It’s an ox, so not ‘entire’ as my livestock-aware friends might put it.
As for the Hay artist:
Baynham read aloud a statement defending the work: “Most straight women haven’t seen a vulva …"
What ? I suspect almost all of them have seen at least one, and if they had a shower at school they’ll have seen quite a lot more than one. Courbet painted this L'Origine du monde - Wikipedia (maybe NSFW, depending on where you W) in 1866. And as for Egon Schiele and also the entire Japanese Shunga oeuvre …
We used to have two planters in the front garden. After 20+ years the rot finally caused them to disintegrate last winter. I was going to replace them as was. But if the ox stays with me I might make the one on its side lower and deeper and just plant it with grass and stand the ox in it .
Went to the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery today. Once I got over the annoying tourists doing what tourists do it dawned on me what a stunning exhibition this is and I was captivated - the well known ones, sunflowers, chairs yes but it was the lesser known ones that just jump out at you, even his paintings of humdrum parks and fields, so fresh feeling and with so much animation and movement looking like they’d been painted yesterday. Truly felt I was in the presence of genius. Highly recommended if you can get a ticket.
I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam in my late teens. I didn’t have a massive interest in art at the time but his work had a profound effect on me. It was like I finally got art, you could stare at his work for hours.
Sunflowers didn’t do much for me either at the time but I still have the print of Wheatfield with Crows I purchased to this day. Will need to return for another visit someday.
When I first saw the Van Goghs at the Musée d’Orsay I wept. It’s one of only two times that art’s done that to me in public. The other was when I stood in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà. So he’s in good company.
If you think about that - 10 years - and then look at what he produced in that short time, and then think about what might have been if he hadn’t committed suicide., it’s mind-blowing. But then again maybe he was a meteor and that’s why it worked. Those just some of my thoughts yesterday.
It really struck me that the key people at his funeral were just pole-axed by his death, they knew that they had lived in the company of a true genius, and despite some misinformation, he was was becoming recognised as a great even in his own lifetime.
Yes. Seeing them in the flesh, that’s when you get it; you can sense some of the textures and techniques but when you stand back, it is as you say breathtaking.
The paintings reproduce very poorly, despite being among some of the most reproduced images on the planet. You miss the texture and brushwork and the way light works with the paint. Bit like music and hifi.
Can also be something that good curation can help with. Back a few years ago, the Seeing Salvation exhibition had some rooms of small scale work starting from the early C2nd IIRC, illuminated manuscripts etc. and then you walked into this.
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