My own work - haha...it sucks I most dig 19th century French art (for some reason that means about 1750-1910). Theodore Gericault Eugene Delacroix Edouard Manet Honore Daumier Just a few...next - school will start!
For some reason, I have always been fascinated by great paintings and artists despite having no artistic ability myself. I like pretty much all styles except for cubism although I like Picasso's stuff before he went into cubism. I love the Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, and Tintoretto. Some other favorites include Giotto, Rubens, Velaquez, El Greco, Durer, and Hans Holbein the Younger. I also like the impressionists of the 19th Century including Renoir, Degas, Manet, and Monet. Strangely, despite not liking cubism, I do like the man that many felt inspired the cubists in Paul Cezanne. I also enjoy sculptors like Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Rodin. As long as it doesn't look weird or far out to me, then I will enjoy looking at it.
School is in session: I also like conceptual and performance art. Here is an example. Joseph Beuys, "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" The Image (one of many): The performance: Beuys had set up an exhibition of his drawings in a gallery. He then "performed" within the gallery space. No one was allowed inside with him - the reporters, public, and critics had to stay outside and either watch him through windows or through the doorway. He covered his face in fat, upon which gold leaf was overlaid (gold leaf is thinly hammered out sheets of gold - used a lot for medieval icons and the like). He also tied a small metal sheet onto his foot so that when he walked around -CLANG! He had some felt attached to him somewhere. Of course, as the title implies, he walked around with a dead rabbit in his arms. As he would go from drawing to drawing, he would wisper/mumble things to the rabbit that the onlookers could not really hear or understand. That is basically the performance. Meaning: Complicated. First, it should be understood that he had his own personal mythology. He was a pilot in WWII for Germany and was shot down over Crimea in 1943. This left his body wrecked. He was saved by nomadic peoples who nursed him to health. He claims to have been kept warm often by the use of animal fat and felt...thus, these elements often appear in his works. Gold face - to inspire thoughts of him being a shaman - a holy man who knows "truth." Also, it explains how he was able to "talk" to the animal - because he has some kind of primal connection. By doing it the way he did, though, implies that there is no truth, etc - because nobody could really hear him talking (especially with the clanging metal). So it makes what he was doing just gibberish in some ways. He wrote that it was a "complex tableau about the problems of language, and about the problems of thought, of human consciousness and the consciousness of animals." So there you have it.
Manet was not an Impressionist. Why don't you like cubism? Do you dislike both synthetic and analytical?
I like Klee and Kandinski. I have these two posters on my walls. I have some original art too, but it’s local and I can’t find any of it on the net. One local artist I’d like to have some of is Joe Fafard. http://www.joefafard.com/joe web page/archive/art/people.html or a Group of Seven piece like this (ha ha!)
