Art Appreciation Lesson 1

I don't really get on with paintings, especially old ones. All other forms of art I'm OK with - I love music, a simple chord or a couple of notes on a piano can be enough. I like photography too and have a lot of time for people who have the ability to capture a moment in time successfully. I even like some of the more unpopular forms of modern conceptual art, I like the idea of art which is created because of a new unique idea rather than worrying about skill or technique.

But painting has always left me a bit cold so I've been trying to rectify that with a visit to The National Gallery today.

Can't say it worked. There are too many pictures of Jesus and his cohorts being tortured to death for my liking - don't really care how well these sort of scenes are painted, I just don't enjoy looking at them.

However there are a handful of paintings I can appreciate, thought I'd share them with you:

1. Perseus turning Phineas to Stone by Luca Giordano

Gotta love a bit of Greek Mythology, especially when it involves monsters and people turning into stone. I like the rather silly theatrics involved in this scene, and the stone effect is done very well.

-

2. Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ('The Ambassadors') by Hans Holbein the Younger

This one is a puzzle and I like puzzles. There are all sorts of objects on the table which are meant to be deeply meaningful but the one thing you can't ignore is the massive distorted skull. There are so many questions about that, why is it there? what does it mean? how did they go about painting it and why hide it in such a weird way?

-

3. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby

There are some interesting musings on science, religion and magic with this one. Back before we knew about matter at a molecular level no one was really sure what happened in a vacuum. When the vacuum pump was invented and scientists started showing that things such as fire or life couldn't exist in a vacuum it lead to some interesting 'debate' along the lines of 'if there is no life in a vaccum then there is no God in a vacuum'. Of course when the religious lot caught onto this and struck back with the 'but God is omnipresent and must exist everywhere' public displays of this experiment were banned and the scientists had to go undercover so to speak and started showing this in private like a magician doing a private show - hence the painting. Anyway, I like it - I like all of the different expressions on the participants, especially the "fuck you religion! I'm doing science!" look on the face of the man in the red.

-

4. The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up by Joseph Mallord William Turner

I can relate to the boat... :-/