The artistic experience

This has nothing to do with politics, or maybe it does. I went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. today. It was intended to be a short visit, mainly to see Roy Lichtenstein's works, my latest passions in terms of art.

The museum itself is fantastic and it's such a privilege that people living here can just walk into so many museums and watch works of art for free, anytime as much as they want. Envy!


Part 1


Roy Lichtenstein is probably one of those artists I turned to after I exhausted my passion for Monet and the impressionists and for the Italian renaissance painters. What stroke me is the idea behind it. I found on youtube this documentary on him and maybe can help you to appreciate the artist and it also reveals its techniques.

Part 2


Pop art is always connected to Andy Warhol. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation.

Part 3


Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963), which was appropriated from the lead story in DC Comics' Secret Hearts #83. Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.



I love they way he uses bright colors, similar to those used in advertisements and isolates them in order to form artistic pictures. I cannot explain the compelling feeling that his works trigger. But I love it.



I will surely go back to look at it works, maybe copy them, and understand where does my passion for this form of art comes from. And it cannot be compared to Andy Warhol (he appears in part 5 of this documentary) which I am not completely crazy about.

Hagiography

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines Hagiography as the (1) biography of saints or venerated persons; (2) idealizing or idolizing biography. A biography is usually written on the achievements of one person. It seems, thought that the 44th (and current) American president Barack Hussein Obama II, is such an extraordinary character that get praise for what he will do, before he has even done anything (or, let's say, is far from having done something very substantial).

A few weeks ago, Obama won the nobel peace prize, and despite the fact that it came from a foreign country it was just difficult to understand. After all the emphasis on Obama, the cool president, the president of change, racially ecumenical, progressive and modern, this was felt here as something too much. Why did he get the prize? What did he do? He has good intentions, he demonstrated great intentions during his campaign, but now, all America, and the world wants, is change: jobs, no war, environmental protection. So far we haven't seen much (although there is a lot going on) And even the guys from SNL are pushing it.
Check this out


Almost one year and nothing to show for it. Guantanamo is still open, Iraq is still a problem, Afghanistan not better, etc...

Nevertheless we have a few hagiographies: "By the people" by Ed Norton on the electoral campaign, and the book "Art for Obama". I hope the change, the good one will arrive before the mid term elections.

Mr Smith in Washington

Funny,
the title of this blog came was inspired on a Frank Capra movie, where the naive Jimmy Stewart is sent to the US senate by some expert politicians sure to be able to manipulate him. I always thought that Brussels would be the correspondent of Washington for Europe: a large amount of people moving to the capital looking for jobs related to the political offices.

Well, due to my job, I was actually sent to Washington and for a couple of months I will be able to discover how it is like. Well, I ain't no politician, neither in DC nor in Brussels and probably I am not even that naive, but Mr Smith is now in Washington and the experience has been good so far.

You can wath the vull movie, right from here. Courtesy of the library of Congress of the US:



It's the city of Obama, and it's a very special time for this country. I'll try to organize my thoughts in my next plots. I'm been having lots of ideas lately, but as you know, I am "out of focus". I'm trying. Not hard.