Art: the focus of today's Friday escapist thread will be great works or lesser known pieces that I personally like by famous artists. 1. "Death of Socrates" by Jacques Louis David. David portrays the moment before Socrates drinks hemlock instead of renouncing his philosophy.
2. "Madame X" -- John Singer Sargent. The daring and sensual content - in particular, its off-the-shoulder dress strap - caused a scandal. (Met Museum.)
3. Caravaggio's shield painting of Medusa's head. Uffizi museum, Florence. Photo: my own. Also Florence's Perseus/Medusa statue. A feminist revisiting of the Medusa myth focuses on her rape, turning a victim into a monster, the patriarchy & more: vice.com/en/article/qvx…
4. Early Picasso: 1901 self-portrait and 1910 Girl with a Mandolin which shows a shift already into the abstract style or direction that his work would go in the future:
5. Rodin's The Cathedral (1908) and his Eternal Springtime (1884):
6. Picasso's Guernica in full and in a small close-up:
7. Marc Chagall, combining Fauvism, Cubism, and his folksy style. Left: Homage to Apollinaire (1912). Right: Self Portrait with Seven Fingers (1913).
8. The Lady of Shalott (1888) by Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse. It's based on a scene from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1832 poem of the same name. (I'm obsessed with the Pre-Raphaelites!)
9. Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876) at Paris' Musée d'Orsay:
10. Flaming June (1895) by Sir Frederic Leighton:
11. The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch at the Prado, Madrid:
12. One of my all-time favourite artists, the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Left: Joan of Arc. Right: La Ghirlandata.
13. More Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Left: Prosperine. Right: Beata Beatrix.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Daydream (L) and Monna Vanna (R):
15. One of Caravaggio's most admired altarpieces, The Entombment of Christ (1603–1604):
