Skyfall Art

The new James Bond film, Skyfall was probably the best Bond film I've seen in a long time. It was fun, self-conscious about it's own Bond movie conventions (with lines like, "somebody usually dies"), and probably more more beautifully filmed than any Bond film in recent memory. The dramatic lighting of the final showdown reminded me of some of the incredible shots in Apocalypse Now. For that matter - they also reminded me of Turner's paintings. This painting "The Fighting Temeraire" by J.M.W. Turner makes an appearance in the Skyfall scene pictured above:

There's also an incredible Friedrich-esque Scottish landscape in the film:

Caspar David Friedrich, "Evening Landscape with Two Men", 1830

My own photo of the Scottish highlands from August, 2012:

Simulacra

I was just at the library flipping through a book called "A Sense of Place; The Artist and the American Land" when I found this painting from 1870:

Sanford Robinson Gifford, "Night on the Hudson River", 1870

The resemblance of this painting to my own painting done this summer is uncanny, but the most bizarre part is that I had never seen the Gifford painting before today. Guess there really is nothing new under the sun...

Nathan Abels, "Pursuit", Acrylic and Oil on Panel, 24x36" 2008

Right Round Baby

Caspar David Friedrich, "Woman in Window", Oil on Canvas, 1822, 44 cm × 37 cm
Caspar David Friedrich, "The wanderer above the sea of fog", Oil on Canvas, 1818, 98 cm × 74 cm
Caspar David Friedrich, "Moonrise over the Sea", Oil on Canvas, 1822, 55 cm × 71 cm
Caspar David Friedrich, "Two men contemplating the Moon", Oil on Canvas, 1819, 35 cm × 44 cm
Caspar David Friedrich, "Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon", Oil on Canvas, c. 1830-1835, 34 cm × 44 cm
Images from Wiki Commons

I picked up "Casper David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape" from the library a couple of days ago and in one section the author accompanied a selection of Friedrich's landscapes that featured a subject(s) looking out onto the landscape with this quote:

"Who has turned us round like this so that we,
whatever we do, have the bearing of
someone who's going away?"

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Relief, Nay, Liberation"

"How often was I able, even in the later years, to cleanse my innermost soul of dark depression by painting dark fog-shrouded landscapes, snow-covered graveyards, and similar things. Perhaps these pictures appealed to other souls as much in darkness as my own. As for me, they always brought me relief, nay, liberation." - Carl Gustav Carus

Carl Gustav Carus, "Das Kolosseum in einer Mondnacht" (The Colosseum at Midnight"), Oil on Canvas, 1828, 47.5 × 37 cm
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Carl Gustav Carus, "Morning Fog", Watercolor on Paper mounted on Board, 1825, 20x26 cm
Source: Web Gallery of Art


Carl Gustav Carus, "Blick auf Dresden von der Brühlschen Terrasse", Oil on Canvas, 1830-1831, 28.5 × 21.7 cm
Source: Wikimedia Commons

I've been enjoying German Romantic painting lately. I ran across Carl Gustav Carus today while making a brief library visit. He studied under one of my favorite landscape painters - Caspar David Friedrich, so it's no surprise that I enjoy his work as well. Carus wrote that "The chief aim of landscape painting is to present a certain mood of the soul (meaning) by showing a corresponding mood in nature (truth)."

Quotes from German Romantic Painting by Hubert Schrade, 1967