Underwater Vision
Posted: June 21, 2015 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing | Tags: 1910, 20th century, Odilon Redon, post-impressionism, symbolism, underwater, water Leave a comment
Underwater Vision. Odilon Redon. 1910.
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Ophelia
Posted: April 3, 2014 Filed under: Art, Prose, Writing | Tags: 19th century, 20th century, 21st century, Alessandra Sanguineti, Alessandra Sanguinetti, art history, death, drowned, Ellen Kooi, Fire with Fire, Gregory Crewdson, Hamlet, John Everett Millais, Nadav Kander, Ophelia, recreation, Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Ophelia, the way home, Tom Hunter, Virginia Madsen, water, William Shakespeare, woman 1 Comment“There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Ophelia. John Everett Millais. 1851.
Millais‘ emblematic representation of Shakespeare’s Ophelia recreated through the ages:
Virginia Madsen recreates Ophelia in this scene from the film Fire with Fire, 1986.
The Way Home. Tom Hunter. 1999-2001.
Untitled (Ophelia). Gregory Crewdson. 2001.
Alessandra Sanguineti. Ophelia. 2002.
Erin Oconnor Posing as Ophelia. Nadav Kander. 2004.
Almere – Ophelia. Ellen Kooi. 2006.
“Lay her i’ the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!”
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Eternal Spring
Posted: March 24, 2014 Filed under: Art, Sculpture | Tags: 19th century, 20th century, Auguste Rodin, classic, embrace, eternal, France, French, kiss, man, marble, Paris, passion, Rodin, romance, sculpture, spring, woman Leave a comment
Eternal Spring. Auguste Rodin. 1906-7.
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Passengers
Posted: March 10, 2014 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Photography | Tags: 20th century, art history, Beguiling of Merlin, Burne-Jones, Chris Marker, classic, French, ingres, La Gioconda, Leonardo da Vinci, metro, Mona Lisa, Paris, passengers, people, subway, travel, women 1 Comment 
Passengers: A Subway Quartet. Chris Marker. 2008-2010.
In this series of photographs Chris Marker captures the passengers of Paris Metro at their most banal, illuminating the beauty and poetry of our everyday lives. In this sub-series, A Subway Quartet, Marker insets a famous classical painting which mirrors the expression and/or pose of his character.
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Sunflowers
Posted: February 10, 2014 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing | Tags: 20th century, Die Brucke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, expressionism, flowers, German, German Expressionism, Kirchner, sunflowers, the bridge, yellow Leave a comment
Sunflowers. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 1909.
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Landscape at Large
Posted: January 29, 2014 Filed under: Art | Tags: 20th century, 30s, abstract, british, collage, landscape, London, Nash, Paul Nash, Surrealism, surrealist, Tate Leave a comment
Landscape at Large. Paul Nash. 1936.
‘Landscape at Large’ is one of a group of landscape collages made by Paul Nash in 1936-8 in which real objects were used pictorially. The Tate Gallery also has ‘Swanage’ (made from photographs of objects and watercolour) and ‘In the Marshes’ (made from bark and sticks). From the title it is evident that this one was seen by Nash as an abstract landscape, with the shape of the bark suggesting perspective, and the texture and patterns of the materials making the features. The ‘at large’, although not explained by the artist, probably has its usual meaning of either ‘at liberty’ or ‘there in complete detail’, implying that the objects are standing in for themselves.
Text from Tate
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A Sudden Gust of Wind
Posted: January 28, 2014 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Photography | Tags: 17th century, 1993, 20th century, A sudden gust of wind, art history, Canadian, collage, digital, Hokusai, japan, Japanese, Jeff Wall, landscape, light box, modern, print, recreate, stage, Tate, Vancouver, wind, woodcut Leave a comment
Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri. Katsushika Hokusai. ca. 1832. Woodcut.
Study for ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai)‘. Jeff Wall. 1993.
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai). Jeff Wall. 1993. Transparency on Light Box.
A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) by Jeff Wall is a large colour photograph displayed in a light box. It depicts a flat, open landscape in which four foreground figures are frozen as they respond to a sudden gust of wind. It is based on a woodcut, Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri(c.1832) from a famous portfolio, The Thirty-six Views of Fuji, by the Japanese painter and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Wall photographed actors in a landscape located outside his home town, Vancouver, at times when similar weather conditions prevailed over a period of five months. He then collaged elements of the photograph digitally in order to achieve the desired composition. The result is a tableau which appears staged in the manner of a classical painting. As in Hokusai’s original, two men clutch their hats to their heads while a third stares up into the sky, where his trilby is being carried away by the wind. On the left, a woman’s body is halted in a state of shock, her head concealed by her scarf which has been blown around her face. A sheaf of papers in her hand has been dispersed by the gust and their trajectory, over the centre of the image, creates a sense of dynamic movement. Two narrow trees, also in the foreground, bend in the force of the wind, releasing dead leaves which mingle with the floating papers. In Hokusai’s image the landscape is a curving path through a reed-filled area next to a lake, leading towards Mount Fuji in the far distance. In Wall’s version, flat brown fields abut onto a canal. Small shacks, a row of telegraph poles and concrete pillars and piping evoke industrial farming. The unromantic nature of the landscape is reinforced by a small structure made of corrugated iron in the foreground. The pathway on which the figures stand is a dirt track extending along the front of the photograph from one side to the other. There is no sense of connection between the characters, whose position in the landscape appears incongruous. Two wear smart city clothes, adding to the sense of displacement.
Text from Tate
