"Sundown Over A Marsh", 1871.
Alexei Savrasov 1830-1897, Russian painter. The best painter you never heard of. Nobody paints mud like Savrasov.
He's equally at home with ice and snow, just great with sludge:
"Sea of Mud", 1894.
And he's excellent with birds, either coming or going:
"The Rooks Have Come Back", 1871.
"Evening. Birds Flying Away.", 1874.
Do people still paint like this anymore? Can they?
If so, why don't we see any of their work? Anywhere?
Ar should be about the beautiful, not the ugly. It should be about regeneration rather than degeneration. I'm sorry if that offends people, but as I say, you can quit reading this page at any time.
The sad truth is that all of 'modern' art lumped together, isn't as good as one of Savrasov's paintings. Of course, this is purely my opinion, but that's the point. Art is meant to make one feel something, uplifted, moved, inspired, yes - but not physically ill. And it's not meant to be something that one first has to read about to be able to 'understand' it. No matter how many times one has seen, heard, read a great work of art; no matter how much time they have spent studying its every aspect, it will always retain its own almost undefinable magical quality - which is precisely the power that it has to raise the human spirit, for the better.
I suppose there are many people nowadays who wouldn't see or feel anything looking at these pictures. Like the Communist accusation of 'formalism' against Russian composers of the '50s, these people would probably call this 'realism' or some other label. They're the same people who can't really tell if a musical work is any good or not. Before they have an opinion, they have to wait, look around, check what 'informed' people have written or said about it. Pedestrians. They check to see if anyone else thinks it's good or not. This phenomenon has always been around, but now seems even more prevalent. Another alarming feature of our present world.