A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
Renzo Razzetto, Unknown Title, Illustration for a Novel
Renzo Razzetto is a freelance illustrator whose collage-based work is produced by or using stippling. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Razzetto produces beautifully dark artworks that explore surreal, gothic fantasy – by creating thousands of very fine black and white dots.
William Baziotes, “Dwarf”, 1947, Oil on Canvas, 106.7 x 91.8 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
William Baziotes was a New York painter whose lyrical and often mysterious works relied heavily on subject matter derived from biomorphism and Symbolist poetry. He was an integral part of the Abstract Expressionist circle and exhibited with them frequently. Like his peers, he was deeply committed to concerns of paint application and abstracted forms.
Yet his interest in the medium of paint was combined with many sources for his imagery to produce works that evoked particular moods, or dream-like states – often more closely related to European Surrealism than to Abstract Expressionism. This duality in his work was described as “biomorphic abstraction” and was influential to artists such as Mark Rothko.
Baziotes was one of the few Abstract Expressionist artists who remained committed to the figure. He took his early Surrealist-inspired explorations further by creating strange, primitive imagery that seems to have been pulled from the darkness of the subconscious. His works in this vein were described as “biomorphic abstraction” because of his use of organic forms and other figurative elements that were not easily identifiable.
Unlike his Abstract Expressionist peers, even Baziotes’ most experimental canvases contain a structured, almost grid-like composition that was influenced by early Cubism and the artist’s work with stained glass. In conjunction with this underlying structure, however, Baziotes also felt that art should evoke emotions and moods through color, shape, and paint application.
Albert Gleizes, “L’Homme au Balcon”, Man on a Balcony (Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud), 1912, Oil on Canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Albert Gleizes was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. In 1912 Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du “Cubisme”. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d’Or group of artists.
He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his many theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany, where especially at the Bauhaus his ideas were given thoughtful consideration. Gleizes spent four crucial years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art.
Jean Paul Mallozzi, “We Come Here Often”, Oil on Panel on Cradled Wood
Jean Paul Mallozzi broadens his fascination with the human condition and the inherent, nuanced complexities of personal relationships, specifically intimate male relationships, which are often hyper-sexualized and informed by society’s rigid and conflicting constructs of masculinity, sexuality and identity.
“We Come Here Often is a personal piece that highlights the emotional bond the couple shares between themselves over a quiet bluff overlooking a cityscape in the distance. The light is coming from both men’s emotional states made visible and crossing over into each other merging together at that moment.” -John Seed, Huffington Post
Baroque Architecture of Francesco Borromini
Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli, was an Italian architect born in today’s Ticino who, with his contemporaries Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, was a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture.
A keen student of the architecture of Michelangelo and the ruins of Antiquity, Borromini developed an inventive and distinctive, if somewhat idiosyncratic, architecture employing manipulations of Classical architectural forms, geometrical rationales in his plans and symbolic meanings in his buildings.
He seems to have had a sound understanding of structures, which perhaps Bernini and Cortona, who were principally trained in other areas of the visual arts, lacked. His soft lead drawings are particularly distinctive. He appears to have been a self-taught scholar, amassing a large library by the end of his life.
Probably because his work was idiosyncratic, his subsequent influence was not widespread but is apparent in the Piedmontese works of Camillo-Guarino Guarini and, as a fusion with the architectural modes of Bernini and Cortona, in the late Baroque architecture of Northern Europe.
Cesare Nebbia, The Dome of the Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, 1585-1590
Cesare Nebbia was an Italian painter from Orvieto, Italy, who painted in the style of Mannerism, a European style that emerged in the latter part of the Italian High Renaissance. This style emerged around 1520 and lasted until the end of the 16th century in Italy, replaced by the Baroque style. While the Renaissance art emphasized proportion, balance and ideal beauty, Mannerism exaggerated such qualities, leading to asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant compositions, which favored compositional tension and instability.
The Mannerist interior decoration of the Santa Maria Maggiore’s Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was completed from 1587-1589 by a large team of artists, directed by Cesare Nebbia and Italian Draughtsman and painter Giovanni Guerra. Recent scholarship found that the hand of Nebbia drew preliminary sketches for many, if not all, of the frescoes that cover the walls.
Paintings by Matt Sesow: Image Set Two
Matt Sesow is a internationally shown artist who produces a prolific number of works. He currently lives and works in Washington, DC.
Mixed-Media Work by Ian Ingram
Ian Ingram’s self-portraits are autobiographical reflections of meaningful events, such as his wedding or the birth of his child; that is, times when a decision or an action changes one’s worldview. Beyond serving as a vehicle to relay his feelings to the outside world, Ingram’s drawings become unflinching windows into his subconscious, and serve as a tool for his own self-reflections and ruminations. His hyper-realistic and intensely emotional self-portraits arrest the viewer with a direct gaze that at times seems almost uncomfortably intimate.
Ian Ingram’s tightly rendered canvases are dreamlike, the result of Ingram’s use of a range of techniques. From careful cross-contours, grids and lines to amorphous passages of blended charcoal, each method plays a role in building Ingram’s expression of the human face’s subtleties. Working with charcoal, pastel, ink and watercolor, Ingram also incorporates more unconventional materials such as beads, beeswax, metallic thread, silver leaf, string and even butterfly wings.
Happy Halloween: Third and Final Chapter: Horror Manga
Japanese horror tends to focus on psychological horror and tension building and suspense, particularly involving ghosts and poltergeists, while many contain themes of folk religion such as: possession, exorcism, shamanism, precognition, and yōkai.
Recommended: Graphic horror works by Junji Ito ( “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” and “Uzumaki”) and “Jisatsu Circle” by Furuya Usamaru.
Recommended: Films: “Jigoku”,1960 by director Nobuo Nakagawa; “Tetsuo: The Iron man”,1989, a cyberpunk horror film by Shinya Tsukamoto; “Ringu”, the original Japanese version of the Americanized “The Ring”,1998, directed by Hideo Nakata.
Enjoy. Do not forget to turn off all the lights. No flashlights allowed. Happy Halloween to all of you.
Five Paintings by Jonas Burget
Jonas Burgert is a German artist based in Berlin who paints epically fluorescent, dramatic apparitions. His portrayal within the oil based canvas shows a new world order providing a grotesque and yet distorted subject matter.
Hugo Simberg, “The Wounded Angel’”, Oil on Canvas, 1903
The “Wounded Angel” is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. It is one of the most recognizable of Simberg’s works, and was voted Finland’s “national painting” in a vote held by the Ateneum art museum in 2006.
Like other Simberg works, the atmosphere is melancholic: the angelic central figure with her bandaged forehead and bloodied wing, the sombre clothing of her two youthful bearers. The direct gaze of the right-hand figure touches the viewer.
The procession passes through a recognisable landscape, that of Eläintarha, Helsinki, with Töölönlahti Bay in the background. In Hugo Simberg’s time, the park was a popular spot for leisure-time activities among the working classes. At the time, many charity institutions were located in Eläintarha park. In “The Wounded Angel” the healthy boys are carrying the injured girl towards the Blind Girls’ School and the Home for Cripples. She clutches a bunch of snowdrops, symbolic of healing and rebirth.
Simberg himself declined to offer any deconstruction, suggesting that the viewer draw their own conclusions. However it is known that Simberg had been suffering from meningitis, and that the painting was a source of strength during his recovery. This can also be read metaphorically: meningitis is known to cause neck stiffness, lethargy and light sensitivity, each of which is exhibited by the central figure.
Bruno Vekemans, “De Zwemmer (The Swimmer)”, 1995, Mixed Media on Paper, 85 x 115 centimeters
Bruno Vekemans was born in Antwerp on July 29, 1952. As a child and teenager he is constantly engaged in drawing and painting. Vekemans took one preparatory year of decoration and a two-year interior decoration course at the Technicum Institute, Londenstraat, Antwerp.
In 1971 Vekemans started experimenting with different techniques, experimenting with collages, églomisé and comics. In 1988 his art work was focused on linear works, mostly gouache on pattern paper. Vekemans later replaced the paper patterns with seventeeth century paper and started experimenting with oils on canvas.
Bruno Vekemans has been in several international exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, Paris, and Amsterdam, among others. Influenced by his travels, he has recently completed two thematic series on Africa and Cuba.
Image reblogged with thanks to https://thunderstruck9.tumblr.com
Antonio Lopez, “Sink and Mirror”, 1967, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
López García studied art in Madrid in the 1950s and lived there after 1960, becoming an instructor at his alma mater, the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando. He has influenced generations of artists as a leader of the Spanish Realists, known for their unyielding depictions of their surroundings and for the long history of painting from which they have evolved. López García’s paintings and sculptures demonstrate not only his keen powers of observation, but also his extraordinary sensitivity to atmosphere and light.
Interior spaces are a recurring theme in López García’s work, particularly the interior of his own studio and bathroom. Though he was initially captivated by the emptiness of his new studio, in Sink and Mirror López captures traces of his own presence. The objects arranged on the shelf below the mirror serve as an autobiographical assemblage that stands in for the (absent) reflection in the mirror.
The artist’s near-obsessive attention to perspective, as hinted by the vertical and horizontal lines of the tiles, cause a rift in the painting’s composition. In order to avoid a terribly inclined perspective, López divided the scene into two views, keeping the traces of process as a mediating buffer in the center.
Jean Michel Basquiat, “Fallen Angel”, Acrylic and Oilstick on Canvas, 1981
Dominated by the figure of a large angel, rendered in staccatoed red, yellow and black lines, floating against a luminous blue background, “Fallen Angel” is a supreme example of Basquiat’s early artistic output. Paramount to the painting is the rapacious creativity and unrepentant vigor contained within each brushstroke.
The vivacious tonal qualities of the work represent a radical fusion of street drawing onto the Modernist canvas. The colors are not those of easel painting, obtained while learning a craft and constantly worked on. They are lively, swift colors of the street, both vibrant and fading, affixed and opposing. The unsophisticated, complex layers of paint and line contain an unrestrained primitivism that eschews high artistic conventions.
Wolfgang Buttress, “Lucent”, Fibre Optics, Mirror
Commissioned by Hearn for the John Hancock Center in Chicago, Lucent will be the focal point of the towers entrance.
Working with eminent astrophysicist Dr. Daniel Bayliss, from the Australian National University, Wolfgang has created a semi-spherical sculpture made up of thousands of nodes which accurately map the stars which can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere from the Earth with the naked eye.
Fibre optic lighting subtly pulsates over the day and throughout the seasons. Lucent is attached to a mirrored ceiling creating the illusion of a whole sphere. Beneath the artwork sits a polished black granite pool of water; this reflects the sculpture and suggests a sense of infinity
Lucent expresses and emanates light; the stars of the Southern Hemisphere are implied in it’s reflection. They are there but cannot be seen.