I learned Paul Gauguin worked on the Panama Canal.
I learned an estimated 22,000 people DIED during its construction.
I learned I cannot catch a BREAK.
arthipstory
makin' art real talk
Monthly Archives: April 2014
wheat field
Vincent van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field in 1890, staggered home, and died two days later. No one asked if he was okay because they thought he was drunk. “Wheat Field with Crows” is speculated to be his last work.
doubting thomas
Doubting Thomas is the original social media poke. Happy second Sunday of Easter, all you that know seeing penetrating is believing.
andy warHOV
“I’m a work of art, I’m a Warhol already.”
Today’s post is brought to you by the number 3: the number of times Jay Z’s dropped Warhol in his verses. Are there more? Possibly. I’m trying to lounge similarly on my couch, so I’m too busy to search his discography right now.
white marilyn
Sometimes, after a long Tuesday, you just need to sit in the corner with a floral crown. Especially when you realize this work broke the record for the amount paid at auction at a cool $104 million dollars.
Pass the pipe, garçon.
arnolfini wedding portrait
Remember Desperate Housewives? Me neither, but the introduction of the show misused a whole bunch of artworks to show the dismay of women on Wisteria Lane. Let’s back up to 1434, shall we?
Arnolfini’s a wealthy dude livin’ with his lady in Bruges. The lady isn’t pregnant. She’s fashionable. They’re wealthy, draped in excess cloth and furs. They even have a convex mirror! Classy.
He signed the wall, “Jan van Eyck was here, 1434.” Jan van Eyck loves liminal space, meaning the space in between the imagined and the real, the imagined ‘real’ and the real ‘imagined.’ Is he signing the artwork, or his appearance in the painting? Is he making Banksy look like a has-been, or is he just setting the standard of signature as witness?
Whatever you do, don’t ask Teri Hatcher. She’ll NEVER know.
double intecession
“The Double Intecession” from 1400 has the Virgin Mary as a pretty hot ambassador to Christ, as she suggests her, well, nourishment of power.
For all those not-yet-fluent in Italian, Christ says, “My Father, let those be saved for whom you wished me to suffer the Passion.” Mary, speaking on behalf of patrons and humanity, prays, “Dearest son, because of the milk that I gave you, have mercy on them.”
There’s so much at work here: The physicality as access. The fascination with fluidity and—let’s be frank, fluids, with the whole water-to-wine-to-blood transubstantiation. The whole female instability isn’t new?! Go, girl.
In her suffering, she makes herself fundamental to salvation. In other words, she really sticks it the static Medieval Man.
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