Category: symbolism

Robert Buratti

Robert Buratti, “The Hierophant”, Date Unknown, Ink and Pen on Paper, 15.7 x 11.8 Inches

This work is part of the Arcana Series by Robert Buratti and was inspired by “The Hierophant” card of the Thoth tarot deck. Buratti’s work is chiefly concerned with the role of the spiritual within contemporary art, and the talismanic and transformational power of the image. Influenced by the approach and experimentation of artists such as James Gleeson, Andre Breton, Aleister Crowley, Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso, Buratti’s work seeks a balance between the seen and unseen, the technical and the intuitive.

James Mortimer

James Mortimer: Paintings, Oil on Linen

James Mortimer, a painter and a sculptor, was born in Swindon, Wiltshire in 1989. He was educated at a Catholic School and studied sculpture at the Bath School of Art, receiving the Kenneth Armitage Prize for Sculpture. Mortimer now devotes himself to painting imagined scenes of immoral excess, mythical creatures and larger than life characters. He is represented by the Catto Gallery on Heath Street in London.

James Mortimer’s fey boys inhabit a world of uncomplicated decadence, a surreal Renaissance landscape where man and beast exist together on increasingly equal terms. Inhibitions go out the window; each is a slave to their own nature. The ensuing relationships provide fertile ground for myriad little dramas as the companions look to get along. Animals become mischievous, even vicious at times. Their masters try to rise above it, retaining an almost Imperial sense of composure, but in the process find themselves somehow detached, lost even, gazing wistfully into the opium haze of their peculiar adopted land.

Whilst seemingly simple, there is wealth of drama playing out behind the scenes. Visual puns and innuendoes pepper his paintings like Freudian slips of the brush. Every fruit and every plant is pregnant with suggestion. Exoticism and the thrill of travel also permeate every scene, like Victorian Boy’s Own adventures that have turned slightly spicy and risqué. And underneath it all, there is a simmering sexuality. These characters are vain, vice-loving and beautiful.

Note: an Extensive collection of James Mortimer’s work can be found at: http://www.jamesmortimerart.com/paintings

art@cattogallery.co.uk

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “How They Met Themselves”, 1864, Watercolor and Bodycolor on Paper, 11 x 10 Inches, Leicester Galleries

There are three versions of this watercolor “How They Met Themselves”. One exists  in a private collection and the other two at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The first version of this doppelganger theme was made with pen and ink and brush and is dated 1851 1860. It was painted for George Price Boyce, Rossetti’s friend and fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist, during Rossetti’s honeymoon in Paris in 1860, to replace the earlier pen and ink drawing of the same subject which was either lost or destroyed.

In a letter to George Price Boyce dated February 4th of 1861, Dante Rossetti expressed, his intentions to undertaking a watercolour version: “I was much wishing to execute the Bogie pen and ink drawing which you have as a watercolour and would be greatly obliged to you for the loan of it…”

Dante Rossetti, by calling it the `Bogie drawing’, expressed his continuing fascination with the legend of the ‘Doppleganger’, the vision of which is a presentiment of death. To illustrate this strange theme, Rossetti chose the subject of two medieval lovers in a wood meeting their doubles who glow supernaturally. Doppelgänger imagery occurs in poems he admired such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “ The Romaunt of Margaret” and Poe’s “Silence” and also frequently in his own more autobiographical poems such as “Sudden Light”, “Even So”, and “Willowwood”.

Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke, “Gypsy Blue”, 2001, Oil on Linen, 36 x 40 Inches

Ed Paschke was born in Chicago where he spent most of his life as an important painter. He was initially associated in the late 1960s with the second generation of Chicago Imagists who called themselves The Hairy Who. He received his B.F.A. from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1961 and his M.F.A. in 1970.

Between 1961 and 1970, Paschke lived for a time in New York where he easily came under the influence of the Pop Art movement, in part, because of his interests as a child in animation and cartoons. His fascination with the print media of popular culture led to a portrait-based art of cultural icons. Paschke used the celebrity figure, real or imagined, as a vehicle for explorations of personal and public identity with social and political implications.

Although his style is representational, with a loose affiliation to Photorealism, Paschke’s art plays heavily upon expressionist distortion and abstract form. The often grotesque cast to his paintings suggests an affiliation in spirit with Surrealism, a movement that has historically interested Chicago artists and collectors.

In the 1970s, Paschke’s figures, now presented primarily as headshots in extreme close-ups, began to wear masks and unusual headgear. Colors became electric; forms were increasingly distorted by video-like disturbances; facial features of mouth, eyes, and nose were hollowed out or veiled with aggressive color shapes. These features became standard elements of Paschke’s disquieting and compelling art.

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo, “Creating with Astral Rays”, 1955, Oil on Canvas

The visionary lone painter, Remedios Varo, typically portrays herself sitting at a desk engaged in magical work, embarking on a journey to unlock true meaning, or dissolving completely into the environment that surrounds her. As a well-studied alchemist, seeker, and naturalist, however dreamlike her imagery may appear, it is in fact reality observed more clearly; Varo painted deep, intuitive, and multi-sensory pictures in hope to inspire learning and promote better individual balance in an interconnected universe.

Interestingly, and understandably, it was not until the last 13 years of the artist’s life, having fled war-torn Europe, found home in Mexico (amongst a community of other displaced Surrealists) and finally become free of ongoing financial constraints, that Varo was able to paint prolifically. Every work completed by Varo demonstrates profound technical skill and an extraordinary insight into human nature.

Although an avid believer in the inter-relatedness of all things and people, including the inter-weave of sound, light and image, her paintings are not typically populated by multiple figures. Instead we are usually introduced to an isolated creaturely hybrid thinker/artist character, reminiscent of St. Jerome in his study or a wise crone wandering in search of new discoveries.Varo repeatedly situates mystical machines in her pictures.

While in most cases such industrial looking devices function to make products that can be touched, held, and made use of, Varo’s structures are here to process that which we cannot see. As our emotions and psychological lives are intangible and invisible, it is useful to investigate them within some kind of known parameters, i.e. within a previously encountered system. Therefore, such apparatus, however made strange, help us to communicate what would be otherwise unspeakable ideas.

Tribal Ritual Eshu

Tribal Ritual Eshu, Date Unknown, Wood and Seeds, Yoruba Tribe, Nigeria

An Orisha is a spirit who reflects one of the subordinate manifestations of the supreme deity. The Orisha are said to have previously existed in the spirit world or as human beings, recognized as deities upon their deaths due to extraordinary feats on Earth.

Eshu partially serves as an alternate name for Eleggua, the messenger for all Orishas. There are 256 paths to Eleggua—each one of which is an Eshu. It is believed that Eshu is an Orisha similar to Elugga, but there are only 101 paths to Eshu according to ocha, rather than the 256 paths to Eleggua according to Ifá. Eshu is known as the “Father who gave birth to Ogboni”, and is also thought to be agile and always willing to rise to a challenge.

Jacek Malczewski

 

Jacek Malczewski, “Polish Hamlet (Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski)”, 1903, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 148 cm, National Museum, Warsaw, Poland

One of the most famous works of Jacek Malczweski, this painting presents Malczewski’s grandson as Aleksander Wielopolski, a member of the Polish Kingdom government in the early 1860s, standing with two allegorical visions of the fate of the Polish nation. The figure is located in the center of the composition, surrounded by two women. He is dressed in yellow-green dress and belted pouch, in which instead of bullets are tubes of paint, and he thoughtfully pulls on the petals of chamomile.

Located to the right is an elderly woman with white hair, dressed in dark robes, her hands cuffed with shackles. Her face takes on an expression of sadness, despair and awareness of her situation. She embodies Poland enslaved, experienced by fate, remaining under the yoke of others, and who can not be liberated. On the left side there is a young girl, half-naked, shown at the time of breaking the shackles. She is full of energy, and her face is very expressive of joy and life. It symbolizes the “young Poland” which is capable of action and being able to release herself from the long-term captivity.

The image can be interpreted as a question of choosing the future fate of the Polish homeland, upon its entering a new century. This dilemma clearly refers to the character of Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s drama and Hamlet’s life choice. Alexander Wielopolski is an example of the person making the difficult decision, and carrying the consequences of that choice. The figure of a man is pensive, lost in melancholy, and his indecision is highlighted even more by the flower in his hand and a belt on the body. The painting is an expression of Malczewski’s concern for the future of the Polish people.

Rodney Smith

The Photography of Rodney Smith

Rodney Lewis Smith was a New York based fashion and portrait photographer. After he studied English Literature and Religious Studies at University of Virginia in 1970, Smith went for his graduate degree in Theology at Yale University in 1973. From eighty-eight rolls of film shot in Israel in 1976, Smith ended up compiling two portfolios, which later became his first book: “In the Land of the Light: Israel, a Portrait of Its People” which was published in 1983.

Smith primarily photographed with a 35mm Leica M4 before he transitioned to a 120/6×6 (medium format) Hasselblad with a 80mm lens. He preferrred natural light to illuminate his subjects, but occasionally would use continuous lighting. Smith shot predominantly in black and white, until 2002, when he first began to experiment with color film. His work is commonly referred to as classic, minimalistic, and whimsical.

Philip Evergood

Philip Evergood, “Dance Marathon”, 1934, Oil on Canvas, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

For Philip Evergood, painting was a form of social protest. In 1923, he studied at the Art Students League under George Luks, where he began painting contemporary life with artists John Sloan and Reginald Marsh. But it was the Great Depression that inspired the most drastic change in the artist’s oeuvre, as he turned to drawing horrific scenes of poverty directly from the city’s streets.

At the same time, he became an advocate for social change, serving as managing supervisor of the New York WPA easel project and president of the Artists Union. More concerned with conveying emotion than beautiful composition, and influenced by El Greco, Paul Cezanne and the Surrealists, he used what he described as “the nasty color or sickly color, the sweet color or violent color or pretty-pretty-dolly color that will express the mood of what I’m trying to put over.”

During the 1950s Evergood departed from his established “Social Realism” style and concentrated on symbolism, both biblical and mythological. He maintained a socially conscious attitude in his art for the remainder of his career, and was in fact considered to be something of a maverick. He was a figurative painter when much of the art world placed greater value on abstraction, and he was a moralist when moralizing was not considered an option for serious painters. His best-known works are gritty, populist images of contemporary life, and are full of vitality and imagination.

Elizabeth Coyne

Four Paintings by Elizabeth Coyne

Elizabeth Coyne was born in Minnesota and raised in California, Canada and Indiana. In the early 1980′s, she moved to New York where she had numerous exhibitions in the 1980′s and 1990′s. She has Masters of Fine Arts in painting from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Purdue University. Elizabeth Coyne has also studied and lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently working on a series of paintings based on the images from her monoprints which deal with tangible and intangible realities.

‘My paintings offer contemplation into life and into possibilities of existence. For me making art is about not only seeing and looking at the world around me- but also knowing that world and absorbing it. I have developed a personal invented language of images and symbols based on the natural world. This visual language is collected from connections that I make in an ethereal way, mental images built  from the logic of the materials I work with.

This world I make in a painting, describes abstract places and relationships and it is a physical transcriptive process, where each painting is a synthesis of the  mind. An image is composed from different sources, both products of my imagination and transcriptions based on my perceptions. Painting has become a way of mapping my thoughts and experiences – a  type of private cartography. “ – Elizabeth Coyne

Stephen Cefalo

Stephen Cefalo: Paintings

Stephen Cefalo is an American artist in the traditions of Symbolism and the Baroque.  He was born in the hometown of Albrecht Durer (Nuremberg, Germany) on the birthday of three of his his heroes, Winslow Homer, Charles Le Brun, and Franz Von Stuck, and felt a calling from early childhood to become a painter.

Magical Staves

Magical Staves from Iceland

Icelandic magical staves (sigils) are symbols credited with magical effect preserved in various grimoires dating from the 17th century and later. According to the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, the effects credited to most of the staves were very relevant to the average Icelanders of the time, who were mostly substitence farmers and had to deal with harsh climatic conditions.

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