Series in Progress

I loved that song when it came out in 1977-78 and still love it today. Both the music and lyrics speak to me, which is not normally the case. 



They have to justify their salaries or invent reasons for the star-struck to throw away money on "the next great hit." 

Regarding Bosch, he surely was interesting. If you Google his paintings, I think you get a lot of blown-up details because some of works (such as The Garden of Earthly Delights) were up to 81 in. x 152 in. [Warning: That link points to a huge, 233.7 MB file, but the detail is glorious.]

Maybe this is a detail from that...or from some other:



I ran across a web site not that long ago which attempted to explain “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” It sounded quite plausible. But for the average enthusiast (me), it’s like staring at hieroglyphics. They may be intrinsically beautify. But as for what they mean, well, that requires a lot of figuring out.

Looking through some of Leonardo’s stuff, it’s difficult to call him a hack. But I think Michelangelo was supreme in this regard. Two examples:





His paintings weren’t bad either:

I finished the six-part Desperate Romantics on Britbox which is regarding The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The first thing to do would be (if you have the interest) take a look at some of the works of the primary figures:

Willliam Holman Hunt
His nickname is “Maniac” and he’s portrayed as sort of a soft brute. He is torn between his religious sensibilities and his love of prostitutes. He eventually travels to the Holy Land and paints the spectacular The Scapegoat (below). He becomes enormously successful.


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I’m guessing that John Everett Millais is the best-known of the Brotherhood and considered the most talented. His breakthrough painting is Isabella.


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No small amount of fame was brought to the Brotherhood by the controversy surrounding Millais’ “Christ in the House of His Parents” which particularly offended Charles Dickens (who does not come out well in this series).


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Millais himself is presented as a gentle, jovial character. Along with his wife, Effie, he may be the only person in this series who is even remotely redeeming. His Ophelia was another noted work. And this shows the face of their prime model (found in a dress shop) and one of the main characters in the series (who looks remarkable like her): Lizzie Siddal (played by Amy Manson) seen here in his painting, Ophelia:


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The worst of the bunch (morally and perhaps artistically) is Dante Gabriel Rossetti who is the ringleader of The Brotherhood.

His breakthrough work may be Bocca Baciata. They all more or less shared (in more ways than one) some of the same models. But in the paintings of Rossetti, they often look like modern men in drag, such as his A Vision of Flammetta.


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As well as being the ringleader, Rossetti is more or less the main character. And that’s a problem for this series because he is perhaps the most irredeemable character of them all. Near the end of the series, I found myself more in admiration of the work of Aidan Turner in the role of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It’s impossible to like the character and it’s thus difficult to decide whether Turner is doing a good job of it or not. I’ve decided that his acting was indeed a little thin in the get-go but that he got better.

One flaw of this series (which is typical) is that it runs on too long. It either needed to add more depth (particularly concerning the art of painting) or it needed to condense it a little and tighten up the story. As it was, we kept running into the same shtick just repeated over and over again. It can get a bit tiring. They keep chasing girls. Getting them. And then not wanting them. And the girls kept coming back for more abuse. Always some trouble trying to impress Ruskin. Rinse and repeat.

Rossetti, as a character, was the most tiresome of all. But there were bright spots including the well fleshed-out Annie Miller (played by Jennie Jacques). She and William Holman Hunt become an item. But Hunt is such a spastically erratic (if not also scumbag) character, it’s difficult for that relationship to deepen. But the quality of this series is contained in the Annie character whom Hunt is trying to do a “My Fair Lady” treatment on her. Annie is a prostitute, but one with ambition.

The main squeeze of Rossetti is Lizzie Siddal. As much as Lizzie tries at times to play the victim, it doesn’t work. She and Rossetti are hopelessly corrupted by their own character and ambitions. And neither character is charismatic. Rossetti certainly has a forever-young charm to him as one of the Golden Children for whom the normal rules of society don’t apply because they are all “revolutionaries,” don’t you know. But he's probably given far too much screen time. He just keeps repeating the same shtick.

And Annie Miller is just tragic and without the charisma to make that tragedy pay off. By the end of this, you don’t really care what happens to her.

The more interesting women in this, by far, are Annie Miller and Effie Ruskin/Effie Millais (her marriage with John Ruskin is eventually annulled and she marries John Millais). There’s a fair bit of sexuality in this, but mostly boobs. Effie’s problem is that the famous social commentator, John Ruskin, has no interest in her — even after five years of marriage. The story surrounding her martyrdom in the loveless marriage, and her escape from it, are generally compelling.


If you have an interest in art, if only as a spectator, there is enough in this series to keep you going. It’s not chock full of political correctness which is unusual, surprising, and very much appreciated. Sure, all the women are victims and all the men are cads. But it’s likely that all these men (or most of them) were cads and the women were victims, if only of their own naiveté and ambition. It’s a series that is better than lukewarm. It has some good characters in it. But it just tends to repeat itself too much.

Yes, Ophelia from Hamlet. They did a lot of that, taking characters from literature. And if you look through some of that stuff, there is a wonderful obsessive-compulsiveness about it. It looks like every individual leaf was painted in Millais’ “Autumn Leaves”:


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I think a lot of formal painting can be a bit off-putting. There is often so much hidden meaning painted into some of these scenes that they are not to be looked and enjoyed as much as to be deciphered, such as Hunt’s ‘The Awakening Conscience.”


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You can find explanations for all the various things painted inside this. It’s like a modern “Myst”-like video game where you have to look for clues. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. But it means there is something that comes between the artist and your perception of the work. You are being manipulated. You are meant to play a game.

And for the curious, you can read all about that painting here. Having done so, in all honestly, it hasn’t made me appreciate the painting any more. Maybe this is just a matter of taste. I think it’s a so-so work.

But then you come upon a work such as Millais’ “Chill October”:


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This was a passing scene that he caught from a train that he had admired more than once. You don’t need anyone to interpret it for you, at least on the face of things. I finding it beautiful and extraordinary.

But if you desire something more “painterly,” you can always try his The Black Brunswicker:


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Yes, there’s a story behind it (a brief one) that you can find here. But you don’t need to do a lot of background checking to see a dramatic composition so beautifully rendered. The overall theme is obvious: This is a man off to war and his reluctant sweetheart not wanting to say goodbye so soon.

The odd thing is that these guys (perhaps with Millais being an exception) were such moral creeps that it’s astounding that they could sometimes produce such profound works.

Yutes with paint brushes, enough talent to fuel promise, rich parents, wine, and girls flocking to them are always going to have a club somewhere.

“We against the world” is a very intoxicating idea. And if you have some talent to back it up (as they did), then all the better for a rush of ego. And yet there is much truth to the notion that artists with real talent do see and experience the world in a different way. They are moral lepers, almost without exception. But there is an element where they do fly above us higher in the clouds.

And when they are engaged in painting instead of flying around in jets trying to overturn the free market based on pseudo-science as mad yutes full of themselves do toay, it sorts of puts it into perspective. They were harmless eccentrics who may have energized for a time an art world that had grown dull — as it has now grown dull all over the world today.

As for their doctrine of realism, well, I don’t know enough about the era to comment on that. But anyone who loves upsetting Charles Dickens is okay my me.

Much art is not in “proper” proportion for consideration so viewing angle, etc., including the Parthenon and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And, according to Timothy, more than a few heads of children.

I have to admit to not being a huge fan of Raphael. His paintings are all so technically pretty but thematically dull. Maybe we’re not seeing the real Last Supper by Leonardo as you said because it’s been painted-over and repaired so many times. But there is a dynamism that comes through still.

“Desperate Romantics” is not of the same stature as “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” But it is a historical drama that, for this day and age, is more serious and informative than 99% of the junk out there. Yes, the yutes portrayed in this can become bothersome because of their antics. But surely there are yutes like that. And surely they bring and energy and vitality to things….as does a tsunami. Was the wreckage worth it? In the case of the Pre-Raphaelites, probably so.

I was thinking about what the critique would be of my general distaste for the obvious excess of modern art. “Brad, you’re just not with it. Art is about breaking boundaries, about expressing yourself, of being passionate and free.”

Not easily swayed by facile arguments, I understand the situation thusly: If one judges “art” via the qualities of novelty and the self-conscious upsetting of convention, then “new for the sake of new” will win out. And if it upsets the Charles Dickenses of the world, it’s then proof positive that such “art” has succeeded.

That is, when a child in a high chair throws his strained peas against the wall and his parents protest, it’s always a good thing. No restraints. Let the unbridled passion of creative youth go where it will. It’s always good. Creative destruction and all that.

And that is pretty much the viewpoint of those indoctrinated into Leftist culture and today’s art culture. If you want to know why a turd can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, you understand now.

But if one measures art primarily by beauty and meaning, then this is a completely different conception of what art is. Yes, it might break convention now and again. But any artist worth his salt must first master the rules before being able to break them or else all you have is egotism, not art.

It’s certainly not art (or at least enjoyable art) to be a mindless slave to convention either. Novelty and creativity are inherent to the process. But if they are the main drivers of the process, then the only meaning involved is artistic nihilism. And because beauty and meaning are so “conventional,” ugliness must thus be raised and and be called beautiful.

And, believe you me, groupthink is extremely powerful in the world of art. It’s far thicker than the thickest oil paints, especially regarding consumers of “high art.” These are status pieces. And “status” can be attributed to anything if the group-mind can be persuaded that  shit is really caviar. And it seems very little persuasion is needed most of the time.