Impressionists: Classic or Dud?

(Just thought I'd get the obvious (though highly amusing) joke in before anyone else)

And that should be "don't see that" in the second sentence.

Gaguin is extravagnt, almost baroque, with his swirling tropics. THe unbelivable pinks,greens,blues. Its like candy . Not deep but it manages to embed into your conciosuness like a pop hook.

The ellipses and smudgings of Monets late seascapes are so lovely and almost abstract.
Cezanne because he was more cubist then anything. With his white terraced houses on greengrey hills. His stilllifes with the pears that seem to be falling off the table or the apples that are caught in the folds of the table.
Matisse for his free and swooping lines. The way he makes his lines live and free. The first colleges , the way he makes cutous a tool of survial

And Bonnard. Oh Bonnard is my favorite but so hard to describe. Light and airy and almost seemign inconsaquential. His pastels that seem so intagible. The colors look like a perfect nature contained by civilazation. His woman in the baths seem perfect calm godesses.

As for the original question, I'm not a fan. So to hell with it!

So, Futurists vs. Vorticists, then. Italian proto-fascism or English wannabes, which d'yer like?

I used to watch Rory Bremner in the early 90s until I came to a similar conclusion, that the voices were great but the material was just... not that funny. However, I saw quite a few of the last series and was very impressed. Seems that it all depends on the state of the nation; maybe there just wasn't much for satirists to pick up on after 1997 blanded everything out.

The thing that shocked me about the last series was that Bremner was the only person I saw attempting to do any kind of real satire on TV pre-election (whether he succeeded or not is a different matter). Alistair McGowan really pisses me off because half the time he just seems to be advertising BBC programmes (oh, an Eastenders rip-off, great) AND his material is rotten.

The post-impressionists is where art started to go seriously WRONG. Don't even speak to me about them. Oh god, I can SEE the one that I really loathe now, but I can't remember his name. Somebody help me out... painted that fucking "dancers" painting that everybody and their aunt has in their living room. Ended his life making fucking cut-outs of sheets of paper. I think I have a hole in my head where knowledge seeps out.

The proper impressionists are pretty but inoffensive. Funny to look at it and think that they caused riots when they were first shown. They just look like art painted to match peoples furniture now. In fact, BLOODY HELL!!! The post-impressionist above actually said that he wanted his paintings to be like a comfortable sofa for tired businessmen and I still can't remember his name.

Can art really take on an "it's not the painter I hate it's their fans" connotation? Because I actually quite like Van Gogh.

Monet is alright, but fucking Renoir should be thrown on a fire and burned. All of it. Sentimental claptrap.

The problem with TV improessionists is like with all comedians, TV eats up material like nobody's business. Since the satirical impressionism is pretty much just getting a politician to say something he wouldn't say in real life but we the public think he thinks, well you can see that doesn't have legs. Celebrity impressions work on about two levels: 1: Oooh, look, isn't that just like them 2: That joke isn't very good.

In the end what Alistair MacGowan (and Ronni Ancona - who is of course better) end up doing is a character based sketch show where the characters just happen to be from real life. Hence oddly they tend to be imbued with worse character development and possibly worse writing (though not necessarily worse that - say - Naked Video).

Dancer/Cut-out man = Matisse, in the words of Tom Paulin on the Late Review (or Tom Tortoise - now, Adam and Joe's toys - there's some proper talented impressionists) "I rather like him."

Sorry.

This seems to be a trend on tv these days particularly on family entertainment programmes, the one that annoys me most is on ready steady cook (although I've stopped watching it since Ainsley Harriott took it over and it descended into the unwatchable)and Valentina Harris would be on, she'd call a dish or whatever by it's proper Italian name and the audience go ape! SHE'S F***KING HALF ITALIAN FOR PITY'S SAKE IT'S NOT EXACTLT DIFFICULT FOR HER!!!!!!!!!!

ooh, I feel better now

anyway, this is the triumph of the mundane that annoys me to pieces

Cripes.

McGowan is very very weak. Trying to make a harry enfield/paul whitehouse style sketch show out of the tabloid characatures of celebrities. Trouble is even these larger than life pictures wear very thin after a while and of course he is constrained by slander laws and the BBC not wanting to piss off celebs. Also his show seems to turn much more his willingness to dress up than on any actual impersonating skill. Bremner is better in this respect. I'd watch bremner but not McGowan.

Much better though are Harry Hill's John Snow, Zena Bedawi Skits where he makes no attempt to even get close to their appearance or voice and is thus much funnier

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I've seen Matisse's Dancers in the flesh (Its on the way to the Picassos in St Petersburg) and it is a lot more impressive than I'd expected. However as much as I like the impressionist idea of making pictures from light atmosphere and forms, rather than solid ideas of shape an colour i thin Turner did it a great deal better. As much as I like Monet's London Pictures if you sit them next to Turner's I think turner gives me a much better impression and feel for London. But perhaps I miss the point, I'm no art scholar so can merely tell you what I like.

Radio 4 recently had a generally unfunny impressionist show on called (I think) Dead Ringers. Buryed in its Grade C satire however was a piece of brilliance which was impressionist as Tom Baker playing Doctor Who ringing Tom Baker asking for help to fix the TARDIS. An odd stand off ensued while Baker tried to work out if he was being set up, going mad or (and it was quite obvious he considered this) it really was The Doctor calling him. He then realised that all three would require the same outcome, and gamely offered his help down the phone.

This merely shows though that Tom Baker is a funny and somewhat whacked out man, rather than any deep truth about impressionists.

Anyway, if you're giving up any Renoirs you might have around the house, Kate, can I take the TV set as well?

(call for return to Medieval painting values was one of the hallmarks of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Obviously, one of my favourite in terms of 19th Century art.)

Anthony, what is this an answer to? I like the Futurists, although when you read their manifestos it's umm.. a blast. The cleansing power of war and and that malarkey. Interesting (?) point about impressionists - none of them can do Chris Evans. You try it. I bet he derives satisfaction from that.

And there is a telly in my house, which I watch frequently. It's just Paul's, not mine.

I prefer German and Dutch/Flemish painters to the Italian set, I'm afraid. The Flemms were where it's at, Campin altarpiece and all that. Bosch is one of the most underrated painters of all time. Utterly brilliant.

I'm much tempted to say the same about Impressionists but there was a great doc the other day that twinned their rise to the introduction of photography, which was the context that made me think I should give some of them a break.

Bill Hader planning a film project (by writer of The Wrestler) on early '60s JFK mimic Vaugh Meader! Very strange.

http://thefilmstage.com/news/bill-hader-attached-to-vaughn-meader-film-from-the-wrestler-scribe-bourne-inspired-project-also-on-the-way/

I love how this thread keeps alternating between comic impressionists and the nineteenth century art movement. More proof, if any were needed, that the OP never owns a thread or its subject matter.

btw, after seeing a shit ton of Manets at the Musee d'Orsay last May, I am a complete convert to thinking he was the most accomplished and interesting artist among the impressionists. Reproductions that I'd been looking at all my life never came close to doing him justice.

ergh, Monet, not Manet

Gustave Caillebotte: underrated because so many of his paintings are held privately.

Also, I remember a late-teens Jim Carrey doing standup from the Comedy Store on an HBO special, and doing amazing facial non-speaking impressions.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/caillebotte/caillebotte.rooftops-snow.jpg