The Met and Fanart

[sistermagpie]

I feel like I haven't been on lj for years. I have been checking in, but I can off the top of my head think of many posts that I read, wanted to comment on, but didn't get a chance to at the time and they are now lost forever.

One cool thing that I did instead of lj was going to a few exhibits at the Met--one was on paintings called American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 and the other, which sort of makes a theme, was looking at the photographs of Robert Frank from The Americans.

They made an interesting contrast to each other. The photos, being photos, naturally captured actual moments selected by the photographer. You knew there was a story behind everything, but you had no way of knowing exactly what it was. The paintings, of course, were carefully staged to tell a story in themselves. Since it was a picture you still couldn't literally know the whole story, but there was clearly some meta narrative put in there to make a point. Like this one:



This picture is from 1847. It seems like there should be some really easy racial metaphor there, but it's actually kind of ambiguous. It's called "The Power of Music" which would imply that music is bringing the races together, but they're actually not together. At the time apparently the debate was over the painting was showing that the black man was lazy so easily distracted from his work, or whether he was supposed to be dignified by the music. I think he's actually based on a neighbor of the author (lookswise, that is).

This one's called "The New Bonnet." Apparently a popular topic of paintings was that women were shallow and liked to buy pretty things. Women are shallow! But this one shows the materialist daughter and her parents being upset over the bill--but see, they've got a mirror and a bottle so clearly it's their fault she turned out the way she did. The delivery girl thinks they're all idiots.



But I love these two girls, both by Seymour Joseph Guy. In the first an older sister is obviously giving her all to telling her little brothers the story of Goldilocks. It seems like she loves the story and is making sure she does it justice--even if it's scaring her little brothers to death. In the second picture in what looks like the same room, a girl does a little roleplaying in front of the mirror.





There were a lot of other pictures I'd love to include, including some great crowd scenes from an election day, the crowded lower east side and black apartment house in Washington. While I was looking at them they made me think about fanart because I could think of so many fan artists that could do such a good job with scenes like this. I mean, this type of painting, telling a story in a picture in this kind of way, seems to go along so well with fanart because it's so connected to character and showing character visually. Or showing an important moment from canon or fanon.

I guess that's why I like fanart so much, that I love this kind of art and it's sometimes the best way to get it nowadays. It's rarely a case of someone just trying to get something technically right, there's usually a story going on it, a moment that gives you more the more you look at it.

Comments

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

I read an interesting article in the New Yorker about the Frank's photo. It sounded like a really cool exhibit, so I'm a tiny bit jealous. :) But one of the points the reviewer made was that Frank's editing process was just as important (or at least, nearly important) as the actual photographs themselves. I think one of the examples was of a glum looking elevator girl that, in several shots not chosen, was smiling for the camera and I think laughing at someone or something out of frame.

I think that's something icon makers and wallpaper makers and vidders do. Pick the image that best captures the mood they're trying to convey. It's true, but it's an opinion as well.

Heh. And I didn't even comment on the actual art you're showing us. The expressions are lovely, and I agree, that's what can be so cool in fanart.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I read that exact same article! It's one of the reasons I remembered to go to that exhibit. So I definitely thought for all of them about the person smiling a few frames away.

There was one where he was walking into a bar where it seemed like he snapped a picture without lifting the camera, as if somebody might attack him if he did that. So it gave the place a sort of scary air.

[ava-jamison.livejournal.com]

Nice exhibit, nice pics. I love a composition that tells a story or a fully-fleshed moment as well.

I especially like the delivery girl. And yes on the sherry and mirror. You reap what you sow, parents!

And those boys do look scared to death!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh--they do look terrified, don't they? Especially with her shadow on the wall. In the audio tour I was listening to the person said that to him it looked like the girl was old enough to take her role as storyreader very seriously, but more like a teacher, so she wasn't mature enough to adjust the story when it got to scary. She thought it was more important to make sure they knew just how the story went. Girl after my own heart.

[truehobbit.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! :D
You'd wish that if painters try to tell stories in a picture, they'd give more info as to what it is. ;)

I like how the photographic realism of the details gives you a good idea of middle-class life in the mid-19th century US.

The first is really difficult. At first sight, I'd say the black man, although not allowed to join the others, evidently feels the music the same way the white people do, so it's a positive message - but, then, what is the jug doing by his feet...?
Someone obviously put their axe aside - but the black guy doesn't look like he's dressed to chop wood.
And, after all, the white people aren't exactly working either (the lad should be polishing some saddles maybe?)

The bonnet - hmmh, the girl is very pretty but also very puritanically dressed. I don't really think it's a denunciation of women's vanity, maybe more of a tongue-in-cheek comment.
I also wonder what the purpose of the veggie still-life on the floor is.

The children - interesting portraits, the shocked look of the first boy is fantastic!

The second pic strikes me as very odd, though. I've never seen a young girl topless in a painting of this time, I think, at least not in such a context.
I'm not normally disturbed by children's nakedness, and I guess even here it's more a reminiscence of innocence - but I think what the painting shows is loss of innocence.
The girl is obviously trying out what she'd look like in a red dress with a long train - the white of her chemise even forming a little bustle. There's also a very grown up boot in the foreground.
While in the background, the picture of the little girl praying is meaningfully half torn from the wall...
I guess she's still innocent enough to not notice she's topless (or think anything about it), but for the spectator it might imply even more loss of innocence still to come after the first onset of female vanity...?
(Where do you see a mirror, though?)
I also wonder what she took out from the top drawer? And why she placed the lamp where she did. Very interesting. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

The easy details of life are some of my favorite things too. Though sometimes they're not completely accurate. The famous portrait of Paul Revere that was in the show has him with a teapot--on one hand he's shown as the simple silversmith he was, but that was during the year where nobody got teapots because they were boycotting tea.

The picture with the new bonnet is definitely a lot about the parents--I think mostly about middle class materialism. I do wonder why the food's on the floor rather than a table, though!

That's a great point about the lamp in the last scene. Some of it is presumably because that's where the artist wanted the light source but it does still seem like the girl put it there for a reason, like for the shadow or...I don't know! There's no mirror that I can see.

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

Those are all really interesting, and I like the stories they tell (or don't tell). We weren't able to get to the Met (it was closed the day we headed over by the time we got there). Looks like we missed out!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Luckily it will still be here the next time you come--and there will probably be something just as good there!

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

i *love* this post. oh, i wish my flist talked about art more. why don't we talk about art more? I agree with you so deeply that fanart is one of the most easily accessible ways for us to get stories through pictures. Did you read Scalzi's Big Idea column by Scott Westerfeld this week? The whole big idea was the concept of returning to illustrated stories, for precisely the reason you're talking about in the post: the value of being able to get an entire story just from a single image. I just read it this morning so this post is a really serendipitous coincidence, because the whole time I read that column, I was thinking: but Scott Westerfeld, the great age of illustration that you are lamenting has not vanished! It has moved to LJ and Deviantart! Though his point was that *writers* have lost something not being able to utilize the image to enhance their story, I feel like the bigger point to be made is that the stories will find their own form. We aren't *losing* the important stories, perhaps; they're just being told through fanart instead.

I really love the Seymour Guy paintings, and ahaha, i LOVE the New Bonnet. That girl TOTALLY thinks they're all idiots. That's fantastic. If only the misguided adults had paid less attention to their gourds and their sherry and their brass fire tongs!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link--I love the illustrations in that book! And totally agree with him on the difference between that and graphic novels. I can remember growing up always being fascinated when books had illustrations like that. Or remember that show on PBS where the guy used to draw an illustration as they read a passage? Was it "Cover to Cover"? awesome.

Sometimes it's even better getting a story from a single image. You wind up thinking about it. Love especially Scalzi's point about how what we know about what Sherlock Holmes looks like comes from that one illustration.