> Impressionism is probably my favorite era in painting -- Renoir, Degas, Manet, Monet, etc, are all artists whose work I adore. I'm not crazy about Van Gogh, but I like some of it.
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> And then all the "neo-impressionists" came and munged it up. Gauguin, who paints awkward, depthless, lifeless, clumsy crap. Matisse is the worst. Devolve much from Matisse, and it's just that pseudo-intellectual psycho "art."

I adore Impressionism... Van Gogh is my favorite artist from that period, actually (specifically, I LOVE his cypress/starry sky paintings), and you really HAVE to see a lot of Impressionist paintings in person to see the true rulingness of the painting technique. When I went to Europe in 2001, I hit as many art museums as I could (being an art major and lover of art history) and saw a TON of amazing, amazing works of art from Assyrian wall-carvings (British Museum) to 'Irises' (Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; the largest single collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world). Fascinating stuff.

Interestingly, I'm taking a History of Photography class right now, and we were just talking about the Impressionists the other day. They do relate to photography... owe quite a lot to it, in fact. The invention of photography freed up a lot of artists from painting strict realism, and the Impressionists in particular were inspired by photography to capture the essence, the 'impression' of a single moment in paint. Not necesarily realistically, but quickly and with feeling, so that the absolute essence of the scene was held in the work. Pretty cool stuff.

Sosi"art history is awesome"qui