Click image for more surrealism.
Dali and Halsman are both Maestros in their fields of expertise. So their collaboration could only result in a work of supergenius. 
I like that image, because it was hard work – they didn’t have Photoshap back in the 1940’s …
More? Philippe Halsman
Sometimes less is more … more excitement, more mystery and more space for our imagination …
Click image for a larger execution.
The drama, the tears, the brutality! I am actually surprised that so many old paintings are pretty bloodless. You rarely see gory scenes like in modern movies. This is especially surprising since those times were pretty bloody, so horrific scenes have been pretty normal to those people – not like us, who see violence and war only mostly on TV or made up movies.
Click image for even bigger gates.
I am a huge fan of Kandinsky: his shapes, compositions and most of all color excite me every time. Good thing he lived here in Munich and I can visit some of his great work in local museums.
After the Nazis took power they not only burned books, but also introduced the concept of ‘entartete Kunst’ (degenerate Art – great website covering this topic). This kind of art was of course ungerman, unpatriotic, sick and almost an act of treason.
So I always shake my head in disbelief, when I hear American pundits screaming about unpatriotic and unamerican art. But the same applies to other cultures as well. Anyone remember the fatwa against Salman Rushdie?
Art and self expression still have great power – that is why clerics and politicians still fear them and suppress artists (and ideas), which can endanger their ‘pure’ path of domination.
Diversity of opinions, races and ideas is still facing an uphill battle – but it’s unstoppable and that is why the control freaks are so desperate.
Boring 3D has LOADS of charming, funny and very cool 3D moments. Just have a look at this archive and you get my point. It’s just brilliant! I like the mind behind it – Jimmy Maidens – who has a wicked humor and great sense for drama and composition.
Looking forward to more of this. Enjoy!
Heinrich Heine:
I don’t know what it may signify
That I am so sad;
There’s a tale from ancient times
That I can’t get out of my mind.
The air is cool and the twilight is falling
and the Rhine is flowing quietly by;
the top of the mountain is glittering
in the evening sun.
The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, wondrous to tell.
Her golden jewelry sparkles
as she combs her golden hair
She combs it with a golden comb
and sings a song as she does,
A song with a peculiar,
powerful melody.
It seizes upon the boatman in his small boat
With unrestrained woe;
He does not look below to the rocky shoals,
He only looks up at the heights.
If I’m not mistaken, the waters
Finally swallowed up fisher and boat;
And with her singing
The Lorelei did this.
German Original:
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,
Un ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
In Abendsonnenschein.
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Leid dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewaltige Melodei.
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’.
Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer uns Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei getan.
Sirens and other watery female creatures seem an endless topic in European myths (like other Rhine Maidens, Mermaids or Siren in general). One of them is is Germany’s Lorelei.
It’s actually a place: a rock somewhere down the Rhine.
Like so many waterspirits she also tempted guys to go into the water and suffer a miserable death.
More? Wikipedia
Inspired by Edosan – who sent me the Heine Poem today.
What a wonderful site! If you like collages and great art this is the place to visit: nshakespeare.blogspot.com. He has a wicked sense of humor as well as a keen eye for great art. His artwork connects with our daily madness in every aspect. He shows scenes from politics, media, sports, spirituality and sexuality.
I especially love this series of collages with two guys playing cards and drinking wine – not matter what happens around them. This is fabulous!
Enjoy!
Click image for a bigger final moment.
I personally like realistic paintings best, when they tell an impressive story in a way no photography could. This is such a painting: real, painful, scary, brutal and without merci. Every element works and transport that sense of final judgement to us.
Take a moment to study all the faces in the image. Wow!
John Singer Sargent has created many trivial paintings like family portraits – but he also created a few magical ones. Whoever Madame X was – Sargent has captured her beauty and fascination well. A dream on canvas.
Rarely I have heard such a sweet, intoxicating and fascinating blend of Arabic and European melodies and instruments. Please visit the great Tania Eshaghoff and simply wait till the music starts to flow from her website to your ears. A musical special journey awaits you …
Thanks to Edosan for another great link.
More? Wikipedia entry or simply buy this great music.
Click image for larger version.
Hypatia is one of my biggest heroes and one of the saddest stories I know (from Wikipedia):
Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last fellow of the Musaeum of Alexandria. Hypatia did not teach in the Musaeum, but received her pupils in her own home. Hypatia became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in about 400. There she taught on mathematics and philosophy, and counted many prominent Christians among her students. No images of her exist, but nineteenth-century writers and artists envisioned her as an Athene-like beauty.
In 391, Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, ordered the destruction of some of the native Roman pagan temples in the city, which may have included the Musaeum and certainly included the Serapeum (a temple for the worship of Serapis and "daughter library" to the Great Library). In the same year Emperor Theodosius I had published an edict prohibiting various aspects of pagan worship, whereupon (although this was part of a wider phenomenon) Christians throughout the Roman Empire embarked upon a thorough campaign to destroy or christianize pagan places of worship.
Hypatia lived during a conflict between pagans and Christians, who were demanding the final destruction of paganism as an imperial institution. Hypatia, herself a pagan, was respected by many Christians, and was even exalted by a few later Christian authors as a symbol of virtue, often being portrayed by them as a virgin until her death.
Theories about the origins of the mob violence that ended Hypatia’s life range from a local, spontaneous Christian uprising tolerated by the Christian Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria over a conflict between Cyril and the city prefect Orestes; to a conspiracy by the Emperor himself; to a lawless, civilian "peasant stock" mob (soldiers are never mentioned) made up of Christians and non-Christians alike, led by a man named "Peter". Another point of view holds that Hypatia was part of a rebellion and her murder inevitable.
Basically she was murdered for religious and political reasons. She is one of the many Martyrs of Science. She died like so many before and after her, because she simply knew too much and was ahead of her times.
Some more information about the painting and the artist here.
Love art? Go and knock yourself out: www.artdaily.org. But bring some time with you – this website has some depth!
Sometimes sketches are better than fine art. Go and look into artists sketchbooks at the Moleskin Project.
Click image for a larger version.
Even Heroes need support. But not often in our lifes we receive the help of a divine intervention and extra special weapons for the task at hand.
From Wikipedia:
Perseus, or Perseos the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits helped establish the hegemony of Zeus and the Twelve Olympians in the mainland of Greece. Perseus was the hero who killed Medusa.
After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danae and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He thereby hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace. Polydectes announced a banquet wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo Hippodamia, “tamer of horses”. The fisherman’s protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring the head of Medusa, one of the gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horselike in archaic representations (Kerenyi 1959:48), the terrible filly of a mare—Demeter, the Mother herself— who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her. The issue of her foaling were the gorgon sisters. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise.
For such a heroic quest, a divine helper would be necessary, and for a long time Perseus wandered aimlessly, without hope of ever finding the gorgons or of being able to accomplish his mission should he do so.
According to the iconography of the vase-painters, the gods Hermes and Athena came to his rescue. They did not know the way themselves, being of a younger generation of deities, but they knew ancient ones who would know; they led him to the Graeae, sisters of the gorgons, three perpetually old women with one eye and tooth among them. Perseus snatched the eye at the moment they were blindly passing it from one to another and would not return it until they had given him directions. He also received winged sandals, a magic wallet (kibisis), the cap of Hades that made one invisible, also known as the Cap of Darkness, an adamantine sickle such as the one that reaped the genitals of Uranus, and a mirrored shield. With all this, “Like a wild boar he entered the cave” where he came upon the sleeping gorgons. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his shield he could safely approach and cut off her head. Seeing her own reflection in the shield, the Gorgon herself was turned to stone. The other two gorgons pursued him, but in his cap of invisibility he escaped.
1. Start Audioplayer below:
2. Click image for a much lager version.
3. Sacrifice five minutes of your life to really look at this painting.
Another great woodcut by Maestro Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Until the second world war Japans cities mostly consisted out of wooden buildings. So fire was a real threat to them – and firefighter even more important.
Too sad that American decided to totally devastated these old cities through incendiary bombings – which totally snuffed out most of Japan’s cities BEFORE they dropped the atomic bombs. Actually both cities were spared any air attacks to ’save’ them for the big experiments.
Anyway – this is a great painting. Bugger.
If there is a King of Pop (aka Michael Jackson) then Jeff Koons is the King of Kitsch. The official label for people like Mr Koons is conceptional artists which I find pretty strange. So far I haven’t figured out if he is just trying to provoke people with his kitsch art or he is playing the (art) system against itself or if he truly is a kitsch person.
But he certainly is a success. His art has been displayed all over the world and his books sold well. Cheap imitations of his work have sold well – because many people like kitsch (but probably wouldn’t like Mr Koons).
And shagging Ilona Staller for arts sake can’t be that bad either? Although I am sick and tired by all this shock art that tries to provocate people by displaying sexual acts, poo or simply something dead and rotten.
Great website: Jeff Koons – A Collection of Images and the Wikipedia entry.
If this is a portrait – it’s not very flattering – but very funny. I just love it!
The great Gabrielle Münter – she was once the student of Kandinsky and later his dedicated partner.
She was one of the first members of the expressionist group ‘Blue Rider’ (Blauer Reiter), who tried to express the spiritual transformation of modern society thru their paintings.
What I like about Frau Münter are her vibrant colors and strong expressions. She started Painting in the age of 20 in the Ladies School of Art in Düsseldorf. Frist she just wanted to be an art teacher, but went for the real thing. She was lucky to be able to visit one of the first art school ‘Phalanx’ that was open to women as well. This is where she met Kandinsky.
Her paintings are full of vibrant colors. Life is an orgasm of light and intensive moment in her work.
More? Wikipedia entry
Sit down weary traveler and enjoy a moment of Asian bliss.
Either Mr. Chagall was constantly on drugs or this was the most wonderful village ever! Great painting …
A classic moment of modern surrealism. Maestro Magritte rules!
The powerful magic of Mr Klimt’s colors. He just mixes them like nobody else …
I wonder if this was considered porn during it’s days?
To RGB or CMYK – that’s the Question!
You are a person with many interests and many skills? You love art, you produce art – but you also live with a huge pile of creative guilt? Welcome to the club! It’s hard to be a digital artist, since your computer enables you to run amazing tools – which have been unthinkable twenty years ago. A creative powerhouse in one small box.
Wanna make a movie? No problem use Adobe Premiere or AfterEffects. Are you a graphics person? Your choice is vast and wide – Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand, Painter – to name but a few. Wanna go 3D and do amazing effects or animations. Once again the list boasts absolutely amazing tools like Lightwave, Maya, 3D Max.
Oh my – you are a creative person! Wow!
You make music and love to sample and tweak sounds? A small feat these days – cool software is cheaply available, even Star Wars was remixed on a simple PowerBook using everyday digital tools and even great modern musicians use the same Samplers, Synths and Sequencer like you do.
Not to forget our good old writing tools to produce anything ranging from articles or complete books! You can go from a simple solution like Microsoft Word up to publishing powerhouses like Quark or InDesign. And how about your own web page or weblog? I am sure you want to show the world what you are capable off, let’s buy Flash, Dreamweaver or GoLive?
You had enough? Fine.
More human than human – welcome to the new 3D art universe (image: Miles Estes)
Modern designer are rapped and pushed to be digital renaissance artists – nothing is impossible. Since the DTP revolution in the late 80’s smashed the old lines between technician and artist – we creative types have to be both today a Geek and a Michelangelo in one person.
Once it used to be enough to excel as a writer, painter or photographer – know you have to be you own typesetter, reproduction expert, scanner and editor etc. as well. But since this is the analog2digital (A2D) generation we love to have multiple choice – since we know how limited we felt with our old tools: clunky typewriter, tipex, letraset letters, dirty chemicals to develop slides, dangerous cutters, slow snailmail and mechanical copy processes to name a few. No surprise: we love absolute control and absolute choice.
Welcome to a mad artists world.
But it’s driving us mad. Instead being limited to a certain area of art or projects we suddenly find ourselves doing a thousand creative things all at once: writing articles & weblogs, drawing illustrations, retouching photos, programming web sites, layouting a new CV and looking for background music for our presentations.
Did you really think one huge monitor would be enough?!
So much to do, so little time and energy. And the web as a global showcase doesn’t make things easier. There is a constant stream of competition and inspiration to cope with. Have you seen those cool Japanese animations? This great Danish photographer? These old retro covers of some weird fashion magazine?
All these choices, ideas and doors waiting to be opened drive any creator mad. The total overflow of choice makes it hard to focus on just one project, just one set of skills, just one insanely great idea. A tough decision for anyone who loves to surf in possibilities.
Modern artists still want and need to be kissed by their Muses as well.
And we feel a lot of guilt of not pursuing all those ideas that pop up in our minds. The guilt of not pursuing another great business idea or product the world desperately needs. We get paralyzed by all the doors we could jump through and enjoy another adventure in creativeland. And this guilt sucks big time.
Anything else Sir? But there is an additional problem: business. Today’s clients and employers all want a young super geeks with a Maestro’s thirty years of experience and wide ranging skill set. But just one arty farty person please. We are on a tight budget these days.
Ah, when art was simple and computers limited. (Image: Andres Becerra)
So it’s really hard to say ‘I am just an illustrator’ or ‘I can only write good articles’, since you don’t want to cut yourself out of the market. So we learn and buy many different software packages, try to stay on top of a gazillion technologies, names and gizmos. But most of all, we lose the time, energy and focus to be masters of our trade – to be simply open, productive and creative.
Although art involves knowledge and craftsmanship as well, once again we should start to make distinctions between mastering expressive techniques and mastering production technologies.
There is a difference between animating something and writing a flash script. There is a difference between composing a great stream of words to entice your readers and operating a content management system. There is a difference between taking great pictures and layout an art book. Let artists be artists, technicians be technicians and geek’s … oh well …
*repost 2003-08-19*
The great thing about abstract art is – that you can tell the audience almost anything and they believe it. 
Still a great art by maestro Picasso.
To be honest I am still surprised about Mr Warhols fame. He certainly was a great artist, but his work (in my eyes) are not as breath taking and special as Picasso’s. But I guess ‘The Factory’ which was not only just a cool place, but a celebrity hang out that played an important role. He was well connected and created his own fans and market in one go. I guess at a certain point he simply was a social anchor as well as Godfather to anything related to art in New York?
Another part of his fame is his commercial ’soup art’ – his understanding how to create mass media compatible mass art. I think in that respect he was truly groundbreaking:
In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.
I think in this quote he summed up everything you need to know about today’s media society (although today it’s 15 seconds of fame on YouTube). His art reflected mass produced images of the same people / themes over and over again. Art was no longer an unique object, but a mass produced variation of an idea / topic.
Mr Warhol was not just a rich and famous person. He also did volunteer work for social institutions. He not only painted soup, he also handed it out. This – more then anything – honors him.
More? Wikipedia
Another day in paradise. Just watching just picture fills me with a quiet tranquillity.
Here is one amazing art blog by Mr. H. – go and enjoy it. He covers many aspects of art in great detail, with knowledge, insight and detail. One of the rare gems in the blogosphere!
I am actually very surprised that I hardly posted any paintings from this great Artist. First of all his style is dark, brutal and sensual – just adore it. You’ll hardly find another painter with such simple compositions, but such honest and direct execution of his stories.
Second – he is part of the Munich Secessions – so that’s home – so expect some more Stuck in this blog.
More? Artrenewal.org and Wikipedia
The ‘original’ – Guido Reni’s San Sebastian.
Japanese writer Mishima posing for the same position.
Pamela going for dollars.
Piere and Gilles – the high Priests of Gayness in Art
Classical themes are still alive and kicking – we just often don’t recognize their heritage in a new composition. Their are deeply rooted in our collective art memories.
John Singer Sargent has created many trivial paintings like family portraits – but he also created a few magical ones. Whoever Madame X was – Sargent has captured her beauty and fascination well. A dream on canvas.
Theme spotting for beginners – can you see Mr Hoppers ongoing objects and subjects?
Douglas Fraser is one of my favorite illustrators and modern artists. I have seen his illustrations in many magazines – and I always enjoyed them. His style is strong, his characters larger than life – yet he always puts some emotion and sense of depth into his work. Make sure to visit his great gallery. Enjoy!
Every day should start like that … a cosmic muse smiling down on us mere mortals …
Amazing colours, drama, action and a Geisha in distress. I love this painting.
I like the geometric play between the pleasing female shape and already blocky & cubistic tendencies of Mr Picasso. But I have to complain that the positioning of the fan(ny) is way too vulgar even for a Picasso. On the other side you can’t be a genius everyday – and he was a ‘just’ another guy someday …
Almost every religion starts with the creation of the universe or the god(s) themselves: Jehova (Judaism), Ptah (egypt) or Brahma (Hinduism). Even the scientific view of the universe starts with creation: the big bang.
So how sexy is creativity?
