Art around the home  

Zenick
Love Zenick's work...

Thanks Woody...
Great to see your collection.
I like the "invisible portrait" ... grey on grey, with just a presence of a possible figure. It is definitely there though. No doubt about it!
Thanks for the close-ups of the guy with the wide tie. I would say it looks like a straight-up pastel drawing. At least the tie and suit look quite richly "drawn" with not much evidence of anything underneath. I do also see some evidence of drawing in the face too, but harder to tell (from here) if there is a photo underneath., or how see-through the drawing layer is.
Love the whole presentation.

Sure thing
And thanks for your comments.
Not to take this off-topic thread even further off-topic, but here is a news story I found quite interesting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2375270/Dafen-Oil-Painting-Villa...

I guess the linked story is proof...
that traditional drawing, painting and copying skills are (in many ways) a fine "craft"-- that is quite learnable by many people.
Its always a trip to see that stuff. Talk about a reasonable facsimile...
On one level, its kind of sad to see paintings that were originally made with a sense of investigation and search- get reduced to a mere "paint job".
But also a good reminder that Art has always been about so much more than that perfect paint job.
Maybe you are trying to tell us something Woody? Seeing these relentlessly copied "paintings" next to the ones in your collection only makes yours look more human and art-like.
No matter the skill level, there is more idea and feeling (and ultimately MEANING) emanating from any one of the paintings in your collection than the most perfect 1000th Van Gogh copy, knocked out by deadline.

There was another artwork thread
a few years ago that was pretty interesting...
Here:
http://www.designaddict.com/design_addict/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/th...

This reminds me of the...
This reminds me of the proposition put forward by Walter Benjamin that mechanical reproduction of an image reduces its aura. You can read Benjamin's fascinating essay at the link below.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Thank you
I just wanted to thank you very much for this thread. Fascinating.

Ah
fastfwd- I remember that thread now; thanks for posting it! At that time, I probably only had a couple of pieces.
Hopefully, more members will post some new things.
tick- That was a great read.

A wall of mine...
Here is a wall in my living room.

I bought an old framed snappy yesterday...for $15USD
of the 1937 Boston Marathon.
Alway's
Aunt Mark

Thanks for sharing, woodywood.
I can see a theme emerging, though I'm a bit confused by the taxidermy.
I'm sticking with hand-colored photograph on the young man. There looks to be both dry and aqueous mediums involved. 1880-1900, depending on region, but it looks European to me based on style of attire and my gut. Your other over-worked photograph of the bearded man could be American.
What's that silver-painted metal thing that EH likes so much?

tktoo
As I mentioned in the other thread, I don't have a proper space to display all of my stuff. This is basically a temporary holding place until I find a new home.
Regarding the colored portrait, did you examine all of the close-up images? I'm having a hard time seeing how it could be a photograph, but maybe I'm way off.
The bearded man looks like pencil or charcoal on paper to me. Again, I will try to add some close-up pics.
Actually, I'm not sure what EamesHead was referring to... Could you guys point to exactly which piece you're looking at? Thanks.

Apologies for poor image quality
(and half-made bed)
but my latest picture buy
Has 1960s Royal Academy label to reverse

woody and tktoo (and adamfowler)
The "silver painted metal thing" that tktoo is asking about is on the link with your posted images, not with the main thread page pics. It is the center and left photo on the third row down on the linked page.
It looks like an "erased" head/portrait. Almost what appears to be a physical "crater" where the head should go. Yeah woody, what's the story?
Erased images are part of a long tradition in art.
The most famous erased image is probably Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased Willem de Kooning", where he actually asked de Kooning to give him one of his drawings so that he could erase it-- thereby creating a "collaborative drawing" with de Kooning. de Kooning picked out one for him that he knew would be VERY difficult to erase, and gave him his blessing to do the piece. The resulting collaboration is not quite invisible, with bits of the original drawing still visible.
There is also Arnulf Ranier, a german artist who basically covers up images of his own face with black gestural scribbles and marks. A different kind of "erasing".
Oh and how about Jasper John's "blind" prints of his own face, where he rolled his previously inked face directly onto the paper from ear to ear. A face print.
I have to say that I mostly argree with adamfowler about most of the work on the old thread that fastforward (?) linked.
For me, not much of the art on that thread gets past a kind of rudderless and mostly decorative attitude, and seems to lack seriousness in its intent.
I stress the word MOST. (Not all)
Art is more than just about one's taste. There ARE standards. (They just are a lot harder to verbalize, thats all)
Taste is taste, and then there is authenticity, which is totally different.
I do like some of the larger and very overloaded "aborigninal" pieces. But not much else seems to have any "toughness" or edge to it, and makes me feel like I am eating sugar, and have to keep moving through the paintings in search of something that gets past that "decoration" problem.