Month: December 2015

The God Thor

Artists Unknown, Eight Images of Thor, God of Thunder

Thor was one of the most important and famous gods in Norse mythology. He was the son of Odin and Fyorgyn, the earth goddess. Thor was considered the storm-weather god of sky and thunder and also a fertility god. His wife was Sif, a goddess also linked to fertility. He had a red beard and eyes, he was huge in size, he had an insatiable appetite and not much wit. Thor was the strongest of all gods and men according to The Prose Edda.

Thor was very talented at slaying giants; many of his stories revolve around violent episodes between him and his enemies. In order to perform his duties, Thor had a hammer, Mjollnir, a deadly weapon also associated with lightning and thunder, which was built by the dwarves. He also had iron gloves and a belt named Megingjard that doubled Thor’s strength once buckled on. There were also some other less destructive aspects of Thor. As a weather god he was associated with the fertility of the earth. He was also regarded as a guide for those travelling over the sea because of his power over storms and wind.

Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci, “Pieta”, Detail, 1600, Oil on Canvas, National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy

The “Pieta” by Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci is the earliest surviving work by him on the subject. It was commissioned by Italian nobleman Odoardo Farnese, who became a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in 1591. The painting moved from Rome to Parma and then to Naples as part of the Farnese collection.

Painter and instructor Annibale Carracci was active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brothers, Carracci was one of the founders of a leadiing faction of the Baroque style. Based  on the masterful frescoes by Carracci in Bologna, he was recommended by the Duke of Parma to Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, who wished to decorate the Roman Palazzo Farnese.

Carracci led a team of artists to paint frescoes on the ceiling of the grand salon, based upon hundreds of preparatory sketches by him for the major work.. Entitled “The Loves of the Gods”, the frescoes rich with illusionistic elements would later inspire a host of artists. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Farnese Ceiling was considered the unrivaled masterpiece of fresco painting for the age.

Tomás Sánchez

 

Tomás Sánchez, “Plastic”

Among the most celebrated contemporary Cuban artists, Tomás Sánchez is best known for his ethereal, idealized painted land- and waterscapes, informed by his practice of yoga and meditation. Though he also produces photographs, prints, and drawings, as well as biblically inspired scenes of urban life, Sánchez focuses primarily on his natural surroundings, which he shows either devoid of or dwarfing human beings, or besmirched with bags of trash, transformed into landfills. Evocative and meticulously painted, and infused with a preternatural serenity, his sublime natural vistas recall those of the Hudson River school artists.

Pearl Whitecrow

Pearl Whitecrow, “Apollo”

Pearl Whitecrow is a visionary arist living and working in North Easter Oklahoma. She is a trained silversmith and a self-taught painter. Culturally, she identifies with several different groups due to both heritage and community. She grew up in rural Oklahoma and is of Cherokee, Sac n Fox, Scottish, Scandinavian, German and Creole descent.

Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau, “Apollo Vanquishing the Serpent Python”, 1885, National Gallery of Canada

Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures.

“Oedipus and the Sphinx”, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. Moreau quickly gained a reputation for eccentricity. One commentator said Moreau’s work was “like a pastiche of Mantegna created by a German student who relaxes from his painting by reading Schopenhauer”. The painting currently resides in the permanent collection at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fischerspooner, “The Best Revenge”

Fischerspooner, “The Best Revenge”

Fischerspooner is an electroclash duo and performance troupe formed in 1998 in New York City. The name is a combination of the founders’ last names, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner. Influenced by retro electropop tendencies (arguably similar to Kraftwerk, early Pet Shop Boys, and Gary Numan) Fischerspooner uses a modern approach to programming.

Originally a duo formed by classically trained musician Warren Fischer and video-artist and experimental theater performer Casey Spooner for an impromptu rendition of their makeshift track “Indian Cab Driver” at the Astor Place Starbucks, the group grew to over 20 performers, most of whom are dancers and guest vocalists. “We started as a performance art piece about entertainment that ultimately became legitimate entertainment”, said Casey Spooner, when talking about the group’s origins.

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

Eugène Fredrik Jansson

Paintings by Eugène Fredrik Jansson

Eugène Fredrik Jansson was a Swedish painter known for his night-time land- and cityscapes dominated by shades of blue. His earlier paintings have caused him to sometimes be referred to as blåmålaren, “the blue-painter”.

After 1904, when he had already achieved success with his Stockholm views, Jansson confessed to a friend that he felt absolutely exhausted and had no more wish to continue with what he had done until then. He stopped participating in exhibitions for several years and went over to figure painting. To combat the health issues he had suffered from since childhood, he became a diligent swimmer and winter bather, often visiting the navy bathhouse, where he found the new subjects for his paintings.

He painted groups of sunbathing sailors, and young muscular nude men lifting weights or doing other physical exercises. Art historians and critics have long avoided the issue of any possible homoerotic tendencies in this later phase of his art, but later studies have established that Jansson was in all probability homosexual and appears to have had a relationship with at least one of his models. His brother, Adrian Jansson, who was himself homosexual and survived Eugène by many years, burnt all his letters and many other papers, possibly to avoid scandal. (Homosexuality was illegal in Sweden until 1944.)

Diego Velazquez

Diego de Velázquez, “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan”, circa 1630, Oil on Canvas, Museo del Prada, Madrid

Born at the Andalusian city of Seville in May of 1599, Diego Rodríguez de Silva Velázquez was an artist of the Spanish Golden Age who rose to prominence in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal. His work became the archetype for the nineteenth-century realist and impressionist painters.

Diego Velázquez was the first child of notary Juan Rodriguez de Silva and Jerónima Velázquez who raised him in modest surroundings. As he exhibited an early inclination for art, Velázquez was apprenticed for six-years to painter Francisco Pacheco del Río the founder of Seville’s art academy. His studies under Pacheco included literature and philosophy, perspective and proportion, and, as Pacheco was the official censor of Seville’s Inquisition, the academically strict representation of religious subjects.

In his “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan”, Diego Velazques depicts the deception announced by the sun god Apollo, who announces to Vulcan that Vulcan’s wife Venus, is cheating on him. The helpers at the iron forge show curiosity and shock.  A young worker on the right, mouth ajar, is particularly comical in his spontaneous reactions. The god Vulcan bends vigorously and is upset.  He’s all the more foolish because the announcement comes while he’s making armor for his wife’s lover, Mars, the god of war.  It’s comedy more than tragedy, and Apollo, a tattle-tale, looks proud and gossipy.

Velázquez shows that he could portray comedy and he could paint real tragedy.   His  brushstrokes capture amazingly realistic textures.  The  fire of the smelting iron, as well as the sheen of a vase and of armor, light up Vulcan’s blacksmith shop.  Furthermore, he has painted the workmen closest to the fire in warmer skin tones, true to the colors that light from a fireplace would reflect on their flesh.” –  Julie Schauer, Artventures

An extended biography of Diego Valázquez can be found in the November 2024 archive of this site.