Depiction of defecation in the works of Pieter Bruegel
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Two behinds out the same window. Detail from Netherlandish Proverbs (The Blue Cloak). Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1559. Gemäldegalerie. Via Wikimedia. “Civilization rests upon two things – the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and the voluntary ability to inhibit defecation.” —Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels The life of the peasant […]
Arthur Bispo do Rosário: creation in psychosis
Rebecca Grossman-Kahn Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States Untitled, Arthur Bispo do Rosario. Personal photo August 12, 2018. Museu de Arte Moderna de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Exhibit: A Tale of Two Worlds, July 12, 2018- October 14, 2018 In a sprawling, cavernous art museum in Buenos Aires, I turned a corner and my eye caught on what […]
Ellen Powell Tiberino’s The Operation
Cody Ritz Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The Operation (1980), Ellen Powell Tiberino. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Julius Bloch Memorial Fund created by Benjamin D. Bernstein, 1990, 1990-116-1. Permission obtained through the Tiberino estate. In the graphite drawing by the late Ellen Powell Tiberino titled The Operation (1980), a tangled chaos emanates […]
Mark Rothko and the dialogue in his mind
Mildred Wilson Detroit, MI [Untitled] (Mark Rothko). Consuelo Kanaga. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the Estate of Consuelo Kanaga, Photo: Brooklyn Museum. “The mind is what the brain does—and more. The mind has a mind of its own. The main business of the mind is to mind its own business.” Edwin […]
Tutankhamun’s androgynous appearance
Glenn D. Braunstein Los Angeles, California, United States Gilded wood statues of Tutankhamun found in his tomb. The left figure shows him wearing the “white crown” as ruler of Upper Egypt (southern Nile Valley) while that on the right with the flattened “red crown” represents him as the king of Lower Egypt (Delta area).1 […]
Stitches as mending, stitches as healing
Kelley Swain Oxfordshire, England “Plague Dress” by Anna Dumitriu, installation view at 6th Guangzhou Triennial at Guangdong Museum of Art. Published with permission. Knitwear designer and disability-access advocate Kate Davies writes of discovering her love of knitting at university: “The movement of your hands helped you to find a different kind of mind space. […]
The Portrait of Doctor Gachet
Nicholas Kang Auckland, New Zealand Portrait of Doctor Gachet, by Vincent van Gogh. June 1890. Private collection. Via Wikimedia. On a spring evening in New York, a portrait is unveiled before a crowded auction room. It pictures an older man wearing a dark blue coat with luminous green buttons. His elbow rests on a red table beside two […]
How black turned white
Kateryna Tsoi Kharkiv, Ukraine The Gross Clinic, 1875. By Thomas Eakins. Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Via Wikimedia. In 1876, the World’s Fair was held outside Europe for the first time, taking place in Philadelphia and coinciding with the centenary of the US Declaration of Independence. Thomas Eakins, not yet a […]
Pieter Bruegel and The Parable of the Blind
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden The Blind Leading the Blind, 1568, Pieter Bruegel, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. Wellcome Collection “Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch.” —Matthew 15:14, King James Version 21st Century The Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel […]
Love and death; painting the farewell
Giovanni Ceccarelli Rome, Italy Image from Ein Maler vor Liebe und Tod. Katalog und Ausstellung von Jura Bruschweiler. Page 123. Collection of Josef Muller, Solothurn. Exhibited in Kunsthaus, Zurich, from April 9 to May 23, 1976. When Ferdinand Hodler met Valentine Godé-Darel, a thirty-five-year-old woman divorced from a Sorbonne professor ruined by gambling, at […]