Forgiveness & Mercy-The Mission

Forgiveness and Mercy...merciful forgiveness and blessings and wonder wrapped up in the beauty that is Robert De Niro and Ennio Morricone.  What a duo.  There is redemption in Morricone's emotional wipe-out music and in DeNiro miraculous face and perfection of characterization. But it is very difficult to forgive these two for the damage they do to the viewer and listener who has to suffer such sweet agony.  THE MISSION's director is guilty too--shame on you, Roland Joffe!  I love you I hate you I love you I hate you I love...

Have Gun, Will Travel

...reads the card of a man.

Paladin.  Palatine Hill.  Paladino.  Twelve Knights of the Round Table.  Twelve Apostles.  Roland (Orlando via Shakespeare), Gérin, Gérier, Bérengier, Otton, Samson, Engelier, Ivon, Ivoire, Anséis, Girard, Oliver.   Charlmagne.  Saracens.  Chivalry.

A Knight without Armour in a Savage Land

The Younger and St. Thomas More

A study of German painter Hans Holbein the Younger is like the study of King Henry VIII's reign.  Being a court painter for King Henry, Holbein depicts the wives and the main players  in the deconstruction of the Catholic Church.   In  the middle drawing above, Holbein depicts a cartoon of faithful St. Thomas More and his family, the one below it,  shows the completed family painting, and the familiar portrait on top can be found in the Frick Collection in NYC.  In addition Holbein painted a  portrait of More's nemesis, Thomas Cromwell (not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell who comes later) below:

 

Of course, we all know that Henry beheaded the decent and faithful Catholic, More, for not supporting the Protestant Reformation in England and that Cromwell was influential in More's beheading.  But More and Cromwell will forever be together at the Frick!

Lucky Holbein gets to paint all of this and shows us Henry and his crew:

Henry:

Now check out a few of the wives...

Jane Seymour...the third wife after Boleyn who gives Henry his only male heir, Charles VI.  Jane dies only 2 weeks after Charles is born, and is the only of Henry's queens who is buried with him.  

Here is lucky little Charles:

Next for Holbein is #4, Anne of Cleves:

 

 She looks pretty good here because Holbein covers up all her pockmarks and tries to flatter her as much as he can.  King Henry rejects her as soon as he sees her, saying  "She is nothing so fair as she hath been reported."  She outlives Henry though he divorces her for lack of male heir.

The remaining wives go like this:

#5-Catherine Howare-beheaded for adultry.

#6-Catherine Parr-Henry is her 3rd husband.  She was named for Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Holbein also paints another of King Henry VIII's opposition St. John Fisher who was martyred along with St. Thomas More:

Licked Finish and Lovely Bones

That is what the French Academie in the 19th Century called the slick finish of academic paintings.  Hardly a speck of the artist's hand can be seen.   When I discovered Bouguereau-and, sadly,  just recently-I couldn't imagine a painting like this:

...or this:

If you studied art history in the 60s you probably used this book:

Nowhere in this Janson book is there mention of Bouguereau.  The Janson book hardly mentions any 19th century painters of the academic tradition, which begs the questions, was Janson's book nothing but propoganda?   If so, I wonder who this Janson joker was.

Well, of course,  he was an art historian, just like the guys I mentioned in my first blog, with no training in painting. None.  He taught in St. Louis and New York.  He loved modern art and took it upon himself to educate the people of St. Louis on Pablo Picasso.  You can get this from his forward and introduction to the Big Book.  From an internet article from Washington University by Liam Otten you get this tidbit of information:

"In the 1930s and 40s, he emerged as a staunch defender of modern artists, writing pieces on Beckmann, Guston, Klee, Picasso and George Grosz while taking a critical scalpel to American Regionalists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood." 
 Scalpel seems the be the key word here.

And here comes the scalpel:

Ok, why do I mention all of this?  I am trying to figure out why Janson left out Bouguereau in his textbook and why I wuz robbed and cheated of the knowledge of him and other painting geniuses in my art history classes in the 60s--I just don't get it.  The only conclusion I can draw today, at this monment, is propoganda.  Propoganda in art, can you inmagine?   John Singer Sargent isn't mentioned either!  Nor is William Meritt Chase!  And look at this perfection:

 

I have some things brewing in my brain about this, but I will post it later. But it does have to do with German ex-patriots and art historians, rewriting history, with a little Islam mixed in.  And I didn't even get to the connection of the 1st Bouguereau painting  above and "The Lovely Bones."

I will speak of that later, after I process this Janson/Bouguereau/ propoganda thing.

Flying Daggers

CUT TO THE NEXT MOVIE:

CHINA'S LOST GIRLS

Ok, so I go to the library and pick this one up...a shock!  It is the National Geographic documentary with Lisa Ling that tells us about the onc-child policy in China today.   ONE CHILD...that's it.  That's all the kids they can have and celebrate.  So, what happens?  Since boys are valued more in China today, if a couple has a girl-this one and only time they can procreate-THEY GET RID OF THAT BABY GIRL by abortion, murder, abondonment.  The result?  No women for men to marry!  No women to be the bearers of the next generation.  It has become a huge problem in China...no women!  One child and no women.

Coney and Hogs

Never sit behind a Conehead at a Razorback game.

 Coney and the Philip Guston Klan Character were separated at birth.

silence in the churches

SILENCE IN THE CHURCHES!!!!!  No more yammering and singing every second!!!  Give us an inch of room for quiet thinking and meditation already!!!!!

Sorolla y Torrez

 

Joachim Sorolla

Two painters, a century apart have the same light-inspired qualities in their paintings.  Sorolla, a 19th Century Spanish painter, is known for his sensitivbe deptiction of dramatic lightning.  Upon reviewing Michelle Torrez's paintings last night, it occurred to me that she uses the same light treatment.   Michelle, from Colorado,  paints today in the same loose, thick, drippy paint as Sorolla and has the same sensitivities toward dramatic lighting as Sorolla.

I wonder why Sorolla is not mentioned on the Art Renewal Center website?  Anyone out there know?

 

Michelle Torrez

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The Flowering Staircase.  The Flowering Staircase here shows the family tree of all those painters trained classically.  Yup it goes all the way back to Michelangelo and Raphael.  But where have all the flowers gone?  It stops suddenly dring the late 19th Century.  Whazzup?   I guess you could  go to Studio Escalier and ask the director, Timothy Stotz.  But you might want to check out the list of critics on my previous post, and ask  when did most of these guys began critiquing?

Mack and Gidget

I am in love with these two people.  Him for his icy-cool voice and her for her beach promises.   Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, written by their son Dodd Darin, promises to shatter my ideal vision of the two.  Beyond the Sea (the movie) with Kevin Spacey is calling me to witness their life together, sans his Pocono entertaining.  Deep sadness with his heat-attack death, and her anorexic alcoholism is going to be a tough one.