Cole and Courbet
Mar. 24th, 2013 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI finished my Thomas Cole paper! It is pretty awesome, except sadly I had to cut out Gustave Courbet’s ridiculously angsty self-portrait, which I think we can all agree would spice up any paper. Observe!
It’s entitled Desperate Man (Self Portrait). It is so over the top and theatrical, I just envision Courbet looking at himself in the mirror and going “I am mad, bad, and dangerous to know, yes I am! Muss that hair!”
I wrote an entry lo these many years ago about Courbet’s many excesses. (It occurs to me that much of my flist missed my first infatuation with nineteenth century artists. This means I can write a new Van Gogh post! Oh frabjous day!)
In a century overflowing with temperamental artists with egos so large that they exerted a gravitational pull, Courbet’s stands out for ridiculous self-centeredness. During one of the Paris World’s Fairs, he hired his own hall to display his works - right outside the fairgrounds, so it would seem like one of the Fair exhibits - and painted COURBET in enormous letters on the sides, just to make sure that everyone in Paris knew who he was.
And then! And then! Those upstart impressionists started stealing all the attention that was rightfully HIS! (In Courbet’s mind, all attention is rightfully his.)
Oh it is so infuriating! They are painting pictures that are actually interesting! (Courbet’s non-self-portraits are almost invariably dull, probably because Courbet found no subject as fascinating as himself.) Courbet works so bloody hard to shock people - I mean, look at that self-portrait, does that not say "trying too hard"? - and the impressionists are shocking the whole art world without even trying.
I mean, literally without trying. So Courbet is puttering around making his boring realist works that take FOREVER because they have to be so highly finished, and meanwhile the impressionists are tossing off canvasses that basically look like studies. You know, the sort of slapdash thing that artists would paint to get the composition right before they sat down and did the actual hard work of painting.
I was going to contrast Thomas Cole’s and Gustave Courbet’s different visions of the romantic genius artist. For Cole the artist is not important in himself, but rather a conduit who imaginatively transforms the beauty of nature into artworks that help people get closer to God; while Courbet basically sees the artist himself as his own most interesting work of art. But sadly I ran out of space, so I decided to share it with you instead.
It’s entitled Desperate Man (Self Portrait). It is so over the top and theatrical, I just envision Courbet looking at himself in the mirror and going “I am mad, bad, and dangerous to know, yes I am! Muss that hair!”
I wrote an entry lo these many years ago about Courbet’s many excesses. (It occurs to me that much of my flist missed my first infatuation with nineteenth century artists. This means I can write a new Van Gogh post! Oh frabjous day!)
In a century overflowing with temperamental artists with egos so large that they exerted a gravitational pull, Courbet’s stands out for ridiculous self-centeredness. During one of the Paris World’s Fairs, he hired his own hall to display his works - right outside the fairgrounds, so it would seem like one of the Fair exhibits - and painted COURBET in enormous letters on the sides, just to make sure that everyone in Paris knew who he was.
And then! And then! Those upstart impressionists started stealing all the attention that was rightfully HIS! (In Courbet’s mind, all attention is rightfully his.)
Oh it is so infuriating! They are painting pictures that are actually interesting! (Courbet’s non-self-portraits are almost invariably dull, probably because Courbet found no subject as fascinating as himself.) Courbet works so bloody hard to shock people - I mean, look at that self-portrait, does that not say "trying too hard"? - and the impressionists are shocking the whole art world without even trying.
I mean, literally without trying. So Courbet is puttering around making his boring realist works that take FOREVER because they have to be so highly finished, and meanwhile the impressionists are tossing off canvasses that basically look like studies. You know, the sort of slapdash thing that artists would paint to get the composition right before they sat down and did the actual hard work of painting.
I was going to contrast Thomas Cole’s and Gustave Courbet’s different visions of the romantic genius artist. For Cole the artist is not important in himself, but rather a conduit who imaginatively transforms the beauty of nature into artworks that help people get closer to God; while Courbet basically sees the artist himself as his own most interesting work of art. But sadly I ran out of space, so I decided to share it with you instead.
