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Heinrich Kuehn And The "Hoffmann-style" House
“Something went through the thickets of belief in those days like a single wind bending many trees – a spirit of heresy ad reform, the blessed sense of an arising and going forth, a mini-renaissance...
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Madeleine Messager / Bibi Lartigue
This photograph was taken during the winter of 1930 and the place is Megeve in the French Alps. The woman who poses on the snowy slope is festively attired for a day of skiing but the festivity does...
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Koloman Moser And The Semi-Detached House
“His talent for surface decoration and every sort of invention in the field of arts and crafts struck us as fabulous.” - Josef HoffmannIn photographs Koloman Moser can always be counted on to have a...
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Blue Apple, Green Sea: Leon Spilliaert
"I have always sought perfection, and believe it or not, perfection of form. In any work of mine you will find a plastic form, viewed objectively and purely for itself, subject to the laws of light...
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Franz Melchers - And Some Others
The last of the (monthly) illustrations by Franz Melchers for L'An was posted here. L'An (The Year) by Thomas Braun is an undeservedly obscure book that was first published in 1897 by Editions...
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Augustus Vincent Tack: The Far Reaches Of Painting And Time
"If we cannot dedicate ourselves to his purposes, then clearly his work will look like nonsense." That sentiment, from an introduction to an English translation of the German philosopher Martin...
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Clara Sipprell: From Vermont To The Balkans
My parents bought this print of White Birches In Vermont when we lived in Massachusetts and, years later, it moved with me when I left home. The artist, Luigi Lucioni, never came up in any of my art...
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Kobayashi Issa: A Radiant Gaze
"The man pulling radishespointed my waywith a radish." Linda Butler - Backlit Radishes. Iwate-ken.To read the short, rich poems of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1826?) is to meet a radiant spirit, but...
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Stagedoom
"El si pronuncian y la mano alargan/Al primero que llega.""They swear to be faithful yet marry the first man who proposes."Sometimes the way in to a picture begins with an emotional frisson. Aesthetic...
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Berce par le murmure d'un ruisseau
“Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may harken to the gusts of homeless wind that go sighing and murmuring about, in quest of what was once a world!” -...
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Agnes Varda In Lotusland
Who better to document the culture clash that was the 1960s than a French New Wave filmmaker living in Southern California? Contemporary viewers may see more of John Waters than traces of La...
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Three Women And The Artists Who Painted Them
How unusual to find these particular artists grouped together but the three paintings form an improbable but satisfying triptych. From left to right John Singer Sargent's Javanese Dancer, Jules...
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Kobayashi Issa: A Radiant Gaze
"The man pulling radishespointed my waywith a radish." Linda Butler - Backlit Radishes. Iwate-ken.To read the short, rich poems of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1826?) is to meet a radiant spirit, but...
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A Multi-Storied Cosmos
Over the course of the last millennium, the shape of the cosmos has changed. To the people of medieval Europe the harmoniously ordered universe was like a multi-storied building, organized on a...
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Henry de Waroquier On The Isle Of The Monks
Imagine a miniature world of contrasting landscapes of beaches, woods, and hills, an island where one is never more than some hundreds of feet from the sea. On the Ile-aux-Moines, the camellias,...
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Beauty Adorns Virtue: Aristide Maillol
Aristide Maillol - Portrait Of Madame Maillol, 1895, Musee Maillol, Paris.Today is the anniversary of the birth of the French artist Aristide Maillol (December 8, 1881), so herewith a tribute, once...
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This Tree, This World
"I see Everything I paint in This World. And I know that This World is a World of imagination and Vision, but everybody does not see alike...The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of...
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Another Version Of Beauty: Fosco Maraini In Japan
Within this photograph of a rainy day and a forgotten sandal on a dock is a vision of beauty that moves beyond forms. In Zen, this is called satori, a mystical experience wherein the contemplation...
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Jacques Prevert: Bim - The Little Donkey
I don't think you have to speak French to get the humor of the original poem once you know the gist of the story. The meaning crosses the language barrier quite well thanks to several words with...
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Raphael Kirchner: A Hard-Boiled Holiday
Before there was the 'Vargas Girl' there was the Kirchner Woman. Raphael Kirchner (1876 - 1917) was a popular illustrator and a purveyor of the popular genre of erotica known as cheesecake. Thanks...
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