Friday, 13 March 2009
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Fine Art Friday:Vigee-LeBrun
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-LeBrun
97.8 x 70.5 cm Oil on Canvas after 1782Art opens doors for me, whereas some feel shut out. This painting is particularly intriguing to me because the life of the artist represents insight into 18th century history. She painted portraits - mainly of the Queen's court.
Cindy at Dominion Family mentions art in her recent review of All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes. She references the television show Lost and wonders why the characters dont understand their situation. I recently enjoyed listening to a LOST podcast on episode 316, an episode teeming with Christian metaphor and symbolism. One of the two highly intelligent commentators had a Christian background and felt that it was odd that Jack didn’t know the story of doubting Thomas illustrated in the episode by Carravaggio’s painting. Apparently if they were more familiar with famous art, then then the course of action would have been more clear.
Carol at Magistramater wrote a review of Hilter's Mein Kampf (yes! she read the.whole.thing!) and a commenter lamented about understanding history. Carol insightfully encourages us to to suspend what you know today and try to visualize yourself living in the time and place (with all the luxuries afforded to the people of the day) of the era you're studying. Once you have the mindset of the time, you can easily understand the actions and reactions of the people. I'm a history major (which means I already like history) and I wish someone had mentioned this *trick* way back when.
But back to the issue at hand - Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun was a brave woman in her own time, who could (even to this day) teach me about French and Russian history, if I would only give her more attention. Here's a link to a webpage devoted to her.
Here's a link to my mother's rendition of the self-portrait.
Does art open doors for you?
Or leave you feeling shut out?
Currently
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution
By Gita May
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Comments (5)
I've been pondering your question since you asked it, and I'll say it definitely doesn't make me feel shut out (except for the modern stuff that doesn't seem to be about anything in particular) but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it opens doors for me. Maybe it's similar to the way I felt about poetry before I made a deliberate study of it beginning about seven years ago -- there are certain pieces that I love but as whole it's sort of under the radar for me.
I inherited from Mike's Great-Aunt Celia a reproduction of Vigee-LeBrun's portrait of herself and her daugther that I love, and I've liked everything else I've seen by her. I'd like to read her biography and find out how she managed to survivie the French Revolution.
@BadgerMum - Yes! Thank you Kelly :) I transposed two digits and have now fixed that!
About opening doors? I didnt mean is an entreprenurial way, but more in the sense of the poetic "a book is like a frigate" - because by studying the artwork one can learn the history of an age, country, science, etc......
I am borrowing the bio from my mother, so later I will give a short review.
@hiddenart - Re: opening doors -- thanks for the explanation. I didn't think you meant anything economical. I was reading it in a kind of artsy-fartsy way, I guess.
So, yes, yes I do love seeing the world through other people's eyes like that -- I've always been fascinated with how different from us in some ways, and how much alike in others, were people who lived in other times and places. There's so much to learn from them because so often they could see things that we cannot. C.S. Lewis talks about that when discussing the value of reading old books.