This painting be Edgar Degas (1890), showcases his fascination with ballerinas and color. His interest in ballerinas was at various times described as endearing and also a little creepy. In this painting, particular attention should be paid to the fourth ballerina, bending over out of frame. Likely while posing for this portrait, she discovered her shoes were untied and then spent the next 12 hours trying to tie them while the painting was completed. This was a common occurrence in French paintings of the time as the shoe laces were particularly unreliable.
It is also interesting to note that none of the dancers are looking at each other. This was Degas’ clever way of demonstrating that if one wanted to kidnap a ballerina, it would be easy to do, even if they were in a group.
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This Jackson Pollock painting (~1949) is one of his more important. Pollock began his career as a portrait painter until he moved onto abstracts because, as he later admitted, he wasn’t very good at painting noses. His technique of hurling paint at stationary canvases revolutionized the art world. His earlier attempts throwing canvases at stationary cans of paint proved much less influential, and in fact little of his work with this method survives.
In this painting, pay special attention to scribble 32, 157, 2327, 2328 and 40 (counterclockwise from left), which are thought to symbolize Poverty and/or Connecticut depending on whether or not you are a Marxist or from Connecticut.
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Dianne Arbus was a cutting edge photographer known for her radical approach to subject matter. Often she portrayed her subjects in harsh or deliberately unflattering poses. This made her a hit in the art world, but a complete bust on the event photography circuit. She is often credited with shooting the worst wedding album of all time, which broke with orthodoxy by not containing a single shot of the bride, groom or anyone else in the wedding.
In this picture, entitled “Glickman Bar Mitzvah, 1970,” Arbus has some fun with Bar Mitzvah boy Jarrod Glickman, portraying him as a oafish giant through clever set arrangement and cropping. Glickman, who in reality stood no more than 4’6″ was delighted with the picture, though Arbus was not invited back to shoot his sister’s Bat Mitzvah two years later.
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The Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci is widely cited as the most recognizable painting in the world. To some, Mona Lisa represents the epitome of female beauty, though many art critics swear that her sister was actually way hotter. Much has been said about Mona Lisa’s smile in this painting which could be seen as subersive, sexual, secretive, or even coy. It is likely, however, that we are meant to assume she just played a really good practical joke on someone since, according to all historical accounts, the actual Mona Lisa was a jerk.
Tags: High Art, tongue in cheek