The renowned art critic Margaret Thatcher famously dismissed Bacon as “the man who paints those dreadful pictures.” But what’s so dreadful about them? Aside, of course, from their subject matter. About this painting Bacon said, we kid you not, "It came to me as an accident. I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field.” That’s like Leonardo da Vinci describing the Mona Lisa as an attempt to paint a bicycle.
Dear fellow art lovers: You can squeeze your brain until it hurts trying to figure out what this sculpture by Bruce Nauman "means." Personally, and we say this having pondered and meditated upon the sculpture for hours, and sometimes entire days, in the museum where it resides, we think it means watch out for blue guys. They will stick their tongue up your nose. They will stick their tongue so far up your nose they can lick your brain and taste your memories.
The enormous popularity of the genre paintings of Albert Anker has led to his being known as the Norman Rockwell of Switzerland. Below is perhaps his most beloved painting, Boy Kicked By a Mule.
It's companion painting, Be Sure to Keep Poisons Out of the Reach of Children, is also a perennial favorite
Here's a painting by Mark Rothko before he went all rectangular on the world's ass. It was painted in 1938 and is what your art critics call "representational," which is to say it's not an abstract lump or spatter of nothing. There are even people, recognizable as such, in it. Here's what Rothko himself had to say about the painting: "I used to go down to the subway to paint and one day I was down there painting when a train blew through the station without stopping and the wind knocked my hat off and onto the tracks. It was a fedora, the hat, and I loved it. I loved it so much that I offered a little negro kid 50 cents to climb down on the tracks and get it. He was no sooner down there getting the hat when another train came and I shouted, "Quick kid! Throw me my hat!" And he did. Unfortunately the little negro kid didn't make it. My hat made it but the kid didn't. Well I felt pretty bad about the whole thing and after I finished the painting I decided I was finished painting people too. They're just too tragic. They get hit by trains while rescuing your hat. Which is still in my possession, by the way. The hat, that is. It's on my head as we speak."
Why isn't Romanian Art more widely appreciated? You will have a hard time finding a group of painters more vivacious, vibrant, and alive than the Romanians. They make the painters of Haiti look like a bunch of Gloomy Guses. Below is a representative work of Romanian art. It's by Nicolae Tonitsa and it's called, We All Went Out in the Cold to Witness the Atrocity. With its muted earth tones and downcast faces, it perfectly captures the ebullient spirit of Eastern Europe's most chipper nation. Asked to describe his painting, Tonitsa said, "If I could stand on a chair and hang myself without missing my next meal, I would. Unfortunately I can't. So I paint instead. In this work I attempted to capture the universal desperation and futility that dog our nation. E.M. Cioran said of Romania, 'What can you expect of a people who howl at funerals?' He forgot to mention that we howl at all-you-can-eat buffets as well. Excuse me, please, I must go drink Tuica until I pass out."
Here's an interesting true story about art. The Russian Ivan Shishkin painted the landscape you see below. Then his then friend the painter Konstantin Savitsky came along unasked and added the bears. Shishin decided that the overall effect was pretty good, and thanked Savitsky.
End of story.
Except it wasn't.
Shishkin's next painting was called The Crowning of Alexander II. It depicted a church scene of amazing splendor. Savitsky, again unasked, came along and added bears. Shishkin complained to the authorities, barred his doors to Savitsky, then painted his next masterwork, Natasha at Her Bath. Savitsky broke into Shishkin's studio at night and added bears.
Shishkin decided at this point to beat Savitsky at his own game, and painted a large canvas filled with bears. He called it, Take That, Savitsky. The night it was finished Savitsky broke in and painted jackets on the bears. At this point Shishkin retreated to his dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg, and took up bird watching. One night Savitsky stole into his dacha and painted bears on the lenses of Shishkin's binoculars.
Shishkin spent the next two years at a private asylum on the banks of the Black Sea. After his release he retreated to the heavily forested property of his sister's husband. During his daily ramble he happened upon a large black bear. He ran up to it shrieking, "It's you, Savitsky, in a bear costume!!"
The bear, who did not like being accused of being a man in a bear costume, reacted violently and Shishkin died of his wounds on 20 March 1898.
We can remember looking at M.C. Escher when we were young and thinking, "So this is what art looks like. We must avoid art in the future." Then when we were a young LSD loving man we looked at him and said, "Woah. Dude. This is too intense." And our friends said, "Yo, the Escher's over here. You're staring at a doorknob." Now we look at M.C. Escher and we think he's too "clever" by half. We can respect his mathematical rigor and his masterful manipulation of perspective. Still, we prefer MC Hammer.
But we make an exception for Bror Hjorth's "Give Me the Ball or I'll Kill You."
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor and painter. He is remembered mainly for singlehandedly initiating the "you can never be too skinny" school of modeling. He forced the subjects of his sculptures to fast for months, or in some cases years, until they reached what he called "a divine state of emaciation." What did his sculptures "mean"? Critics differ. Giacometti himself described his art as an expression of "humanity's eternal quest for a really humongous cheeseburger."
the first leggy supermodel
