vince’s ear

Throughout the centuries our primal fears have neither waned nor changed; what we fear today is not new. Mankind has been fearing the same things since evolution has made it possible to ponder. There is no deeper fear than the fear of death or the afterlife. No matter what our religious beliefs, the fear of the unknown is as basic a human quality as any other.

Danse Macabre

Art has represented this subject with an intimate vigor in all forms and media. In the Middle Ages, the Black Plague would wipe out up to two thirds of some populations of countries in Europe causing a change in human outlook toward mortality. With the chances of each day being their last extremely high, the people began to look deeply at their own lives and wondered about the uncertainty of death.

The Danse Macabre (French) resulted from the idea that no matter who you are in life, the Dance of Death unites all. Typical in the accompanying art movement were depictions of death of all sorts from demons and devils to skeletons, usually dancing juxtaposed with the living, who cower in fear. It was a general warning to all people that any day you may be visited by the grim reaper, and so you should prepare yourself and pray. The common theme was all folk from pope to pauper would face death sooner or later.

The Afterlife and The Bible

Perhaps no single person’s death has been painted more in the history of art than that of Jesus Christ. The gruesome reminding of this religious icon’s tortuous death hangs in Christian homes, churches, chapels, bedrooms, and anywhere else you can think of to this day. More often than not, the painting or sculpture gives an accurate depiction of the horror of what a crucifixion must have been like: nails, blood and all.

Many portrayals of the biblical stories show the aftermath of Christ’s death. The body in the arms of his mother, the distraught disciples’ executions, the tomb, the resurrection of Christ into Heaven, and the assumption of his mother into Heaven have all been depicted in paintings over the centuries.

There are many examples of a horrible post-mortem destination such as Hell, oftentimes intended to warn people of their unholy ways. Hieronymus Bosch was a strong advocate for religious moral values and a firm believer in an eternal afterlife. Many of paintings show his fellow Man, swimming in sin, on a path to Hell lest they change their ways.

Not all afterlife visions were gloomy, however, with plenty of visions of Heaven and angels accepting those penitent people who knew all along not to waste their lives in sin and debauchery.

Death and The Maiden

The idea of an innocent young girl being courted by Death has been a long and celebrated one through art history. The obsession of human mortality can be seen in the practice of putting beauty next to horror. Some good ones are by Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Hans Baldung, and Kathe Kollwitz’s “Death Embracing a Woman” (seen above) is probably the scariest one. And of course I must plug my own. In mine, the girl unfortunately doesn’t possess drop dead gorgeous looks, but I think the skull is pretty creepy.

Similar to the Death and the Maiden was the Gustav Klimt painting Death and Life. The twisted group of warm, sleeping people are being stalked by the cold and waiting skeleton.

I’ll end this post with somewhat of an antithesis. Shown here is Edvard Munch’s Vampire, the epitome of eternal life. I often wonder would I choose immortality such as this, or venture into the unknown that is Death…

Technorati Tags: art, painting, death, death in art, dance of death, middle ages

As featured on Associated Content

Book illustrations should never be considered a sideline or a part of the background of the book. Good illustrations should be just as good as the story if not better than the actual reading material. Perhaps this would worry the author that the illustrations would detract from the writing. Sometimes the illustrations are what make a book.

But authors needn’t worry that much because the pictures can complement the story nicely and add quality to the material. In the case of younger readers the pictures are an integral part of the book. Illustrations of children’s books are valuable introductions to art, and could inspire lives of artistic creativity.

Classic Storytelling

Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press children have been picking up volumes of classic stories good or bad to look at the pictures. Many young imaginative children, including a certain blog writer you know, would make their own stories up in their heads as they go. These were the best stories.

When we read Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as children the depictions of all the strange characters led us through the tale and allowed us to put ourselves in the story. Zany as the story itself is, you can expect some zanier pictures. The one at the top of this page is by the book’s original illustrator Sir John Tenniel, whose interpretations of the story are probably the most famous. This delightful fellow above is the Mad Hatter. His hat says “In this style 10/6″ meaning it costs 10 shillings and sixpence.

Another good version is by Arthur Rackham, who also did the Brothers Grimm, English Fairy Tales, Shakespeare works, some King Arthur illustrations and much more. Ignoring the danger of going too off subject, I will take this opportunity to plug some fine video game art. In this modern age you can actually be in the Alice in Wonderland story, such as in American McGee’s 2000″Alice” computer game. Coupled with the music of Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna, the eerie artwork makes for a good experience.

Animals In Clothes, and Morals

We all know of Aesop’s timeless fables, personifying animals and always teaching a lesson. The illustrations do help to, well illustrate the point. Making little cautionary stories with interesting pictures to accompany them has long been a way to trick kids into heeding the morals, which come as kind of subliminal. these fables have an almost infinite amount of publishings and just as many illustrators, and are always fun to look at.

Another good “animals as people” is the classic Old Mother Westwind books of the early 20th century. You can read one volume here, illustrated by George Kerr. Once again, there’s usually a moral behind the stories but they always had interesting illustrations to go with them.

American Illustrators

No article about illustration would be complete without the mention of Howard Pyle. Born in 1853, he illustrated for magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, taught at Drexel University, Philadelphia, and would influence many of America’s most notable illustrators. Some of his most famous works are the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, and the famous picture the Nation Makers.

One of Pyle’s students was Newell Convers Wyeth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. N.C. Wyeth was the father of Andrew Wyeth and the grandfather of Jamie Wyeth, one of the most prominent family of painters in the Philadelphia region. N.C. Wyeth was noted mainly for his illustrations doing such work as Treasure Island.

Scary Stories, Even Scarier Pictures

No book illustrations, however great and classic, compare to the art in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illustrated by Stephen Gammell, this gem’s pictures would haunt everybody to set eyes on them. In grade school, you would be lucky to be able to take this out of the library because it was constantly out. There were three books, and one compilation of the three, and told ghost stories, urban legends, tales of woe, and even morbid jokes and songs.

The best part without a doubt are the pictures. The one above is the story of a bride who played hide and seek on her weeding day and got trapped in a trunk only to be found years later. Some good ones were the story of a dream, a big toe that a kid found, floating heads, strange occurrences, and my all time favorite, the story of a scarecrow named Harold.

Every Boy’s Dream

I’ll finish this article off with a little unknown gem called The Magical Drawings of Mooney B. Finch. This was one of my favorites growing up, as was I’m sure of many others who have been lucky enough to read it. It’s the story of a child who discovers that everything he draws on paper comes to life. What kid wouldn’t kill for that ability?!

He draws a bubblegum machine and there it is, he draws a big green dragon to be his friend, and his wish is the crayon’s command. Of course, as with every super power, there are serious drawbacks. The town folk catch wind of this and ceaselessly seek the favor of the boy. He gives them a treasure chest of gold, a limousine, even a simple comb for a fellow with a bad hair day. The boy eventually gets fed up with all this materialism and has enough of it, destroying all the drawings. I believe before he retires he draws himself a tiny dragon on a leash for a keepsake from his little adventure.

I think its books like these and many others, too many to include here that have sparked my curiosity of art. At such a young and impressionable age, a young child’s picture books are worth their weight in gold.

Technorati Tags: illustration, illustrator, books, Tenniel, Pyle, Wyeth

See also The Illustrations of Edmund Dulac

As featured on Associated Content

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan and lived in the 16th century. He is known for his feverishly grotesque portraits of humans made entirely out of non-human material. Paintings of people as books, vegetables, fish, plants, birds, the elements, and what ever fantasy he could think of dominated his canvases. The further into his career the stranger and more unreal his hallucinations seem. One may argue whether these works were due to strange apparitions in his mind from insanity, a sick sense of twisted humor or the imaginative output of a genius. Perhaps it was all three.

Ahead of His Time

Known in some circles as the Father of Surrealism, he actually predates the movement by about four centuries. In a time when other painters were careful to paint everything exactly as seen in reality, being sure to show no sign of craftsmanship or brushstrokes on their canvases, Arcimboldo boldly paints people in a fantastically unreal way. Was this perhaps the way he saw people? His subjects didn’t mind being portrayed as fruits and twigs, however, even receiving such high society commissions as the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and later Rudolph II.

Rudolph II would be depicted as “Vertumnus,” the god of the seasons, in part of his “Four Seasons” series. He would look like vegetables, fruit, nuts, berries, and some flowers. “Winter” can be seen above at the top of this article as a man made of the twisty stump of an old tree with a broken branch stump for a nose, moss for a beard, and tree mushrooms for lips. What imagination!

“You Are What You Eat”

The first time I ever heard of Giuseppe Arcimboldo was when I was probably about eight or nine years old when my parents got me a picture medical book for kids. This was a great book with all kinds of neat illustrations about human anatomy, bodily systems, and nutrition among many other things.

The funny thing was the chapter involving nutrition with a section titled “You Are What You Eat” or something along those lines. I remember it showed a cow drawn entirely out of grass and the portrait of a boy made from vegetables and fruit. I guess it made sense to me. The picture was probably “Summer,” in Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons.

A Very Thin Line

What started out as simple variations of reality, such as a self portrait in the likeness of sheets of paper, would eventually lead to what appeared to be downright derangement. What could be categorized as his “Professions” paintings, the subjects could barely be classified as humanoid. An interesting example here is the “Lawyer.” Something tells me he didn’t intend this as a gift for an attorney friend. Also take the “Librarian,” which is basically just a stack of books. Here the humans have almost completely transformed.

It takes a genius to be able to shatter perceptions of reality like this. No one can argue against his innovative genius, being so ahead of his time it would take the world centuries to catch up in terms of artistic expression.

One may never know now what was really going on in the mind of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Art historians are kept busy pondering the idea that his genius led to madness or vise versa. Take a look at some of these Arcimboldo paintings, and decide for yourself.

Technorati Tags: arcimboldo, surrealism, surrealist, painting, artist, art

As I wrote the title for this post I considered not comparing the two artists as it may subordinate one to the other. I speak of course about the Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, not to be confused with Michelangelo Buonarroti, who did the Sistene ceiling and David. As you can see the two share a given name although the former is known as Caravaggio, the town from whence he came, and the latter simply as Michelangelo. The two men had the same name but were great each in their own way.

The two artists were both Italian but lived at different times; Caravaggio was born seven years after Michelangelo’s death. Both could have been seen as arrogant and had personalities larger than life. While Michelangelo was an extremely versatile artist, he generally had a disdain for painting (although he did it masterfully). Caravaggio on the other hand was generally known for his paintings.

Master of Light And Shadow

Long before Rembrandt stepped onto the scene, this enigmatic Italian painter was innovating the use of chiaroscuro in his works. He is attributed with the invention of “tenebrism,” the use of extreme contrast of light and shadow for dramatic effect. This generally came in handy when portraying his religious themes, which dominate his resume. In the “Calling of St. Matthew” (see above) a single ray of light leads Christ’s gesture to the uncertain St. Matthew, as if to point to him, allowing the viewer’s eyes to follow to the focal point.

Artificial means were used in the studio such as mirrors and other highly reflective materials to shine light on his models. What results is almost theatrical in depicting his subjects flooded with light, producing strong shadows and contrasts.

Humble Models, Holy Subjects

Normal and plain looking people often found themselves in Caravaggio’s grand canvases, religious theme or not. What he loved most were his scugnizzi, or street boys. What he would accomplish was a unique envisioning of saints and angels as average looking common-folk. He would take these boys, who were anything but conventionally attractive, and raise them to a glorified status. A case in point is Bacchus. Here we see a young man lacking striking good looks, with an average adolescent’s musculature reclining in a slightly drunken manner, struggling to hold the wine glass still. Hardly a god, is he?

Another example was the “Madonna di Loreto” showing Mary, the Virgin with infant in a doorway with peasants kneeling before her feet. This painting was met with much criticism, looking far too common for a Heavenly subject. A wall with bricks falling apart, the dirt on the peasants’ feet, the plain clothes of the Mother of God were too worldly and lower class for the prominent art world at the time.

A Modern Look For Classic Content

Caravaggio was known for his wide use of anachronism in his paintings, often depicting classic or biblical stories with modern elements in them. See in the “Calling of Saint Matthew” above a Christ dressed in clothes of the 1st century Anno Domini in the room with men wearing contemporary Italian attire. You may see soldiers in armor of the 17th century shackling Christ, and characters in Baroque style feather caps, etc.

This style has been used throughout the history of art and is still used today. You can see it in cinema such as Julie Taymor’s depiction of Titus, but relevant here is Derek Jarman’s 1986 film Caravaggio. Following in the same style as its namesake, the film would show “Michely” in a bar with the ambiance of a television sports commentator in the background, or a miserly art patron using a calculator.

This movie is definitely worth checking out if you’re an art or Caravaggio fan. I must warn it is mostly fictionalized, but it does have an interesting story and is extremely poetic in its narration. The most interesting aspect is Jarman’s use of live models posing for actual Caravaggio paintings, whether it is for the actual painter to paint or just for show (when Caravaggio dies, posing as the “Entombment of Christ.”)

On The Run

Throughout his life, Caravaggio was known for his short temper and argumentative demeanor. He was a bawler liable to throw down at the drop of a hat, and it would eventually bring his downfall. In 1606, being prone to outbursts, our painter killed a tennis opponent over an argument about a match. Normally his friends in high places would get him out of trouble, but this proved too serious and they could do nothing to come to his aid. The last four years of his life were spent in exile and on the run from the authorities.

Caravaggio would flee to Naples, Malta, and Sicily all the while searching for a patron of power to help expunge his crimes. You can note the further toward 1610 and the farther he traveled the propensity toward gruesome and depressing paintings, most of which involved biblical stories. Scenes of decapitation became common, sometimes putting himself as the unfortunate receiver. Finding enemies everywhere, “so many labels on the luggage and hardly a friendly face,” it was impossible to settle down and escape the fear.

Eventually, in 1610 Michelangelo Merisi set out to beg the pardon of Cardinal Scipione Borghese with three final paintings intended as gifts. He never completed that journey and was never seen again. With no body found, his death remains a mystery to this day but most accounts claim he died of fever near Tuscany on July 18th.

Resources

An in-depth look into the life and works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is definitely recommended for further knowledge on the Italian Baroque master. An article worth reading is the Wikipedia article found here

Another great article is on Charley Parker’s Lines and Colors, which you can link to on the right on the sidebar. The Caravaggio article can be found here.

One of the best websites I have ever had the pleasure of viewing on any artist is the “Complete Works of Caravaggio: An Impossible Exhibit.” This website shows the actual exhibition of 54 digital reproductions of Caravaggio paintings shown in one place. You can click on any painting to get an in-depth study. You can zoom in completely to see minute details, and hear commentary by several professionals about the works in detail. The website goes into the life and times of Caravaggio in depth. I don’t know of any other website that contains as much information on a single artist.

You can visit the website here or copy and paste:

http://www.caravaggio.rai.it/index_en.htm

Technorati Tags: Caravaggio, art, artist, painter, Baroque