Art…

I love art, and that may be seen as pretentious to some, but I love art.  When I started my English Language and Literature degree we studied art for many many months, and at first, I did not understand why, but then after a few weeks we had to write critical reviews of the pieces, or study the reason for the artist composition and write about that, we covered Duchamp, Rothko, Benin, Cezanne, along with many other artists.  However, my favourite artist is Rothko.  Yes, not many people will agree with me, but his piece Untitled No 4 (below) is one of my favourites.  At first when looking at his abstract art I was a little unsure as I have a deep love for classic art, the type you would see in the Vatican (which was an amazing place to go), but the more I read about Rothko, the more I started to understand why he made these compositions, and the deep-set depression and mental health that he suffered from.  I began to look at his works in a new light, enlightened you may say.  I have been lucky to see many of his original pieces at Tate Liverpool.

Whilst in Rome we visited many churches and saw some of the greatest masterpieces in Vatican City, those being The Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’, Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ, ‘Raphael’s The School of Athens’ and ‘The Annunciation’, Leonardo’s ‘St Jerome in the Wilderness’, ‘Belvedere Torso’, ‘Laocoön and His Sons’, but one of the most impressive pieces of art was Bernini’s Baldacchino, which dare I say, was enormous and so detailed.  I could have spent the whole day just looking at it and if it were possible touching and feeling it, realising the sheer effort in making such an impressive bronze sculptured canopy.

Art is all about us, in everything we see, some bad, some good, and some damn right mediocre, but all in all, it is everywhere.  I am writing this on my MacBook Pro, which in itself, is a delicious piece of art.  But do we appreciate the art all around us, or do we take it for granted, and in turn miss what is in front of us.  One of my biggest loves is photography, I was trained in photography when I was 20 but always had an eye for it.  Every day I see things in the world that a lot of people miss, back in Rome it was overwhelming but even the street graffiti had an allure to it, again art, but by another name.

Over the next few months, I will be posting photographs I have taken, all in the name of photographic art.  Feel free to comment and tell me what you think.  Do you enjoy art? if so, do you stick to a particular genre, or like me have a taste that runs the gamut?  A lot of us are crafters/knitters and that too is now an acceptable form of art.  Greyson Perry being our champion, promoting not only his puts but his tapestries, again I have been very fortunate to see a lot of his works in the Liverpool Tate.

I guess I have been lucky in my life with the appreciation of art as I have been surrounded by it when for many years I worked in Liverpool.  The city is swamped by many museums, galleries galore, private collections open to the public like The Lady Lever and an overall wealth of statues and world heritage architecture.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes, I think we all need to stop, look, and be consumed by what we see, see it for what it was originally set out to be.  Next time you go out to your local town, city or village that may be at first drab and uninspiring, dare we say boring and typical, don’t just go from A to B with your head down, take your time and look up, yes up, a place we miss the most and you will be very surprised at what you see.  Look for things that you normally miss, take the blinkers off, and the world will show you some amazing things.