Allegory of Music, by Antiveduto Grammatica

“Grammatica: A Brief History”, by Mason River

The 16^th and 17^th century Italian painter Antiveduto Grammatica was a highly talented artist of strong repute during the Baroque period of art. His birth was predicted by his father, who had premonitions that his child would be born while he was on a journey, caught between Sienna (his hometown) and Rome. When his son was born just as he had expected, he named him Antiveduto, which means foreseen.

Grammatica learned his trade as an apprentice for the Perugian artist Giovanni Domenico Angelini, who started by training him in copper-work. Eventually he became known for his profile paintings of the famous, and soon after befriended the Cardinal Del Monte, who accelerated his career substantially, being very close with him.

This style of painting is called Carvaggesque because of the similarity to the works of the famous Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Memory of Time No. 6 , 2007 by Tian Taiquan

Till I was nine years old, I like that oily, thick smell of the newspapers. I don’t like it anymore. Maybe it’s not so much the smell of the newspapers that I dislike, I guess it’s the smell of the news that bothers me and makes me anxious. It is the same smell, thick and heavy.

Sometimes I would just like to get rid of it. Crawl under a rock and stay there for a while. Two months, two years, twenty…I don’t care. Sometimes it’s too overwhelming.

I’d like to fall asleep and wake up to realise that it was a bad dream. I would like to realise that it was a bad dream, to realise that there was never a single war in the world, never a struggle for freedom, never an unhappy child.

Sometimes I wish I can  pretend I never saw any of it and just get rid of all that burden of the past and present. Just shake off all the news I ever read and the time when my life was a part of it.

~Dot Black

I was attracted to this painting the moment I saw it in a Shanghai Gallery. Don’t worry too much about the title which seems like a literal translation from the Chinese language. Concentrate on the wonderful depth of vision instead. Truth and beauty are in the eyes of those that see them. It’s not necessary for everything to be absolute and tied off neatly. Hear what the artist says about his own work.

“I don’t want to force my own understanding or interpretation of my paintings on the audience. The mixture of images within each of my paintings is like a combination of controversial elements in life. We don’t have to understand everything we see in each painting. Like life, we cannot understand everything that we have seen or experienced. In my paintings, Eastern and Western, historical and modern opposites coexist, reflecting the reality of today’s lifestyle.”

It’s quite easy to spot past, present and future elements in the painting. To the right, birds and people fly away. In the centre, a new generation of children is arriving with faces as bright as the sunlight shining on the snow-capped mountains. The viewers are there in the form of silhouettes spiralling joyously down. I’m a little old for that. So I’ll be the parachutist drifting down from the top left corner. That was fun, wasn’t it? Art is fun too.

~ Noel Worthington-Smythe

The aboriginal style of art utilizes bold, vibrant colors to depict their spiritual and cultural understanding of the environment. This understanding has been passed down from generation to generation through ancestral stories known as the Tjukurrpa.

Tommy Watson is something of an ambassador of the Aboriginal society to the outside world, his paintings allowing the observer to experience the “dreamtime” landscape of his world from a topographical view. In his words:

“When they were alive, they would take me around the country, when I was a kid. That dreamtime country. That’s why we look after the country, go out whenever we can, see if the rock-holes are good. I want to paint these stories so that others can learn and understand about our culture and country.”

~Mason River

Scared Boy by Frank Horvat

Actually, I’m not that scared as I’m uncomfortable. I have my best clothes on. ”Sunday clothes”, my mother calls it. It doesn’t really allow me to play freely as I would like to. You see, my coat is too long to slide down easily. And I really dislike
when my new shoes slow the speed on my way down.

I should also be careful not to fall into the dust, my mother will notice the dirt when I get back home from the mass. Oh, the mass! I should hurry, I shouldn’t be late.

I have time only to slide down once…I have to calculate, carefully… It has to be a perfect slide!

~ Dot Black

I hit the dirty pavements every day. And every day, the windows tell me the same thing – “No vacancies,” says one. Another says, “No jobs here.” I chuckle when I see one a few blocks onward. “Don’t even think about it,” it shouts, in angry red writing in permanent marker. That one makes me chuckle a little, in spite of the fact that I haven’t worked in six months.

My feet ache as I walk. My shoes had better last the month – I can’t afford a taxi and bare feet will only take me so far. I bump into other people, worse off than me. I can feel the resentment in their hollow eyes and ravenous stares; skin leathery from too many nights sleeping under the stars. My own place stinks and the ceiling leaks from the neighbours above – but at least it’s a roof.

I cross the street – the smells from the food stalls are taunting me. I count the coins in my hand, which are enough for a bottle of water. Who needs lunch anyway, I laugh ruefully to myself, as I pass a store displaying leather handbags. Each one bears the letters “L” and “V.” The store is empty.

~ Meandering Maude

Angelica and Medoro, by Simone Peterzano 

Angelica and Medoro were characters in the sixteenth century Italian epic Orlando Furioso, an overwhelmingly popular story in which Angelica, an Asian princess living in a French court, falls in love with a Saracen knight and runs away with him to China.

Angelica is a beautiful woman who is the subject of adoration by a number of men, some of which risk death to win her – one even fighting a sea serpent who had captured her and chained her to a rock (another scene that became a popular subject for artists).

The setting that Peterzano painted takes place soon after she is rescued. In this scene Angelica nurses the wounded knight she found in the forest; during this fateful meeting they fall in love, and marry soon after.

~Mason River

Waterloo Bridge (Claude Monet, 1900)

Claude Monet lived from 1840 to 1926 and travelled all over Europe painting pictures. He was a controversial impressionistic painter in his time who believed in expressing ideas as opposed to painting scenery accurately. This was a bold move from the classic style in which pictures were almost as accurate as modern photographs.

In this picture Monet uses two very different images. The background shows factory chimneys putting out smoke against an angry orange sky. The foreground bridge is almost dreamlike, as if it’s something temporarily created out of water. It’s almost like looking at a waterfall or cataract.

What do you think the artist is trying to say? He is using two very different concepts in his message. Even in those days Waterloo Bridge was grimy and the water filthy. So he’s certainly creating an impression of something that might have been, or might be sometime.

I don’t think it really matters. Some people just see a lovely picture, while others interpret it as an environmental statement. Perhaps Monet is saying that there’s room for opposites in what was then a modern world. He was certainly insulted by many who described his art as amateurish. Today he’s become a genius.

~NWS

Image Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/23/little-ice-age-thermometers-%E2%80%93-history-and-reliability-2/

Liquidation by Benjamin Anderson

You know those days when everything just goes down the drain? Those days when you expect to be spectacular and then there’s one moment (okay, maybe more than one) that gets you off the track? Those days when your plans irreversibly drown in a rush of a day?

Go to piano lessons and finally make that fine pillow you’ve found on the DIY blog, do the laundry and get rid of that pile of clothes in the corner of the bedroom, learn Spanish and read that book that’s been on your ”to read” list for quite some time… And that’s just the informal things, don’t get me started about the formal ones!

Seems multitasking is not for everyone, at least not always. It seems some days I should just settle for ”tasking”.

Today I should have been spectacular. Well, okay…maybe I’ll be spectacular tommorow.

~ Dot Black

Image Source: http://www.artonfix.com/painting/benjamin-andersons-artistic-soup

Witness by Guillermo Kuitca and Bill Woodrow,  2010

The taxi dropped me off on the corner of God-knows-where and Help-Me-Now. So that’s what it must have felt like to step on the moon, I thought, as my food collided with an inconveniently-placed smear of dog’s droppings. I had arrived at my new workplace – in a new country – on a new continent – on what felt like an entirely different planet.

Saffron skies, pungent, yellow smells and the sharp, Cyprian green of young trees assaulted my senses as I tried to come to grips with where I had landed. I made my giant few leaps onto the tarmac – my first steps into a new life! Little did I know, my new colleagues where already waiting for me.

They were a mysterious bunch, made even more inscrutable the obstacles in culture and language that presented themselves. I haltingly introduced myself in their language – a few greetings of which I tried to learn on the plane journey over – and burned bright red with embarrassment. They smiled calmly, and told me to go through the door to the left. It was dark, small and foreboding. But, I thought to myself, all new things are. I picked up my suitcase and walked in.

~ Meandering Maude

Image Source: http://www.artnet.com/auctions/artists/guillermo-kuitca-and-bill-woodrow/witness-guillermo-kuitca-born-in-argentina-and-bill-woodrow-born-in-england