Looking For Meaning : Whistler’s Mother

#arthistory #art

[barbaranowak-cuthel]

This definitely changes my viewing of this piece. I can engage it on the black- white tonal beauty but also for seeing the feelings of his family & culture, which I DO NOT SHARE. The irony of beautiful art created by a painter with ugly feelings & ideas.

[CHM]

The information you present is august and I always love to listen to it when I'm either painting on my easel or sketching on my drawing board. Keep up your fine work!

[ronoc]

The Canvas: We must always remember that the apolitical is the weapon of supremacists.

Us: Heh heh, Mr. Bean.

[carolyncasner]

I saw his paintings when they were at the Clark about 10yrs ago. The book in the gift shop mentioned that he had a relationship with Oscar Wilde. Since it did not end well it is suspect that Whistler was a loose inspiration for Dorian Gray. Interesting Wilde would name his character Gray.

[TheUnmitigatedDawn]

Mr. Bean has forever changed the general public's perception of this painting

[hongquiao]

Not gonna lie, my first thought was "is that the painting from the Mr Bean movie?"

[antoinepetrov]

Unfortunately, the Mr Bean film and thus modern culture's memory of this painting, omits the original title and intent of the artist

[alec]

I thought I was gonna be clever and reference Mr. bean, turns out all the comments are bout Mr. Bean

[vik.]

If we're to judge the works of people who lived many decades or centuries before us based on their personal takes on matters that weren't viewed as we view them in the present,

there won't be anything standing.

That's guaranteed.

[cardinalgin]

Oh no ! I used to love that painting ! You are right : it does change my perception of it and I can't feel sorry for the fate of this cruel man nor his mother's. Thanks for having brought this to conscience.

I would like to do to it the same thing Mr Bean did in the "Bean" movie by Rowan Atkinson, so all I would see is the "study in grey and black" and no human face. The movie is now even funnier in hindsight.

[concernedbro]

Even though Mr. Whistler was perfectly aware that his mother was a hideous old bat who looked like she'd had a cactus lodged up her backside, he stuck with her, and even took the time to paint this amazing picture of her. It's not just a painting. It's a picture of a mad old cow who he thought the world of. And that's marvellous... Well that's what I think.

[cgautz]

It can be hard separating the art from the artist. I think specifically of Kevin Spacey, who's films I love.

[gaskoart-tmbv]

Thanks for finally making this painting interesting to me

[BBnose]

The mother painting was in Musée d’Orsay. Just saw the painting last month

[DoloresJNurss]

The meaning that I see here is that art distills the best from the artist, separating it from his (sometimes glaring) faults. The same applies to Richard Wagner, George Gordon Lord Byron, and many others whose works I enjoy but who I wouldn't want in my home.

[Laughingsundrop]

She lived and died by strict morals she wasn't sure that she ever believed in

[merrillsunderland]

So perhaps the painting was a silent admission of the grief the Whistler family felt over the fall of the Southern Secession. A mother in Black, with Confederate Grey (or West Point Grey) behind her. Created by a man who conveniently found himself otherwise engaged during the conflict and then later spoke with flowery, insipid prose over the tragedy.

Set against the background of the family history, this reads as an artistic representation of America’s “Lost Cause” movement. Whatever Whistler titled it, no artist ever creates art without infusing something of their world view into the work. Maybe he was unaware of his personal biases; or maybe he was intentional in his symbolic representation but hesitant to openly flaunt what amounted to Treason after the reunion of the States.

Either way, I don’t know if he really belongs to the ranks of American artists, both due to his fleeing the nation and due to his loyalty to a Confederacy that directly opposed the central government.

[philipu]

It occurs to me that the confederate colors were blue and gray; that blue was also a color of the union armies; that the alternative designation for Negroes (from the Spanish word for black) is blacks. The defeat of the Confederacy to a racist Southern mind might suggest the surrounding of the pro-slavery population by black, either in its direct racial connotation or as a substitution for the perceived enabling "blue" Union victory, in either case, a "black" day for the slave system and its ideology. Or, perhaps, it simply was Whistler's art-for-art's-sake.

[maryrath]

This was at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017, which I got to see as well as some of his other works. It's much bigger than I imagined. I remember going to see it before Mother's Day and was hoping to get a postcard of the painting to give to my mom. Unfortunately, the gift shop didn't have any.

[MorrowLanguageLounge]

I appreciate the research you pour into your videos, the composition, the thoughtfulness… I just discovered your channel last night, and I subscribed this morning ❤

I want to make one point that some might not agree with. It was the norm for white Americans to be racist in the 1880s. Not believing slavery should be legal is NOT the same as seeing black people as equal, and it’s helpful to contemporary people to make that distinction clear, especially since people still conflate the two.