In her right hand she holds a posy of roses and she holds her other hand over her genitals. She stares straight at the viewer. Its an oil painting on canvas – physically small (119 x 165 cm) – sumptuously realized by Titian Vecellio in 1538. By the time he executed this work, Titian was established as the leading master …
Read More »CELESTIAL LOVE – Poetry, by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475/1564) was an Italian Renaissance painter, but also sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. He is considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Leonardo da Vinci. CELESTIAL LOVE …
Read More »STRONG PORTRAYLS GROWING UP BLACK – John Thomas Biggers, the painter that had grow nex to the “Shotgun houses”
JOHN THOMAS BIGGERS – John Thomas Biggers was an African-American muralist and studied African myths and legends. He was drawn to the creation stories of a matriarchal deistic system. Biggers is an artist whose strong portrayals of African-American life, combine images of his childhood, his travels in Africa and his feeling, about growing up black in America. He was born …
Read More »JOHN THOMAS BIGGERS (1924/2001), AMERICAN PINTERS – The unmistakable and remarkable influence named Biggers
BLACK RIDERS CAME FROM THE SEA – Poetry, by Stephen Crane
BLACK RIDERS CAME FROM THE SEA > Black riders came from the sea. There was clang and clang of spear and shield, and clash and clash of hoof and heel, wild shouts and the wave of hair, in the rush upon the wind. Thus the ride of sin. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems-Stephen-Crane/dp/0801491304
Read More »THE SCARLET LETTER – Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where you can know Hester Prynne, she bears an illegitimate child. It was June 1642, in the Puritan town of Boston, when a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of a young woman found guilty of adultery. The Hawthorne’s compelling novel, of the callous …
Read More »DEATH – Poetry, by Emily Dickinson
DEATH > Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves, and Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, and I had put away my labor, and my leisure too, for his civility. We passed the school, where children strove at recess, in the ring. We passed the fields of …
Read More »THE HOUSE OF MIRTH – Romantic novel, by Edith Wharton
She was caught between her entitled taste for luxury and her yearning for true love. “She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.” Lily Bart, the beautiful and intelligent heroine of this novel, slowly slithers down the rungs of the New …
Read More »DON’T THINK TWICE IT’S ALRIGHT – Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright > It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe it don’t matter, anyhow an’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe if you don’t know by now, when your rooster crows at the break of dawn. Look out your window and I’ll be gone, you’re the reason …
Read More »ONE ART – Poetry, by Elizabeth Bishop
ONE ART > The art of losing isn’t hard to master. So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, …
Read More »WINSON HOMER (1836/1910), AMERICAN PAINTER – He believed that artists only should stutter in a language of their own
DADDY – Poetry, by Sylvia Plath
DADDY – You do not do, you do not do any more, black shoe in which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, poor and white, barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time. Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, ghastly statue with one gray toe, big …
Read More »MARINE LANDSCAPES & FARM LIFE SCENES – Winson Homer: The son of art who loved the sea
WINSON HOMER 1/3 – He was an American landscape painter, best known for his marine subjects. Winslow Homer was born in Boston (Massachusetts), and his mother was a amateur watercolorist, also for that his art talent was on display early. He is considered a preeminent figure in American art. Almost self-taught, he began his career like a illustrator (Homer’s career …
Read More »THE PEOPLE, YES – Poetry, by Carl Sandburg
THE PEOPLE, YES – The people yes, the people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold, and go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds, the people so peculiar in renewal and comeback, you can’t laugh off their capacity to take it. The mammoth rests between his …
Read More »OUR YOUNG MAN – Novel, by Edmund White
Our Young Man, interrogates the crucible of vanity prevalent in modern gay life. “He thought he was like an expensive racehorse whom all the people around him kept inspecting and trotting not for his well-being but to protect their investment. Feel his withers … is he off his feed? The grandstand seems to spook him, he needs blinders … his …
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