Visual Arts Canova

[Angela]

I saw this exhibition at the Met this week-end. Really very lovely, so I thought I'd share.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/feb/11/serene-beauty-canova/?insrc=wbll

These are just two of the reliefs:

These are the more well-known free standing Canova sculptures, set to the music of Bizet. It's the next best thing to seeing them in person. In one way, it's better than seeing them in person...the camera is allowed to go closer than we poor humans. The first nude is of Napoleon's scandalous sister.

 

[StevenEvans]

[FONT=&quot]After watching "Happy Days", that's when it happened. Diana Cavova is so pretty. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Has anyone seen "Happy Days" episode #11 "Because she's there" ? She was really something.[/FONT]

 

[Angela]

Since the original link is broken:

 

[Jovialis]

I saw this exhibition at the Met this week-end.

I was just there this past weekend, definitely one of my favorite places in the city.

 

[Angela]

I was just there this past weekend, definitely one of my favorite places in the city.

I'm there a lot, not just for special shows. I choose one relatively small area and just concentrate on that.

I don't know if you ever saw Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn. When the blues struck her she would go to Tiffany's. For me it's the Met. It's like a temple.

 

[Jovialis]

I'm there a lot, not just for special shows. I choose one relatively small area and just concentrate on that.

I don't know if you ever saw Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn. When the blues struck her she would go to Tiffany's. For me it's the Met. It's like a temple.

It is definitely a great place to cheer one's self up

I like to roam around, and find my way to the balcony area overlooking Central Park.

 

[Angela]

It is definitely a great place to cheer one's self up

I like to roam around, and find my way to the balcony area overlooking Central Park.

Yes, it's a great view. The whole place is like an oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle.

I even like to eat there, depending on my plans for the day and evening, and how flush with money I'm feeling. You can't beat the view of the park while you're eating, and the food is quite good, although it's all expensive. My out of town guests tend to gape at 16.00 for an alcoholic drink, even if you're on the rooftop with the park and all of Manhattan spread out before you.

The whole place is just my idea of what a great public building should be: monumental, cool, clean, wonderful architecture.

I just find it very calming.

I have favorites I go back to again and again, of course, foremost among them the Egyptian temple and exhibits and the Greek and Roman area.

Well, enough of being New York City tour guide. Everyone who comes to New York as a tourist should go, though.

 

[Angela]

It is definitely a great place to cheer one's self up

I like to roam around, and find my way to the balcony area overlooking Central Park.

Yes, it's a great view. The whole place is like an oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle.

I even like to eat there, depending on my plans for the day and evening, and how flush with money I'm feeling. You can't beat the view of the park while you're eating, and the food is quite good, although it's all expensive. My out of town guests tend to gape at 16.00 for an alcoholic drink, even if you're on the rooftop with the park and all of Manhattan spread out before you.

The whole place is just my idea of what a great public building should be: monumental, cool, clean, wonderful architecture.

I just find it very calming.

I have favorites I go back to again and again, of course, foremost among them the Egyptian temple and exhibits and the Greek and Roman era.

Temple of Dendur:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Dendur

Well, enough of being New York City tour guide. Everyone who comes to New York as a tourist should go, though.

 

[ToBeOrNotToBe]

http://humanphenotypes.net/Litorid.html

That's basically the Greco-Roman art ideal, only they had an obsession with blondism for some reason (even in the Renaissance, at least from my time in Florence, many/most of the angels were blonde). The morph also shows some nasal convexity which for the most part wasn't present in the Greco-Roman ideal, although often is.

 

[Angela]

That's incorrect. While it's true that Canova was a NEO-classical sculptor in that he used classical themes, poses, and dress, a style popular all over Europe at that time, he carved from life models more than fourteen hundred years after the fall of Rome. If they look like Romans to you facially, it's because the subjects are Italian.

As for Canova's sculptures or the Roman/Greek ones, for that matter, showing an obsession with blondism, that's impossible as they are all carved of WHITE marble. Did that escape you? Frescoes from the Roman period show a variety of hair colors as do paintings from later periods. I suggest you google Roman frescoes and Renaissance Italian art and Neo-Classical Art.

It's a mistake to draw vast conclusions from a very superficial look at a few paintings or from what you think is a face looking like a "GRECO-ROMAN ideal. It's also a mistake to think you get informed art criticism and history from anthroforums.

For example, you might think these two sculptures conform to some sort of ancient ideal. You'd be wrong. For one thing, Roman portrait sculpture was often very warts and all depending on the period, and second it's Napoleon and his sister.

Or, take this carving by Canova of what he labeled a "Vestal". She just looks Italian.

 

[bigsnake49]

I don't know about Romans but the Greeks colored some of their sculptures.

 

[Angela]

I don't know about Romans but the Greeks colored some of their sculptures.

They both colored their statues, and buildings as well. It's just that we didn't know about it until recently, with the advent of modern technology which can "see" the paint.

Ancient Rome as well as ancient Greece, and Etruria, for that matter, were much more colorful than we imagined.

On one of the threads here I quote extensively from some textbooks on art history from my university days where they spent tens of thousands of words explaining why the ancients chose NOT to use color. All completely wrong.

All of that said, I prefer them all white, statues and public buildings both. That's just my own aesthetic speaking, however. I like cool, quiet palettes for public spaces, even private ones. I wouldn't want the Washington or Lincoln monuments, or the Capitol, colorized.

 

[bigsnake49]

Yeah, I like the look of cool marble only because I can just imagine somebody using gaudy colors to color their beautiful cool white statue.