I want pics, dates, artists and explanations.
go ahead go nuts go apeshit



+Post as many as you like but PLEASE can you do so in seperate posts, otherwise my brain wont work properly.+

Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter. It's a garden shed that has been exploded. I like garden sheds and the things you find in them and would like to explode one too. That is why i like it.

oh man

I haven't seen this piece in person, I don't think. I've seen the other amphora by Exekias that is equally as famous at the Vatican. However, this remains my favorite. Black figure vase painting is one of the reasons why I became so interested in Greek and Roman art and definitely the highlight of being at the Vatican.


Exekias
540 BCE
Archaic--Black figure amphora

Ajax was the person who in the Trojan war retrieved the body of Achilles, but instead of being rewarded as the new leader of the army, he was passed up for promotion, which was incredibly shameful. Odysseus became the leader. In this painting you see Ajax setting up his death, basically..Somberly patting down the sand, standing the sword upright, his armor neatly leaning on the side of the painting (how cool is it that his helmet is staring at him?). Like in many other Greek vases, the scene is painted many many times. Yet this one by Exekias captures the solitude and the pain Ajax must have been feeling after being shamed. Sophocles wrote a play called Ajax that I still think is one of my favorite piece of literature.

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The fresh heartbreak was, in a sense, like being in a foreign country; everything seemed alien, brilliant and glinting. It was as if I’d been flayed, so that even the air hurt. When you’re that unhappy, any glimmer of beauty or consolation feels like running into an old friend abroad, or seeing mountaintops through smog. Maybe we mistakenly think we want “happiness,” which we tend to picture in very vague, soft-focus terms, when what we really crave is the harder-edged intensity of experience.

I like Stuckism. Billy Childish is probably my favourite, but I couldn't help but be moved by this piece by Paul Harvey.



He also painted my husband, which was sweet of him. But it won't get you in his gallery my dear.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning. The first time I saw this in the Tate Modern I couldn't move away from it for at least 10 minutes. It's a beautiful dreamscape, and has slightly sinister undertones, which remind me of my own dreams, where I'm always sure they could lapse into creepiness at any moment. I'm getting an adapted tattoo of it on my back one day.

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