French artist Jean Francois Millet painted haunting, and sometimes bleak, scenes of ordinary rural life in the 19th century. His painting The Sowers became the symbol of European liberalism and socialism. Millet’s work, while popular in his own century and later with French Impressionists, gradually fell out of favor. Modernism lost interest in images of the rural poor.
I recently went to see “Avatar.” I give it an “A” for special effects (with reservations) and a “D-” for plot.
Here are my random comments about the movie:
There are two commercials currently running on national television that I place on opposite ends of the like/dislike spectrum.
Forty years ago in Madrid’s Prado Art Museum, I discovered the early 19th-century Black Paintings of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (Goya). They were deeply disturbing, but also incredibly intriguing. I wondered about their message and their meaning. Why had he painted them? I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the Spanish artist had gone mad in his old age, or at least flirted with serious depression and/or insanity.