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8731. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 12/25/2008 10:43:50 PM A good ethical man! 8732. David Ehrenstein - 12/25/2008 11:01:38 PM Indeed. I'm sorry there aren't more clips from The Servant on You Tube. Pinter appears in the famous restaurant scene and his line deliver is the epitome of razor-sharp elegant wit. 8733. wonkers2 - 12/26/2008 12:12:43 AM R.I.P. Eartha Kitt 8734. wonkers2 - 12/26/2008 12:14:09 AM 8735. David Ehrenstein - 12/26/2008 12:58:35 AM Orson Welles called her "The most xciting woman in the world." 8736. David Ehrenstein - 12/26/2008 3:41:57 AM Here's a clip of her in All By Myself -- a marvelous documentary portrait by Christian Blackwood made a number of years back. 8737. alistairconnor - 12/26/2008 10:11:11 AM 
Harold Pinter is dead
A presence who had accompanied me throughout my adult life.
His Nobel acceptance speech from 2005 bears re-reading.
8738. David Ehrenstein - 12/26/2008 11:54:40 PM Lates tFaBlog: Fait Diver -- Darkness at the Edge of Bruce. 8739. wonkers2 - 12/31/2008 6:26:00 AM Somerset Clearance Portraits 8740. David Ehrenstein - 1/1/2009 4:45:16 PM JERO on Kohaku2008 8741. wonkers2 - 1/1/2009 6:21:14 PM Nice video. Interesting story. Jero Wiki 8742. David Ehrenstein - 1/1/2009 8:57:17 PM MORE on Jero. 8743. wonkers2 - 1/2/2009 5:40:23 PM The country would benefit if there were more "blended families." 8744. wabbit - 3/14/2009 6:17:12 PM Yesterday I saw the “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice” at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. If you get the chance to see this show, do not miss it — Holland Cotter fears there may not be many more big art shows for a while. I don't have a lot to add to his review.
The show is hung by subject, not by date, and similar works are side-by-side or very close to each other, allowing the viewer to see the similarities and the differences. Many of the Tintorettos in particular stand out, because he used very heavy shadowing, almost outlining his subjects. However, not all his paintings are so obviously different from Titian and Veronese; some are similar in their technical execution, though his compositions are his own, full of diagonals and action. He seems to have been the wild man of the three.
Veronese was the quieter, gentler prodigy, taken under Titian's wing. Titian and Tintoretto had a true rivalry, but Veronese was more amenable and seemed less threatening to Titian, though Veronese's talent was unquestionably great.
Titians colors are luminous, especially his reds, and the visibility of brush strokes in his later works is so different from the invisible marks in the early work. In one painting, The Supper at Emmaus, the detail on the tablecloth is amazing — not the folds, but the actual pattern of the cloth. You need to be fairly close to even notice it. I'm not a fan of fussiness, but this doesn't seem fussy, it is part of the completeness and tranquility of the painting. The Tintoretto of the same title next to it seems harsh and violent by comparison.
An interesting part of the exhibit involves the restoration of Tintoretto’s Nativity. The painting is in a small, darkened room, along with x-ray images of the underpainting and speculation on what that painting was, why that particular canvas was reused, how the Nativity painting was made and changed, and more. A film crew was there, so something may show up on tv about this painting and what is being revealed by conservation science.
It's a wonderful show, made up almost exclusively of Titians, Tintorettos and Veroneses. The single Bellini at the start of the show is meant to illustrate the move from painting on wood panels to painting on canvas, which allowed painters to paint larger works and not have to paint on site. It's hard to pick a favorite room, but the portrait room is stunning. 8745. judithathome - 3/14/2009 7:46:25 PM Holland Cotter fears there may not be many more big art shows for a while.
I fear that, too.
Last weekend, we went to Dallas to see an exhibit of the Etruscans...wonderful event, astounding items. However, it was put on by the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU, which is a great museum but not like a publicly funded one...and it turns out, the Meadows Foundation had underwritten the excavation of the items! I was astounded.
Next up in Fort Worth...in fact, opening today with a patron preview which, regrettably, we had to miss, is Art And Love In Renaissance Italy and I'm suspecting it contains many cross-over artists from the exhibit you saw, Wabbit.
I'll report back after we attend... 8746. wabbit - 3/14/2009 8:20:37 PM I found the website for the Meadows exhibit. It looks fascinating, and how wonderful and odd that the school financed it: This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum in association with the Florence Archaeological Museum, Italy, the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Soprintendenza of Archaeology for Tuscany, and Centro Promozioni e Servizidi Arezzo. This exhibition has been funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation. I'm glad to see they were able to come up with the money, though you and Mr. Cotter are right, money is drying up quickly for the arts. I know the Met in NYC cut many jobs not long ago and is about to go through another round of layoffs.
I'm sorry that I missed Art and Love when it was at the Met, there are many pieces that I would love to have seen in person. One of the Titians in the Met show is now in Boston — I'll be interested to see what replaced it. I look forward to hearing what you think of the show. There is a Tintoretto that you'll spot straight away, Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan — heavy on the shadows and very dynamic!
This must be the season for Italian art!
btw, the Met has a YouTube page with video lectures that were done for the Art and Love show, you might want to check them out. 8747. judithathome - 3/14/2009 9:20:21 PM Venus and Mars Surprised by Vulcan — heavy on the shadows and very dynamic!
Actually, I've seen this one...in Italy.
Can't say when we'll get to the show but I will definitely report on it.
We hang out with a crowd of local artists and they are in despair over the "state of the arts"....ironic that my custom car tag is a "Texas: State Of The Arts"...I've had it for years now and think it's become an anomaly...there is very little funding for the state of art anywhere these days.
You'd have loved the Etruscan exhibit...I'd never been to the Meadows before and it is an excellent venue...not crammed at all. My favorite pieces were little alabaster jars in the shapes of locusts...the stoppers were the insects' faces and looked almost like something from Pixar!
The people went with...the bronze sculptor and his wife (spoken of them before) had attended another exhibit there...the Pre-Raphelites. They said the paintings were enormous and breathtaking...I was sorry to have missed it as it is one of my favorite (semi) modern genres.
8748. wabbit - 3/14/2009 10:32:09 PM It's nice to have people to visit museums with — I go by myself most of the time. I prefer to move at my own pace and sometimes take notes. If people would just go their own way and agree to meet me at the end of the day, that would be fine, but I end up being rushed along by persons who really shouldn't have "offered to keep me company" to begin with. It's my own damn fault, though. I no longer tell anyone when I'm going to an exhibit. Much easier that way.
I love the colors of the Pre-Raphaelites. I'm always bothered by the way the models in some paintings don't quite feel like they are in the painting, but I like the medievalism. I also appreciate the influence they had on so many other movements, such as Symbolism and the Arts and Crafts Movement, which I like a lot.
Those small jars sound right up my street. I suppose I should consider myself a collector of containers, since I have so many boxes, bottles, jars and bowls, and most are useless for holding much more than dead cicadas or cat whiskers. One day I'm going to have to buckle down and make some kind of record of the bits and pieces I have. I just got myself a hacked :CueCat so I can catalog my books. 8749. judithathome - 3/15/2009 2:21:33 AM If people would just go their own way and agree to meet me at the end of the day, that would be fine,
This is what's so great about our friends...we enter the museums and agree to meet up later in the lobby. If one of us comes upon something we think the others will like, we go looking for them but also depend on them seeing it eventually.
We have super friends in that regard...we all know each others' habits and preferences. 8750. judithathome - 3/15/2009 2:25:14 AM Wabbit, you and I would get along so well...I collect antique tins and put oddities into them. I had warned my son not to sell them willy-nilly at a garage sale after mine and Keoni's demise...some of the stuff I have in those tins is priceless...but I guess now, I'll have to log it all and put the valies in a will of some sort.
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