vince’s ear

This blog has touched on modern art, art history, and illustration with subjects like creativity and inspiration making appearances from time to time. Rarely will we mention poetry, the art of writing, fiction, or the graphic novel along with the other topics. The literary arts web-zine “Escape Into Life” touches on all of these aspects of art and literature, and then some.

Escape Into Life, to which I have the pleasure of linking in the sidebar on the right, encompasses art, literature, and philosophy in a web magazine (or web-zine) format. The site provides a lounge for free thinkers, artists, writers and aficionados of Outside Art.

One of the main themes of this web-zine is how art, music, and literature are not exclusive of each other. It’s kind of like looking at a Wassily Kandinsky painting and hearing the same symphonies he wanted to imply with the colors and brush strokes, or how the best authors can put you physically in a scene much like the best paintings do.

You’ll notice plenty of illustrations by Henry Darger, the foremost American Outside Artist, or Naive Artist, not to mention others such as Adolf Wolfli. This helps to set the indy, out of the mainstream kind of mood, and hopes to attract like-minded folk to join the community and submit their own artwork. The more “outside,” the better.

So, check it out, and Escape Into Life…

It’s been three months since I posted Paintings of Hell, and yet it remains the most viewed post on vince’s ear. I don’t know if it’s your fascination with the morbid, an obsession with the macabre, or anxiety of a possible future residence. Either way it seems you can’t get enough of viewing the eternal and tortured plight of the doomed. So, it is with heartfelt satisfaction I present to you the man of the hour of judgment, your fiery host…

The DEVIL

Call him the devil, Satan, Lucifer, the serpent, Beelzebub, or diabolos. Just don’t call him when you want a favor- you’ll regret it later. This diabolic character is known through various religions and folklore as the tempter of man, and offers his help, if only you should give up your everlasting soul. Even if you rationalize, “Well I wasn’t using it,” you will eventually want it back, I’m sure.

Satan rules over his infernal prison, and is envisioned to be a scaly and blood red beast, usually with horns, and sometimes holding an implement of pain, such as a pitchfork. Legend has it that he also frequents the world of the living harassing and tempting its residents in various ways.

There is no lack of imagination when it comes to illustrating the Prince of Darkness.

Medieval Western art is rich with biblical themes, particularly in churches when stories were told to the illiterate through art. The masses had to be kept in line with fear of the afterlife. This lasted well into the Renaissance as we see in Michael Pacher’s Saint Augustine and the Devil.

This is Hans Baldung’s representation of Eve and the Serpent With Death. It can be argued that the bible doesn’t say exactly who the serpent is, but it is generally thought to be a symbol of Satan. Baldung was known for his fantastic depictions of witches, the occult, and Death.

Han Memling’s demon is similar to the other two devils, in that they are not as ferocious and powerful, but small, wicked. This hellion dances on the souls of the dead as they are fed into giant beast’s hungry mouth. In the bible, Satan is said to be a great dragon.

Possibly the best known painter of Hell in the Renaissance is Hieronymus Bosch. In the Garden of Earthly Delights, the sins of Man lead him directly to Hell, on the right panel. The image on the right above is a detail of Satan in the form of a half man, half bird hybrid devouring people only to defecate them out into a pit below.

This is Michael Pacher’s Christ in Limbo. He is tormented by a Devil similar to his earlier depiction.

As long as we are considering the serpent in the book of Genesis as the Devil, this is The Fall by Hugo van der Goes. It is much more serene than our other Devil pictures, and shows the moment Eve gives into the temptation and falls from the grace of God. A slimy and grotesque serpent (who still had limbs before God amputates them) looks on with a human face.

Another renaissance painter, Luca Signorelli, is known for religious paintings. Here we see a disturbing image of the Last Judgment, with Satan whispering in the ear of Christ.

Raphael gives us our first image where the tables have turned, with Saint Michael stomping and impaling the Beast.

Italian Rococo painter Carrado Giaquinto shows an interesting Devil as he transforms from the angel Lucifer and is cast down to be the epitome of evil for eternity.

Of course, we can’t forget William Blake’s magnificent watercolor paintings showing the Beast in his most triumphant settings. This is the Great Red Dragon series.

William Blake also created Satan Inflicts Boils On Job, from the story that God sent Satan to inflict hardship on Job to test his faith.

Jan Matejko was a Polish painter of the nineteenth century who painted Satan’s Triumph, with a grim vision of mankind’s defeat to evil.

The most recent of these paintings of Satan is the most colorful and beautiful in my opinion. This is The Treasures of Satan by Belgian painter Jean Delville. Delville was a symbolist painter and occult, and died in 1953. His painting shows a golden mass of flesh over which a beast/man hybrid floats ready to consume the souls of the people.

See also Paintings of Hell,

Scariest Paintings: Hell,

and The Great Red Dragon

Perhaps I should start a new category called “bizarre,” because I can’t think of any other way to describe this one.

Ever faint in a museum and not know why? Ever look at art and forget where you are, get dizzy, and begin hallucinating? If so, then you may have Stendhal’s Syndrome. This strange affliction is a psychosomatic (the mind affecting the body) illness that happens to some people when they witness art.

Symptoms are dizziness, rapid heartbeat, hallucinations, and confusion. This isn’t the type of confusion you get when trying to figure out a Cy Twombly painting, but rather a forget-your-name type of confusion. This can happen when someone is exposed to particularly beautiful art or large amounts of art in one place. Very odd.

The name comes from the pen name of a French author in the 19th century who described his experiences in Florence. It has been observed by psychiatrists over a hundred times in tourists particularly in Florence, especially at the Uffizi Gallery. The syndrome is also present in some people when exposed to music from the Romantic period.

I’ve been known to bore people with my art, but never caused severe psychological disturbances. In my case people may start hallucinating about better art. I must say though, that while I’ve never fainted looking at art, there have been times when I’m totally lost in a painting. Some art really is that good that it enraptures me.

It’s a beautiful sunny day with the yard work done and the dog walked. The birds are chirping, the breeze is coming in and a nice big porterhouse awaits the grill tonight. Of course here I am writing a post about death. Leave it to me to find the gloomy side of everything, with posts ranging from Death and Art, Scariest Paintings, Morbid Vanitas, etc. etc.(I may as well add the category “Death!”) You’d think I always wear all black and constantly play the funeral march on my Windows Media Player.

The truth is death can come at any time. So it behooves us to seize the day, live like it is your last day, and at the very least be aware that our days are numbered and our time on this planet is short. After death, who knows what happens?

It is this fear of the unknown which has fueled our fascination with death. We express, through art and music, our fear, grief, respect and wonderment of the afterlife. In the Middle Ages, when plagues and famines wiped out up to 70% of the population in some areas of Europe, people began to think philosophically about the tenure of their lives. The Dance of Death (or Danse Macabre in French) was a common allegory on the theme of death which stated that no matter what station you hold in life, you will surely die.

The term Danse Macabre comes form the artwork showing, as you can see in these examples, skeletons dancing around the living, taunting them.

I just watched The Seventh Seal about a knight and his squire traveling home from the Crusades. The knight is met by the personification of Death, who he challenges to a game of chess in order to buy time to see his wife before he dies. At one scene the knight confesses to a priest (who is really Death), and reveals his strategy to use a combination of knight and bishop. The knight loses his faith, and while witnessing the burning of a witch, he asks desperately if she could see Satan or God. When the girl can give no acceptable answer, the squire, the voice of reason, explains that all she sees is emptiness, because after life there is only emptiness. The movie is a masterpiece of existentialism. In the final scene an actor, who along with his wife are the only to “escape” Death, sees the Reaper leading the others hand in hand on a hillside in one final Dance of Death.

As you know, Vince’s Ear has never been an art news blog. In fact, if you look at the Artists page you’ll see that a great majority of the artists covered are deceased. I’d say it’s more of an “art history” blog, but that just sounds boring. It’s all about art from the past and present, including art ideas, themes, techniques, specific paintings, artist personalities and lives, and news when necessary. They say “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish-wrapper,” so forgive me if you’ve already heard these tidbits and have already wrapped your salmon in them.

Recession woes notwithstanding, there have been some record sales at Sotheby’s Auction this week with one of our favorite masters of the macabre Francis Bacon fetching $83 million for a triptych (seen above). The Irish-born figurative painter used the tri-paneled triptych frequently as a favorite method of conveying his creepy figures with nightmarish distortion. Each panel measures 6½ feet by 5 feet making this an unusually large and frightening Bacon, with his typical self expressed angst.

Takashi Murakami was pleased to see his My Lonesome Cowboy statue bring in $15.1 million, four times its expected value. Another copy of The Cowboy is also on view in Murakami’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum which opened last month. Takashi was present at the auction when his piece sold to a telephone bidder.

Yesterday’s post was about Robert Rauschenberg, who recently passed away, and how his unconventional methods (Erased De Kooning, etc.) had made him one of the most important American abstract and pop artists of the mid-20th century. Several Rasuchenbergs sold, one of which was expected to bring in $10 to $15 million and sold for $14.6, a record. After an artist dies, the work becomes more valuable (i.e. rare) because obviously there can be no more works created. Yet, soon after the artist’s death the art market is expected to be flooded with works, thus lowering the price. However, we can see there is an exception here for an exceptional American artist.

A Chelsea dealer who was seen leaving the salesroom commented on the success of the show, “Recession, what recession?”

We saw some illusions in painting before with some examples of trompe l’oiel (to fool the eye) such as a painted oculus in a ceiling with cherubim looking down, and we even looked at some anamorphosis such as a giant skull super stretched so you can only see it in one angle. Now feast your eyes on some of these illusions of other sorts.

Do you first see the nine dolphins in the middle of that jug? Didn’t think so. When shown to young children all they can make out is the dolphins. The naked intimate couple is not part of their previous experience so they simply don’t see it. But that’s the first thing you saw, right? Get your mind out of the gutter!

Maurits Cornelius Escher was the master of what is called the paradoxical illusion. One famous example above shows the impossible staircase with people ascending and descending at the same time.

And then there’s the Escher with the water from the waterfall feeding itself again at the top- sort of a perpetual motion mill.

M. C. Escher pictures are amusing on different levels.

This one I like. Cover the top half, then cover the lower half. Which way is the window facing?!

Salvador Dali is another famous one for making illusions in his paintings. The one above is an ambiguous illusion called Visions of Don Quixote where we see the Man of La Mancha with his companion Sancho Panza, but at the same time we see the bust of a man. This is just one of many from the Spanish Surrealist.

Similar is this man/couple with sleeping dog.

If you look closely you can actually see Salvador Dali in this illusion.

Many of Dali’s illusions involved skulls.

A bowl of veggies?

What Is Art?

What actually is art? If you ask twenty people, you’re likely to get twenty different answers. What art means to the individual relies very much on that person’s upbringing, personality, and beliefs. One’s core values comes into play when deciphering a work of art. Do you look at a splattered canvas and think the artist is a genius for conveying what you think is a strong statement? Can someone find a bunch of tossed away bric-a-brac, glue it all together haphazardly and call it modern art? What is considered beautiful, what is aesthetically pleasing? Is the art tasteful? Does it even qualify as art? In short “art” means different things to different people. Even the mere definition is more varied than the world’s cultures.

And what is culture? To understand the art of the world we must first define “culture.” Culture, anthropologically speaking, is everything about humanity that hasn’t been inherited biologically. In short, it is our human expression. Besides basic human traits and characteristics, everybody that has walked this Earth shared and learned a wealth of knowledge and customs of the people in the areas they lived. Depending on what corner of the land on the corner of the planet one came from, the language you spoke, the clothes you wore, and the means of self expression were generally apart of the culture of your people.

Ever since man became a cognitive entity, homo sapiens sapiens, or “Thinking thinking man,” he has needed to express himself in one way or another. The origins of language could have been a series of grunts and gestures, a way of communicating thoughts and ideas in tangible ways. Long before alphabets and writing came into play, symbols were created to represent ideas, and were painted on the walls and other surfaces to convey messages. This early way of putting ideas into visible cues is the origin of art.

Art, therefore, is and has always been a means of self expression. The power to ponder and associate thoughts and ideas, the ability to differentiate dreams from reality, and the assigning of perceived value and significance to real objects are what separates us from our chimpanzee cousins. Since the beginnings of humanity, our feelings and ways to express them have been a staple for our survival as a species. Once the basics of communication have been established, ways of showing others a higher form of feeling must be achieved.

This is art as we know it. Individuals with their own unique thoughts are expressing it in ways their fellow people can understand. Early art was animals painted on the walls of a cave. Fellow cave dwellers looked at the art and knew instantly what it was and what it meant. Certain methods of portraying people and events in art became commonplace in any given community. The leaps and bounds of art throughout history, however, have been a challenging of such readily accepted ideals. Society as a whole has their own set of values of what is acceptable and many pioneering artists who were ahead of their time were shunned.

Like anything else, art has its fads and fashions. What’s news today is tomorrow’s fish wrapper. Throughout history, each society and period of time had its styles. From early art to recent times, art had a propensity toward realistically representing nature. The figure was portrayed to look human, at first ideally, and then gradually more realistic. The 19th century brought some new ideas such as Impressionism, which sought to express landscapes and events by the impression of the light reflected off surfaces. Eventually the abstract art of the early 20th century challenged realistic representation altogether by showing expressions of thoughts and ideas with no recognizable elements besides colors and gestures. The minimalists made a statement about how art is a continuous subtraction since the beginnings or art, therefore art will eventually be no more than a black canvas. Blank canvases and simple geometric shapes become a fad to demonstrate this statement.

We all know that art and its trends of course did not eventually reduce itself to nothing, and representational art is still very much alive. If anything on may say that art has been cyclic, starting with symbols and basic shapes, going to ideal figurative art, to realistic representation, all the way to photo realism, back to abstract symbols, and finally back to realistic representation again. One thing is for sure, no one can predict the future, therefore it is impossible to say where the art of tomorrow can be headed.

So, in a nutshell, art is what you make of it. You, as an individual, have the power to decipher art, and to express your own art in any way you see fit. Art can exist anywhere. It can be the small crafts one makes for seasons and holidays such as Halloween and Christmas. It can be the consumer versions of these in the form of statues for sale which were mass produced and stocked on the shelves of any department store- someone had to design them, right? Artists of all ages, skill levels, and backgrounds produce their art in their own way. Not all art is going to be as great as Michelangelo‘s David, and this is important in your critiques of what art actually is. Good art, crummy art, corporate art, scribble drawings, advertisements, finger paintings, rug designs, body painting, found art, digital paintings, you name it- it’s all art. So it is unfair to the artist to say that something simply isn’t “Art” because you don’t understand it, and it may not smile back at you like the Mona Lisa.

Whether you believe in God or not you can’t deny the importance of religion in society. Atheists being a minority, a large percentage of the world’s population belongs and has belong throughout history to some form of religion or spiritual community. This is evident in the cultures across the world and the effect this has had on art throughout art history is tremendous.

Early Art

Saying the phrase “early religious art” would be redundant. It seems in much of early art history we see the majority of artistic expression involving some religious theme in one way or another. Cave paintings often depicted rituals and ceremonies. Even if it seems only wild animals running or a hunt, it is very possible the paintings themselves were meant as a sort of prayer for good luck to supply the people with meat.

Before alphabets were even invented, symbols and images of the air god and other deities decorated the buildings of ancient Mesopotamia. People from this earliest of civilizations believed in a higher power and held rituals for important events such as burials, and began to record their beliefs. Places of worship were erected to pay homage to their many gods. These temples would be important examples of architecture in the culture of ancient Mesopotamia as would the temples and houses of worship of every other culture through the ages to this day.

Temples were an important part of the indigenous peoples of the Americas such as the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs. They believed in human sacrifice and would have stepped temples where the person would be offered to the god on top, closest to the sky. We know about the religions of these societies by studying their writing systems, which consisted of hieroglyphs. These hieroglyphs were a series of symbols painted on ceramics, or carved in wood, stone, or molded in stucco.

In the Eastern hemisphere, art history is mostly dominated by Buddhist beliefs and thus Buddhist art. Starting around 1 A.D. in the Indian subcontinent, Buddhism would influence much of the culture of the whole of Asia and prevail for centuries. Buddha was mostly represented in sculpture and sometimes bas-reliefs. These Buddhas can be pre or post-enlightenment. The pre-enlightenment Buddhas have a whole subcategory called “Bodhisattvas.” These beings were on the way to enlightenment and offered support for others on their journey.

Medieval And Renaissance Art

The art of the Middle Ages is dominated by religion. The majority of paintings are mostly Christian-themed, representing stories mostly taken from the bible. The Church knew that most of the uneducated masses couldn’t read, so paintings were meant as a way for the peasantry and illiterate to learn the ways of God. These paintings and frescoes were painted all over churches and public walls and portrayed the lives of the saints, Jesus Christ with the Mother of God, and the Holy Spirit, as well as many other biblical passages.

Some of the finest pieces of architecture in European history belong to the magnificent cathedrals and churches that dot the landscape. In cities throughout the world, such as Philadelphia, there seems to be a church on every corner housing a plethora of different religions dating from all periods of time, some centuries old. Indeed these building structures were meant to last, with some cathedrals having about as much stone beneath the surface as was above. It is no surprise people took refuge in the old churches in time of war. The styles and attributes of these cathedrals with their arches, steeples, and flying buttresses are the subject of a much more detailed article to come in the future.

The people of the Middle Ages in general were a highly religious bunch. Christianity had a stronghold on most of the European countries and the priest and bishops were the highest ranking public officials. With plagues and other hardships, as well as basic philosophical unrest it was easy for the religious leaders to control the masses with promises of damnation or salvation. A tithe of 10% of one’s income ensured favor with the priest, thus buying favor of the saints. For a small fee one can reduce the time in purgatory of a recently deceased loved one. It is no surprise that the cardinals and popes of centuries ago as well as today are grandly dressed with gold jewelry and worshiping with fine holy instruments of precious metals.

Prayers were offered in the form of icons. Small art objects were made which were meant as an offering to God. To this day icons are an important part of religious art, ranging from modern crucifixes to tabernacles and chalices. To the people who pray and have prayed to these icons, the object is not a mere work of art, but rather a sacred object with a very special function. The making of these icons was a delicate task undertaken usually by a monk. Strict rules and guidelines had to be adhered to in order to make the object holy. The immaculate surface was painstakingly painted and was the equivalent to the writing of scriptures.

Throughout the Renaissance of the late Middle Ages, much of the early religious art stayed the same. Churches were built extravagantly in accordance to modern styles, and Christian art was still sacred and served a purpose for more than just viewing. But around this time, private patrons were beginning to commission and purchase art for themselves. Guilds of painters became artisans to serve the public, rather than just the Church and government. This meant subjects were beginning to stem away from dominant religious themes and the art was much more free. Religious themed art began to see the patrons themselves painted right alongside the saints or even the Holy Family. With advances such as the understanding of perspective, as well as the emergence of landscape paintings for their own sake, art in general started to become more diverse.

Some religious themes took on a more secular spin to them as well. Sculptors such as Michelangelo created artworks such as the biblical David but made them in a more realistic way rather than the usual religious practice of portraying people ideally. Caravaggio’s holy themes with simple humble looking subjects took the religious art world at storm. Portraying the Virgin Mary alongside peasants with dirt on their feet was a bit much for the traditional Catholics. But times were changing.

Religious Art of Modern Times

Wassily Kandinsky the Russian abstract painter stressed the importance of spirituality in art. His book, Concerning The Spiritual In Art tells us how spiritual life is like a large triangle with the point being occupied by only those who “bring sublime bread to man.” He says the artist has the task and mission of bringing others to the top through the use of his talent. During bad times, he says, souls fall to the bottom of the pyramid and seek only material success, and ignore the spiritual. Kandinsky goes on to explain some of the psychology involved in observing a painting. When we look at colors, he says, two things happen. One is a physical reaction to the colors which may bring us joy comparable to eating a tasty treat. The other is a spiritual vibrating of the soul.

Many contemporary artists still produce religious art in traditional ways. God or gods and important scriptural stories are portrayed as they always were. Much religious art of today is kitschy, with statues of saints and Blessed Virgin Marys being produced by the thousands for the religious masses to consume. People wear jewelry such as crosses and other examples of religious artifacts that they probably take for granted.

Religion in general has inspired, and will continue to inspire, artists to express their beliefs as offerings or homages to a higher spiritual world, or as messages meant to influence, inspirit, or educate society at large.

This is the absolute first post in vince’s ear, the blog. I started this blog so that I may share my own personal insight about all kinds of art with the general public. You can never have too much culture, and I look forward to sharing and gaining information with all of you.

In my posts you’ll hopefully find a wide array of topics pertaining to the art world. My favorite subjects being painting and sculpture, you’ll see a lot on those, but also drawing, architecture, crafts, cartoons, animation, some graphic design and much more. I will touch on certain exhibits and galleries, mostly being around my hometown of Philadelphia but going as far as New York. I’ll write about some paintings and artists I like, as well as create some photo-journal type articles on my art adventures.

Without a doubt I believe writing this blog will be an adventure in itself and it is with great excitement that I start my first web journal. Let’s see what lies ahead, shall we? Take care and have fun!

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