Month: April 2015

Terry Eagleton: “Arbitrary Definitions of Normality”

Photographer Unknown, (Heavy Construction)

“Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of ‘normality’. This charge is in fact more usually aimed against psychiatric medicine as a whole: as far as Freud’s own views on ‘normality’ are concerned, the accusation is largely misdirected. Freud’s work showed, scandalously, just how ‘plastic’ and variable in its choice of objects libido really is, how so-called sexual perversions form part of what passes as normal sexuality, and how heterosexuality is by no means a natural or self-evident fact. It is true that Freudian psychoanalysis does usually work with some concept of a sexual ‘norm’; but this is in no sense given by Nature.”

-Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction

Xavier Mascaro

Xavier Mascaro, “The iron Guardians”, Cast Steel, 2010, Spain

Xavier Mascaro’s work “Guardians” calls to mind – albeit in iron – the terracotta warriors of Ancient China. Up to 10ft tall, these faceless sentinels manage to look imposing yet protective at the same time. Again, unlike so much contemporary sculpture, which revels in its ephemerality, these works – you think – could date back centuries, even millennia. They command those old-fashioned artistic virtues: awe, solemnity and respect.

Mascaró is also of interest for anyone with a particular curiosity about Spanish sculpture. His fondness for iron reflects that of his Iberian predecessors, Julio González, Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida. Yet, he rejects the abstract approach so popular during the later years of Franco’s regime – a form of subsumed political dissent – in favour of the figurative.

Giorgio Dante

 

Paintings by Giorgio Dante

Born in 1982, Giorgio Dante is an Italian figurative painter living and working in Rome, Italy. After graduating in 2006 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Dante distinguished himself as an artist of contemporary revival of classical painting.

Dante’s work emphasizes traditional methods and techniques of old masters. Italian art inspired him to paint since his childhood and influenced his choice to pursue an academic figurative style, focused on 19th century European painting influenced by William Bouguereau, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Lord Leighton, John William Waterhouse, Paul Delaroche, and Jan Jaques Henner

 

Karl Bitter

Karl Bitter, “Memorial Stone for Henry Villard”, Granite, Sleepy Hollow, New York

The Henry Villard Monument in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Sleepy Hollow, New York, is an Art Nouveau masterpiece. Here, Vienna-born American artist Karl Bitter, (1867-1915) sculpted fluid lines of the base of two trees that culminate in rounded tops flanking the statue of a young man depicted holding a sledge hammer, resting against an anvil as he gazes upwards.

Kinetic Sculpture “Octo 3″ by Anthony Howe

 

Art in Movement: Kinetic Sculpture “Octo 3″ by Anthony Howe, Stainless Steel, 25 Feet High, 30 Feet in Diameter.

Anthony Howe (born 1954, Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American kinetic sculptor who creates wind-driven sculptures resembling pulsing, alien creatures and vortices. He makes use of computer-aided design, shaping the metal components with a plasma cutter, and completing his work by use of traditional metalworking techniques. “Multiple axis finely balanced forms, both symmetrical and asymmetrical, conspire to create a visually satisfying three-dimensional harmony.”

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Mahlon Blaine

Mahlon Blaine, “Chess Match”, Gouache on Paper Board, Date Unknown, 13.25 x 19.25 Inches, Private Collection

Born in 1894, Mahlon Blaine was a major figure in book illustration before the Depression, shich devastated his livelihood. Although he continued to illustrate, much of his work was done for non-mainstream publishers. Near the end of his life, Blaine returned to illustrate some Edgar Rice Burroughs reissues.

Among the books of the fantasy genre, Mahlon Blaine illustrated were two books by Hans Heinz Ewers: the 1927 “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “Alraune”, a fantasy trilogy published in 1929. He also illustrated the 1928 edition of William Beckford’s “Vathek”, a Gothic novel of Arabian fantasy first published in 1786.

When painting, Blaine habitually used oils; his interior illustrations for books were usually done in pen and ink. Blaine’s book illustrations of the 1920s and 1930s were visibly much influenced by Aubrey Beardsley, with those for the book “Vathek” being decadently erotic.

For decades, Blaine labored in the factory-like setting of the underground New York erotic literature scene. Working closely with Jack Brussel, the energetic antiquarian book dealer who published and sold erotica first at his Ortelius Book Shop and then at other Fourth Avenue locations, Blaine illustrated symbolist classics like Paul Verlaine’s “Hashish and Incense”, the Marquis de Sade’s “Justine”, fast-money low-market fetish pornographic booklets, and everything in between.

Blaine would work steadily in this genre until the end of his career in the 1960s, accepting commissions for freelance work from clients as diverse as ‘Arizona Highways Magazine’,  and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “The Land That Time Forgot”. Blacklisted from the ranks of working illustrators for his work as a pornographer, Blaine began using the pseudonym G. Christopher Hudson for some of his more mainstream endeavors.

Mahlon Blaine died in poverty and obscurity in 1969.

Henry Miller: “The Clothes He Wore, , ,”

Photographer Unknown, (Man in His Hoodie)

“What sticks in my crop about this period, when he [Conrad Moricand] was so desperately poor and miserable, is the air of elegance and fastidiousness which clung to him. He always seemed more like a stockbroker weathering a bad period than a man utterly without resources. The clothes he wore, all of excellent cut as well as of the best material, would obviously last another ten years, considering the care and attention he gave them. Even had they been patched, he would still have looked the well-dressed gentleman. Unlike myself, it never occurred to him to pawn or sell his clothes in order to eat. He had need of his good clothes.”

― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch