Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Useful Art History Websites

Is this blog itself too new to start referring you to other places on the web you might go to look up more about art history?  I hope not, because I'm going to introduce you to three places right now.  All three are great places to happily click around and procrastinate.  They're also great if you need to look up quality images and reliable information on a specific artist or art movement (well, the first two are great for that, at least).

Diego Rivera, Creation, 1922-23, Mural at Esquella National Preparatoria, Mexico City

I've been having a great time browsing this site.  Every time you enter the site, a new "featured painting" captures your eye.  For me today, it was this Diego Rivera mural.  They have good reproductions of a lot of paintings, including many which are intriguing and less well known.  I encourage you to go there, click around, and leave a comment here on this blog telling me of a painting you felt drawn too.  

2. Art History Resources
Angelo Bronzino, Venus Cupid Folly and Time, 1540-45

Want to know more about this wacky painting?  A professor named Dr. Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe has built an incredibly thorough resource out of what must have started as a class website (there are still links to syllabi occasionally scattered throughout), but has grown into something more.  It is quite a treasure trove of links.  Some day, I hope my blog houses as much information.  

Artist Unknown, Sunday on the Pot with George, date unknown

Be ready for a laugh!  And be ready to wonder at the fact that this museum really truly exists, specializing in finding and curating all the awkward, odd and ugly works they can find, and curating them with silly tongue-in-cheek captions.  

So enjoy, and let me know what you find!
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Bilbo from CaliforniaJanuary 24, 2012 at 6:08 PM

    I like the MOBA site. But what makes art bad enough to qualify?!

    - abba

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AlexisJanuary 24, 2012 at 7:50 PM

      I guess which art is bad enough to qualify is mostly up to the curator. It seems like he/she finds particularly bad works which take on an art movement and apply it in a way that kind of makes the viewer cringe. (Sunday on the Pot with George is pointillism applied awkwardly to an even more awkward subject).

      Of course what is ugly is just as subjective as what is beautiful, so we are certainly allowed to disagree with the curator's choices.

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)