Positive Thread: Classic Masters

[Anonymous No.2009471]

I rarely see quality thread and would like to promote and share the work of people many aspire to integrate into their respective styles.

Please post artwork and names of artists you think have amazing usage of light, strokes, color, lines, detail, expression, and composition.

[Anonymous No.2009473]

Sargent: Great use of economy with brush strokes. Conveyed a lot with very little.

[Anonymous No.2009475]

Albert Bierstadt: Amazing lighting, composition, and technique.

[Anonymous No.2009476]

>>2009475

[Anonymous No.2009478]

Morgan Weistling: Great composition and use of lighting to accentuate it, great gesture with figures, good use of ambient color.

[Anonymous No.2009480]

>>2009478

[Anonymous No.2009488]

entitled "Nostradamus", painted by Cesar de Nostradamus, son of the famous prophet Michel de Nostradamus.

Very underrated artist, as you can see there is a lot of passion deeprooted in the technical mastery of this painting. Shame he's overshadowed by meme artists like Davinchi.

[Anonymous No.2009494]

>>2009488
I hope you're joking.

[Anonymous No.2009496]

>>2009471
is it classical, in like the plebby sense of "stuff that's old" or in the

>(often initial capital letter) pertaining to or designating the style of fine arts, especially painting and sculpture, developed in Greece during the 5th and 4th centuries b.c., chiefly characterized by balanced composition, the separation of figures from an architectural background, and the naturalistic rendering of anatomical details, spatial movement, and distribution of weight in a figure.

sense?

[Anonymous No.2009501]

>>2009496
Whats the difference? If you dont want to participate in my thread then please leave. We're trying to learn here, you understand.

[Anonymous No.2009507]

>>2009501
i do, i just want to know if you want classical stuff or if you just want old stuff. i don't want to post a bunch of unrelated stuff. i think i'm being reasonable.

[Anonymous No.2009535]

>>2009496
From the works posted so far it seems they mean it as a euphemism for, unless they are not OP who have posted additional images so far. I think most people just think of "classical" as old now anyway. It's really quite difficult as a Classicist if you want to meet actual Classicist painters.

Here is Raphael. The light is sober, the forms rid of the accidental excess of Nature, expressions and actions painted to be clear and majestic imitations, and the composition orderly. The style isn't strictly personal and we aren't made away of the toil of the artist. Art is the hiding of art's art.

[Anonymous No.2009619]

Ictankunman. Classical artist from the 9th century. He was very well known for his master pencil drawings of dragons, and he would also spend a lot of time walking through towns wearing nothing but his underpants and holding dual broadswords which confused the public.

[Anonymous No.2009624]

Ictankunman. Classical artist from the 9th century. He was very well known for his master pencil drawings of dragons, and he would also spend a lot of time walking through towns wearing nothing but his underpants and holding dual broadswords which confused the public. But it wasnt the very act of walking around naked that confused the public as much as it was the fact that he would sporadically transition himself into a random dynamic pose while holding onto the swords for several minutes and then very forcefully and violently changing the pose. He was known as the Pose Maniac for this behaviour, and as an artist he was known as Black Dragon Rage.

[Anonymous No.2009652]

We already have "post your favorite artwork" thread, which we have ALL OF THE TIME, so I don't know what the purpose of this thread is.

[Anonymous No.2009879]

>>2009652
"post your favorite artwork" threads usually come down to people posting artwork without much text to come with the image. the proposition of this thread also gets rid of at least modern art and and mostly definitely dispels digital artists. in a stricter sense, it bars anti-classical styles.

[Anonymous No.2009884]

>>2009879
>it bars anti-classical styles.
while still managing to skew what classical means in an art context.

[Anonymous No.2010079]

>>2009884
That's more the individual posters' faults, and we aren't even sure what OP means by "classical" yet. It's always difficult to propose a thread anywhere about classical art because of the misconceptions or different interpretations about what classicism is, which is why I wrote "in a stricter sense." There are painters today for example who claim to be classical while probably not even a percentage of them are in actuality. I'm not even sure if we have the same definition for what classical is.

Moreover there are some art styles which aren't Classical in the handling or forms yet are products of Classical learning, such as Rubens. Who could believe that he was a member of a neo-Stoicist circle from looking at his fleshy nudes? Mannerism is sometimes called the anti-classical style (of course, in relation the High Renaissance) but if you will read the treatises written at the time they praise ancient sculpture and philosophers.

For me it's a set of interrelated ideas which regulates the art and manifests in the form and content where everything has a purpose rather than art made at specific time periods (such as Classical Greek art) although it tends to be the case.

Here's an article I read that has key points in my view of Classicism.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/batewj/class.htm

Picture is a Poussin. I really like the composed gravity on the muse here.

[Anonymous No.2010146]

OP

I haven't posted anything besides the first 3 examples. By classic I mean anything before the Modern Period where Warhol dominated the art world. Anything before that is fine as long as I'd like to see artists with skills we can integrate into our own respective styles.

Neoclassical Jaques Louis David

Great use of composition and lighting, great figure studies and gesture. Old master.

[Anonymous No.2010155]

>>2010146
>By classic I mean anything before the Modern Period
Got it.

[Anonymous No.2010160]

>>2010146
>anything before the dominance of Warhol
So pretty much the entirety of Modernism

[Anonymous No.2010190]

>>2009476
My Nigga

[Anonymous No.2010194]

I saw this painting posted a long time ago here on /ic/ and it remains one of the paintings that has stuck with me. I really wish I could find out more about it. I think it's called The Lighter of the Lamp"?

[Anonymous No.2010255]

>>2010194
Looks like either Rudolf Ernst or Antonio Fabres.

[Anonymous No.2010370]

>>2009475
I honestly believe he's one of the top 5 greatest landscape painters in history. I dig how all of his skies end up looking like Valhalla

[Anonymous No.2010376]

>>2010370
Really? Who else would you consider to be top 5? I personally don't really like Bierstadt's work that much. It all feels very false to me. Like this great big show of jamming as much "picturesque" stuff into each image as he can, and these big backlit glowing scenes filled with detail piled upon detail and mountains and clouds and forests and lakes and waterfalls and animals. It seems more showy than honest. Just about every one of his images looks the same too.

I'll take a Levitan over a Bierstadt any day of the week.

[Anonymous No.2010385]

>>2009473
>>2009476
Yes

>>2009494
He obviously is.

[Anonymous No.2010388]

>>2010376
Not the same guy but how bout Thomas Cole?
>>2010376
Have you ever seen the rocky mountains? Are these scenes really that far fetched? Also a lot of them look the same because he is often painting the same mountain range. What's wrong with painting the beauty of the newly settled west?

[Anonymous No.2010401]

>>2010388
Beirstadt goes too far into sentimentality. Kind of like when photographers take shots of sunsets. It's impressive on the first moments but it's not something that grows well with familiarity.

[Anonymous No.2010403]

>>2010160

I am still amazed that picasso could draw and paint still life so well at such a young age yet he chose to paint like this

why?
how many ounces of mushrooms did he eat?
how many bags of grass were smoked?

it's strange to think he wanted it to look so simple, to be so broken down instead of complicated and overworked

[Anonymous No.2010405]

>>2010401
Well put. I feel the same way about Aivazovsky, though it seems not many people share my feelings. It just feels like forced romanticism that's not based on reality. As you say, overly sentimental.

[Anonymous No.2010418]

>>2010403

It was pretty clear that he had an amazing understanding of art at a super-young age. i think he got tired of painting the same high-quality material repeatedly and just did whatever the fuck he wanted. I don't blame him, shouldn't have been hard to become disillusioned by something that seemed so limited back then.

>pic related: one of his paintings at 13

[Anonymous No.2010423]

>>2010418
His dad painted that for him. Picasso was a talentless hack, always going on an on about the realism which he could allegedly capture with ease and never once actually showing it.

[Anonymous No.2010425]

>>2010403
Because visual resemblance is just one thing about art. He was interested in exploring other things and deliberately avoiding that kind of thing, because indeed, it draws a lot of attention. If you draw or paint a representation of an object like a photograph, everyone will jump for it, it has a power to hypnotize people. But what about it? What do you do with that virtuoso technique?

Most people on /ic/ have secondary goals as well, but they make use of that accurate representation. It's important for concept artists, it's useful to tell narratives in comic books, storyboards, cartoons... It can be a hobby and an interest own it's own, just to draw and paint for fidelity to the eye. But what truly amaze me is that it seems to be the only thing that is interesting to most people here. The only one.

I love it too, but there are many other ways to produce interesting images, relevant images, images beyond representation or religious icons, shocking or that appeal to primitive senses. It's incredible how blobs of paint can look human, and more incredible that two dots, a triangle and a curve can still look like a face. More so, each set of dots, shapes and curves appear to have a personality of its own. Imagine the possibilities.

Picasso lived in art. He was working as a kid up to his dying days. He did prints, sculpture, paint, drew, experimented with all techniques, he worked with other people and alone, he worked with political themes, mythological themes, ordinary, ancient, modern themes. He wouldn't have settled down with one way of seeing and painting.

[Anonymous No.2010441]

>>2010423

This. Picasso couldn't actually paint this well. Picasso is art history's greatest lie.

[Anonymous No.2010459]

>>2010423
citation needed

[Anonymous No.2010469]

>>2010425
>Because visual resemblance is just one thing about art. He was interested in exploring other things and deliberately avoiding that kind of thing, because indeed, it draws a lot of attention. If you draw or paint a representation of an object like a photograph, everyone will jump for it, it has a power to hypnotize people. But what about it? What do you do with that virtuoso technique?


But that argument makes it seem like, although you do not mean it, that all the virtue of representation lies within the representation. And I suppose this was one of the positions for defense of abstract art at the time which is still affecting us today. As a counter defensive reaction artists are painting realistically for its own sake more than ever. There's so much to do with good technique in depiction. If all the crowd will see is the finish or the technique in a picture with believable space that's the artist's fault firstly, and then the crowd. Even if the crowd is mostly to blame, depending on the times, the artist still holds some responsibility.

[Anonymous No.2010483]

>>2010469
There are many layers to this, anon.

Evidently that not all virtue of representation lies within the representation, as I mentioned the parallel objectives of figurative artists.

>And I suppose this was one of the positions for defense of abstract art at the time which is still affecting us today.
Art doesn't need that kind of defense and never did. What people defend from are attacks, be it from the market, the critics, the public... Abstract art is cool as it is, there is no conflict between it and other kinds of art. You can do one or the other or both or neither.

>As a counter defensive reaction artists are painting realistically for its own sake more than ever.
That is not true, anon. You have that impression because you are amongst people who care about that. "Realistic" painting, in the sense of naturalistic visual representations lost one of its most proeminent roles to photograph, which led to a search for new uses of it. So there was a split around the mid-19th century, between gallery artists rethinking their craft and their market (impressionism and onwards) and other graphic artists who found a home on the printing press.

I don't get what you mean by blame or fault between artist and crowds. And following your argument, if all the crowd will see is the finished piece, then they don't see the technique. What we see is the art product, not the art work. The rest is imagined by us. There are many many ways to do art. As well as there are many crowds, with various different ways to appreciate the pieces and many things to see in them.

There is no harm. And the split between the "high-brow" art market of today and the illustrators that realistically paint only exists because the authority of the museum, or this cultural status (both that are merely imagined and criticized by the artists themselves) appears to still have an effect on people that don't realize that the comic book, the art installation and the grafitti coexist.

[Anonymous No.2010487]

>>2010459
No I think the citation needed is for Picasso. always claiming that he can draw like Raphael and never once, not even ONE TIME IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE Furbishing proof to back up that claim. The only thing that is ever shown is that communion painting conveniently painted while living with his father who was a realist and just so happened to paint in the exact same style, a shitty beginner tier plate study, and the one self portrait in blue that is just okay. Picasso is the equivalent to an annoying shit poster who brags about their super awesome art skills and then when asked to post their work posts merc wip.

[Anonymous No.2010537]

>>2010483
>Art doesn't need that kind of defense and never did. What people defend from are attacks, be it from the market, the critics, the public
In effect, same thing. No matter; what I mean to say is, artists defend their art. The position is held by these then newer artists to validate their art to the crowd and critics that all painting before had the end to recreate the sensible reality and thus obsolete with photography around. (of course, this is just one of the many positions) Now we both know that isn't the case, as I've said that you don't mean actually to imply it. But the notion did come to around that time and to an extent a lot of "realistic" art at the time was just bland superficiality, which brings me to the next point.

>I don't get what you mean by blame or fault between artist and crowds
If the crowd will only be amazed at the technical mastery (using representation which is close to photograph or record of visual stimuli), then perhaps the artist didn't put in enough genius into the work (which is to say did possess the capacity to add deep qualities to them, for which he is to be blamed), or the crowd doesn't have the capacity to see beyond the surface technique. I call finish that which is rendering, a part of photographic painting technique.

>You have that impression because you are amongst people who care about that
Except many painters today are actually trying to paint as realistically as possible to the exclusion of any depth at all. I suppose "defensive reaction" was the wrong phrase though. It's more like, they come to believe it themselves, these new-realists, that the end of representative painting is to paint like a photograph and add very little.They do also react against modernist nonrepresentational art, but that's another subject. Like you I'm against the mindless adherence to representation. I won't even consider myself a representational artist. Not even fine artist, although others might classify me under these.

[Anonymous No.2010539]

>>2010537
I hope I made myself a bit clearer. I admit it's really quite difficult to because of the multiple words which each have multiple meanings as well as the multiple levels to the story.