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Mariana by John Everett Millais, Private Collection.
Mariana is the main character in a poem by Tennyson that deals with a woman "trapped" in her life. She is surrounded in a perfect Victorian setting by the dictates of the Arts & Crafts movement. The movement was a reaction to the increased industrialization of the world and sought to emulate a time when everything was created by hand.
Detroit Industry, South Wall detail, 1932-33 by Diego Rivera, The Detroit Institute of Arts.
Rivera was at the height of his popularity when he was commissioned to create two large murals representing the auto industry. As a follower of Trotsky, Rivera took the opportunity to celebrate all workers and their important contribution to American Industry.
Detroit Institute of Arts Rivera Court
The Strawberry Thief by Morris & Co., 1883 drawn by Philip Webb.
As William Morris and his family tried to grow strawberries at their home, Kelmscott, thrushes would climb under the barriers they erected and steal the strawberries.
Sechs Kissen (Six Pillows), 1493 by Albrecht Dürer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Dürer created this drawing as a study of shading by using cross-hatching, but it is also a study in drawing drapery.
House of Dread, Newfoundland, 1915 by Rockwell Kent, Plattsburgh State University of New York.
"Upon a bleak and lofty cliff's edge, land's end, stands a house; against its corner and facing seawards leans a man, naked even as the land, and sea, and house; his head is bowed as though in utter dejection; and from an upper window leans a weeping woman. It is our cliff, our sea, our house stripped bare and stark, its loneliness intensified. It is ourselves in Newfoundland, our hidden but prevailing misery revealed." p. 290,
Its Me O Lord by Rockwell Kent
Where the Eagles Soar (date unknown) by Franz Johnston, Art Gallery of Ontario.
Also known as "Frank" Johnston, he was a member of The Group of Seven but loosely associated after he moved to the United States in 1910. His work concentrates on the wilderness around Northwest Ontario. Plein Air
The Birch Grove, 1915-16 by Tom Thomson.
A unofficial member of the Group of Seven artists but only because he passed away before the group was established. He was an avid outdoors man whose work reflects his love of nature.
Fruits and Vegetables, 1938 by Grant Wood.
Another publication from Associated American Artists. Wood hired his sister Nan and her husband to hand-tint the flower and fruits watercolors.
Wild Flowers, 1938 by Grant Wood, Assorted collections.
During the Depression many artists were not able to make a living so two New York Art Dealers commissioned working artists such as Wood to do a series of lithographs that they sold in the back of magazines for $5-$10 each. Today some of them go for around $10,000.
The colored images were done in watercolor by Wood’s sister Nan who was also the model for the daughter in American Gothic.
If only I could travel back in time....
Roden Crater by James Turrell, under construction.
Kanye West has brought a lot of attention to light and space artist James Turrell whom he worked with and filmed Jesus is King at Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona. Roden Crater is expected to open to the public in 2024.
Artist/architect Paolo Soleri studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West and with the famous architect himself, although Soleri's designs took on a more amorphic and almost insect-like look about them. The photos were taken by me at a retrospective of the artist at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2018.
Soleri and his students started making bronze bells as a source of income and an artistic outlet. The bells can still be purchased at Cosanti.
Architectural model for Arcosanti, Mayer, AZ
In Preparation, She Cached A Guidebook Near the River of Oblivion, 2008 by Holly Lane, Forum Gallery, Inc.
A working artist whose fantastic artwork is fit into her intricate hand-made frames. Her frame style is so rich and detailed, while her paintings have a distinctly surreal look. Lane was born in Cleveland and went to school in California.
Thanksgiving, 1935 by Doris Lee, Art Institute of Chicago.
The hardest part is getting it all hot and on the table at the same time.
Looking forward to celebrating with family today.
Thanksgiving by John Currin, 2003, The Tate Collection, London.
John Currin's artwork brings to mind the naturally lit rooms of Vermeer and the realistic, beautiful, yet often grotesque figures of Odd Nerdrum. What I see here are three women, obviously related, preparing a huge turkey for Thanksgiving, but the turkey is really the star. It is impossibly fat and huge, I have a hard time believing they will be able to fit it into an oven.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Freedom From Want, 1943 by Norman Rockwell,Saturday Evening PostCover
One of the Four Freedoms series inspired by a speech by Franklin Roosevelt:
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression
-- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
-- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments
to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression
against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941
The Last Judgment, 1536-1541 by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
Michelangelo and the Vatican butted heads over the nudity in this colossal fresco of the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse. All of the souls are being judged and either ascending to heaven or falling down into hell. Some of the figures are coming to grips with their fates based on how they lived they lives.
Nymphea 'Bagdad,' 2006 by Leslie Berge, for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
A Florilegium is a collection of flora, most often garden flowers. The earliest known examples date to about the 15th century, but as you can see from this example, they continue to be produced in the present day. The Victorians were very fond of gardening and many Florilegia were produced in the 19th century.
The Florist and Pomologist. London: Journal of Horticulture Office, Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections.
Allegory of Spring by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, 1563, The Louvre, Paris.
Arcimboldo created some of the most fascinating paintings of the 16th century. He began his career making stained glass windows and eventually worked for royalty where he created portraits made of fruits, vegetables, flowers, leaves and even books.
Spring, detail
Egyptian Faience Hippo, Middle Kingdom Period, 3800 - 1710 BC.
Faience is a type of ceramic with a high concentration of quartz. When fired it turns a bright blue. While the Ancient Egyptians considered the male hippo very dangerous the female was thought to bring luck in maternity. The lotus flower and other plants that decorate the body represent the river where the hippo lives.
Also see William at the Met.
Laocoon and his Sons (or Laocoon Group), Greek Hellenistic (most likely 42 -20 BC), Vatican Museums, Rome.
Laocoon warning about the Trojan Horse earned him the wrath Poseidon who sent serpents to attack him and his sons. Michelangelo was influenced by this work and the contortions of the body of Laocoon can be seen in many of his works, especially something like the Dying Slave.
Dying Slave
, 1513-16 by Michelangelo, Louvre, Paris.