WRONG:
And still does - like Bigfoot … Nobody would challenge you??? I will assume you are being hyperbolic. You and I accept these beliefs to be silly based on facts and complete lack of evidence. That is not true of everybody.
People believe all sorts of nonsense.
My 5 year old drew a picture of an imaginary being, I wonder if it was god? How could it not be, he says he heard them speak and now I guess that makes my son a great profit of god. How can he be wrong?
Indeed. Including that Jesus appeared to a four year old child and taught her to draw.
I’ve had a long look at the paintings. They’re technically very good imo. I like some of the darker, serious portraits. She has a kind of old masters thing going there, imo. A lot of the stuff looks like it was lifted from greeting cards. BUT I’m as jealous as hell. None of my paintings*** come within a county mile of her skill or artistic expression.
OK, she’s a savant. Is there any suggestion of her being on the autism spectrum? Not that it matters, I’m just curious.
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*** About 5 years ago, I took a year of art classes, followed by some time at a senior’s art group. I do not show my art to others. Although it gives me a lot of satisfaction, I’m acutely aware that it’s crap. So yeah, jealous of that young girl.
Crank, I spent six years of my misspent youth attending full time courses in art colleges until I got my overly precious Fine Arts Diploma. I studied under renowned artists like Bill Rose, Peter Upditch, Ted Binder and a host of forgotten national art prize winners and I came out with the philosophy that art satisfies many needs of human aspirations and vanity.
I remember with a touch of regret one attempt to have my work exhibited in an influential and exclusive studio. The immensely long shortlist was down to myself and a fellow student at the same college. I was desperate for money and needed the opportunity to sell some works and hopefully a commission from a wealthy patron. I’d been working nightshift for two years as a cleaner in a soap factory (loooong story). The other guy was the nephew of an immensely popular famous and still remembered Australian artist. My fellows assured me my artwork was superior and that I would win the slot. I lost. Call me a bad loser but the only real difference between our works was that he could add his uncle’s surname to the bottom right hand corner. But I insist I was not bitter. I struggled on with my art in various mediums. I moved from paint to print to sculpture to finally ceramics and pottery. I came to understand that my art was never a consumer product, it was my vanity on canvas, in ink, stone and clay and before everything else, I really enjoyed it. It was my life.
So when I started teaching general art classes the first thing I impressed on students was that they needed to nurture a love for themselves and whatever ‘hideous’ outcomes they created.
Andy Warhol, that most untalented of successful artists and one of my favourites, insisted ‘art’ was a verb. Its what people do. I agree. My favourite artworks are ancient cave paintings, like Lascaux and Altamira the Aboriginal cave paintings around Sydney. The paintings, the careful and considered applications of the ochre to the stone by hand, sharing the moment of that robust animal stampeding across some ancient pristine plain connects the viewer to the action, imagination and memory of the artist across a span of thousands of years to that very point in time when paint met rock.
The greatest value of ‘art’ is that it connects people. The price tag is just for crass sensationalism.
If you enjoy it Crank, fuck the notion of high art and keep on painting.
GrinseedAtheist
I feel so much better after that… Art and Fashion… two industries of which I have absolutely no understanding. I just don’t get it.
My mother was an artist, supplementing her welfare checks with art work. I learned to draw as a child and took art classes in High School and Junior College. I had some of my work selected for art shows. First, when I looked at the things I produced, they were lacking talent. That was a fact and I knew it. I can paint and draw and I can make a picture look like what it is I am drawing, but it lacks the ‘wow’ factor that talented people can add to a piece of art. There are high school students with more artistic acumen than me. I am good at other things. Being an artist just was not meant for me.
Thanks mate. Exactly what I’m doing.
Perhaps that most important thing I learned from the art classes was ‘there are no rules in art’ (apart from not signing the name of another artist )
So, my stuff is pretty eclectic. I still tend to use references such as photos and paintings. Also use Youtube videos to learn technique. Eg how to paint clouds and waves.
I use acrylics because they are cheaper, dry quickly and not as unforgiving as water colour.
Toady I decided this morning I decided to scrap the last two paintings I did because I hate them and think they’re beyond repair. No probs, I’ll cover them with palette knife abstracts.
I’ve always admired that Andy Warhol had more front that Myers. Never liked his stuff. I think I ‘got’ him, but thought his stuff was rubbish. Thought he probably laughed all the way to the bank at the pretentious twats who bought his shit.
I have no problem with the common idea of art as decoration. Probably why I’m beginning to run out of wall space.
I’ve only had a visceral reaction to art twice in my life: ‘Blue Poles’ knocked my socks off when I saw it in the art gallery. The other was a wood carving of Mary Magdalene by Donatello in Florence.
Can’t say I admire Australian rock art, but like the French cave paintings of animals.
Are you still producing art? I do hope so.
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I have only two pieces of original paintings; a nineteen the century Japanese woodblock (plus a dozen reproductions). The other I bought from the artist about 20 year ago for $300. I liked and still like the wit.
What a Joke!!!
Lutheran Mother, Catholic Father, attending a religious school, self admits to being influenced by the religious sculptures at the school, then home schooled by her religious parents… “Raised in an Atheist Home?” Seriously? Poor Henry, that confused, delusional, puppy…
“Religious art of sculptures, reliefs and paintings in one of the parochial schools I attended greatly influenced my later attraction to legendary figures. For the first time I got to encounter the world’s view of what divinity was supposed to be, but deep down I felt that I perceived everything in a much broader and deeper sense. It appeared to me as if most people were completely ignorant of other realities, or that the realities they perceived were seen only from a very narrow angle.” (Akiane Kramarik )
Atheistic Family MY ASS!
Cranky,
Cranky I’m glad to hear you are not precious with your work as illustrated by your decision to scrap your last two paintings. It defines your honest approach with which I associate with you.
One Japanese weaver I knew expanded the idea that there are no rules in art “There is no cheating in art, either things work or they don’t.”
You are absolutely right about Warhol. His life was the subject of a major written work for my college studies. He was once asked what art was, he replied “Art is short for Arthur”.
One of his main themes was the commercialisation and industrialisation of art. He once revealed his famous celebrity prints were all organised over the phone (some art critics today still talk about how he painted those portraits, sigh*); his negatives were prepared with a commercial photographic service, then sent to a silkscreen operation for preparation on silk frames for multi-colour inking and then the actual printing done by another independent art business who prospered by using volunteer printers who only wanted to bask in Warhol’s glory. All he had to do was sign the finished work and even then he used various means of signage including having different types of stamps commercially produced with initials or symbols, which relieved him of even having to do that. Yep, he laughed all the way to the bank while, with very clean hands, thumbing his nose at the pretensions of the art world.
Do you know who the woodblock print is by?
Did you mean you have the print or the woodblock?
When I went through my print making phase I dabbled in making woodblocks and focussed on Hokusai and Haramaro (funnily enough woodprints were an industry in the day and Hukosai was the principle artist in the production house he worked for. Following the very strict Japanese social disciplines of the time, he was restricted to producing the original drawings and preparing the organisation of the proposed artwork and then separate teams prepared the wood cuts for each colour printed, and other teams then printed the individual blocks to produce the artworks. Something similar to what Warhol did a century or two later.
I do like that painting of Pharaoh watching tv, as you say, for the wit.
With a complete lack of regret I confess I haven’t done any graphic artwork in years. I hit a point with my family where I simply wasn’t making enough to keep them so I got a real job and applied the same creative disciplines and did reasonably well. I only used to draw for my children’s amusement and education. My daughter is a more accomplished online artist than I am and my son has actually made money from his guitar which I first taught him to play. I’ve been out of work from since before Covid hit Oz. Too old to be eligible for the dole I had to take up my pension. I still really want to go back to work. Yes I know I am a sick puppy, but I am still capable of active work and the sedentary lifestyle is killing me slowly.
I bought a small art kit with the honest intention of resuming my drawing, but it sits untouched after four months because I am too busy writing here and on my own projects. Writing is now my medium; its easier and there’s a hell of lot less mess to clean up.
Yeah, I understand you. I started out really wanting to be an artist like some really want to be a rock star. But in all honesty while I achieved the discipline and technical where fore, I just lacked that ‘wow’ factor. I realise, all too late, I was too clinical in my execution, not much more than a self indulgent camera, but eh, no regrets. The decision to attempt to be an artist led me to a unique life and so far so good.
NO. As best as I can tell from the Japanese date print, I think it was printed in 1855, but could be mistaken.
I mean I have the print [below] taken from the original woodblock, on poor quality paper ,as was usual. That meant it cost me as much to have it framed on acid free backing as the print cost . (the print was $70 unframed about 35 years ago) The picture has still developed some rust.
I bought it because of the design on the kimonos, fairly complicated for a woodblock print I think.
The other dozen I have are half size prints, from artists such as Hiroshige and Utamaro. I bought them from an antiquarian book dealer about 40 years ago. They were spot glued into a large folio made from cheap newspaper . No text. . I paid $40. I each of them professionally framed. One of them is an interesting actor print.
That’s a beautiful looking print.
Favourite actors and actresses and geishas were popular subjects for the buying public, just like posters were in the 1960/70s.
The date of printing is very significant because it was only in 1853 Commander Perry prompted the lifting of Japan’s 200 year old isolation (and re-imposed the rule of the Emperor over the Tokugawa Shogunate). So your print is most likely to have been a product of the traditional arthouse collective method. I expect you have a nice valuable collection there.
Re the complicated kimono design, yep each colour required a seperately carved wooden block and each print had to be manually placed to ensure an accurate register. The Japanese did not have a printing press. After each wood block was inked, and the print was placed in exactly the correct register, it was then rubbed using a hand held ‘burin’ to ensure the even distribution of ink. The entire process was complicated and manual which added to the elegance of each print.
That’s been my understanding
Without getting too technical, why would an artist use wood if metal was available? If you haven’t seen them, have a look on Google images for Norman Lindsay etchings . Or are the two processes totally different and I’m confused again.?
Re my collection; I may have expressed myself poorly. These are 1/2 to 2/3 size printed in the 1920’s .Photographic lithographs as they would not have had access to the original wood blocks.(?)
They were valued at $50 each in 1977. I’d be surprised if they were worth much more today. Japanese prints have never been highly valued in Australia, even as they have become increasingly rare.
I was in Tokyo in 1979 and could not find a woodblock print anywhere. I think the internet would be a big help in tracking some down. I’ll have look around.
-------- 5 minutes later: Yup, Ebay, from under $100, lots at $200-300, with a few over $1000
Ok, my mistake. I did misunderstand the dates of the prints you have. By 1927 Japan had modernised and wood block prints would have been the quaint cultural oddity from the past.
But first a potted history of printing:
Engraving or ‘drypoint’ involved drawing directly into a metal plate (copper, iron etc)
The metal sheet is inked and the wiped clean; the ink in the grooves remains; paper is laid on the metal and both are run through a press; a reversed image of the original etch is produced on the paper.
So you have to first conceive your finished work in reverse, tricky.
Etching (c.1500) involved lining the surface of the metal plate with an even layer of wax. The drawing is made through the wax exposing the metal. The metal is placed in an acid bath; the acid burns the image into the metal; the wax and acid is cleaned away; then the plate is inked and wiped; the ink remains in the recesses burned with acid; the plate and paper run through the press.
Lithography (c.1790) first involved smooth limestone, later metals; the image is drawn on the stone with a fat/wax crayon (tusche) or painted on in a stable liquid form; the stone is treated with acid which eats into the non-waxed stone; the stone is cleaned to remove the acid and the fat; oil based ink is applied to the wetted stone and the ink remains only where the drawing was made; then the stone is run through the press with a paper sheet.
I think I got all that right.
Why wood and not metal?
Wood block prints, as the name suggests, were carefully carved into wood. The untouched raised surfaces would be inked with rollers and the image transferred to the printed paper. The type of wood and the quality of its ‘grain’ allowed a great deal of fine detail.
There are at least four or five colours in the print you showed us, so there would have been four or five separate blocks, one for each colour.
Why wood in Japan? Somewhere between 1600 to 1650 the Shogunate, the war lords, shut down Japan to the outside world for two hundred years, deposed the Emperor, who remained as a spiritual token, expelled foreigners and only permitted very few exceptions. Japan became a social time capsule.
This preserved their traditional and cultural practices. Wood block printing along with many other cultural practices, was more than just an artform, it was a sacred practice.
Somehow Japan up to the shut down, resisted the introduction of the printing press (their reverence for writing attained its greatest expression in calligraphy the oldest Japanese artform ) and in their isolation they missed out on the advent of lithographic printing and photography.
After Perry burst their isolation bubble, Japan had two centuries of modernisation to catch up with and they demonstrated to the world the Japanese tenacity to learn new stuff was mixed with the persistent and tenacious mediaeval mindset. In just over 50 years, “little Japan” with a fully modernised naval fleet defeated the Imperial Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima. (by comparison Australia at the time cobbled together the meagre collection of dilapidated ships from the colonial states that served as the Royal Australian navy, which the the Russian fleet would most likely have crushed).
In that rush to adopt modern technology a lot of the old Japanese cultural traditions like the woodblock print were forgotten but not entirely lost and the stone and metal photographic lithography eventually became the standard printing medium in Japan as elsewhere.
Photolithography is best suited to commercial purposes and industrial techniques.
I found the manual process of lithography and etching far too demanding, tedious, indirect and unforgiving. As an art student I gained work as a ‘clean hands’ assistant in a professional art lithographic studio. I likened it to brain surgery, though I remain in awe of the finished quality of lithographic artwork.
However I loved to create block prints, sometimes wood, sometimes lino. The successful culmination of drawing, carving, and printing, together with the unique quality of the final work, was immensely satisfying and the simpler, direct processes permitted for a smaller, less toxic work space (I hated working with acid). I did a lot of works at home, at the dining table. It’s one artform I often think about returning to. One day maybe.
The brothers Lindsey, Lionel and ‘Naughty’ Norman were both masters of oil and watercolour painting, drawing and sculptures and did much of their work in etching.
Norman was ‘naughty’ because of his prolific work depicting naked statuesque women, nymphs and satyrs which horrified the church going ‘wowsers’ in Sydney town, who continually protested vainly against his ‘devil’s’ work. In 1940, Norman took sixteen crates of paintings, drawings and etchings to the U.S. to protect them from the war. Unfortunately, the American officials declared all his works as pornography and burned the lot without compensation. Lionel remembered Norman’s cheery reaction: “Don’t worry, I’ll do more.”
Apologies for hogging this thread…there aren’t many theists about to debate and Cranky keeps prompting all of this stuff I thought I had forgotten.
Thanks Grin, most helpful.
I once worked with a bloke who collected Norman Lindsay etchings (the Rubenesque ones) He regularly flew to Melbourne for auctions.
Not my cup of tea. I have always preferred the gamin look; Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Carron. My ex wife and all my girlfriends except the last one did not exceed 5 feet 3 inches (the last one was 5 feet 6 inches and very thin)
Yeah, I guess my favourite female actresses date me a bit. Most of them are dead or definitely looking their age. (if not the victim of a very greedy plastic surgeon)
—Does this ever happen to you?---- At the shopping centre, I see an older woman, possibly late 60’s and think to myself “Gee, what an old boiler!”. Then immediately think :“Hold the phone there buckeroo! She could be one of your old girlfriends! --AND YOU stopped being love’s young dream 40 years ago!”
–I didn’t really get to age with a partner, so perhaps see women a bit more objectively than I might have done. Although I still thought my last girlfriend was gorgeous when she was 50.
—Does this ever happen to you?----
Sort of. I am a chronic melancholic. When I do notice an older woman - Jesus, what am I saying? When I notice a woman my age or older, I usually ponder on the cruelty of ageing. With some, if I remain undetected, I will search their aged faces for the young woman that once was. Sometimes, fleetingly, I can see her, this woman, as she might have been 20, 30 years ago and I am briefly cheered but then I am almost immediately filled with pity, because we are all thus afflicted.
And yes, I knew I had stopped being anyone’s Adonis decades ago; all but for one who could see past the physical and appreciated the idiot I really am. Then I was lucky to find another.
I can say have been fortunate. I have never had any preference for any physical ‘type’. My late partner was statuesque; my current partner is gamin. Both use makeup sparingly, if at all, and in my eyes, both are beautiful. I have never been seduced by the standard measures of feminine beauty and I can honestly say that I have been, in a few instances, repelled by it, or rather by the disparity between that ‘beauty’ and a distinctively unattractive personality.
Back to the older women in shopping centres, I guess I should care less about their younger selves; better and more charitable that I seek evidence to celebrate the happier aspects of their lives, but that’s hard when checking them out furtively and with the way aging blurs the distinctions in us all, when we all just end up looking like generic ‘old people’.
The old saying is “Youth is wasted on the young” but the truth is “Youth wastes everybody”.
I think both are true.
I hate being old.
I’ve had a full beard since 1978. Kept it because my wife liked it. Today I will not save shave off my beard because I don’t like the look of the bloke behind it.
Spare a thought for self centred celebrities: Barbra Streisand once said “Mine is the only business where you age publicly”. It saddens me that aging actresses often feel the need for plastic surgery. Especially when some don’t know where to stop.
I’ve always thought Nicole Kidman was very beautiful. Lately she seems to be fading. Pretty sure she’s had work done, although she says snot.
Always considered myself a five who married a six. Many of the women I dated were 7 or 8. My last girlfriend a 7.
Do not be surprised that the Truth sounds ludicrous to you when your brain has been programmed to only be able to comprehend lies and falsehood.
If you believe my efforts are directed to hopeless cases like yours, you think very wrong. It’s not for hopeless cases, but those who are truly willing to know the Truth, of which you’re not one. So expect what I do to sound foolish to you. It’s because that’s what wisdom is to you.
As for me giving up because of people like you, try and first make all atheists become hopeless cases like yours, then perhaps I might give it a consideration.
The fact remains that the purpose of this thread which is to prove a baby doesn’t need indoctrination to be religious as atheists think has been accomplished, and you’d need to live with that
You’ve offered no objective evidence to suggest your conclusion from your unevidenced anecdotal story is true. Your arrogant assumption those who disagree with you have flawed reasoning is nothing more than an ad hominem fallacy, and an hilarious one given the indoctrination religions have always used, and the blind faith they champion.
That’s based on a lie, as I have not seen a single atheist ever claim that all theists are indoctrinated. I’ve certainly never claimed this. Though your blinkered arrogant bias suggests you fall firmly into that category.
Oh yes, I’m aware and feel very sorry for you.
