#artthishouse — Public Fediverse posts

Today, #ArtThisHouse celebrates the interiors of #DavidHockney, who passed away at 88. While far from gothic, his work absolutely changed how we think of spaces, seeing, and art in general. His absolute refusal to use one- (or even two) point perspective give his interiors a complexity that comes from not putting the viewer in a central space.

This is important, because most representational painting assumes a single, stable point of view.

Today, #ArtThisHouse looks at the under-appreciated June Leaf, whose subjects ranged from robots to theaters to ... yes, of course ... houses — and how we find ourselves at home in a new environment. Her work often includes collaged photographs, as in "House" from 2022. #Painting #ArtHistory

Leaf passed away in 2024. We actually cried when we saw the obituary as we leafed through the newspaper looking for images for our collages. Her work was tremendously personal, playful, and inspirational to us. Which is why this is a difficult writing to conclude. Usually we are talking about grand, sweeping art narratives.

#ArtThisHouse instead will just recommend you hang any June Leaf in a place of quiet contemplation, perhaps somewhere not near a window, so you can always look out and in.

Today #ArtThisHouse looks at the under-appreciated June Leaf, whose subjects ran from robots to theaters to ... yes, of course ... houses and how we find ourselves at home in a new environment. Her work often includes collaged photographs, as in this image called "House" from 2022. To us this substitution (or completion) evokes many things, like the way different realities impose themselves on one another.

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#Painting #Artwork

#ArtThisHouse is always a fan of making a space your own, so today let's talk about the "Merzbau" by Dada trash artist Kurt Schwitters. "Merz" is another word for "dada" and "bau" is "construction." Makes sense. In 1923, Schwitters began reconfiguring his family home in odd angles and found objects. This view, photographed by William Reddeman, shows the Merzbau in 1927.

#ArtHistory #Architecture

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Today, #ArtThisHouse looks at perhaps the most famous house in American art: the one that provides the backdrop for Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930).

The finished painting is so parodied and reproduced, it’s hard to even “see” it anymore. So, let’s reconstruct it, starting with the house, and Wood’s sketch of it.

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#painting #ArtHistory

Though we have journeyed far from the house, allow us one more. Wayne Thiebaud’s “Tie Rack” has always seemed to us a response to Tatlin/Brueghel in the form a consumerist tower, reaching to the great heights of the Godly well-dressed man.

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#ArtThisHouse

Soviet Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin would create a model of his own tiered tower some 500 years later as a monument to the Soviet state — and the collectivism God denied us. It’s difficult to not see this sculpture as a version of Bruegel’s Babel paintings (down to the color). It would even have had broadcasting equipment at the top, enabling the communication God destroyed. It was only ever a model, however.

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#ArtThisHouse

While not a painting of a house per se, The Towel of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is a marvelously complex work about structural construction and pride coming before the fall (and/or God’s absurd retribution) — making it a rightly gothic painting.

And a highly inspirational one too (see thread)

#ArtThisHouse recommends hanging this anywhere you wish to ponder language, hubris, or godly caprice.

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Perhaps no artist understood the strange visual experience of being in and seeing a room like Richard Hamilton. In “Berlin Interior” he combines multiple photographs in an etching to create a portrait of space in planes. And the dark pools on the floor by the open window make us think of painting or murder.

#ArtThisHouse recommends putting this one in the most ambiguous space in your home, perhaps in that atelier with the unfinished wall.

(Source: Artnet)

#Art #Photography #Printmaking

We've been looking at Robert Swain Gifford's illustrations for Edgar Allen Poe's stories today. His Usher house is a curious representation, less off kilter and grandly gloomy than most, almost a quietly overgrown cottage, but very, very lonely.

#ArtThisHouse recommends this one be hung in your study, where you can contemplate the isolation of the home (and whether or not you should add a turret to yours).

(source: pafa.org)

#Bookstodon #Illustration #art

A post from @stina_marie has us thinking about the surrealist painter Remedios Varo and her use of interior spaces as carefully crafted sets for her oneiric characters to act in.

#ArtThisHouse recommends hanging "Armonia" in that weird room in your house that you dream about, but wake up to find isn't there at all.

#painting #surrealism

#ArtThisHouse

Gordon Matta-Clark’s photo collage,“Splitting”, excites us with its reasonable impossibility. He called it “anarchitecture”, and it’s a dreamy deconstruction we could live in (or maybe we already do). Hang it in your foyer so you’re reminded of "the functionalist aspect of past-due Machine Age moralists" you call a home.

(Image from MOMA)

#Photography #Architecture