There are really only two times a year you can really go ‘Bah humbug!’. Christmas and Valentine’s.
We’ve just posted our 6 favourite romantic paintings. But plenty of paintings have nothing to do with romance, or are outright non-romantic.
Here are our 6 favourite NON romantic paintings…
ANTONIN ARTAUD – THE TOTEM
Artaud’s primary interest was drawing. Suffering from mental instability throughout his life, he approached art as a kind of therpy. Skull, coffins and dismembered limbs are reocurring themes….He believed society was alien, isolation and insane!
JOAN MIRO – SUMMER
Semi-human creatures, where the result is decorative as it is expressive. Miro advocated ‘psychic automatism’ as a way of producing imagery, creating in a manner od a doodle.
C.M COOLIDGE – DOGS PLAYING POKER
Perhaps the most famous of Coolidge’s paintings, it depicts seven dogs sitting around a table playing poker in the wee morning hours. It derives its name from the bulldog handing an ace under the table to his friend. With that additional ace, the dog with his back to the viewer will have four aces..
THE EXPERTS – ALEXANDRE – GABRIEL DECAMPS
When the French Academy of Painting rejected several works by Decamps for being too experimental, he responded with this loving portrait. “The Experts” depicts several serious art critics in chimpanzee glory, over-analyzing a baroque landscape. This style, where monkeys ape human behavior, is called a singerie (literally “monkey trick”).
PIETER BRUEGHEL THE YOUNGER – THE FLATTERERS
Known as “Hell Brueghel,” for all his depictions of, well, bleaker subjects. In “The Flatterers,” Hell Brueghel takes a break from the flames to show off his dark wit, and coins a timeless visual metaphor for suck-ups.
OTTO DIX – PORTRAIT OF SYLVIA VON HARDEN
Dix’s paintings set out to shock. Watch her monocled eye of sternness, a frosty, forbidding manner, the largeness of her hands, while they still retained their artistic pointedness.
