Tag: Art Essays
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An essential attitude of the heart
Florence Gelo Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Andy Warhol, 1970. By Alice Neel. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Timothy Collins. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY I project an image of the painting, Andy Warhol, on the screen in the medical school classroom.…
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Mark Rothko and the dialogue in his mind
Mildred WilsonDetroit, MI “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 S. Shneidman1 Mark Rothko was one of the most celebrated abstract expressionist painters in the twentieth century. In 1961, he opened a two-month…
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Stitches as mending, stitches as healing
Kelley SwainOxfordshire, England 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. You lost yourself in the rhythm of your own industry. You made a thing.”1 There is something extraordinary about taking one…
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The Portrait of Doctor Gachet
Nicholas KangAuckland, New Zealand 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 yellow books. In front of him is a glass with faded purple…
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How black turned white
Kateryna TsoiKharkiv, Ukraine 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 well-known artist, decided to present a large-scale canvas at the exhibition of a subject he knew well. An ardent…
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Pieter Bruegel and The Parable of the Blind
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “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 the Elder (b.ca.1525-d.1569), who lived and worked in Brussels, was considered “the most perfect painter of his century.”1…
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Love and death; Painting the farewell
Giovanni CeccarelliRome, Italy When Ferdinand Hodler met Valentine Godé-Darel, a thirty-five-year-old woman divorced from a Sorbonne professor ruined by gambling, at the Kursaal in Geneva at the end of 1908 or beginning of 1909, he was already a famous painter. His two paintings Nighta and Day,b in which “the same spirit permeates all things, manifesting…
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Strabismo di Venere—Michelangelo’s David
Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States It is one of the most recognizable sculptures in Western art, the work of an acclaimed Renaissance artist. For over 600 years, it has been viewed by millions of tourists and by millions more in photographs or books. Yet until recently, an obvious physical abnormality had gone largely unrecognized.…
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The Potato Eaters: Brushstrokes of sickness and sustenance
Jeanne DsouzaManipal, India One wants to be an honest man, one is so, one works as hard as a slave but still one cannot make both ends meet . . . One is afraid of making friends, one is afraid of moving, like one of the old lepers . . .– Vincent Van Gogh, Autumn…