Category Archive: ART
Much More Than Scenery
Landscapes of South Australia by Alex Frayne (2020) The Varnished Culture has hitherto grudgingly conceded photography as an art; this sumptuous volume has fully convinced us. Over 200 pages of beautiful photographic plates, in brilliant, vibrant tints or tasteful, crisp black-and-white, this is a book for a bedside table, not a coffee table. If one is fortunate to live in South Australia, it fires the imagination and galvanizes the traveller to breathe the immense and often desolate beauty of the State, especially in these days of border-hopping restrictions; for those of us who regard camping as akin to a root…
Continue Reading →El Greco
(Doménikos Theotokópoulos,1541-1614) The master of iridescent, intense, orogenic paintings, rocketing up to a boiling grey sky – so high the artist seems to want us to genuflect whilst viewing, preferably in dread as well as admiration. Filled with preternatural radiance and colours and sinuous, writhing, stretched bodies that eerily crowd his paintings, spurning conventional balance of framing, this singular genius and his dramatic and expressionistic style was first fêted, then ignored, then disparaged, then re-discovered. From Crete to Venice to Rome to Holy Toledo, ‘El Greco’ was influenced by Italian masters such as Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto (who also used clay…
Continue Reading →Rembrandt
(15 July 1606 / 7 – 4 October 1669) A man from Leiden sallied forth, Though plain of face, he ventured north; From callow youth to grand old age He shows himself at every stage, An autobiography in paints Along with sundry sinners and saints. [His light and shade: His stock in trade: Full in control Of workings of the soul – And mysterious light: Enigmatic sight: All of human thought In his canvas caught.] After long life, after his last breath, He was a pauper at the death, Forgotten then his splendid skill And the phosphorescent thrill Viewing the…
Continue Reading →Painted Saints and Martyrs
As Cats are to the internet, so Saints were to the religiose and their artisans. Whether by miracle or martyrdom, these historical figures (a miniscule sample of whom are below) provide the anthropomorphic link between the carnal world and the beatific vision.
Continue Reading →Flower Girl: the Brilliant Rachel Ruysch
Michiel van Musscher "Portrait of the artist Rachel Ruysch in her studio" (1675-85)
(3 June 1664 – 12 October 1750) Until the Dutch were sent mad by tulips, the Dutch Golden Age had Rachel Ruysch to thank for the luscious still life gallery of flowers. Her minute observations of each flower, each stem, each inquisitive insect, in an extremely naturalistic way, but according to an elaborate arrangement or composition, are close to miraculous. Simon Schama suggested that this flower genre was a product of male oppression: “There were certainly women painters in the Republic, but just as opportunities for women writes and poets were available so long as they obeyed male assumptions about ornamental…
Continue Reading →