Spoofing Nymphs and Satyr

Welcome to my blog! There are some changes to the format of The Pagan Sphinx. To make it easier to find older posts, I've put three posts to a page. To find posts older than that, please look for the "older posts" link at the bottom of the three posts. All of the sidebar information, including my blog lists and art resources, can now be found at the bottom of the posts page. Enjoy the larger image format!

The Friday Evening Nudes - Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet

The Artist's Studio

Begun in late 1854, he completed it in six weeks. "The world comes to be painted at my studio" said Courbet. The figures in the painting are allegorical representations of various influences on Courbet's artistic life. On the left are human figures from all levels of society. In the center, Courbet works on a landscape, while turned away from a nude model who is a symbol of academic art tradition. On the right are friends and associates of Courbet including writers George Sand and Charles Baudelaire, Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and collector Alfred Bruyas   wikipedia entry

 
Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet 

The Woman in the Waves

Metropolitan Museum of Art

 1853

Slight Changes to The Pagan Sphinx on its Blogoversary

I wanted to be able to place larger images for posts. After all, this is primarily an art blog. I cleaned up what was once the "sidebar" and took out things I no longer find relevant. A lot of that stuff is at the bottom of each post. Every post will have its own page, followed by the lists, links, quotes and other stuff I've collected on the blog for two years now. Just click "older posts" to view whatever has come before the most current one.

 My two year blogaversary is actually on February 16 but I won't be here - I'll be in Boston on a little three day get-away to Boston.  It's also WP and my sixth dating anniversary.  I am his Yoko Ono. Which if anyone knows anything, they know what really broke up the Beatles.  ;-)

I guess I'm celebrating quietly. If you'd care to join me for a little art, check out The Friday Evening Nudes tomorrow.

Till then,
I remain your Pagan Sphinx

John Lennon

Pagan Sphinx Entertainment Highlight - Aimee Mann - I Should Have Known

Aimee Mann -- I Should've Known

Al | MySpace Video

Bad Art or Not? A Sampling of the work of Martin Kippenberger

Vatican needs more faith in modernism 

Guardian.co.uk

Modern Art Is Rubbish - at least that's Martin Kippenberger thought

Martin Kippenberger

Zuerst die Fusse (feet+first)

Drunken Master

The short-lived German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) made a rambunctious art that is of a piece with his grandly uninhibited personality. Legendary for a hard-drinking lifestyle that frequently involved singing and stripping to his underwear, Kippenberger somehow, magically, could animate a scene (notably in Cologne, his home base) with a special avant-garde creativity. He took his act around the world, and is now famous not only for an imaginary global subway system but also for artworks made on hotel stationary. The last U.S. survey of his work was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1991, six years before he died of liver cancer at the age of 44. ...more

As I was perusing his images on the web, I did wonder why he depicted himself in underwear so often.

Further Works by Martin Kippenberger

Modern Art Is Rubbish - at least that's Martin Kippenberger thought

Spoofing Man Ray

 

Man Ray

 

(good link above)

 

Le violin de Ingres

1924

I came upon the parody of Man Ray's famous photograph when doing what I spend way too much time at - searching for art images on the web. I'll get back to that in a moment.

There are a lot of parodies of famous works of art, as I'm sure you know or guessed. Some are homegrown photoshop creations, others more polished.

In any event, I'm not sure where I got this Man Ray spoof but I thought it was a fun departure from some of the usual masterpieces that are chosen:  Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Munch.


Man Ray himself could've gotten a brief chuckle out of it.


Getting back to image searches. You should see some of the stuff I dig up! If I were to post it, it would have to be on an "adult content" blog and then what would become of me!? I mean, they banned Cranach's Venus from the London underground, for cryin' out loud! Sometimes I think I'm on an alien planet.

Pagan Sphinx Entertainment Highlight - A Museum Visit, My World Tuesday & Ruby Tuesday

We went up-country to Brattleboro, Vermont today for our monthly foray into the world of organic foods, Tibetan prayer flags and decadent desserts that I guess you can have if all you eat is seaweed. And that is why I stocked up on miso and seaweed - so I can eat more deserts! The Brattleboro Coop is one of those places that I can't leave without spending more money than I had budgeted for.

                        Pandas for the little ones at school.

The shopping was followed by a walk across the street to the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.

 

Once inside the museum, I took quite a few photos of the artworks, though not very many came out well. A lot of the glassed works are difficult to photograph due to glare.

My apologies to the artists. I failed to take note of a few

Bill Long

Through the View

The the mini gift shop was having a sale so I attempted a little museum store therapy and bought some trinkets for my loved ones.

Llama Love finger puppets

Mona...

and Monet

Venus Beaded Bookmark

Botticelli

Birth of Venus

Detail

 Bridge Railing

Brattleboro, Vermont

If you celebrate it, Happy Valentine's Day!

Ruby Tuesday

My World

What's Goin On

 A photo from Christmas of SG1 and my mother, who visited from Portugal for holidays.

One of the last photos I had an opportunity to take of SG1 at the Mount Holyoke campus, before she graduated last year.

Some time constraints have eased for me and I am able to blog with a frenzy this coming week. If you see a new post, please scroll down for what will probably be others that have been posted in close succession. They're mostly art posts, though I've been finding it fun to engage with my blog pals a bit by asking for requests such as a favorite nude for The Friday Evening Nudes and more recently, asking folks to tell me what famous artist they would want to paint their portrait. For me this is entertaining and lots of fun. I think I've lost some readers who may not really like art all that much but I guess that's the way things go as a blog evolves and eventually knows what it wants to be.

Just a note to my blog pals about what's goin' on in the life of Pagan Sphinx. Not much, really. My class ended two weeks ago and I'm awaiting my grade a bit anxiously, as the class was a ball of confusion due to an unprepared, inadequate and ambiguous instructor. There was one component of my final project that was missing due to how convoluted the last minute revisions the instructor imposed on the final assignment were. I'll try to be gracious about my final grade, if I feel it is fair but if I feel it isn't, I will certainly contest it. I palled up with three other women in the class and all three of us had the same impressions. Including that if you were a woman over 40 in that class, you remained invisible even if you stood on your head on your chair and did the splits. Oh, well.

Otherwise, I work. I come home and talk on the phone with my girls for as long as it takes for them to tell me what's on their minds. Sometimes, it is a long time before I'm done with my phoning. I'm glad they keep in touch so much.

SG1 is busy prepping for the GRE (graduate admissions exam) so that she can begin to narrow down what graduate programs she'd like to enroll in. If she is accepted to one far from Santa Barbara, it will mean a separation for her and her wife. I find it amazing that they're willing to be apart so they can both fulfill their goals. SG1 is way too goal-oriented and very clear about what she wants to accomplish to take a back seat to a partner. They both understand that and wish to help the other. Although, it won't be easy, I see this couple as being very supportive of each other and I don't doubt their ability to make things work. SG1 is interviewing for a summer position as a research assistant for a professor at UC Santa Barbara who is doing some huge study or textbook writing, I'm not sure, on constitutional law, which is one of SG1's areas of expertise. Americorps continuous to drain her with its 12 hour days and endless demands for community activities on weekends. It is a means to an end, as after two years with them, they will give her 10 grand, which will wipe out her own student loans. I wish they would give me some money to pay off my portion of her student loans. All in all, it is not much, considering that it costs around $50,000 per year to send a student through a private U.S. college or university. You either have to be rich or smart. And I'm sure you can imagine which category we fit into.

SG2 is not taking classes this semester at BU. She applied for a paid internship at the Boston Globe and got it. She's not thrilled about working the 5:30 to 1:30 am shift but she says she's learned more in a month of the internship than she has over the course of the five semesters of journalism classes she's taken. I worry about her ability to find work in print media, as newspapers are folding and cutting back jobs like crazy these days.

I am otherwise healthy and fortunate to be 83% Happy. You, my blog pals, are responsible for more than just a few percentage points of that!

This song is for my beloved family and for all of you who care enough to come here often or even every once in a while.