The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution 1/4

[eighthobstruction]

Thanks folks !!....

[mercia]

I expect you all already know about the 63,000 (and counting) paintings that can be viewed on the BBC Your Paintings website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

I've been doing some "tagging" for them which is quite fun in a mindless sort of way (all you have to do is register as a tagger)

[Lateralthinking1]

Wow. That looks very good. Can I just "tag" onto this thread please an article from The Guardian today. It links in with "Create! Art for Autism" and features work by young people aged 11-25 diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). I really love the one by Evan Findlay-Dykes but all of them have interest to me because of their vibrant originality:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2011/jul/18/art-for-autism-competition

[JoeG]

I also dislike the presentation on the Impressionists programme but at least he is better than Matthew Collins! The British Art programme is wonderful - currently recording the second programme. Strangely though the presenter's favourite work by a number of artists was my least favourite of those he showed. My favourite artists is Nevinson but I was surprised at the statement he never was at the front in WW1 and was a bit of a fantasist. I also love Italian Futurist painting but their politics was very suspect!!

[Mary Chambers]

The British Art programme is wonderful

It's an example of how to do an art programme - informative, unexaggerated and quietly knowledgeable. The enthusiam is there but it's not hysterical. Even the music, though unnecessary, is tolerable!

[Somerset Viking]

I think the paint in tubes and flat brushes idea is a bit too silly

Every art historian who burst upon our screens is desperate to win the space for himself: to talk about art in a different way; to say something new.

Waldemar Januszczak is no different. But in his anxiety to be different he talks about art like a spivvy insurance salesman with an adenoidal complaint and his additions to the subject are just too silly to be mentioned by anyone else!

So Monet, according to Waldemar, could only paint impressions of a sunrise or a seascape because he had paint supplied in a metal tube and a metal ferrol on his flat brush. Yet he goes on rightly to celebrate JMW Turner, quite correctly, as the true master of painting light and the sea. Poor old Joseph Mallord had to work strapped to the mast of a ship without a tube of paint in sight. Does the insurance salesman seriously expect anyone to believe that making a flat brush out of a flat bit of wood would be beyond the means of a man of Turner’s ingenuity?

The hunt to find an art ‘personality’ who can talk intelligently about the subject is still on.

[gradus]

How refreshing to hear Munnings name mentioned and his work shown, in James Fox's programme this week on Britain's best painters. Apparently, Munning's reputation has been traduced by the current art establishment; more fool them.

[aeolium]

Something that I would like to see in an arts programme, whether on TV or radio, is an exploration of a culture which spans the arts as a whole rather than just one part of it - visual art, music or literature. It is hard in this age of specialisation to find such cultural historians, people who can provide a wide overview as for instance Bronowski attempted. I thought when watching the programmes on British visual art in the first half of the C20 how it would have benefitted by being put into the context of what was happening in the other arts.

[eighthobstruction]

I am lucky enough to live in a place that abounds in things of beauty....I've always been a 'looker' [no need to wolf whistle, I mean looking with my eyes] and really value the countryside and change that happens all around me, though have lacked the ability or patience/concentration/computation/obssession to record it [ I paint non-representational colour field type]....Last night walked out of my house at 2100hrs to walk dogs, straight into an Impressionists dream....fantastic sky [mauve to Rose Madder, changing from Torquoise to French Blue as I watched, grey clouds tinged with gold and silver....reflected in the beck, where flies were rising and trout jumped to intercept them.... grids of silhouettes against a fire of the late sun....jeez....LUCKY !!

[johnb]

I watched last night's programme (having missed the earlier one) and was surprised by just how intensely irritating Waldemar Januszczak was. Rather than the presenter acting as a guide to the subject it was more a case of "look at me, me, me".

There was a scene where he was talking while walking along the centre of a surreally traffic-less road in Paris (why?) and I couldn't help hoping that a car would come along and splatter him.

[aeolium]

He really is appalling - a classic example of how to make a potentially fascinating series unwatchable.

[Nick Armstrong]

I am lucky enough to live in a place that abounds in things of beauty....I've always been a 'looker' [no need to wolf whistle, I mean looking with my eyes] and really value the countryside and change that happens all around me, though have lacked the ability or patience/concentration/computation/obssession to record it [ I paint non-representational colour field type]....Last night walked out of my house at 2100hrs to walk dogs, straight into an Impressionists dream....fantastic sky [mauve to Rose Madder, changing from Torquoise to French Blue as I watched, grey clouds tinged with gold and silver....reflected in the beck, where flies were rising and trout jumped to intercept them.... grids of silhouettes against a fire of the late sun....jeez....LUCKY !!