Blogging 'Round the Globe - Shadow Shot Sunday

Museum Shadows

  

 Museum of Fine Arts

Boston

  

Clark Art Institute

Williamstown, Massachusetts

Shadow Shot Sunday comes to your from Brisbane, Australia and features shadows in photography, 'round the globe

The Friday Evening Nudes

Paul Delaroche
1797-1856

Pierre Carrier-Belleuse

1851-1932

 Raphael

483-1520

 Gaston Bussièrre

1886      

Leda and the Swan

Bacchiacca (Francesco d'Ubertino) (Italian, Florentine, 1495–1557)
Oil on wood
( I really dig those hatching cherubs!)

Although Leda, wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, is commonly said to have conceived two children by her husband and two by Zeus during the same evening, Euripedes, in Iphigenia at Aulus, mentions a fifth child. Bacchiacca was no doubt familiar with the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisée, which states that Castor, Pollux, and Helen all emerged from a single egg, as here depicted at the right. The two children at the left must be Clytemnestra and Phoebe.
The pose of Leda derives from a print by Dürer, and the buildings in the left background from a print by Lucas van Leyden.   from Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

 Salome

Pierre Bonnaud
1865-1930

Fragonard

1782-1806

 Pierre Bonnaud
1865

And because she lopped off the head of a different man, for different reasons than Judith, here is a rendition of Salome.  Would anyone like to take a stab at identifying what the instrument laying on the tiger's hide might be? If you are the first to guess, (right or wrong, cuz I'm not sure either, I'll let you guest-host a segment of The Friday Evening Nudes.  And then you can ask your own inane questions!   ;-)


Have a great week-end family, friends and readers.
Peace,
Pagan Sphinx

Celebrating African-American Artist Barkley Hendricks

There are only a few days left before February, which is Black History month, is over. On The Pagan Sphinx blog, we've celebrated writer and historian Zora Neale Hurston and now it's time for some African-American art. I present you with the fine work of American painter Barkley L. Hendricks.

 Barkley L. Hendricks

1945-

The painter Barkley L. Hendricks caught not only the mood, but also the dress of black Americans in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, the subhead of the Studio Museum’s exhibition, “Birth of the Cool,” gives the nod to the development of a style whose casual hipness and intimated militancy marked a generation of African Americans read the whole article here

The paintings below were featured in the exhibition Birth of the Cool at Studio Museum, 

Harlem, New York

Pagan Sphinx Entertainment Highlight - Natalie Merchant - Sally Anne

 I loved this song when I first heard it by the excellent band The Horseflies. I was really excited that Natalie Merchant liked it enough to cover it a few years later. Her incredible voice more than does the song justice - it illuminates the story. Vague as it might be, when I hear this song, I imagine Jakarta and Argentina...

Joining Natalie on this Letterman performance is Horsefly members Judy Hyman on violin and at least one other member of the band, though I'm not sure which.

"The Horse Flies combine musical and lyrical quirkiness with beguiling wit and intelligence …  a melange of rock, folk, and minimalism … music that challenges the brain without sacrificing the groove."  (Chicago Tribune).

Art News: Art Meets Science

Now, this is fascinating and interestingly, the article by the scientist herself is quite entertaining!

Is Mona's Smile just an optical illusion?

Harvard Neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone on Mona Lisa:

A side interest in the lab is to use what we know about vision to understand some of the discoveries artists have made about how we see. The separate processing of color and form information has a parallel in artists' idea that color and luminance play very different roles in art (Livingstone, Vision and Art, Abrams Press, 2002). The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision (Science, 290, 1299)  Harvard Medical School Neurobiology Department

These three images show her face filtered to show selectively lowest (left) low (middle) and high (right) spatial frequencies.

Painting Perception
The Harvard Crimson

Oh, and for less scientific Mona Lisa entertainment visit Mona Lisa Mania

Blogging 'Round the Globe: Monochrome Week End

Below is my very modest contribution to this photo theme. This is a challenging photo game brought to you from Scotland  (I think!. My apologies to Aileni. I tried to refresh my memory but the site has undergone  revisions and I couldn't confirm the host's home nation. Please correct me if I am wrong! )

Do check out the photos of the other contributors. There are some exceptional black and white photographs exhibited there!

Rocket 
Belgian Sculptor Paramarenko 

Brooklyn Museum

New York

  2008

Monochrome Weekend
hosted by Aileni

Music for Sunday - The Decemberists

 The Decemberists

 from Portland, Oregon

 

 

 

Surealistic Sunday - Odd Nerdrum

Well, I'm taking liberties with the title of my feature. Odd Nurdrum is not at all categorized as a surrealist but I find that some his work has a surrealistic (dream-like) atmosphere to it; a bit like Bosch. Cited Nerdrum influences are diverse:  de Vinci, Rembrandt, Dali and Munch, among others. At first glance, Nerdrum could be a baroque painter. But when one looks closely, there are modern motifs in his work as well. He is, in fact,  a self-described kitsch artist.

 born 1944

Norwegian-born, Swedish figurative painter

If your foremost goal is originality, then you are no longer making kitsch.
Kitsch seeks intensity, not originality.
The goal is to approach the best of the old masters as closely as possible,
especially the Greek hellenism (300 b.C - 100 A.D.)
and the Baroque Renaissance (1500-1670).
taken from: Kitch Dogmas

 

Self-Portrait

Twins by the Sea

Twins by the Sea 
detail

 Dawn

Kitsch is the opposite of the public space, of the public conversation, of the demand for objectivity and functionality. Kitsch is the intimate space, our selves, our love and our congeniality, our yearnings and our hopes, and our tears, joys and passion. Kitsch comes from the creative person’s private space, and speaks to other private spaces. Kitsch deals therefore with giving intimacy dignity - 

Odd Nerdrum, ArtNews, April 2000.

 

 Bath

 Bath 
Detail

 In Limbo

 

Twins

Early Morning

Woman with Doorknob






I found all of this weirdly fascinating...