Month: April 2016

Cacaxtia’s Venus Temple

Detail of Battle Mural in Cacaxtia’s Venus Temple

Cacaxtla is the name of a Late Classic to Epiclassic (AD 600-900) city in the Puebla Valley, Tlaxcala, Mexico. It was a sprawling palace containing vibrantly colored murals painted in unmistakable Maya style. The nearby site of Xochitecatl was a more public ceremonial complex associated with Cacaxtla. Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl prospered 650-900 CE, probably controlling important trade routes through the region with an enclave population of no more than 10,000  Olmeca-Xicalanca people.

The most famous of Cacaxtla’s preserved paintings is the “Battle Mural”, or Mural de la Batalla, located in the northern plaza of the basamento. Dating from prior to 700, it is placed on the sloping limestone wall of a temple base and is split in two by a central staircase. It depicts two groups of warriors locked in battle: on the one side are jaguar warriors, armed with spears, obsidian knives, and round shields, who are locked in battle with an army of bird warriors (some of whom are shown naked and in various stages of dismemberment).

Jane Parker

Jane Parker, “Drifting”, Gouache, Beads, Sequins, 2014

Jane Parker paints in Noosa, a beach town in Australia. Her colourful paintings resemble Aborigional artworks, painted in gouache but embellished with beads, sequins and gold.

“I find that I will dream of a finished picture and then sit down to execute it without preliminary drawings,” said Jane. “This picture was triggered by something I read, about the jellyfish drifting in the ocean at the mercy of storms and all obstacles. It seemed to me that the human condition is very like this.”

DJ Filip Hodas

Three Graphic Illustrations by DJ Filip Hodas

Prague-based graphic designer and DJ Filip Hodas creates stunning and surreal graphic illustrations which incorporate abstract and contrasting shapes, textures, colors and lines. He’s subjects are sharply defined and a consistent theme which is evident throughout most of his work is to incorporate unique shapes into a pre-existing space or form.

Reblogged from http://llcnsnnts.tumblr.com

Willie White

Willie White, “Birds and Crosses”, Self-Taught Artist, Felt Tip Markers on Paper

A retired gent with a mesozoic vision, Willie White, a self taught artist from New Orleans, sold felt marker landscapes like “Birds and Crosses”, from his Central City front porch. He painted odd animals but the women he painted were odder, at times resembling those obscene “Sheela-na-gig” female gargoyles that can be seen exposing themselves above strategic portals on ancient Irish cathedrals.

Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio, “Conversion of St. Paul”, Oil on Canvas, 1600-01

“The Conversion of Saint Paul (or Conversion of Saul” by the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio, is housed in the Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome. It is one of at least two paintings by Caravaggio of the conversion of Paul. Another is “The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus”, which is housed in the Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo.

The painting, together with a “Crucifixion of Saint Peter”, was commissioned by Monsignor (later Cardinal) Tiberio Cerasi, Treasurer-General to Pope Clement VIII, in September 1600. According to Caravaggio’s early biographer Giovanni Baglione, both paintings were rejected by Cerasi, and replaced by the second versions which hang in the chapel today. The dates of completion and rejection are determined from the death of Cerasi in May 1601.

Maréchal-Ferrant …

Maréchal-ferrant …

The term “Marshal” comes from the Old French “Marhskalk” that comes from common Germanic “Markhaz”, itself derived from the Celtic “markh” (horse), and Germanic skalkaz “servant”,   

Literally: the servant charged with the care of horses, which designated a servant who tended the horses.  The word then took two different meanings, designating the craftsman responsible for shoeing horses, and also the officer in charge of the horses. The word “farrier” was created to distinguish these two trades.

Bernard Gilardi

Paintings by Bernard Gilardi, Self-Taught Magical Realist Artist

When Bernard Gilardi died in 2008 at the age of 88 he had made nearly four hundred oil paintings. The fruits of a more than forty-year effort, these works were tucked away in the basement studio of his Milwaukee home, neatly stacked amongst files of preliminary sketches and the magazine and newspaper cuttings from which he drew inspiration.

During his lifetime Gilardi hadn’t publicly exhibited any of his work. Ironically, it was Gilardi’s funeral that eventually brought his paintings out of the basement. A family friend attending the funeral at the Gilardi home saw his studio and told daughters Dee and Mary they should show their father’s work. This suggestion prompted the sisters to take photographs of a few paintings and send them to various galleries in the Milwaukee area.

Debra Brehmer, director of Milwaukee’s Portrait Society, was one of those who received the photographs. A contemporary art gallery, Portrait Society showcases both current and historic artists who work in portraiture. Brehmer called to inquire about the paintings immediately after looking at them. Soon she and artist Richard Knight, her assistant for the excursion, were descending into Gilardi’s basement studio and excitedly uncovering painting after painting. “We were down there with our mouths open,” says Brehmer. The two spent months in Gilardi’s basement studio, cataloging and photographing his paintings.

According to Brehmer, Gilardi is a rare example of a self-taught artist who, painting in his spare time, crafted not only a prolific amount of work—more than some professional artists—but work whose style and subject matter evolved over time. It’s even more incredible when one considers that he had no support group or critical audience from which he received feedback. His devout Catholic family mostly ignored his painting—to them it was simply “Bernard’s pastime”—or found the figures and faces he painted a bit too strange for contemplation.

Douglas Bourgeois

Douglas Bourgeois, “Saint Anthony Appears to Tony”, Oil on Panel, 1989

Douglas Bourgeois is an American sculptor and figurative painter who was born in 1951 at Gonzales, Louisiana and grew up in St. Amant, Louisiana. He received a BFA from Louisiana State University in 1974.

Douglas Bourgeois’s transcendent, fantastical images of pop icons as religious icons, set against southern Louisiana scenery, are inspired by his rural life and his homages to what and who inspires him. The lush, but flattened foliage of Henri Rousseau and the detailed, surrealist portraits of Frida Kahlo are clear artistic influences in Bourgeois’s work.