![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tyler Green, over at Modern Art Notes, has asked for his readers to assemble another list (previously, he asked for our favorite buildings - mine are HERE).
This time, in light of the fact that a Thomas Kinkade painting will be adapted for the silver screen (aw, jesus fuck a bagpipe!), we're asked for five paintings that we think actually SHOULD have a future in the motion picture medium.
Now, as a lover of both painting and film (the latter being my first love, the medium I think and feel in; the former being the perfect, pure medium I aspire to the qualities of), this is harder for me than it might seem, for my general rule for any medium is that the best work in any art form is usually that that is pure and true to that medium. Great films, novels, plays, etc. don't translate as great in media other than their own.
So, no Pollocks on my list.
My first thoughts were of Hopper and Vermeer. David Lynch once mentioned two of his favorite artists as being Bacon and Hopper, but the latter only "for film." I understand this - I don't necessarily like Hopper all that much, except he's very inspirational in a cinematic sense. There are a few painters like this, not so great on the wall, maybe, but great as static filmmakers (when I was at NYU Film School, Robert Longo was rather popular among my my fellow students - lots of 16mm black-and-white second-year films of men in suits fighting . . . most of them not bad, actually).
Hopper has also been pretty well done in film by now, too, perhaps best in Herbert Ross' film of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven. So, no Nighthawks.
And Peter Greenaway has pretty much dealt definitely with Vermeer in a filmic context in A Zed & Two Noughts. So, after considering The Music Lesson, I decided to go elsewhere.
I also considered and discarded works by Goya, Duchamp, Rothko (one which, I discovered less than an hour after I dropped it from my list, is about to go under the gavel), and a different de Chirico from the one I settled on.
In the end, I had to leave behind some of my own feelings about the works as paintings, and just see them as worlds I'd love to fall into, or frozen stories that I want to see the "before" and "after" of.
1. The Garden of Delights by Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1504
Sorry, only the center panel. It's way too small as it is, reduced here. The whole thing, all three panels, is a world I'd love to wander in, at least within the safety of film (dear god, not for real, that would be mad!). A trilogy.
When did the "Earthly" get dropped from the title in most references? Confusing.
2. Montparnasse Station (The Melancholy of Departure) by Giorgio de Chirico, 1914
Another landscape to wander in. This time, I think I'd actually like to be in this for real, if that were only possible . . .
3. The Menaced Assassin by Rene Magritte, 1927
NOW WHAT? Where did this come from, where is it going? The importance of the gramophone can not be overemphasized.
This, by the way, was always one of my favorites to revisit at MoMA. IT IS NO LONGER UP IN THE PERMANENT COLLECTION, DAMMIT! They've kept the other good Magrittes, and a not-so-good one, but . . . but . . . okay, I know it's actually big, but still . . !
4. City Limits by Philip Guston, 1969
I kinda want to hang with these characters, and ride in this car, but that's probably not such a good idea. Be fun to watch, at least.
5. Ocean Park No. 115 by Richard Diebenkorn, 1979
Peter Greenaway, a painter who became a filmmaker, once titled a painting If Only Cinema Could Do the Same. I want a film able to capture the tonalities, the textures . . . to have LIGHT like this, with the clarity. Maybe I broke my rule on this one, and might have well gone all around with abstracts . . . Well, I've seen Rothko sunsets, maybe someday cinema can get Diebenkorned.
This time, in light of the fact that a Thomas Kinkade painting will be adapted for the silver screen (aw, jesus fuck a bagpipe!), we're asked for five paintings that we think actually SHOULD have a future in the motion picture medium.
Now, as a lover of both painting and film (the latter being my first love, the medium I think and feel in; the former being the perfect, pure medium I aspire to the qualities of), this is harder for me than it might seem, for my general rule for any medium is that the best work in any art form is usually that that is pure and true to that medium. Great films, novels, plays, etc. don't translate as great in media other than their own.
So, no Pollocks on my list.
My first thoughts were of Hopper and Vermeer. David Lynch once mentioned two of his favorite artists as being Bacon and Hopper, but the latter only "for film." I understand this - I don't necessarily like Hopper all that much, except he's very inspirational in a cinematic sense. There are a few painters like this, not so great on the wall, maybe, but great as static filmmakers (when I was at NYU Film School, Robert Longo was rather popular among my my fellow students - lots of 16mm black-and-white second-year films of men in suits fighting . . . most of them not bad, actually).
Hopper has also been pretty well done in film by now, too, perhaps best in Herbert Ross' film of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven. So, no Nighthawks.
And Peter Greenaway has pretty much dealt definitely with Vermeer in a filmic context in A Zed & Two Noughts. So, after considering The Music Lesson, I decided to go elsewhere.
I also considered and discarded works by Goya, Duchamp, Rothko (one which, I discovered less than an hour after I dropped it from my list, is about to go under the gavel), and a different de Chirico from the one I settled on.
In the end, I had to leave behind some of my own feelings about the works as paintings, and just see them as worlds I'd love to fall into, or frozen stories that I want to see the "before" and "after" of.
1. The Garden of Delights by Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1504
Sorry, only the center panel. It's way too small as it is, reduced here. The whole thing, all three panels, is a world I'd love to wander in, at least within the safety of film (dear god, not for real, that would be mad!). A trilogy.
When did the "Earthly" get dropped from the title in most references? Confusing.
2. Montparnasse Station (The Melancholy of Departure) by Giorgio de Chirico, 1914
Another landscape to wander in. This time, I think I'd actually like to be in this for real, if that were only possible . . .
3. The Menaced Assassin by Rene Magritte, 1927
NOW WHAT? Where did this come from, where is it going? The importance of the gramophone can not be overemphasized.
This, by the way, was always one of my favorites to revisit at MoMA. IT IS NO LONGER UP IN THE PERMANENT COLLECTION, DAMMIT! They've kept the other good Magrittes, and a not-so-good one, but . . . but . . . okay, I know it's actually big, but still . . !
4. City Limits by Philip Guston, 1969
I kinda want to hang with these characters, and ride in this car, but that's probably not such a good idea. Be fun to watch, at least.
5. Ocean Park No. 115 by Richard Diebenkorn, 1979
Peter Greenaway, a painter who became a filmmaker, once titled a painting If Only Cinema Could Do the Same. I want a film able to capture the tonalities, the textures . . . to have LIGHT like this, with the clarity. Maybe I broke my rule on this one, and might have well gone all around with abstracts . . . Well, I've seen Rothko sunsets, maybe someday cinema can get Diebenkorned.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 02:31 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 02:45 pm (UTC)From:There was a point where I realized how many possibilities there were I hadn't looked at yet, and put the brakes on and stuck with the five favorites I had at that point. Once you discover a couple of online resources with thousands of paintings on them, in fairly good digital reproduction, well-organized, it's hard to stop.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 06:57 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)---The Evil voice on your left shoulder