A Guide To Art: Part 1

If you’re an art guy, like me, then Paris is the place for you. You can find whatever you want here, whether it’s timeless masterpieces, modern marvels, or tasteful penis statues:

Apologies for the bad photo. This is in the window of some Sex Museum near the Moulin Rouge. In a museum = art.

The trouble is, there is so much art going on, how do you know what to talk about? What if your boss, Mr Stringfellow, asks you for your thoughts on art at the company picnic? You can’t let Mr Stringfellow know that you’re nothing but uneducated scum.

Lucky for you, I’m unemployed, and have been spending plenty of time following guided tours of art galleries and listening from a distance. I looked at art, so you don’t have to.

Today’s lesson: Portraits

Portraits are like photos of people, only worse. Some very old portraits are worse than black and white photos, even. So why should we look at them? Surely we should just look at great photos, like this one:

Or this one:

Well, the thing about portraits is that some of them are famous, and that means you have to know about them. It’s a peer pressure thing.

When looking at art, it’s important to ask oneself, what was the artist trying to convey? What were they trying to invoke? Take Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of Her Sisters (at the Louvre), for example:

What’s going on here? I’ll tell you. Art! The artist (apparently ‘anonymous’) captures the thrill and majesty of a breast exam. His subjects’ joy simply leaps off the canvas. Also, if National Geographic has taught us anything, it’s that boobs sell. I bet ‘anonymous’ was like the Terry Richardson of his day.

Here’s another nude. To be honest, the Louvre is a bit porny. 

Bathsheba at Her Bath by Rembrandt, who I think is a Ninja Turtle

Many portraits were painted to show how much the artist adored their subject. For example, James Whistler must have really loved his mother in order to portray her as a lifeless, withered crone:

So evocative; so sensual. Can’t you feel the love? That’s art right there.

Here’s a portrait of Jesus. It's by a chap named Antonello da Messina.

You get quite a lot of pictures of Jesus at the Louvre, especially. His mainly does sad poses, and there is a quite a lot of him during his Passion of the Christ phase. I suppose that was a pretty important time for Jesus, but it’s be nice to see a few smiles from the King of the Jews – even if just for the juxtaposition. I, for one, would like to see Jesus on the Swings; Jesus at the Santa Parade; Jesus Opens His Easter Eggs – things of that nature.

The most famous portrait is the Mona Lisa. I believe it is named after a Julia Roberts movie:

I have seen this portrait three times. Just thought I’d brag.

Some portraits are self-portraits. Most of them are like selfies, at best. But many of them were painted before selfies were invented, and that’s why they aren’t very good. This is a famous pre-selfie self-portrait:

A narcissistic self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh

This guy thinks that people are made of lines. Nobody told him that people are made of atoms, not lines. Sometimes that happens with art. The artists go to art class, and they miss science class, where you learn about atoms.

The easiest way to identify a portrait is to remember that it’s a “people painting”. Usually one person, but it could have more people. You could have a portrait of some majestic creature like a horse or a hermit crab, but it’s easiest just to remember people. When you look at a painting and it has more mountains and flowers, or boring bowls of fruit, it’s not a portrait. A mountain or field painting is called a “landscape”, and that is what we will cover in the next part of my Guide To Art. And if you thought there were a lot of boobs in portraits…