My biggest discovery this month was the Symbolist painter Gustav Adolf Mossa and I am still smitten with his fascinating watercolours of skeletons, passion, blood, saints and flowers, I also enjoyed the beautiful, vibrant and dreamy flower paintings by Odilon Redon, Jean-Louis Forain’s paintings of ballerinas and their admirers, theme of transience which I explored through the art of Juan de Valdés Leal’s painting “In ictu oculi” and let me quote Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s play “Life is a Dream”: “What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.” As you have seen from my fashion inspiration post, I have been into the 1990s fashion and that’s mainly because I’ve been watching (again) the show Beverly Hills 90210 but only the first four seasons, I don’t care for the show after Brenda leaves. Early in the show Brenda sometimes annoys me, but in season four she is just wonderful. Here’s a poem by Jack Grapes that Dylan recited in the show in season four at a poetry reading class:
“With you, the earth was a bed of grass
We slept in it like two seeds
With you, I was more than I am
Your mouth, the sun
Made everything possible
I burn with the love that I lost
When I lost you.”
“You know, it’s quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don’t do it. I know I’ll never jump again.”
(Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea)
Los Angeles, picture found here.
Picture found here.
Los Angeles, 4th July 2020, picture found here.
Picture found here.
Watercolour found here.
Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Letter written to his sister Ludmila, 1905
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YES!
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The Symbolist Movement, the gift that keeps on giving. Whenever you think you know all the artists, another one you’ve never heard of pops up!
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That’s SO true! But I feel like that about all art, that is ALWAYS some new artist to discover, there is always a new way of seeing the old…
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That’s the real joy of being an art lover, a book lover or a music lover. Always something new to find or, as you say, a different angle on familiar territory . . .
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