Yes, it's a whole website devoted to HAY!!! Piles of hay! Paintings, photos, books about hay, poetry for hay-lovers, a database for hard-core hay scholars. Your horse will love it and so will you. There are actually many, many masterworks depicting haystacks. Hay is amazing. Hay is beautiful. Hay is Art.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The Beguiling
Original Art for sale by Kim Deitch - frontpiece from "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
Poster by Seth ...only $5!Take a tour through The Beguiling 's online Art Store. It's a Toronto comic shop that offers original comic artwork by some GREAT artists. Here are two of my favorites. The prints and poster section is an added bonus. Wish I could go there and check out the real life store. They not only have vintage comics that date back to the 1930's, but they have unusual art books as well.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
De Chirico's Slide into Mediocrity
De Chirico After 1918
De Chirico before 1918Who said that artists only get better with age? Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) is an example of someone who created his most poetic, alluring and convincing art before the age of 30. In the 60 years after 1918, he struggled with a classical switch in style and subject matter that never quite made it. (He even ended up "forging" some of his own early metaphysical works in the 1940'-60's when he needed extra money.) He wanted to paint like Titian, but it was his early, more modern style that caught on. It was a unique language that easily lent itself to mystery, metaphor and moody depictions of surreal objects/buildings in stark landscapes. The classical style that he later adopted, with it's mythical bent, did not. He lost his way for the rest of his life, but stubbornly held onto the notion that his work was only getting better. I can understand his desire to really learn how to paint more academically...using more than just the flat, colorful symbols with heavy black outlines that became his trademark early on. However, he had to start over and he never quite got to where he wanted to go. The later works simply don't work. They never became "classic". But, his early works are classic and the drawing is much stronger and so is his imagination. Life is full of irony.
John Kelly was Special
"Maleana" by John Kelly
"Banana Girl" by John Kelly
Menu by John KellyCLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE
John Melville Kelly (1878-1962), a shy Irishman, arrived in Hawaii in 1923 from San Francisco.
From the 30's through the 50's he painted and made prints of the Hawaiian people. His etchings and aquatints remind me of Mary Cassatt's famous series of prints. Hers were inspired by Japanese prints and both of these artists have the same sense of elegance, fine lines and reverence toward women in subject matter.
(more here )
Friday, August 24, 2007
BibliOdyssey
I found this striking image called "Europe Supported by Africa and America" onthe BibliOdyssey Blog. It's a beautiful place to wander...full of hand-colored engravings and illustrated pages from old books- "Books~~Illustrations~~Science~~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart"
Very Unusual Tarot Card Deck 1945
"The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has scanned and published a full set of tarot cards created in 1945 by an inmate at the Dachau subcamp known as Allach. They are the size of normal playing cards.
Boris Kobe (1905 - 1981) – Slovenian architect and painter was a political prisoner at the concentration camp of Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau. (...) As a whole, this work of art represents a visual summary of life in a concentration camp, the main vehicle of which consists of Kobe's tragic and humiliating sequences spiced with acrid humor. At the same time, this tiny exhibit is a miniature chronicle of the twilight of humanity brought about by Nazism, which regarded a human being, and therefore the artist himself, as a mere number." Link. (Thanks, Yaffa)
Ophelia
"Ophelia" by Millais
"Ophelia" Copyright 2004 Amy Crehore ,"Little Pierrot Series"One of my earlier paintings in my "Little Pierrot" Series is called "Ophelia" and it takes it's cue from Sir John Everett Millais' famous and unforgettable painting of "Ophelia", 1851. Read about the Ophelia character in Hamlet. Surely Hamlet drove her mad with his skitso behavior, although the reason for her death is debated.
Ophelia
Ophelia
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