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signifier.bsky.social
Signifier
@signifier.bsky.social
180 followers 20 following 620 posts

quality writing on : art : design : media
also The Signifier : six : shot : gallery

🌐 https://medium.com/signifier

Editor & Curator: @remydean.bsky.social‬
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signifier.bsky.social
👃 ⚔️ 🎭

'Cyrano de Bergerac, a Literary Oddity?'

Samuel Belleville-Douelle reflets on how the author Edmond Rostand caused such a stir in fin de siècle France with his 5-act play in verse & why it still resonates today

📖 medium.com/signifier/cy...

#art #ArtHistory #literature #movies #history
illustration for ‘Aventures prodigieuses de Cyrano de Bergerac’ (1900) by Henriot, published by Épinal, Pellerin & Cie - Cyrano stands upon a globe of the Earth, with his back to us, surrounded by fantastical characters riding through the sky on magical creatures - for example a hare riding a winged rabbit, a cavalier riding a flying giant snail and another on a flying fish, a squirrel, moth, dragon, stalks, cranes and a coffee pot?
November 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Are Ziggy Stardust & Thomas Jerome Newton the same person? Such parallels landed David Bowie a starring role in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' (1976)

@remydean.bsky.social discusses how two iconic personae fused multimedia fictions in a Pop Art cycle of creative feedback

⚡ medium.com/signifier/wh...
David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton wearing a fedora and looking pensive in the closing scenes of the film 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' (1976)
November 9, 2025 at 6:56 PM
signifier.bsky.social
“Excuse Me, But Where Do You Come From?”

#art by Victoria Si Wah Dong was our November 2022
#exhibition in The Signifier : six : shot : gallery :

6️⃣ medium.com/the-signifie...

#ContemporaryArt #illustration #printmaking #weaving
art by Victoria Si Wah Dong - a colourful collage of woven paper, uncontained by a frame with irregular border elements of photography and text can also be seen among the bright lines, curves and chequer patterns
November 8, 2025 at 1:14 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Where we encounter art affects our responses to it. We may feel very differently about saleable objects presented as #art in a classy gallery than something unlabelled we encounter ‘in the wild’

Rodrigo S-C explores these notions by way of a short anecdotal sojourn...

🍷 medium.com/signifier/wh...
photograph by Rodrigo S-C of street graffiti dominated by large rounded white forms on vented metal panels
November 6, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Signifier
remydean.bsky.social
'Go Round' 💞 new song & MV from Kizuna Ai x Daoko

🎶 youtu.be/AbImHCMJNfE?...

'What the Future Sounds Like: the #JPop #Art of #HatsuneMiku & #KizunaAI' is a longish article I wrote @signifier.bsky.social

💗 medium.com/signifier/wh...
KizunaAI「Go Round（feat.Daoko）」Official Music Video
YouTube video by KizunaAI - A.I.Channel
youtu.be
November 6, 2025 at 3:54 PM
signifier.bsky.social
🔥 🧨 🎆

remember. remember...

'Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge' (c.1858) from Utagawa Hiroshige's 'One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'

learn about the artist's 'Road to Fame' in our article by @kimvertue.bsky.social

💥 medium.com/signifier/hi...

#art #ArtHistory #illustration #イラスト #fireworks
the woodblock print 'Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge' (c.1858) from Utagawa Hiroshige's 'One Hundred Famous Views of Edo' in which a silhouetted crown watch falling fireworks by lantern light, reflected n an expanse of water
November 5, 2025 at 3:02 PM
signifier.bsky.social
🖼️ 🫟 🪟

A Small Thing But My Own

@kimvertue.bsky.social looks back on the technicolour emotions of Howard Hodgkin & how daubs of vivid colour & elusive forms represent intangible feelings about solid reality

💎 medium.com/signifier/a-...

#art #painting #ArtHistory #illustration #GraphicDesign
abstract painting by Howard Hodgkin called 'Night and Day' (1997-1999) is a frame in vivid green and yellow around a swathe of deep blue across orange...
November 4, 2025 at 4:01 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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Richard Long’s #landscape #art is the land itself

@remydean.bsky.social shares a long walk through some of the ground-breaking artist's oeuvre that spans the globe in distance & could also be interpreted as spanning a timeline of geological epochs

〰️ medium.com/signifier/a-...
two black and white photographs of expansive barren landscapes with large geological features in the distance and subtly altered terrain in the foreground: in the left image, stones have been moved to form a paler, clearer, circular area and in the right image, a darker, wavy line has been produced by repeatedly walking in a sandy looking plain.
November 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
signifier.bsky.social
💀 dark #art & witches & #ghosts 👻

this week, our popular & trending section is stuffed with spooky stories ideal for #Halloween reading...

🦇 medium.com/signifier
six thumbnails from the Signifier landing page showing some spooky images
October 29, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Reposted by Signifier
signifier.bsky.social

'Sat Upon my Heart, an Incubus'

@remydean.bsky.social explores how a nightmare of the Gothic imagination prefigured #Surrealism & the #art of #horror…

ideal #Halloween reading🫣

medium.com/signifier/sa...

#ArtHistory #painting #history
detail from ‘The Nightmare’ (1781) by Henry Fuseli - a ghostly horse (a night-mare) emerges from parted curtains and a demonic imp sits on the stomach of a sleeping woman
October 29, 2024 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Signifier
signifier.bsky.social

‘The Ghost of Oyuki & Her Twin'

@mitsukinonaka.bsky.social explains how ‘Hangonkō no Zu' & other Ghost Paintings by Ōkyo Maruyama templated the genre & defined ghosts in Japan…

more ideal #Halloween reading 👻

medium.com/signifier/th...

#Japan #イラスト #art #ArtHistory #illustration
details from ‘The Ghost of Oyuki’ (c.1777, with red collector seals) collection of the University of California’s Museum of Fine Arts [view license] and ‘Hangonkō no Zu’ (c.1781) of the Kudoji Temple [image courtesy of the Hirosaki City Board of Education] - more description and analysis in article via link in post
October 30, 2024 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Signifier
signifier.bsky.social

'The Man Who Painted Spirits' 👻

@remydean.bsky.social tells us a William Blake & John Varley ghost story about the art of seeing beyond the Veil...

Happy #Halloween 🎃 from the Signifier team!

medium.com/signifier/th...

#art #ArtHistory #history #GhostStory
‘The Ghost of a Flea’ (detail, c.1820) by William Blake - the head and shoulders of a monstrous being, half-man, half-insect.
October 31, 2024 at 11:25 AM
signifier.bsky.social
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'The Dazzling Vortex'

Some Vorticists flirted with Fascism but their #art also helped defend the allied navies.

@remydean.bsky.social finds "a rare example of art, abstract art at that, having a proven & quantifiable function..."

🏁 medium.com/signifier/th...

#ArtHistory #history #design
two black and white photographs of ships painted with bold geometric patterns: USS ‘West Mahomet’, November 1918 and RMS ‘Mauretania’ bringing troops home from Europe, December 1918
October 17, 2025 at 12:38 PM
signifier.bsky.social
💧

'David Hockney: Making a Splash with the Bigger Picture'

@kimvertue.bsky.social dives into the large-scale, immersive #art of the people’s painter who continues to please with new work more than six decades later…

💦 medium.com/signifier/da...

#painitng #ArtHistory #history #photography
detail of the splash from the painting 'A Bigger Splash' (1967) by David Hockney
October 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
signifier.bsky.social
it's #fungi season in the Eurozone so time to revisit:
'Beatrix Potter’s Field Studies' 🐸

@kimvertue.bsky.social on the #art & #science of a pioneering mycologist better known as the beloved children’s #author & #illustrator

🍄 medium.com/signifier/po...

#illustration #fungi #history #ArtHistory
two illustrations by Beatrix Potter: ‘Toad’s Tea Party’ (c.1905) - six toads gather around a small table, five sit on toadstools, and ‘Mycology Study’ - and accurate natural history illustration of fungi
October 13, 2025 at 11:47 AM
signifier.bsky.social
'Résumé'

#art by Géraldine Swatridge was our October 2021 #exhibition
in The Signifier : six : shot : gallery :

6️⃣ medium.com/the-signifie...

#ContemporaryArt #painting #drawing #landscape #illustration
two semi-abstract sketches in ink and watercolour by Géraldine Swatridge - one has tree forms in mainly orange, the other resembles a map of parkland in mainly greens
October 13, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Signifier
dlbowman76.com
People like to give Kapoor a hard time because of the Vantablack thing but his best public sculptures are genuinely good. "Cloud Gate" in Chicago is not only harmonious with the park but you instinctively want to touch it (a sign of a good sculpture!)
remydean.bsky.social Remy Dean 🏴‍☠️ @remydean.bsky.social · Sep 15
Aanish Kapoor x Arata Isozaki 'Ark Nova' concert hall inflated for recent Lucerne Festival - the socially functional sculpture gets a mention in my article @signifier.bsky.social

Kapoor & Me, Now & Then 🎈 medium.com/signifier/ka...

pic via DesignBoom report: www.designboom.com/architecture...
four view of the huge, blood-red inflatable concert hall - two of its cavernous interior and two in situ in parkland, softly glowing in the evening gloaming
October 12, 2025 at 11:55 AM
signifier.bsky.social
'From Beyond the Grave — Unearthing Japan’s Forgotten Photographer'

@remydean.bsky.social finds a haunting beauty in the unique #art of Ukai Gyokusen which has finally surfaced after being, very literally, buried in the past

🔲 medium.com/signifier/fr...

#photography #ArtHistory #Japan #history
very damaged ambrotype photograph by Ukai Gyokusen - the image of a man with a shaven head can be discerned, a head and shoulders portrait, but a quarter of his face is obscured by damage to the image
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
signifier.bsky.social
French painter Georges-Pierre Seurat used Pointillism & Divisionism to point out divisions in society: "these ‘noble workers’ were as important as the people in grand historical paintings hung in museums"

@remydean.bsky.social considers early Modernist Masterpieces

🚣 medium.com/signifier/th...
The first Pointillist painting - the green grass, for example, is made up of dots of pure colours including yellow, pink, blue and orange, yet our eye mixes these colours to give the vivid grass green of summer meadows - though it is used alongside smoother, blended brushstrokes here - the scale of the figures in the group of bathers is inconsistent...
October 3, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Signifier
signifier.bsky.social

Quintessentially #Japanese, yet influenced by Western #art & printed with European blue, Hokusai’s print fascinated & inspired many Modern painters.

@kimvertue.bsky.social considers 'The Great Wave' & Hokusai’s series of 'Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'

medium.com/signifier/th...
"Mount Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan yet from this angle The Great Wave seems ready to engulf the mountain, and flecks of foam seem like snow about to settle on its peak! It’s estimated the standing wave is cresting at about 30 feet. Impressive, though not a tsunami as it’s often described. The graceful curves and limited palate viewed at a distance are almost abstract and only upon closer inspection do we see three fishing boats and fishermen using all their skill not to sink beneath the great wave. It’s an eloquent depiction of man’s heroic struggle for survival against the daunting and often destructive forces of nature. Japan, after all, suffers the vagaries of typhoon seasons, earthquakes, and tsunamis." more description and analysis via link in post...
October 9, 2024 at 1:15 PM
signifier.bsky.social
'Victoriana-o-rama'

Lawrence Alma-Tadema enjoyed success in his lifetime but his #art suffered the the vagaries of fickle fashion since his death… @remydean.bsky.social discusses the life & times of an artist who influenced #comics #illustration & Hollywood #movies

🖼️ medium.com/signifier/vi...
‘The Finding of Moses’ (1904) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - historical painting of scene of a procession in which a lady is carried in a chair on the shoulders of servants and a baby in a wicker basket is held aloft
September 29, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Signifier
signifier.bsky.social

'Ghosts in the Words & Pictures'

@mitsukinonaka.bsky.social peeks into the world of Japan’s spooky picture #books through ‘Ghost Story Picture Books’ - the popular contemporary #horror anthology

medium.com/signifier/gh...

#illustration #イラスト #illustrations #folklore #ghosts #art #Japan
illustration by Tomoaki Ichikawa of strange creatures on a train
September 28, 2024 at 8:51 AM
signifier.bsky.social
👞 🩰 👢

'Whose Shoes?'

@remydean.bsky.social takes us on a quick-step through some shoe symbolism in #art & #culture along the path from innocence to experience... from #FairyTales to #horror films

👠 medium.com/signifier/wh...

#art #ArtHistory #shoes #illustration #イラスト #fashion #movies #history
pop culture quoting red shoes cinematic imagery: album covers for 'Eldorado' by E.L.O. and 'The Red Shoes' by Kate Bush
September 28, 2025 at 1:39 PM
signifier.bsky.social
⚔️ 🐲 🐻

'Sutton Hoo, a Great Warrior’s Treasure'

@kimvertue.bsky.social uncovers mystique and myth surrounding Britain's most significant Anglo-Saxon ship burial and its surprisingly sophisticated artefacts

⛏️ medium.com/signifier/su...

#art #design #ArtHistory #history
"...purse lid decorated with elaborate motifs, including interlaced animals and wolves on either side of a human figure, also adorned with gold and garnet inlays. The use of Millefiori glass also indicates technical sophistication. These beads are produced by placing glass rods of different colours together and cutting across them to reveal a chequered effect" - more description and analysis in article via link in post
September 27, 2025 at 3:13 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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'Do You Know What’s Really Surreal?'

…and do you know your Veristic #Surrealism from your Automatist or Organic? @remydean.bsky.social offers a brief introduction to the first major movement in Postmodern #art

👁️ medium.com/signifier/a0...

#ArtHistory #history #painting #sculpture #movies
Alberto Giacometti’s 'The Palace at 4 a.m.' is a small seemingly fragile construction of wood, glass, wire and string. This is from Giacometti’s earlier period when he was experimenting with the surreal. The rooms of a house are suggested by a framework of slender wooden dowels and these rooms are populated by small carvings: a simple feminine figure, a detailed human backbone, an organic seed-like form and a skeletal bird.
September 22, 2025 at 12:37 PM