Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Rijkmuseum's new widgets

This blog is still officially moribund, but I did want to draw visitors' attention to the Rijkmuseum's new Rijkswidgets--now, for blogs as well as desktops.

What is Dutch for "very cool"?

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Final post

Due to professional and personal concerns, I have not been able to return to this blog for some time. And now that I've begun a push on getting an academic blog started on a subject completely different from this one, I simply won't have adequate time that a blog like this deserves. So: this will be the last post here, at least for the foreseeable future. I see, though, that people visit and, I assume, find it useful, so I'll leave it up.

Thanks to the regulars among you for thinking this thing was a good idea. I agree that it was (and is)--it's out of respect for that good idea that we'll be going moribund.

Happy Admiring.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

If you have any interest at all in the subject of this blog . . .

. . . and live in or close to New York and/or can afford a visit there, you'd be foolish not to try and see this.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Two Paintings

The blog lives! A new post! And, to boot, the revival of what I'd hoped would be a weekly feature of this blog!

(Well, a variation on the feature.)

Though the subject matter in each of these paintings is different, I hope it will be immediately apparent why each appears here. Also, the selection is a way of beginning a response to Robert's comment in the previous post regarding the influence of Caravaggio on Dutch painting.

As always, click on the image to see a larger version.

Caravaggio, The Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1600-01


Dirck van Baburen, Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan, 1623

I look forward to being a bit more regular in posting here.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Pozzo, (very) up close

Still getting my land-legs from the upheaval of getting the new half-semester started. In the meantime, though, have a look at this: a zoomable image of Andrea Pozzo's magnificent 1685 ceiling painting, La Gloria di Sant'Ignazio.

Hat-tip: Clusterflock.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Hiatus

It indeed has been a while. I'm flattered by the rather directly-expressed hopes for new content here, and a bit embarrassed that I just haven't had a real chance to oblige. I want to, though.

Mid-semester tests and grades are next week here. Then a--wait for it--four-day weekend for us. I'll have plenty of time then to look at some pictures and books and think up something to say about them.

Until then, then. And thank you again, loyal visitors.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Asparagus and Broad Foreheads: Lost Codes, Sensuality, and "Art"

Adriaen Coorte (c. 1663-after 1707), Still Life (Asparagus) (1697), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Well. A couple of weeks has turned into almost a month, as Robert was kind enough to remind me in comments on the last post--and I am flattered that even one person has missed my posting here. I am not sure that this post will make up for my hiatus from here, but at times one has to work with what one has at hand.

The image you see above appeared a couple of days ago on my computer monitor via the Rijksmuseum's desktop widget, which I've mentioned here before and which rarely disappoints. Coorte is a lesser-known painter, but there is something about this painting that made me want to remember to post it here just for what I found to be its attractiveness--not to mention learning from the museum's website that asparagus were (and still is, apparently) thought to be an aphrodisiac.

But it was Robert's comment at my post on grail geometry that prompts something more from me than a bit of bemusement (and I also have in mind some general observations on deliberately-created mysteries that Conrad makes in his most recent post over at Varieties of Unreligious Experience). The questions I have are these: once we've lost the ability to read an artwork as it was apparently intended to be read, are we still able to read it--but just according to a different sort of code? And the corollary: does this new code have its own value? That is, down the road here I'll be saying that what holds my attention as I look at Coorte's painting is its sensual appeal. It is "pretty." But is its prettiness enough to make it "art"?

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