Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Finding a painter who lived in NYC and ...

"Mom today in art we learned about an artist...." yelled by one guy

"who moved to New York City...." yelled by the other

"and lived on the 30th floor of a hotel...."

[are you getting how this was screamed in the van?]

"and listened to Boogie woogie music"

"and painted a picture of taxis!"

Together - "Can we find his picture?"


Bless, bless Google.


I first typed into that lovely rectangle painter who listened to boogie woogie music and just got listings for CDs.

Then I tried painter boogie woogie music and this appeared on the computer screen -

"THAT'S IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" they both screamed.


Piet Modrian painted Broadway Boogie Woogie between 1942- 1943. My kids made their own versions of it in art class last week with squares they cut from construction paper.

A-toot, a-toot, a-toot-diddelyada-toot
He blows it eight-to-the-bar, in boogie rhythm
He can't blow a note unless the bass and guitar is playing with him
He makes the company jump when he plays reveille
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B


(Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy by Don Raye and Hughie Prince)

12 comments:

Jen said...

Oh, that was just too funny, and what did we ever do before google?

Flower Child said...

what did our parents do before google? just made stuff up I guess.

soccer mom in denial said...

The boys were just incredulous that I could not figure out who they were talking about. Because OF COURSE they had given me enough information to figure it out.

At one point one guy says "MONET!" and I said I didn't think he listened to Boogie woogie music.

But kinda cool he knew Monet was a painter....

painted maypole said...

Google rocks.

and I will now be humming that song the rest of the night. ;)

Goofball said...

Yeah Piet Mondriaan (Dutch spelling - Dutch guy after all) rocks. I love his compositions.

What I like is that he didn't simply paint lines and squares 'what's art about that, we can all do that'. In the beginning apparently he painted realistic paintings and just started to minimise and make them more abstract if I remember well. I've seen once a part of a documentary where you can see that the branches of his trees become more square etc....and slowly it resulted in the colorful lines and squares that made him famous. Knowing that it was an evolution (and that he can technically actually paint acurate landscapes) makes it more interesting for me.
There is some vision behind it all as well...but I'd need google to look it up :p

Fourier Analyst said...

Great that they are getting exposed to artists and different artistic styles when they are young. I did not get any kind of real cultural exposure (not counting barrel racing and goat roping which are typical in Texas!) until I was in college. Then I ended up in Europe and I feel so inadequately educated. I am now learning along with my girls!

Jami said...

Before Google? The first words I remember either of my parents uttering: "I don't know. Go ask your (mother/father)." And then there was the encyclopedia ...

It's absolutely GREAT that the kids are learning this. Just yesterday, I got a 10 minute lecture from Fireball about the Statue of Liberty while en route to karate.

And FA, goat ropin', barrel racin' and steer rasslin' are all highly cultural events! Right up there with gar fishin' and javelina huntin' and square dancin' (if you're not Baptist).

Luisa Perkins said...

Excellent post!

Anonymous said...

hahahaa!

that's amazing!

i can't say i'm a huge fan of mondrian. but i can see why kids would.

mcdonalds colors. well, im sure there is more than that, but that was honestly the first thing i thought of.

Alex Elliot said...

The internet can just be so great! And also so scary too.

Unknown said...

I love Mondrian! That one in particular! Next time, email me!

God, I loved Art History in college.

:)

And P.S. what Goofball said about Mondrian is also what is wonderful about Picasso. That he was technically skilled but chose to explore art in different ways than anyone had ever thought of before.

Goofball said...

@ Aimee: I guess that makes great artists so great: they go beyond the expected and the usual! And that's why they often only get the respect they deserve, decades later. Fascinating really!