Just for you today on the Friday Afternoon Challenge: My ‘Curious’ Discoveries!

[CTyankee]

Occasionally, in my eclectic art wanderings, I come across some interesting oddities, and I save them. Let’s see if you can identify any of this motley group!

And, as always, here we do observe the no cheating rule...

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. #2 looks like Goya!

It looks like his style...

[CTyankee]

4. No, but Goya definitely had his black period when his stuff got a little weird...

[cthulu2016]

2. #2 is

from the brief period in the 1930s when William Blake was doing covers for Weird Tales.

[CTyankee]

5. do you know this work?

[cthulu2016]

9. Not a clue.

[CTyankee]

10. You are close with the era. I find the artist pretty fascinating. John Updike wrote an interesting

essay on one of his works on a Shakespeare comedy. A fun read...

[pinboy3niner]

3. #6: Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon

I'd never seen it before, but it was a pretty easy search.

[CTyankee]

6. I laugh every time I see it. I knew it would be easy but I just had to include it...

Uccello was a serious artist so I can't understand how he did this thing. Bizarre...

[ananda]

24. See the Uccello with the great Fanthorpe poem...

... here.

http://cunycomposers.wetpaint.com/page/%22Not+My+Best+Side%22%3A+Paolo+Uccello+and+U.A.+Fanthorpe

Each stanza is from a different pov: stanza 1 is the dragon speaking, 2 is the princess, and 3 is St. George. It's wickedly funny.

[CTyankee]

25. This poem is how I knew about this painting! I read it in a grad school course called

"Drafting the Self" which was essentially a course in creativity. The image accompanied the poem, of course...

The poem along with the painting is a hoot. Everyone in the seminar loved both and we had a great discussion around it...

[pinboy3niner]

7. #4: Masaccio, Holy Trinity

Again, found by searching, which led to this analysis of the fresco:

Masaccio’s Holy Trinity is a truly brilliant example of the power of perspective and illusion. A ledge seems to protrude out at the viewer away from the plane of the painting; on this ledge the donor and his wife are portrayed. Beneath them resides a skeleton, whose tomb bears the inscription “I was once what you are, and what I am you will become.”

The ledge is surrounded by graceful columns framing a room that seems to disappear beyond the plane of the painting into the wall. In this room farther away from the donors, Mary and John appear even farther removed from the viewer. God is portrayed as an old man supporting his Son, who is on the cross. The Holy Spirit appears as a small dove between them (the bridge between the Father in heaven and the Son on earth who came to die for our sins).

Because of Masaccio’s mastery of perspective, the Trinity appears remote and far off, while the viewer remains closest to the skeleton. This is a reminder that the viewer is mortal and removed from God. Masaccio plays with the perspective of the painting to create a scene in which the viewer shares space with some of the figures (the human figures and the remains of a human) and is unable to reach the other divine figures, as they exist in a room beyond the plane of the painting. Masaccio uses perspective to create a feeling of mortality and distance from God.

http://evergreen.loyola.edu/brnygren/www/Honors/masaccio.htm

[CTyankee]

8. Oh, yes, this is an outstanding example of "cadaver tomb" art, kind of perfectd by the

English artists. It is a memento mori, remember death.

This painting is a milestone in linear perspective revival in early renaissance art. Masaccio actually laid this out on a grid to make sure the proportions were accurate.

However, the presence of the skeleton is a bit of a shock when you see it.

It is in the Santa Maria Novella church in Florence, where I saw it in Sept. 2010. Quite a work, indeed!

[IcyPeas]

11. number 3 is peculiar in that

it looks like this... but doesn't look like this (Jacopo Pontormo, mannerism madonna and child with st. john the baptist)


[IMG][/IMG]

[CTyankee]

13. Yes, you got it! It IS Pontermo!

Mannerism is so strange, I think.

Tell me what led you to this...

[IcyPeas]

17. The picture you posted

I recognized as Mannerist. So I searched for Mannerist Madonna and child and this one came up. But yours and mine look very different!! Look closely. Is it just the color?

[CTyankee]

18. The color is important in Mannerism. Do you see the relationship of this painting with #1?

[CTyankee]

12. BIG HINT: #1 was reviled by Mary McCarthy in her book "The Stones of Florence"

She wrote that this painting had a "simpering, rouged, idiot Child."

[horseshoecrab]

22. great clue!

#1 is "Madonna and Child with Saints" by the mannerist, Il Rosso, aka Rosso Fiorentino. His real name was Giovanni Battista di Jacopo.


horseshoecrab

[CTyankee]

29. would you believe that this thing is in the Uffizi?

[pinboy3niner]

30. I saw that when I looked up the book, lol!

And, looking at the Uffizi's website and images of its works, this one is a real non sequitur.

"You can't explain that!"--Bill O'Reilly

[blaze]

14. Just bookmarking

so I can find the thread again tomorrow or Sunday...

[CTyankee]

15. Great. I think lots of folks are away for the Memorial Day holiday...

see you then!

[MineralMan]

16. #1 - Look! This is the Youtube app.

You have to see this kitty video.

[CTyankee]

19. It's a pretty scary kitty video then...it freaks me out...

[MineralMan]

20. No...look at the two putti at the bottom of the painting.

That's the reference.

[CTyankee]

21. Ah. Now THAT is the conundrum. Here we have a freak show at the top of the canvas and

these adorable putti at the bottom.

This is one of the things that makes me scratch my head about this painting. I researched him and found out that the guy was probably nutty as a fruitcake.

the top and the bottom of this work does not seem compatible to me...

[ellisonz]

23. I got nothing.

Those are freaky.

[CTyankee]

28. I thought everyone would love the Goth look of the Child in #1!

Of course, the artist lived with a baboon and kept cadavers in tubs of water...

there were more than a few screw looses with this guy...

[pinboy3niner]

26. So how do we stand--3, 4, 6 solved and 1, 2, 5 remain?

[CTyankee]

27. Answers are here http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002730414

Hope everyone had a good time! I enjoyed sharing my own little freak collection with you guys. As usual, you are superb at art...

[Johnny Rico]

31. #2 looks like one of the paintings in the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland.

You know, the ones that change when the light from a (fake) lightning bolt hits them?

[CTyankee]

32. well, since artists copy earlier artists, this does not surprise me. Evidently, the Disney artists

copied the main concepts of the Louvre for their Magic Kingdom castle (the Louvre had originally been a castle).

[Johnny Rico]

33. Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom was based on a number of castles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_Castle

Cinderella Castle was inspired by a variety of real and fictional castles. These included Fontainebleau, Versailles and the chateaus of Chenonceau, Chambord and Chaumont, as well as Castle Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, and Alcázar of Segovia, Castile and León (Spain), the oldest of all, which is 9 centuries old and also the Moszna Castle in Poland which was built in 18th century. The chief designer of the Castle, Herbert Ryman, also referenced the original design for the castle in the film Cinderella and his own well-known creation — the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California.



I like Cinderella's Castle rather more than Sleeping Beauty's Castle in Disneyworld:



Trivia: There's actually a luxury suite where one can spend the night in Cinderella's Castle! It was originally planned for the Disney family and executives but since Walt Disney died nearly five years before the park opened, it remained unfinished, and eventually was turned successively into a telephone call center, a dressing room, and is currently a lavish Dream Suite hotel room for specially selected guests.



Here's an article about it:

http://www.disneytouristblog.com/cinderella-castle-suite-tour-photos/

[CTyankee]

34. That's interesting. My information came from a lecturer, a Brit living in Paris, who

conducted a tour of the Louvre, starting in what had been the moat. There was a model of the original that was in place there. It was fascinating.

Here is the model we saw during the lecture http://www.google.com/imgres?q=model+of+the+louvre&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=632&tbm=isch&tbnid=uRGVPl9z9-iFtM:&imgrefurl=http://www.ourtravelpics.com/%3Fplace%3Dparis_2%26photo%3D388&docid=-VoamavJMiJ7KM&imgurl=&w=1024&h=768&ei=JiHBT7HuEMbm6gHI9tyjBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=265&vpy=296&dur=8826&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=103&ty=192&sig=108813109928341483086&page=1&tbnh=130&tbnw=138&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:86