२६ ऑगस्ट, २०१९

I'm a longtime fan of "Renoir Sucks at Painting," and now here comes the New Yorker art critic, Peter Schjeldahl with "Renoir's Problem Nudes"...

... subtitled "An argument is often made that we shouldn’t judge the past by the values of the present, but that’s a hard sell in a case as primordial as Renoir’s." And I can see people at Instapundit getting exercised about about the political judgment of high art.

First, I must observe that Schjedahl doesn't mention Max Geller, called "the leader of a group called Renoir Sucks at Painting" in the 2015 Atlantic article "Why Absolutely Everyone Hates Renoir/The protestors in Boston who declared even God despises the maligned Impressionist might be on to something."

Schjedahl is speaking out now — 4 years after "Renoir Sucks" peaked — because there's a new exhibit, "Renoir: The Body, the Senses." He writes:
The reputation of the once exalted, still unshakably canonical, Impressionist has fallen on difficult days. Never mind the affront to latter-day educated tastes of a painting style so sugary that it imperils your mind’s incisors; there’s a more burning issue. 
The art historian Martha Lucy, writing in the show’s gorgeous catalogue, notes that, “in contemporary discourse,” the name Renoir has “come to stand for ‘sexist male artist.’ ” Renoir took such presumptuous, slavering joy in looking at naked women—who in his paintings were always creamy or biscuit white, often with strawberry accents, and ideally blond—that, Lucy goes on to argue, the tactility of the later nudes, with brushstrokes like roving fingers, unsettles any kind of gaze, including the male. I’ll endorse that, for what it’s worth.
Lucy makes the painting sound better than it is.  I don't see what's bad about a painter of nudes being sensuously involved with the fleshly characters he's depicting. Why leap to calling it sexist? My guess? It's way to justify the exhibition of this insipid stuff. It's not bad painting; it's bad politics — and that infuses the show with modern-day relevance.

Here, take a look:
Schjedahl writes, "Renoir’s women strum no erotic nerves in me," and he complains about "the carnal tapioca, the vacant gazes, the fatuous frolic." But:
Everything in Renoir that is hard to take and almost impossible to think about, because it makes no concessions to intelligence, affirms his stature as a revolutionary artist. 
"Almost impossible." The reason I find it hard to think about is that I'm not sure what is meant by making "no concessions to intelligence." It cannot be that Renoir is intellectually challenging! I think it must mean the opposite, that Renoir didn't have any intellectual aspirations.
He stood firmly against the past in art and issued a stark challenge to its future. 
Renoir doesn't seem firm and stark at all. He's more... gelatinous. But Schjedahl is probably just saying that Renoir distinguished himself from the earlier academic style and later artists distinguished themselves from Renoir.
You can’t dethrone him without throwing overboard the fundamental logic of modernism as a sequence of jolting aesthetic breakthroughs, entitled to special rank on the grounds of originality and influence. 
He belongs on the time line. That doesn't mean he belongs on a throne.

१०४ टिप्पण्या:

BarrySanders20 म्हणाले...

I wonder if the model asked afterward if she really had the arms and legs of a linebacker, and if her breasts really look like they are going in the opposite direction.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

In this episode of the Brit show Fake or Fortune, the wonderful Fiona Bruce takes us through the authentication of a minor Renoir owned by some minor gentry.
The French do not cooperate

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

You know, Gauguin sucks too.

Narr म्हणाले...

FWIW I like Impressionism but R. doesn't turn me on--and he didn't make his models look hot (or even warm) to me. That gal is a bit of a freak, or R. didn't learn anatomy, or both (? I don't know and someone will tell us.)

Narr
First?

Ben Morris म्हणाले...

Renoir is the Wordsworth of painting.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Read The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze by Karen L. Kleinfelder, on Picasso. Available used way overpriced used or probably in university libraries free. Written before #MeToo began editing academic women and they could write about normal stuff as normal.

Being a woman she gets wrong what happened, going through the periods in Picasso's relation with his models as interpreted from his drawings, some of the observations being very nicely done; what happened when Picasso suddenly lost interest in his models, at age 80 or so. She speculates Picasso finally came to terms with his mortality.

I'd say it's more likely that a neuron finally switched off.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

They're not drawn to be sexy. They're drawn as they'd be as impressionistic.

The annoying thing about Renoir is that women in crowd scenes all have the same face.

Mark म्हणाले...

Sorry if I don't pay much attention to a modern movement that throws some cow dung on a wall and call it "art."

Most of what the elite call "art" the past hundred years has been complete shit.

Narr म्हणाले...

I don't expect anything as crass as sexy. I think he's actually good at skin and hair, but his figures and faces don't move or seem particularly lifelike.

Narr
IMO and off for a while

Two-eyed Jack म्हणाले...

Mark said: "Most of what the elite call "art" the past hundred years has been complete shit."

Theodore Sturgeon said “ninety percent of everything is crap."

steve uhr म्हणाले...

Idk. Lots of nice paintings on his wiki site. The one you highlight is not up to par. Everyone has a bad day.

David Begley म्हणाले...

That’s like writing, “Vanilla ice cream sucks.”

There is no disputing taste.

Rob म्हणाले...

I'm still trying to figure out why Schjedahl thinks "Young Boy with a Cat" is homoerotic, unless any painting of a nude male by a male artist is automatically homoerotic. It seems like the old joke about a Rorschach Test: "You're the one with the dirty pictures."

rcocean म्हणाले...

Renoir is a giant compared to most of the crap these Art "experts" push. Chagall for one. Jason Pollack for another. Renoir's problem is he painted too much. Its just politics. When they go after a commie/leftist painter, I'll change my mind.

Richard Schaaf म्हणाले...

David Begley had IMO the only trenchant comment.

rcocean म्हणाले...

My experience in Paris that the impressionists don't gain much by seeing them in person as opposed to prints. Same with Van Gough. The Great Masters OTOH are 1000% better.

rcocean म्हणाले...

"Most of what the elite call "art" the past hundred years has been complete shit."

Quit sugar-coating it!

rcocean म्हणाले...

Richard Schaaf has the only esoteric comment.

Rcocean - Comment Judge - Superior Court.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Regarding Picasso. The German occupation was a boon to painters. With gas rationing, food rationing, a blackout etc. they had nothing to do but paint and have sex. A communist, Picasso had to lay off politics or be a Guest of the Gestapo.

YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

Go to the Louvre. The Louvre is a "monument to French culture" & it's full of bad French art, especially painting. Each generation's "rebels" become the next generation's "salonistes", a process repeated ad nauseam.

I come from a long line of French artists. I have quite a bit of "not-so-good" French paintings coming from my parents' estate.

David Begley म्हणाले...

Schjedahl writes, "Renoir’s women strum no erotic nerves in me,” “

This guy ought to check out Zoosk. I think I’m looking at the mugshots in the Lincoln Journal Star.

rcocean म्हणाले...

"Le déjeuner des canotiers" has several different women, all based on Renoir's friends patrons and lovers.

rcocean म्हणाले...

They who can - paint. Those who can't - teach. Those who can't do either are critics.

Mark म्हणाले...

Go to the Louvre.

I went to the Louvre a couple of weeks ago.

What a disappointment.

The Uffizi is better. The National Gallery in Washington D.C. has a better painting collection. The Vatican Museums have a better collection of antiquities.

Mark म्हणाले...

Two other people who have been the Louvre or had family members go said the same thing.

Perhaps its because expectations were so great. Plus, if they are going to divide up the galleries into numbers rooms/areas on the map, would it kill them to put those numbers on the wall somewhere???

David Begley म्हणाले...

I can, however, name two works of art that don’t suck:

1. Ann’s rat drawings; and

2. Begley’s “Frankenstein in Love.”

Bay: Coming your way with MUCH improved draft. I read Blackstone for it. Cited him twice in the dialogue. Cut the third reference.

rcocean म्हणाले...

I love it when people say they hate the Louvre. The smaller the crowds - the better.

YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

@Mark,

The Uffizi is better. The National Gallery in Washington D.C. has a better painting collection. The Vatican Museums have a better collection of antiquities.

If you're disappointed in the Louvre, well, there's a lot to be disappointed about. But, it really helps to see it not as an "Art Museum" as is the NY Met, for example, but as I said above, "a monument to France". That helps to explain the exhibit upon exhibit of mediocrity.

Look at the Louvre as an analog to the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a cathedral to the secular saints of the French Republic. It's certainly not a place of cultural beauty.

Mark म्हणाले...

Where do you get "hate" out of "it was a disappointment"?

And it is always going to be overcrowded. Like Prague.

madAsHell म्हणाले...

would it kill them to put those numbers on the wall somewhere???

Someone might mistake it for art, or something Napoleon stole!!

Mark म्हणाले...

Didn't bother with the line to the Mona Lisa.

Never a big fan of Leonardo anyway. It's not like he's Renoir or something.

Oso Negro म्हणाले...

Martha Lucy may know art but she knows JACK SHIT about men, if her beliefs are reflected accurately in this passage:

"Renoir took such presumptuous, slavering joy in looking at naked women—who in his paintings were always creamy or biscuit white, often with strawberry accents, and ideally blond—that, Lucy goes on to argue, the tactility of the later nudes, with brushstrokes like roving fingers, unsettles any kind of gaze, including the male."


Attractive naked women NEVER unsettle me. Arouse yes, unsettle no! I once got an erection looking a Greek bronze nude in the Metropolitan. Plug that information into your feminist post-modernist art criticism, you fucking jackals.

JML म्हणाले...


"I'm still trying to figure out why Schjedahl thinks "Young Boy with a Cat" is homoerotic, unless any painting of a nude male by a male artist is automatically homoerotic."

I don't either. I mean the kid obviously likes pussy.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Theodore Sturgeon said “ninety percent of everything is crap."

Sturgeon was an optimist.

BudBrown म्हणाले...

I don't like elitist university types trying to shame me into not liking Renoir. I f I had a bucket list stealing a Renoir from the Louvre would be in the top 5. Or maybe top 10. Plus that model is turned on. Women get that vacant stare it's maybe because they've given up trying to look modest. And people must have been buying the things? How many nudes did Van Gogh sell?

mockturtle म्हणाले...

The model's figure certainly looks misshapen and I suspect it was the artist's fault.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Renior liked Creamy White Blondes and red heads. And pissed off all the brunettes. Bad career move by Renior.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

I have never particularly like Renoir's work, but I don't hate it either. In a similar vein of work, I much prefer Manet's. Also prefer that of Monet, because he seemed to have a broader range of work.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

I also miss the rat drawings.

Bob Boyd म्हणाले...

The above painting looks like Renoir talked the flabby dude from across the hall into sitting as a model. Then he left out the body hair, slapped on some tits and a girl's head.
If that's not impressionistic, I don't know what is.

Mark म्हणाले...

I did really like this Madonna and Child by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato though.

Mary is quite beautiful in it.

Johnathan Birks म्हणाले...

You think that Renoir is bad? Have you seen the official Barack Obama portrait? Ouch.

Michael K म्हणाले...

We have had Renoir's "On the terrace" on the wall above our bed since 1979.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Plush women were the fashion in the 19th century. Some of it was a sign of prosperity as the women, and men for that matter, showed they had plenty to eat. For the same reasons that geometric formal gardens were in fashion in the 17th century at a time when most of the world looked like wilderness. Then the "Romantics" came along and wilderness fashionable again. It's just hemlines again.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Bob Boyd - Exactly. I've seen old guys like that (from the neck down) at the local Y.

buwaya म्हणाले...

A lot of that, er, clumsier stuff may have come from his old age, when he was in a bad way.

"The Boating Party" is a reverie, a nostalgia. It reminds me of my youth, our youth, when we would go in a party, well, boating, precisely like that, precisely in that spirit. Or it could have been a beach, or indeed, once, a volcano. And everyone was falling in love with all the rosy-cheeked girls, and everyone was brilliant.

I suspect Renoir was a happy man.

Mark म्हणाले...

If we look at most women (or men) as they really are, they are far from the idealized aesthetic that we might expect art to be.

buwaya म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

@Buwaya,

The Boating Party" is a reverie, a nostalgia.

Since the "Boating Party" is in a DC museum, I've seen it multiple times "in the flesh". Trust me when I tell you that no reproduction does it justice. It's just much more "fleshy" & erotically charged on the canvas than comes across in reproduction.

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

Schjedahl is obviously a faggot, and much else that is not nice, but I will admit that Renoir's chunky ladies are not exactly my cup of tea. But having said that, a painting has to work as a painting, not necessarily as a literal depiction of reality (not that such a thing is possible). I think most of his paintings do, to a nontrivial degree, on some level. So, some angry hipsters don't like Renoir. Who cares?

I liked this Renoir when I saw it in person. https://www.wikiart.org/en/pierre-auguste-renoir/strong-wind-gust-of-wind

I wouldn't trust how the color renders on your computer. It looked radically different on two websites just now, and neither one of them was correct.

It doesn't come across at all in low-res VGA, but having seen the original, I wouldn't mind having it in my house.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Thank you, YH, for pointing out that real reality beats virtual reality any day.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Here's the art critic:

"Renoir took such presumptuous, slavering joy in looking at naked women—who in his paintings were always creamy or biscuit white, often with strawberry accents, and ideally blond "

So his wife was a brunette, and that last part was just Bullshit. I should have known that. Was Renoir, just a little too...Idaknow....white for the 2019 critics?

mockturtle म्हणाले...

I suspect Renoir was a happy man.

Oh, well, we can't have that! Happy artists! What next? Happy activists?

rcocean म्हणाले...

BTW, just because Renoir painted it, doesn't make it great. And just because some of his paintings were bad, doesn't mean most of them weren't good/great. Just sayin'

mockturtle म्हणाले...

We have had Renoir's "On the terrace" on the wall above our bed since 1979.

And a delightful painting it is! One of his best, IMO. I'm assuming you have a print or a reproduction. IIRC, the original remains in Chicago.

YoungHegelian म्हणाले...

@Phidippus,

but I will admit that Renoir's chunky ladies are not exactly my cup of tea.

You like them sit on a dime chicks, like, from Titian. Amirite?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM म्हणाले...

More Titian !!

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"I don't see what's bad about a painter of nudes being sensuously involved with the fleshly characters he's depicting. Why leap to calling it sexist?"

Well, it's a man focusing his male gaze on a naked woman. He presumes to have the right to look and paint the way he does, hence he is presumptuous. Bad man, poor woman: after half a century of whining, why not leap to calling it sexist?

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Renoir was probably a champion darts player. Everybody's good at something.

Big Mike म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Big Mike म्हणाले...

I assume that the idea is for a small cabal of art critics to demonstrate their clout by picking some famous artist of bygone days and setting out to trash him (it’s always a male; no one trashes the overrated Mary Cassatt). The idea is to see how many critics of lesser reputation, academics, poseurs, and even normally intelligent people can be conned into falling in line, thus demonstrating the clout of the cabal.

My own take is (1) there is nothing wrong with a heterosexual male enjoying the sight of a nude model, (2) the idea of what constitutes a. Ideal female figure evolves almost continually, and in the late 19th century the ideal female form featured modest, hemispherical breasts, a large butt, and thick thighs (look up the “Hottentot Venus”). And (3) people will by buying Renoir’s paintings when no one knows who Peter Schjedahl was.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The male gaze business is wrong from the start. The light goes from the woman into the man's eye, not from the man's eye to the woman. If she objects to it, she can stop sending out light his way. She had it last.

Seeing proceeding from the eye to the object is the Greek theory of sight. It does explain why, if you put your hand in the way, you see your hand instead. I have to give the theory that.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM म्हणाले...

Why leap to calling it sexist?
cuz that's the easy first step.
Next-- they're white, so "racist" is next, etc
Eventually, the paintings will have contributed to global warming

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

YH said: "You like them sit on a dime chicks, like, from Titian. Amirite? "

I like the Botticelli ones the best. I suspect that they had a lot of hidden talents.

His Venus certainly took care of Mars. She had time to get dressed again, and he's still out cold:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_and_Mars_(Botticelli)#/media/File:Venus_and_Mars_National_Gallery.jpg

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Mary Cassett is okay. It's a picture of what interests a woman, when you put one up.

A trick that doesn't work with music. That's always just music a woman wrote trying to sound like a man wrote it.

Laslo Spatula म्हणाले...

"2. Begley’s “Frankenstein in Love.”

I'm pulling for you, Begley.

There are a lot of scripts out there, though. So, a suggestion: make it yourself.

It can be done. Without losing your life savings doing it. As with the Frankenstein Monster, you can make it come alive.

My fourth feature in two years is screening next month in a film festival in Hollywood*. This is its fifth festival selection in four months, and the movie cost less than what i paid for my first (used) car.

There are still people that want films that have fun and ideas, not just CGI superheroes.

(*hell yeah I'm going)

I am Laslo.

jaydub म्हणाले...

The Louvre is not one of my favorites, but I found the Iffizi to be just overwhelming - sensory overload as my wife described it. My own favorite artist is El Greco, and I admire his adaptation of the Venetian Renaissance to his unique Spanish style. There is a small, simple El Greco museum in Toledo, a part of which was his actual home and workshop until he died. There are also displays of his students there, most of whom were so true to his style that it's difficult to tell their works from those of the master. I think some of his best works are on display in the Iglesia Santo Domingo el Antiguo and other Catholic Church properties around Toledo and in the Prada in Madrid. That Toledo is itself an architectural museum as much as a city is a bonus to a visit there.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Frankenstein with the monster apologizing at the end would make it a romcom.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

I was in Paris in 1960 and did not visit the Louvre.

Roughcoat म्हणाले...

I love "The Boating Party" and "On the Terrace". The young ladies in the former are very pretty and desirable, and the young mother in the latter is indescribably attractive, the more so because she is a young mother. I like Renoir. I'm married to a blond with a peaches-and-cream complexion and Renoir's women in the two aforementioned paintings remind me of her.

The critic who wrote that bilious screed comes across as mean bitchy New York-type homosexual. Anybody who writes like that can't be very happy and I can't help but feel that he deserves his unhappiness for being such a poisonous douche.

Incidentally the Art Institute in Chicago is one of the world's great art museum,especially if you like Impressionism. And I especially like Impressionism.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The last Louvre pic I remember was Edge of Tomorrow (2014). It's where the Omega taking over the earth was hiding. They pretty much wiped the place out, worse than the Guggenheim in The International (2009). That had set the standard for them.

Roughcoat म्हणाले...

If you like El Greco you should visit The Art Institute in Chicago and view his "The Assumption of the Virgin". The museum consider that painting to be the greatest in their collection and although that's saying a lot I am inclined to agree with that assessment.

William म्हणाले...

I like Renoir, Norman Rockwell, the pre-Raphaelites, Hopper, and many others, but not enough to make an educated comment on their merits. I'd like to live the kind of life where you get upset by a Renoir nude.

Maillard Reactionary म्हणाले...

rhhardin said: "Seeing proceeding from the eye to the object is the Greek theory of sight. It does explain why, if you put your hand in the way, you see your hand instead. I have to give the theory that."

That was the problem with Greek natural philosophy. Once they came up with a satisfying story, they considered the job done.

They could be quite ingeniously wrong, though.

Openidname म्हणाले...

Didn't you get the memo? All male sexuality is, by definition, sexist -- I assume because it isn't equally aroused by males (or by anyone who calls xirself xir).

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

The girl next door pre weight watchers. You have to admit it grabs your attention. Pre tattoo times.

stephen cooper म्हणाले...

Renoir was not very bright, but he was intensely fascinated by painting.

In his bad paintings, there was not a lot of difference between Renoir and those poor souls - male or female - who dress up as drag queens because they

HAVE BEEN VICTIMIZED BY ASPERGERS SYNDROME

and they do not know that this world is a good world, and CARICATURES ARE SAD

unless like you are just trying to be funny, in a way that people on the spectrum really never know how to be.

SAD! I really am saddened by that fact ..... so many people who think they are funny are just reaching out, in a sad way ----the wackiest, for example, of poor Harold Stern;s wackpack is Stern himself, because he is the only one who should know better

(props to the little guy though for going all out in his charitable efforts for the abandoned animals of New York, the way Plum Wodehouse did)

WHEN YOU REPEAT A CARICATURE OVER AND OVER AGAIN YOU ARE NOT BEING FUNNY.


That being said, I have looked at about 200 Renoir paintings, he gets it right about one in ten or one in 20 times.


Generally speaking, if you look at these things through the eyes of those sad people who work in the sad field of art teaching, or the teaching of music, you know this:

ANYBODY WHO IS TRYING TO CREATE ART AND WHO GETS IT RIGHT ONCE OUT OF A THOUSAND TIMES IS AN AMAZING ARTIST

assuming of course they are also decent people, who follow the commandments and, even if they do not love God, know they ought to love God, because otherwise their art eventually seems factitious...

So let's all calm down

Ken B म्हणाले...

Never been to the Louvre. Best museum I have been to: Borghese Gallery. Need tickets long in advance, and you get 2 hours. Small crowds, amazing art.

stephen cooper म्हणाले...

for example Nietzsche was a fairly good prose stylist in German

but eventually a bore

because prose style is a finite thing


AND KNOWING GOD LOVES EVERYONE WE LOVE

is the important thing to know

if you want to be an artist

narciso म्हणाले...

Howard, stephen cooper, you can see he used the dame stylings with the figures off in the distance.

Daniel Jackson म्हणाले...

I have long believed that Renoir was what the French call an artisan rather than an artiste. He was, throughout his career, interested in process from the model to the hanging. His nudes are truly studies in brush stroke, saturation, tone, and the capture of reflected light. Unlike the nudes of his contemporary artists and photographers, his work can hardly be called erotic given the weird proportions of the naked women he paints. He as about style and sales. A true artisan.

There is a wonderful scene in Andy Garcia's Modigliani where Picasso takes Modigliani on an outing to meet the aging artisan at his chateau for an afternoon chat. Renoir makes it clear that for him, his work is a living. He had studied long about process and had become successful. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367188/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_54

I find all his works that I saw at the National Gallery and the Phillips growing up in DC studying art in high school to be far more Memories or Dreams from a distant past; like Kurt Vonnegut said, "My, if this isn't this nice, I don't know what is." The people are far more peasant framed and barely pubescent. Certainly not erotic given the standards of his day. He liked Rubens. So what.

Dissing Renoir is SO passe. He has his place. Personally, I like how his brush strokes and unexpected combinations of color to convey depth intrigues me: how the hell did he combine the micro with the macro to produce such vivid tableaus.

On the whole it is a pity that Modigliani died so young. Now, his nudes--oo la la

David Begley म्हणाले...

Laslo:

There are scenes in the Artic, on a sailing ship and in London. Two big fires. I am counting on Emily Blount or Hugh Jackman (or their younger equivalents) in the two leads. I’m undecided on who will play Frau Althouse. I’m told $20-50m to make it. Begley gets a big number for the script!

I have discovered the film festival and screenplay competition world. If I don’t win the Omaha Film Festival script competition, I will pissed.

Birkel म्हणाले...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Opinions are like ass holes...

stephen cooper म्हणाले...

but here is the thing .... narciso ,,,, and this is why I get so worked up about these things, not that I care, my days of getting passionate about the losers in this world are over, almost none of us can live our lives forever without eventually saying.....

LOSERS GONNA LOSE AND I TRIED MY BEST

all those "dames" were born to be the "beloved wives" of the sort of guys who were their "beloved husbands"

ok I am gonna get real specific here.

Every morning when I wake up, and every evening when I fall asleep, I ask myself ----what have i done for the people who think
Life is a Joke and that we are just playing parts ....

Life is not a joke and none of us are playing at parts, IKNOW THAT AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT TOO ....

IFYOU ARE NOT AWARE THAT GOD LOVES YOU AND EXPECTS YOU TO DO WHAT PEOPLE WHO KNOW THAT GOD LOVES THEM DO

well, wake up, GOD LOVES YOU AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EASY IT JUST IS TO BE BRAVE ANE READY TO PRAY EVERY MOMENT FOR PEOPLE


like the people I care about

don't bother praying for me, I don't need it.


Seriously.

I have heard the words of Jesus praying for me, and there is no way anyone who has heard that WONDERFUL SOUND can pretend like we are not the happiest among everyone who has ever lived, and there is no way we would ever ask anyone, no matter how good they are at praying for those they love, to pray for us.
Because this.
This world is an ugly place.
It is really ugly for people like you and me who are not rich and not among the chosen.
But here is something more important.
GOD LOVES YOU JUST THE WAY TOU ARE

and God desperately wants you to know that your sufferings are appreciated

GOD LOVES YOU

and God knows how much you have suffered

AND GOD APPRECIATES EVERY GESTURE OF KIND-HEARTED LOVE

God knows your story, and God loves you

Trust me. I have seen so many bad things in this world but I have always seen, not long after (because God loves me and wants me to know the goodness of the world) - I have always seen, despite the amazingly bad things I have seen (and may God protect you from knowing what I know about how bad this world can be) -----

I have always seen how good this world is, because God loves us ....

and



Listen, Losers gonna lose, year in and year out, imagining that God is not going to make this world what I know it is going to be

REDEEMED

and sure, it might seem like they are not capable of being convinced, not capable of being convicted by the Holy Spirit


but

(imagine for a moment this is not actually 2019 but it is some other year where the losers are no longer losers but are decent people, loved by their friends and family, who know what I know


GOD LOVES US ALL ....

just saying.
Your mileage might vary.








Michael K म्हणाले...

I found the Iffizi to be just overwhelming -

The Uffizzi has a great collection and especially of Fra Lippo LIppi whose model was a young nun in the convent he was the Chaplain. She was also his mistress and they were married after the Pope gave them a dispensation from their vows, courtesy of Lorenzo de Medici. Their son, Fillipino Lippi, was also a great painter whose work is in the Uffizzi.

narciso म्हणाले...

Well emily blount strikes me as very shrill, how about hayley ashwell

Louie Looper म्हणाले...

The Barnes museum in Philadelphia has about 200 Renoir paintings. I got very tired of seeing them. I didn’t think they were bad paintings or unartistic or sexist or political. It was just too much of the same thing.

I had the same feeling after seeing an exhibit of Picasso and Braque paintings from 1908-1909. They painted one or two pictures a day. The same scenes with the same colors. Boring. You could tell when they got a new tube of paint.

narciso म्हणाले...

Is the concern, that the nudes might entice adultery in the spirit of the law, that depemds in the intent doesnt it?

Michael The Magnificent म्हणाले...

Looks like a lesbian utopia.

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Michael The Magnificent म्हणाले...

It brings me endless joy to tie together two unrelated Althouse threads.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

God didn't love the lopsided tranny in that crappy picture.

Jeff Brokaw म्हणाले...

Whatever the relative merits of Renoir and his nudes, art is subjective and so people who write articles analyzing it sound ridiculous.

Especially if the phrase “male gaze” is used, as we see here.

I’m not a big Renoir fan though I do like French Impressionism generally.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe म्हणाले...

Hammond grew up, early 1950s, a quarter mile from where the Clark Art Instutute (referenced in the New Yorker article) now sits. We would hike up Sabin Drive to a small pond - now a drain basin in the Institute parking lot. Ice skating in winter, watching pollywogs in spring and summer. No naked nymphs in evidence then.

अनामित म्हणाले...

rcocean: Was Renoir, just a little too...Idaknow....white for the 2019 critics?

Ya think?

Don't know why Althouse would associate her own "Renoir sucks" judgments in with those of these bloviating apparatchiks. She's evaluating the paintings aesthetically, as an artist.

That said, Althouse, I don't get your disingenous pose...

I don't see what's bad about a painter of nudes being sensuously involved with the fleshly characters he's depicting. Why leap to calling it sexist? My guess? It's way to justify the exhibition of this insipid stuff. It's not bad painting; it's bad politics — and that infuses the show with modern-day relevance.

...as if you just now noticed something non-obvious going on here.

MD Greene म्हणाले...

Whenever I read an art critique informed by a political point of view, I I think of those USSR propaganda murals and Hitler's condemnation of degenerate art.

Interesting fact: Many fine painters fled the Soviet paradise and settled in China, where they trained Chinese students in classical techniques. As recently as 10 years ago (my last art class,) some of the most sought-after protrait painters (for captains of industry, billionaires, etc.) came from the PRC.


Mrs. Bear म्हणाले...

They're just paintings. There's no need for anybody to get all worked up about them.

PB म्हणाले...

Renoir is remarkable for his color and brush strokes.

Bill Peschel म्हणाले...

"Many fine painters fled the Soviet paradise and settled in China, ..."

I think some settled in America as well. My wife and I walked into a tourist art gallery in Lewes, Del., and was floored by a painting. Fruit in a bowl still life, but it was as wide as a picture window and as detailed as a masterwork from the 17th century Dutch masters. Russian artist.

Narr म्हणाले...

The Kunsthistorishes Museum in Vienna was overwhelming, exhausting in 1978; in 2017 we stayed out of the Louvre because we didn't have forever. The Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh in Amsterdam are more human scaled, as is the Musee d'Orsay, which doesn't depend on mass.

I was in Wurzburg in '96 at a conference, and the reception was at the Residenz--allegorical frescoes by Tiepolo. Classiest party I ever was at.

Narr
Or I should ask to be shot

MB म्हणाले...

Exactly what I think about Picasso's nudes, both from his abstract period and before that. Renoir's too. They are grotesque and in bad taste. Bovine.
It's almost as if the artist is daring you to point it out and be offended. Probably that's where their secret enjoyment is coming from.

MB म्हणाले...

For Renoir it's even more pathetic: the model was the governess of his children, to whom he made advances half openly, half behind his wife's back. He was completely smitten with her and painted her hundreds of times, both nude and dressed.

Narr म्हणाले...

I've re-looked at some Renoir (not in person, alas) and have to revise: some of it is great, and it's only fair to acknowledge that.

Narr
Still, his women tend to look better clothed



PluralThumb म्हणाले...

That specific painting is all styles of weird, except for the dreamy squiggles with colour. Any child may like squiggles with colour but when intelligence suggests romanticism, those squiggles become unicorn poop. That child face with malnutrition cheeks on a healthy farm white supremacist body, from a lost tribe that spoke gailic up in the Northern region of pre-queen politics. Good folk but may have had hairy feet back in those days.
At least he did not disgrace the hands.
Cudos !