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:
17. When it comes to impressionistic light, sunsets, clouds, or a combination of all the above over the sea, Turner (J. M. W. Turner) is the best, imo, and a big favourite:
18. I have a HUGE soft spot for post-Impressionist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. He was a childhood fav. & I adore his poster representations of Belle Epoque Paris. But I don't think he gets enough credit for more substantive work (painting L) or for capturing the seedier side of life:
19. Strong, striking modern sculptures: left, The Force Of Nature By Lorenzo Quinn, one of several identical pieces around the world. Such meaning, esp. re Earth! right, METALmorphosis by Czech artist David Černý, 25 ft high with rotating parts & a water feature, located in NC
20. An existentialist statement about travelers leaving a part of themselves behind is also, imo, applicable to the modern worker. Remove the suitcase, add a briefcase, and you have the fragmenting, lost, overwhelmed modern Man/Woman/Worker in today's world. By Bruno Catalano:
21. One of my top 3 favourite artists ever, Gustav Klimt:
@Kafkaesque_Blog Thanks for all the beautiful pictures of the libraries and the art Kafka! I loved them all. Hope you are doing well.❤️
@Kafkaesque_Blog Totally agree about changing the suitcase for briefcase. That’s honestly how I tend to think of it and how capitalism strips away so much of workers. That’s the fun thing about art;you can have your personal meaning beyond any official meaning.