Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

George Bellows

George Bellows, “Dempsey and Firpo”, Oil on Canvas, 1924, Whitney Museum of Art, New York

Dempsey and Firpo, one of George Bellows’s most ambitious paintings, captures a pivotal moment in the September 14, 1923 prizefight between American heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his Argentine rival Luis Angel Firpo. The frenzy lasted less than four minutes, Firpo going to the floor nine times and Dempsey twice. Although Dempsey was the eventual victor, the artist chose to represent the dramatic moment when Firpo knocked his opponent out of the ring with a tremendous blow to the jaw.

At the match on assignment for the New York Evening Journal, Bellows portrays himself as a balding man at the extreme left of the picture. His geometrically structured composition also creates a low vantage point that includes the viewer: looking up at this angle, we find ourselves among the spectators pushing Dempsey back into the ring. The excitement is further heightened by the chromatic contrast between the fighters bathed in lurid light, and the dark, smoke-filled atmosphere around them.

Jim Harrison: “Perhaps Swimming Was Dancing Under the Water”

Photographer Unknown, (Poolside)

“Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one’s questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.”

― Jim Harrison, The Man Who Gave Up His Name

Bodhisattva Padmapani

Bodhisattva Padmapani, Mural Painting, Late Fifth Century, Ajanta Cave One, India

This extraordinary mural painting of Bodhisattva Padmapani survives from early medieval India, likely dated to 477 AD, and is preserved in the interior of the rock-cut Buddhist monastery of Ajanta. It provides the earliest visual evidence of elaborate crowns being worn as signifiers of both princely and divine status. The crowns depicted are the antecedents of those used in Buddhist ritual today by the Vajracharya priests in Nepal.

The Ajanta Caves system has been described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as “the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting,” and consists of about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from approximately the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE.

In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara, also known as Padmapain, is the Bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He is depicted and portrayed in different cultures as either male or female. An English translation of the Bodhisattva’s name, Avalokiteśvara, means “the lord who gazes down at the world”.

This segment from Helen Gardner’s 2009 “Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives”, originally published in 1926,  describes the scene shown:

“The Bodhisattva Padmapani sits among a crowd of devotees, both princesses and commoners. With long, dark hair handing down below a jeweled crown, he stands holding his attribute, a blue lotus flower, in his right hand. […] The artist has carefully considered the placement of the painting in the cave. The bodhisattva gazes downward at worshipers passing through the entrance to the shrine on their way to the rock-cut Buddha image in a cell at the back of the cave.”

Note: There is very limited lighting done inside the caves to protect the paintings from heat and no flash allowed.

The Rouen Cathedral

The Rouen Cathedral, Rouen, Normandy, France

The Rouen Cathedral, the tallest building in France until 1880, contains a tomb of Richard the Lionheart which contained his heart. His bowels were probably buried within the church of the Château of Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin. It was from the walls of the Château of Châlus-Chabrol that the crossbow bolt was fired, which led to his death once the wound became septic. His corporeal remains were buried next to his father at Fontevraud Abbey near Chinon and Saumur, France. Richard’s effigy is on top of the tomb, and his name is inscribed in Latin on the side.

The Cathedral also contains the tomb of Rollo (Hrólfr, Rou(f) or Robert), one of Richard’s ancestors, the founder and first ruler of the Viking principality in what soon became known as Normandy.

The cathedral contained the black marble tomb of John Plantagenet or John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, one of the English commanders who oversaw Joan of Arc’s trial. He became a canon priest of the cathedral after her death. His original tomb was destroyed by the Calvinists in the 16th century but there remains a commemorative plaque .

A Small Space

Photographer Unknown, (A Small Space: The Airplane), Selfie

“To some people, there is no noise on earth as exciting as the sound of three or four big fan-jet engines rising in pitch, as the plane they are sitting in swivels at the end of the runway and, straining against its brakes, prepares for takeoff. The very danger in the situation is inseparable from the exhilaration it yields. You are strapped into your seat now, there is no way back, you have delivered yourself into the power of modern technology. You might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

― David Lodge, Small World

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.