Beverly was visiting Chicago last weekend and got to spend some time at the Art Institute Museum (I am SO JEALOUS that’s one of my favorite museums in the entire world). She discovered a wonderful lesser-known Van Gogh painting and has created a new really cool meme about our favorite paintings.

This is the bad part about being an art major: I know a lot about art but I don’t know what I like. Because, to me, I can’t always just view things as “good” or “bad” I have to analyze the shit out of something then end up having ambiguous feelings about it. This seems to be the dilemma for most Democrats these days - complete overanalysis of a situation instead of towing the knee jerk reactionary party line. May the gods help those who think too much it seems.

So to get this narrowed down a bit I decided to limit myself to my favorite black and white line drawings or etchings. And, not-surprisingly considering my whole obsession with women in art, they’re primarily line drawings and etchings of the female form. Not exactly idealized forms, but reflections on how women are seen, by the artist, by society, by themselves. Because that’s an issue I’ve been studying for a very long time.

And I’ll try not to write a dissertation on the images, just say what I like about them. So here goes.

from the 1946-47 Femme Maison series, Louise Bourgeois
Women and houses. Female form and domesticity. Caregiver, birthgiver, home. Inexorably linked no matter what kind of advances are made in feminism and the roles of women in society. I knew a woman in college that had this tattooed on the lower right side of her back. She modelled for one of my painting classes. If she hadn’t already had this tattoed I might have come up with it myself. Unfortunately I’d just be a big copycat now.

Le Violon D’ingres, Man Ray
Technically not a line drawing but it’s in black and white anyway. A woman as an object, an instrument. An instument with lines that many regard as beautiful. But an object. I know a woman who wanted to have the f-holes of a violin tattooed just like this photograph. Also brilliant and something I wish I’d thought of first. Yes, all of my art history training is filtered through nudes and the memory of tattoos. No not really.

Femme - Picasso.
The best example that shows the simplicity derived from years of visual training. Four lines. And you know what it is. The stance and everything. I totally want this tattoed on my…ok just kidding.

Sorrow sketch, Van Gogh
One of the saddest drawings I’ve ever seen. That’s what gets me about Vincent - he was the most melancholy frustrated little guy but could see and reflect beauty in nature like no one else. His portraits and self-portraits are always at least a bit sad. But his reflections of nature are always beautiful.

The Mulberry Tree, Van Gogh
This is from one of my other favorite museums in the world, the Norton Simon in Pasadena. Doesn’t it look like its on fire?

Study of female form for scupltures, Henry Moore
I’ve been a fan of Henry Moore for a long time. Luckily I saw a wonderful exhibition of Moore’s work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1992 and got to enjoy a lot of his 2-d work in person. Among them was this great etching. A few years later I managed to find and save up for a licensed lithograph of the same piece at a consignment gallery in Santa Fe.

These are two more of my favorite etchings by Moore.

The sculptor’s hands

Sheep
As someone who lived most of his life in the English countryside, this guy drew and sculpted a lot of sheep. I’d never had any contact with them before. After seeing this exhibit and spending some time on sheep farms in Australia I learned more about them. Now that I actually spin and knit with wool it makes me think of his sheep drawings again.

So those are a few of my favorite images anyway.