Tag Archives: painting

Monet’s Waterlilies and Some Free Association

A nice image of Monet’s waterlilies, c. 1915, via Wikipedia Commons: __________ The feel of this image for me is not of tranquility and coolness, but of heat and melting. First there is the white flower echoing a fried egg; … Continue reading

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Try Something New This Weekend

Don’t be afraid. How about learning to paint?

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Poet Charles Hood’s theory of Van Gogh’s Irises painting at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles: perhaps Van Gogh made his painting after “reading Shakespeare too intensely”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                . Poet Charles Hood has of late been immersing himself in the letters of Vincent Van Gogh, and he made a connection that I found quite intriguing between Van Gogh’s Irises  painting at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles … Continue reading

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Robert Campin (1375-1444): the truth will out?

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I get a “the truth will out” vibe from the paintings of Robert Campin—a sort of protective concealment-revelation cycle of some sort functioning as a subtext in at least some of … Continue reading

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Are You a Bohemian?

This nineteenth century person was. She let herself be painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and he named the painting Lise the Bohemian (1868): This appears to be a young woman, amidst a languid summer, in the process of falling in on herself, almost … Continue reading

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“Fences Make Good Neighbors”: A Painting of a Meadow with a Fence Running Through It (1875)

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Thomas Gainsborough’s Daughters Hold Hands. One Reaches for a Butterfly. The Other, Holding a Feather, Looks On. There is an Element of Impulse and Restraint in the Painting That Echoes Michelangelo’s Moses

One girl seems thoughtful, and may be holding a feather that will become a quill pen. The other seems more impulsive. Like Michelangelo’s Moses, tugging back at his beard to restrain his anger and energies, I see one girl slightly … Continue reading

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Prance, Blow, and Have Peak Experiences: Men in Tights from the 1400s Remind You How to Live (Detail of a Painting at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA)

I see that the elementary laws never apologize . . . I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time. (Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” lines 411, 420-421)

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“The Apology of Dionysus”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

I know that you like my bee- balmy glades, and my jugs heavy with their sweet wines— but mine also are the snake’s skin and the wind-whip of biting sands. I weed your gardens with rakes of lightening and flurries of hail, frosting your fruits and … Continue reading

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Severe Hawkeye: Albrecht Durer Paints His 70 Year Old Father

  “Marble heavy, a bag full of God.” –Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

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Image of a Woman, in Solitude, Reading a Letter

Solider. Mother. Father. Son. Lover. Husband. Friend. Daughter. Sister. Brother. Stranger. Clergyman. Aquantance. Who is the letter from? Is she reading a letter sent to her, or spying words sent to another? In her solitude, as she reads, does she hear the person’s voice in her head? Is … Continue reading

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