Line Drawing

The Greeks 

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Zeus is masquerading as a friendly and beautiful bull to get a Phoenician princess to climb onto his back. Her name is Europa.
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Greek mythology is full of stories of this kind. Zeus was always trying to seduce the ladies in many far-fetched ways. Once he famously changed himself into a swan.

The idea was to seduce Queen Leda of Sparta. ...... and the German poet Heinrich Heine wrote : "what a goose would you have been to let yourself be seduced by a swan!"

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Aktaion is getting torn to pieces and killed by the dogs he had raised, even as Artemis draws her bow at him.

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Apollo lets his friend Hyakinthos ride the oceans on a swan. --

The stories are not deep, but they were great to illustrate, because they are about beautiful heroes, courageous winners, and tragic victims. The drawings are figured out much more carefully than the stories they represent.

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Achilles killed Penthesilea. They were both heroes, and according to legend she killed herself in the simplest of ways:
She refused to continue breathing.


These stories have always carried a lot of weight and have been studied by the most influential people. They are similar to rumors and sometimes meant to be entertaining, but they feel fatuous.

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 Cave Art

Rock carving of an elephant. -- Photographed by Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it published at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Libya_5041_Petroglyphs_Tadrart_Acacus_Luca_Galuzzi_2007.jpg under the CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

It looks similar to a teacher's drawing on his blackboard :-)
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Contemporary

In modern times, the most famous line drawings are Picasso´s.


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Line drawing is taught and encouraged in all art schools. These two are from the Madrid art school by ghD:

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Most cartoonists prefer lines. 

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Representing a judge who opens a trap for the defendant to fall through. In this case the defendant is himself a judge: Baltasar Garzon.

http://elpais.com/autor/peridis/a/

Anonymous, Snoopy, and Peridis: most drawings are line drawings. Everybody draws lines around things.


Since these lines do not in fact exist, the question is whether they are learned like an early form of writing, or whether they are even ritualistic or ceremonial,  leading to the origin of writing:


"One has to do first a circle and then one has to put on a smile and some eyes and then it is almost finished, but one can also do some legs and arms left and right."

Children often attach arms and legs directly to the head. And even those who live in a flat in a city, will draw a little house always with a chimney stack and smoke coming out.

This is a pirate in his boat and a house with somebody sitting on his bed. -- Notice the smoke stack.

The drawing is part of a study by Norman H. Freeman published at http://www.answers.com/topic/children-s-drawings-of-human-figures

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The Origin of Writing  

Below is an Egyptian drawing.
It shows "The Heart being Weighed" :-)
It is at Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.

The photo is by Hajor, released under a CC Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egypt.Papyrus.01.jpg

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Their drawings were narrative, but so conventional that in hundreds and hundreds of years they did not change a bit.

And since they never changed, little by little they were used as signs representing words and later these signs became the letters of our alphabet:

The complete list of those letters is at http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html 

Quote: 

"If you don't recognize the letters, keep in mind that they have since been reversed (since the Phoenicians wrote from right to left) and often turned on their sides!"
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Define "line drawing": delineation: a drawing of the outlines of forms or objects wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
 
A black-and-white drawing with no graduation of gray tones; usually done in India ink. www.bctsouthflorida.com/BCT_Help_Center.php
 
A graphic representation made with lines and solids, as opposed to one made with tone gradations. www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/buildingdictionaryl8.htm
 


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The Greek drawings are from http://www.theoi.com/

Bruegel -- a Landscape Painter?

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At the time they killed each other on the question whether faith alone was sufficient to reach heaven or whether good works were of higher value.

Bruegel: The Blind Leading the_Blind

In public domain according to http://www.wikiart.org/ 

Because of this quarrel, some charities lost prestige and beggars became suspect of using make-up to fool the softies.

It is not known whether the lurid diagonal composition with that Catholic church in the background is meant to cover up or expose political anger.

Bruegel may have been a Calvinist and had to fear the Inquisition. This would at least explain why so little is known about his life. It might also explain why even now his work is sometimes described and sold as "landscape paintings".--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder

This child is from a painting called "Peasant Wedding". It's not the only place where he makes a child look so dull.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons

All the beauty -- and at times very much of it -- goes into some distant background.
But the people are ugly and silly, and unhappy.

It is difficult to find a beautiful lady, for instance, though I think there are some in a famous painting by him, where  a picnic party or some public fiesta seems to be going on. It is the hour before the execution of Jesus who is almost invisible, though placed in the center of the composition, dragging his cross up the hill:

http://artboom.info/painting/painting-classics/painting-classics-pieter-bruegel-the-elder.html

There, in the foreground, there are some ladies in beautiful robes: the Virgin Mary and her friends attending the terrible celebration.

Next to them there is a white horse to draw your attention to a bar just aboe it: the cross, and Jesus falling beneath it. 

And did you notice that little windmill high up on that rock? (How does the miller carry his bags of wheat up to the top and as flour back down?)

Bruegel: Die Sprichwörter

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6) Der eine schert Schafe, der andere Ferkel -- der eine lebt im Überfluss, der andere in Not

8) Dem Mann einen blauen Mantel umhängen -- ihn betrügen

>>> >> English version >>> >>  http://espliego.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/bruegels-proverbs-painting/
 
9) Er schüttet den Brunnen zu, nachdem das Kalb ertrunken ist  -- es wird erst etwas unternommen, wenn es zu spät ist

10) Rosen oder Perlen vor die Säue werfen -- Verschwendung an Unwürdige


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21) Er hängt der Katze die Schelle an  -- ein Unternehmen ausposaunen und dadurch gefährden

33) Er trägt das Licht im Korb an den Tag --seine Zeit nutzlos vertun

34) Kerzen für den Teufel anzünden  -- sich jedermann zu Freunden machen

35) Beim Teufel in die Beichte gehen -- seinen Feinden Geheimnisse anvertrauen

43) Er pisst gegen den Mond  -- er strengt sich an, Unmögliches zu erreichen

46) Der große Fisch frisst den kleinen.

Quellennachweis
Dies Erläuterungen stehen unter CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Lizens bei http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bruegel6.jpg


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Bruegel malt mit Vorliebe ländliche Tölpel, und er sieht sie als komisch geschäftig, grausam oder blödsinnig.
Sie entstellen mit ihrem Dasein die Traumlandschaft des weiten Horizonts im Hintergrund.


Es heisst, Bruegel sei manchmal inkognito an einer Hochzeit erschienen, um Ideen für seine Gemälde einzuholen.

Er sieht die Leute als Bestien, düster, unheimlich, und vertieft sich in jedes ihrer Gesichter. Nur reiche Leute sehen anständig aus. Selbst kleine Kinder sind stumpfsinnig.

Aber erstaunlicherweise  heisst es  im englischsprachigen Wikipedia, Bruegel sei Landschaftsmaler -- während im deutschsprachigen Wikipedia kommt

"er führte die flämische Landschaftsmalerei des 16. Jahrhunderts auf ihren Höhepunkt, begründete das niederländische Bauerngenre" 

Hier sind zwei kleine Hochzeitsgäste:

Man sieht zwar die Augen nicht, aber Haltung und Kleidung und jener Finger im Mund lassen vermuten, was das untere Bild mehr sichtbar macht:

Im kleinen Kind steckt bereits der zukünftige Tölpel.

Keine sehr katholische Vorstellung.
Hat Bruegel sich vor der Inquisition zu fürchten ?

Vielleicht hat er sich daher als Landschaftsmaler einschreiben lassen :-)
Warum weiss man von seinem Leben fast nichts? Und verwechselt ihn mit anderen Malern seiner Familie?

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Im Prado Museum in Madrid hängt sein berühmtes Bild:

Der Triumph des Todes 

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Die Toten gehen in militärischer Formation gegen die Lebenden vor.
Noch immer sind da viele am Leben, aber retten können sie sich nicht. Sie unterliegen einer nach dem andern der sinnlosen Uebermacht des Todes.

Ein altes Pferde zieht einen Wagen voller Skelette und tötet unterwegs, was sich da etwa noch bewegt.

Im fernen Hintergrund des Gemäldes ragen Galgen zum Himmel empor und am Horizont brennen Schiffe. 
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Whose Art ?

This is from the Queen Sofia museum in Madrid, Spain.

The painting on the wall is probably worth a pile of cash, since it must have been bought with public money. It could also have been a donation, because it does take up a lot of room. It is made for people with very large houses or lots of garage space.

The view from the window would be pretty. Maybe, instead of buying all those paintings, the curators should have made a few more holes in the walls of the museum.

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The dog and the broom are not at the Queen Sofia, but with permission taken from http://davidlevine.wordpress.com/

And, thoughtfully added later, a toenail version of Norman Rockwell's "Connoisseur":

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The Queen Sofia has very beautiful things. They are only difficult to find because there is a lot of trash.

Perhaps the curators lacked some criterium of selection and classification. Each room got a name that means nothing, nothing, nothing at all:

>>> Resumption of the timeless absurd in space.

>>>> The absolute in its subconscious dimension curled in confusion.

>>>>> The evasive plurality of incongruence in a temporalizing environment

I shuffled the wordies to make these names up , because right now I cannot find the original notes.****

*****  Some time later 

 I did find some of the names seen at the museum about two years ago.

    The tensions of the venue.

    Structures, systems, and circuits.

    The lowest common multiple of experience.

   

Those were the real names of the rooms !!!

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See these car tyres?

The photo is from a report about the problems of a failing residential development in a small village south of Madrid:

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Well, some time ago the Reina Sofia exhibited  old car tyres piled up like that as a work of art. I have been told, but can't believe it, that they were flown in from the US.

Why don't I try and find out, and also the name of the artist?

Because trying would take too long. How many hours would you put in before giving up? And the glorious thing anyway would  be to find

>>> what justification  there was for this exhibition

>>>> how much it cost

>>>>> who signed the bill

And that is impossible. I would not even know how or where to start.



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The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid owns paintings by Dalí, Picasso, Miró, but they are hard to find.

There are two versions of Dalí’s Girl at the Window. It is his sister. At the time he had not yet met Gala who became his model later on.

There is also Picasso’s Guernica and many of the preparative sketches that Picasso made for the most famous of his paintings.

It is in fact the only one of his paintings that became as famous as several of his drawings.

And of course they have some of Dalí’s “surrealist” paintings, striking, but complicated to remember.

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There is a great shop:

The mobile hanging from the ceiling is by the American artist Calder.
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