“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
Virginia Woolf ~ To the Lighthouse
Poema del Atlantico/La Noche (1917-1918 Poem of the Atlantic/Night by Nestor Martin- Fernandez de la Torre
This painting is part of the series called Poem of the Atlantic, painting of the Atlantic Ocean in various times of the day and night.
Nestor Martin (1887-1938) is the only Canaries painter, who being part of the symbolist and modernist European currents, left a major collection of work, one that is an essential part of these movements.
The first thing I did when I came to Gran Canaria was visiting Las Palmas and the wonderful Museo Nestor where one can admire Nestor’s collection of paintings. I was impressed and I still am!!! What a great painter coming from Gran Canaria…
I dream a lot. I do more painting when I’m not painting. It’s in the subconscious.
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth Pennsylvania, USA – 12th of July, 1917 /2009
Famous Andrew Wyeth paintings include realist works of rural scenes, usually with a figure, object, or animal in it. His unusual compositions tend to add to the understated drama of his work.
“I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears”
Edgar Allan Poe ~ The Pit and the Pendulum
The Pit and the Pendulum is a claustrophobic tale of horror and suspense with an overpowering atmosphere of dread that has prompted much discussion about the writer’s mental state. We could consider this masterpiece though as a compelling work of a gifted imagination.
Source 1001 books
“Dora Maar in her Studio”
Paris, 1946 by Brassai
She was born Henriette Theodora Markovitch in Tours, Western France to a Jewish family. Her father, Josip Marković, was a Croat architect, famous for his work in South America; her mother, Julie Voisin, was from Touraine, France. Dora grew up in Argentina.
Before meeting Picasso, Maar was already famous as a photographer. She also painted. She met Picasso in January 1936 on the terrace of the Café les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, when she was 29 years old and he 54. The famous poet Paul Éluard, who was with Picasso, had to introduce them. Picasso was attracted by her beauty and self-mutilation (she cut her fingers and the table playing “the knife game”; he got her bloody gloves and exhibited them on a shelf in his apartment). She spoke Spanish fluently, so Picasso was even more fascinated. Their relationship lasted nearly nine years.
Source Wikipedia
Witches’ Sabbath is a 1798 oil on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya . Goya used the imagery of covens of witches in a number of works, most notably in one of his Black Paintings, Witches Sabbath or The Great He-Goat(1821–1823) which contains similar sharp political and social overtones. At the time, a bitter struggle raged in Spain between liberals and those in favour of a church and a royalist-lead state
Witches’ Sabbath shows the devil in the form of a garlanded goat, surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and aging witches in a moonlit barren landscape. The goat possesses large horns and is crowned by a wreath of oak leaves. An old witch holds an emaciated infant in her hands. The devil seems to be acting as priest at an initiation ceremony for the child, though popular superstition at the time believed the devil often fed on children and human foetuses. The skeletons of two infants can be seen; one discarded to the left, the other held by a crone in the centre foreground.
The English word “sabbat” came indirectly from Hebrew (שַׁבָּת). In Hebrew it means “to cease” or “to rest”. In Judaism Shabbath is the rest day celebrated on Saturday. In connection with the Medieval popularity of the belief that Jews worship the Devil, satanic gatherings of witches were called “sabbats” or synagogues. The latter is a Jewish places of worship, much like a church. Alternately, some Christians were accused of Judaizing. Christian Sabbathkeepers, who never accepted Emperor Constantine’s edict in 321 A.D., the first enforcing Christian worship on Sunday rather than on Sabbath, were demonized and accused of witchcraft; hence, the accusatory nomenclature, “witches’ sabbath.”
Source Wikipedia
Witches’ Sabbath is a 1798 oil on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya . Goya used the imagery of covens of witches in a number of works, most notably in one of his Black Paintings, Witches Sabbath or The Great He-Goat(1821–1823) which contains similar sharp political and social overtones. At the time, a bitter struggle raged in Spain between liberals and those in favour of a church and a royalist-lead state
Witches’ Sabbath shows the devil in the form of a garlanded goat, surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and aging witches in a moonlit barren landscape. The goat possesses large horns and is crowned by a wreath of oak leaves. An old witch holds an emaciated infant in her hands. The devil seems to be acting as priest at an initiation ceremony for the child, though popular superstition at the time believed the devil often fed on children and human foetuses. The skeletons of two infants can be seen; one discarded to the left, the other held by a crone in the centre foreground.
The English word “sabbat” came indirectly from Hebrew (שַׁבָּת). In Hebrew it means “to cease” or “to rest”. In Judaism Shabbath is the rest day celebrated on Saturday. In connection with the Medieval popularity of the belief that Jews worship the Devil, satanic gatherings of witches were called “sabbats” or synagogues. The latter is a Jewish places of worship, much like a church. Alternately, some Christians were accused of Judaizing. Christian Sabbathkeepers, who never accepted Emperor Constantine’s edict in 321 A.D., the first enforcing Christian worship on Sunday rather than on Sabbath, were demonized and accused of witchcraft; hence, the accusatory nomenclature, “witches’ sabbath.”
Source Wikipedia
The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existence.
Brett Whiteley (Australian artist, 1939-1992)
