Wangechi Mutu: A Necessary Madness
“Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.”
Video: The unheard story of the Sistine Chapel | Elizabeth Lev
Elizabeth Lev’s experience studying and teaching art has led her to believe that when we encounter something beautiful, we are made vulnerable and opened to the truth.
Molly Fisk: Phil, Who Loved the Giants
The bra I took off at 4:45 through the sleeve of my dress
and put down somewhere I find on my grandmother’s hutch
in the kitchen, incongruous, surrounded by jars of jam
Elinor Wylie: Castilian
He washed his face in water cold,
His hands in turpentine;
He squeezed out colour like coins of gold
And colour like drops of wine.
Michael Simms: Re-reading Christina Rossetti’s ‘In an Artist’s Studio’
The value of Rossetti’s poem lies in both the expert use of the Petrarchan sonnet, a particularly challenging form to master in English, and in the poet’s complex stance on the role of art in creating and re-enforcing images of women.
Emma Parker: This young woman created 784 paintings while hiding from the Nazis
Together these sequential images tell a family history, focussing on a central character called Charlotte Kann, a semi-autobiographical version of Salomon herself. They document Charlotte’s development as an artist, her struggles against madness and her first love affair, all painted against a backdrop of increasingly violent Nazi rule.
Video: Georgia O’Keeffe talking about her life and work
Here’s a video of Georgia O’Keeffe at her home in New Mexico in 1977 — she was nearly 90 at the time. . Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands, 1918, photo by Alfred … Continue reading
Video: Pierre-Auguste Renoir at work in 1915 (rare footage)
This is rare footage of French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir at work, which is from Sacha Guitry’s patriotic World War I-era film Ceux de Chez Nous, “Those of our Land”. Renoir … Continue reading
