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):
16. Paradise (c. 1620) by Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Younger:
@Kafkaesque_Blog The way the edge breaks into the viewer’s space helps to pull the viewer into the image and feel more involved in the moment as it breaks the barrier of the canvas/frame. Powerful. One of my faves of his religious paintings.