these 30 days of such-and-such memes...

[ratcreature]

I keep thinking how neat it would be if there was one of these for art, and people would talk about art they enjoy and maybe link to paintings, illustrations, sculptures, or even applied/commercial art like posters or design that they like, if there was some online version. And I looked at the ones for tv and music I've seen, thinking that maybe they could be adapted, but that didn't really translate well, and I couldn't think of other good meme questions. I'm not good at creating meme questions.

Also it then occurred to me that often when I like some art I see I don't actually remember the artist once some time passed. So I'd probably have trouble merely answering a meme about art. Like I once saw a painting in a museum (by now I don't even recall the museum), a fairly modern abstract one, that was just reds with texture and stuff (or at least mostly red? it's been quite a while and I mostly remember that I reacted to it strongly, rather than what it looked like), and looking at made me very happy, and I even sat down in front of it for a while, but I had never heard of the painter before, and now I don't recall the name. I even tried to buy a postcard in the museum shop of that painting to remember it, but they didn't have one, so no reminder for me. Anyway, so now if I got a meme question asking which painting moved me or whatever, I couldn't even answer with that one, because I don't think "it was an abstract red one I stared at in a museum for fifteen minutes once" would be a very useful answer.

Still, maybe other people have better memories for art that impressed them in some way, and could answer. I think it would be cool to see. (As a side note, I often think that my memory must rather suck compared to other people's, because if for example I were to attempt writing some kind of memoir of my life, it wouldn't just be boring, but I'd have trouble stitching together any full narratives of events, and it would have very few vivid details. I actually often wonder whether the autobiography producing people have all been taking notes/kept event diaries throughout their lives to make this kind of thing work.)

Comments

[reginagiraffe]

This painting is about a thousand times more amazing in person (it's at the National Gallery in London).

I never really understood what they meant by "light" until I saw this painting. It's like the light sources in the painting actually glow and light up not just the scene but out from the painting also.

Amazing.

[ratcreature]

Original painting usually beat reproductions by a lot. The painting that used to make me really happy as a kid was this altar painting. Not for its relgious meaning, but the detail in the animals is great when you look at the real thing, and I found it very impressive. Actually that is only a part a sixth of the left outer wing, there are several more images depicting other scenes, but I liked the animal bit best, though I was quite taken with the comic like aspects of the whole altar too.

[derryderrydown]

My version of your 'abstract red one' is a black and white one with lots of wavy lines that was in the Pump Room in Leamington Spa. I was unemployed and pretty severely depressed at the time (but too depressed to realise it) and I used to go into the Pump Room at least once a week, just to look at this picture.

I remember the artist was a woman but that's about all I can recall.

[ratcreature]

I really like how abstract paintings can work directly with emotions when they resonate with you. They are kind of like music in a way. I never quite understood why some people find abstract art more complicated than representational. I mean, as its audience you can just look at it and then like the feeling it produces or not, just like listening to some instrumental music piece, whereas with representational ones there's always this level of "stuff you see" inbetween, which is great in its own way, seeing real or imagined scenes or interesting light effects, but it's more like literature, in that more often than not you need all kinds of context to actually get what's going on in the picture, or you are going to totally miss that the seemingly random cucumber at that time was meant to be some fertility symbol.

[calvinahobbes]

I actually often wonder whether the autobiography producing people have all been taking notes/kept event diaries throughout their lives
Me too! I've wondered this frequently. I think I've decided that they're probably just making stuff up - like, there might be a framework, but surely all the details are just stuff that sounded good to them when they wrote? XD

I think the art meme would be a really cool idea, but you're probably right that fewer people would be able to give detailed answers. Then again, maybe such an exercise would be a way to spark more awareness about the art we see.

[ratcreature]

I've decided that they're probably just making stuff up

Heh, that could be it. Though I tend to assume that people then would label it as autobiographical novel instead, but maybe I'm too gullible.