Art imitates life, or so I’m told, but in The Good Samaritan by Vincent van Gogh, life doesn’t just inspire the art - it bleeds into it. You can feel the strain in every brushstroke. This isn’t a tranquil tale of neighbourly virtue. This is what compassion looks like after the cameras stop rolling. After … Continue reading Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
Tag: art-history
Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’
Detail High time I talked about another piece of art. So… I’ve long maintained that heaven, if it exists, is probably not a harp-saturated cloudbank filled with recycled hymn lyrics and relatives you were secretly relieved had passed on. But then I stumbled - quite willingly - into Ascent of the Blessed, one of Bosch’s … Continue reading Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’
A Midsummer Nightmare
Marc Chagall’s painting A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a garish spectacle that fails to capture the essence of Shakespeare’s timeless play. Chagall, known for his vibrant colours and dreamlike compositions, seems to have let his whimsical tendencies run amok in this work, resulting in a piece that is as perplexing as it is unsatisfactory. Firstly, … Continue reading A Midsummer Nightmare
Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a Moustache
L.H.O.O.Q. Marcel Duchamp Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q., infamously known as Mona Lisa with a Moustache, is an audaciously irreverent assault on Leonardo da Vinci's iconic masterpiece. This ready-made work, embodying Duchamp's signature brand of Dadaist mockery, transforms the serene visage of the world's most famous painting into a spectacle of absurdity and defiance. Let us delve … Continue reading Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a Moustache
A Frolic through Fitzgerald’s Kaleidoscope
John Anster Fitzgerald: The Painter's Dream c. 1857 First of all I have conflicting sources that title this painting differently: one is The Artist's Dream and another, The Painter's Dream. I'm not going to cry about it but some of the sources I've looked at were a waste of time - not including the sources … Continue reading A Frolic through Fitzgerald’s Kaleidoscope
Wording 