friendship ended with LITERARY TWITTER now ART TWITTER is my new friend

this thread is directly responsible for me following a bunch of surrealist artists i wasn't that familiar with, and i just have to say - rene magritte seems very bad to me, i must be missing something.

salvador dali is not my bag generally speaking but a few things that have come across my feed have impressed me.

John Singer Sargent has been my big revelation after subscribing to various drawing/museum bots (also thanks to this thread)

I was in NYC on my birthday in 2015 and one of my best friends (who lives there) asked me if I wanted to see the Sargent show at the Met with her. She’s into art, yeah, but she never seemed to type to want to see a Sargent show. Anyway, I agreed and when we met outside the museum, she told me she’d already seen the show twice and that it was her favorite show of the year— and then we went in, and it totally blew me away. Fantastic exhibition, just exquisite. Made me a Sargent stan for life.

https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2015/sargent

tfw yr a SYMBOLIST

Fata Morgana, 1865 #watts #georgefrederickwatts https://t.co/HxYBozQdbR pic.twitter.com/Hi5ulUZ3P0

— George Frederick Watts (@artist_watts) June 24, 2022

I put Sargent up there with Velazquez as a portraitist (*whispers* maybe higher). And El Jaleo is so great:

El Jaleo, 1882 #sargent #johnsingersargent https://t.co/LLbxhcH1uV pic.twitter.com/KAeGhJCdMC

— John Singer Sargent (@artistsargent) June 26, 2022

Love the musician in the background in ecstasy at this jam.

following JSS now, thanks thread!

And thanks to user emil.y for mentioning Leonora Carrington upthread. I knew who she was but really didn't know her work at all

Green Tea, 1942 #surrealism #carrington https://t.co/rEDZicDCaE pic.twitter.com/cfD4D9Jpjy

— Leonora Carrington (@LCarrington_Art) June 30, 2022

this thread is directly responsible for me following a bunch of surrealist artists i wasn't that familiar with, and i just have to say - rene magritte seems very bad to me, i must be missing something.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Tuesday, June 28, 2022 8:46 PM (two days ago)

I think I was exposed to Magritte at too impressionable age to not like him (he's great for young people getting into art: easy to see what he's doing and what's different about it compared to realism), but it is a very uptight version of surrealism, a little too linear really. Also one of the worst museum show experiences of my life was a Magritte show at the Art Institute of Chicago—not because of the work though, it was so incredibly crowded I was on the brink of a claustrophobic meltdown the entire time

Also on the JSS tip, highly, highly recommend visiting the JSS murals at the Boston Public Library which are absolutely incredible:

John Singer Sargent - 'Pagan Gods' ceiling mural for Boston Public Library (c.1892) pic.twitter.com/f8j5UiZA8p

— The Séance (@TheSeanceRadio) January 24, 2019

Images don't do it justice, the originals are huge.

Dali and Magritte were both terrible painters. I know you are supposed view this stuff with some historical context, but they both evoke the A level art I recall seeing on display at school to me. Which was probably just stupid kids copying them (or Francis Bacon) tbf. I think sometimes in the world of 20th century painting people made it because they had an easily identifiable style rather than being any good. Margritte was a crude talent and not in a good way and is just doing the same predictable shit over and over again. Dali was just an egomaniac with an average commercial illustrator skillset who chatted a lot of shite!

^^^ceci n'est pas une post

I am just going to paint a hat made of clouds against a background sky made out of hats and this is my manifesto!

lol I can't really argue with any of that tbh. There's also the thing with 20th c. artists where if you're the first (or are perceived to be) to have an idea you get immortalized as a genius even if your one idea is pretty thin.

I do think the bowler hat thing gets at a "the surrealism of 20th c. bureaucracy" idea that I like in other works too, which might explain my soft spot

I like Magritte too, the Magritte museum in Brussels has (as you would expect) a lot of his lesser-known works, which often have a De Chirico-like blankness and lack of effect which makes them feel eerie. I'm not usually a fan of surrealism but the cumulative effect was real, for me at least.

https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-340_wqOMQ7R.jpg

his mind would have been blown by 21st century face-swapping apps

I was about ready to defend his use of color and realized I was thinking of Matisse.

Matisse was the probably the only post-impressionist I've got a lifelong love for

extra "the" in there because I was going to post Matisse was the fucking Don!

lmao

Lmfao do you like anything, Calzino?

Magritte is great, Dali has some baller paintings, too.

there's loads of painters I love. Just from this thread alone. I'm into Klee, Guston, Miro, Cezanne, Dix, Twombly, Rothko. I just hate loads of them as well and unfortunately I'm probably just as shit at criticising art as I am enthusing about it!

Fucking love Klee and Cezanne. Bought a gorgeous Klee book last month. Agree that Magritte is terrible!

When I was a textile design student I used to do knockoff Klee quite often, even painstakingly mixing the gouache until I had the best match for his colours. His colour sense you could copy but his beautifully simple drawing style was something you can't imitate though!

Magritte makes dead paintings, you could describe one to me I've never seen and I could probably visualise almost an approximate image of what it looks like it in my mind.

yes I'm talking about him in the present tense, because someone told that is what real art critics do!

does anyone want to go in on picasso?? overrated in my very uninformed opinion.

he's a bit like Christian Ronaldo, you can admit he was an impressive talent and amazingly prolific without professing any love for the horrible man. From the cubist era, my controp is I preferred Braque. There is something simultaneously impressive and totally soulless about him. But Guernica was a str8 banger I will have to admit!

I do agree that Magritte is the lifeless corpse of surrealism, but i think like someone else here, I was first exposed to him as a five or six year old and it blew my mind.

haven’t thought about him or his work in years fwiw

sorry I don't mean to be a buzzkill here and am probably wittering on too much

no i love it. you know what book i love? the big coffee table MAX ERNST COLLAGES book that i got for 1$ at a rural library’s annual sale. Speaking of surrealism.

he had some kind of "frottage" technique of painting didn't he? I can't remember what that actually means, but recall reading it decades ago in a art history book.

max ernst is da bomb

the max ernst twitter account has been showing us bookplates lately

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVE9puIWYAYq6W1?format=jpg&name=large

hell yeah

yes I'm talking about him in the present tense, because someone told that is what real art critics do!

― calzino, Thursday, June 30, 2022 6:08 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

They mostly dish out art-world gossip these days afaict.

Saw the Dix show at the Neue Galerie maybe ten years ago. Didn't know anything about him and came away totally stunned.

it's always such a delight when this bot posts one of the Chicago Imagists

Jim Nutt, Miss E. Knows, 1967 #contemporaryart #jimnutt https://t.co/UPur1e5Jkc pic.twitter.com/8JDhQPLOGS

— AIC: Contemporary Art (Bot) (@aic_contemp) June 29, 2022

hal foster piece on a magritte biog in the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n13/hal-foster/massive-egg

not really a foster stan and i've only read as far as the obligatory paragraph on magritte's mother's (CN:) suicide when he was 13 and RM's disavowal of this as an element of content: "no one can say whether the death of my mother had an influence or not" (correct of course, since there's No Such Thing As Influence™)

I love the more obscure Dutch artists, like this fella Jan Steen, and Jacob Jordaens, who aren't afraid of showing the meanest, crassest and funnest human behaviour:

Couple in a Bedroom, 1670 #baroque #steen https://t.co/8XiYfOCHA5 pic.twitter.com/PyQpvY4i0a

— Jan Steen (@ArtistJanSteen) July 4, 2022

Once I went on a Tinder date with this guy who, once a week, would take a famous painting (e.g. Mona Lisa, Nighthawks) and replicate it but with the people as Minions. He had almost 100 painting but refused to sell them. He said he just wanted “other people to join the movement” pic.twitter.com/ByBq0aZU90

— Calliope 👀 🍿 (@Callies411) July 4, 2022

A Buffoon (incorrectly called Antonio The Englishman), 1640 #diegovelazquez #velázquez https://t.co/BYpSiduirF pic.twitter.com/sRLdilnjJp

— Diego Velázquez (@velazquez_bot) July 8, 2022

That use of white paint on the hat, shoulder and dog is pretty sweet.

Wine and Candies, 2005 #tetyanayablonska #yablonska https://t.co/Td6pEbujFL pic.twitter.com/eHDlnhFaPI

— Tetyana Yablonska (@ArtistYablonska) July 4, 2022

art that looks like shitposting

Hairy Locomotion #remediosvaro #varo https://t.co/lBZd7LQlqx pic.twitter.com/D4NeI94NBz

— Remedios Varo (@artistvaro) July 15, 2022

it manages to be both amusing and frightening.

i knew thomas eakins was great but wow thomas eakins was really great

Thomas Eakins, Whistling for Plover, 1874 #brooklynmuseum #museumarchive https://t.co/ODgUIYdVHG pic.twitter.com/CvqxgDuGQE

— Thomas Eakins (@artisteakins) July 18, 2022

Yeah, he is one of my favorites. I don't know that one! So much sky.

lonely guy, thinking baout Sherwood

The Passing of Robin Hood, 1917 #romanticism #wyeth https://t.co/os7Mq2MheS pic.twitter.com/KsRbcjdkm4

— N.C.Wyeth (@NC_Wyeth) July 18, 2022

"bury me where ere the arrow shd fall!"
*FAINT TWANG*
"bury you in yr own foot then?"