Tag Archives: Francisco Goya

cats cradle: fatal feline attraction

Thorstein Veblen, as the previous post indicated, had little love for pets. Pets to him, represented the power of symbolism, the purchasing of things that people can’t use, and are wasteful, yet are endowed with a measure of status. In … Continue reading

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imagination: leaving the gray elysium

An ambivalence to life reflected nowhere more so than the child’s relationship to memory, at once complete, graphic  and epic yet vague, blurry and unfinished. And why not, given the facility to escape, to flee at one’s leisure the fairytale … Continue reading

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finding their way back to the new-old world

At some point the sublimity of spirituality becomes corrupted, infected and toxified with religious hallucinations embedded with supersitition and fantastic images from the recesses of the mind. An addiction to the subjective roots of ostensibly objective problems. James Ensor could … Continue reading

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ragged glory

The first impression is of some weekend painter with a crude, vulgar, unskilled hand depicting mercenary goons, violence, power, subjugation, and a whole stock of themes from the politically correct almanac. Once that prejudice falls away there is something quite … Continue reading

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prodigal children aware of time

To trust, to put faith into the emotional life. To unencumber oneself of the layers of reason and logic, the common sense of classicism that had dominated art to that point. Romantic visions, but with a classical foundation. It added … Continue reading

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nativity and counting: brand new day

In the modern era, the all too human tends to be repressed. But back then, in 1566 it was a time of ingrained, seemingly genetic aggression, envy, hatred and wanton destruction. Perhaps not that dissimilar after all. Bruegel’s Census in … Continue reading

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corpse poetics

Working with death as an aesthetic. Is it purely the shocking or a continuation of the gothic and the more macabre elements of romanticism, in the tracks of Henry Fuseli passing through Goya’s horrors of war, Kafka hybrid-human creatures and … Continue reading

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collapsing the geometric order

The search for emotional impact. Classicism and romanticism are only tenuously compatible. Like Cain and Abel, its a contrapuntal piece of music, that if played often enough, like Glenn Gould with Bach, can create some some odd exposures to the … Continue reading

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when the abyss stares back

You have to question one of the basic axioms of Western life, a foundational myth of the enlightenment that “civilized” society values human life. That a life is precious. Sanctified. Or rather,  an eye for an eye. A tooth for … Continue reading

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circumstantial angels

It was the art of circumstantial speech. Mixed with the art of underestimation, with some irritating asides thrown in for good measure. Well, Peter Falk did act funny. This uncanny ability to start talking in one direction and going off … Continue reading

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