I recently discovered a bunch of Escher prints online, including a number I hadn't ever seen before! One of them involved a man holding an "impossible cube"--an optical illusion that can be drawn on paper but not created as three-dimensional object. Turns out that that little print, is almost identical to a section of a larger print called Belvedere…

Billy Rose was a producer and impresario from the 1930s to the '60s, as well as a lyricist. (He wrote the words to at least two songs that I recogznize--🎵Me and My Shadow🎵, and 🎵It's Only a Paper Moon🎵.) He liked extravaganzas, and made them happen often. Today, we're looking at an image of a show he produced originally at the Great Lakes Exposition in 1937 (later moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair).

Fires are not such a common artistic subject, as I noted in a post back in week 5 of year 1. That was a post of a color etching of a campfire with embers floating up in the air by Richard Bosman, who was the very first artist I posted when I started this as a formal blog, and who is still one of my favorites.

I found today's image in a collection of art from historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) shared by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The online exhibition is called "No less lovely being dark." To quote the description: "African American contributions to the arts have been historically undervalued in the American arts canon. In mounting their own exhibitions, providing venues for authors and performing artists, and hosting educational programs, HBCU museums and archives asserted the worth and significance of Black cultural production."

Whistler has become one of my favorite painters. It's interesting, as another of my favorites' style is so different. I love Canaletto for his sharply defined, detailed scenes, and Whistler for his foggy, indistinct nocturnes. I've shared more than half a dozen of Whistler's works starting more than three years ago. He often names his pieces as if they were musical compositions--hence, the many nocturnes.

The photo to the left generated a meme often called The distracted boyfriend, with its own Wikipedia article. I think the essence is self-explanatory but Wikipedia has lots of interesting context. This photo/meme was the first thing I thought of when I saw today's image, a Saul Steinberg wordless New Yorker cartoon. The fact that it's reciprocal and the fact that both protagonists are looking away from their primary responsibility (i.e.

Would you expect turnips to be the subject of a painting I used to introduce a new artist into this blog? Yet that is, in fact, the case. I learned of the contemporary Japanese painter Kazu SAITO in a Facebook art group. The picture posted there caught my eye, and I said "this is beautiful enough to share on my blog" and put in a folder.

On this day in 1938, November 9th and into the 10th, Germans, including members of paramilitary organizations as well as civilians, unleashed a wave of violence against Jews, their homes, synagogues, and businesses. This was a concretization of a growing anti-Semitic sentiment fostered by Hitler. The name (Night of Crystal) came from the large amounts of broken glass littering the streets after the breaking of windows of Jewish homes and businesses.

The story goes that the legendary violinist, Jascha Heifetz, was stopped on a Manhattan street by an unsuspecting tourist who asked “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The response: “practice, practice, practice.” From 1892 to 1962, Carnegie Hall (7th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets) was the performance space for the NY Philharmonic. It was built when Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, got married for the first time at the age of 51.

Yesterday I shared the famous style of Wedgewood's jasperware ceramics. Today I'm sharing conceptually similar modern work by former archaeologist, now artist Sarah Ritchie (of Mohkinstsis, Alberta). She creates lovely ceramic vessels and then "paints" on a relief design onto the surface--"painting" with slip--clay mixed with enough water to give it the right consistency. Among her favorite subjects are insects, as you'll see from the examples below. Check out her website! And enjoy this short creation video--it's fascinating to see how she makes these. Bas-relief decorated ceramics (Contemporary) by Sarah Ritchie

I recently remembered one art interest I had as a child. My grandparents had a few ceramic pieces in beautiful colors--green, black, and especially pale blue--which were decorated with scenes in raised white (bas relief) on the surface. I delighted in looking at them though I was never allowed to touch them, of course. I later learned that this was a style popularized by an 18th century British artist/manufacturer named…

“Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves – or desires.” — Jacquetta Hawkes Ponyhenge! A continuously rearranged Anonymous Cooperative Community Sculpture of toy ride-on horses in Lincoln, Massachusetts. I posted about it here six months ago. It's such a brilliant thing and there are so many awesome photographs that I couldn't present them all six months ago, so I decided to do one more post.

One of my earliest themed posts was about Don Quixote, and over the years I've done 6 posts about this literary figure. Another early post explored the artform of cut paper silhouettes. And then of course there are papercuts and the like, a more elaborate art form similar to silhouettes. On a recent trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (If you ever get to Boston, do NOT miss it!), I stumbled upon a few cut paper silhouette pieces by German-American artist Wilhelm Hunt Diedrich (1884-1953).

Yesterday I shared Andrew Wyeth's most famous painting, Christina's World, a portrait of his neighbor Christina Olson, who had a significant mobility challenge as a result of a progressive neuromuscular condition. Today's painting is also Wyeth's work, and I'm including it right now because Wyeth said he felt it was symbolic of Christina's condition. "Comparing the rigid window frame to Christina's resiliency, the decaying curtains to her disability, and the crocheted birds to her delicate and surviving femininity, Wyeth considered the painting to be a symbolic portrait of her."

Andrew Wyeth is a well-known American painter, and his most famous picture is called Christina's World. It shows his neighbor, Christina Olson, who suffered from a progressive neuromuscular disease, most likely a hereditary neuropathy called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome. She refused to use a wheelchair, and by her late 20s was getting around largely by crawling. Olson's house was next door to Wyeth's summer home in Maine, and they were friendly.

Kind of the kiddy fright dream team--a scary fairy tale worked over by Stephen King and illustrated by Maurice Sendak? Sendak designed the scenery for a 1997 production of a 19th century opera version of Hansel and Gretel (by Englebert Humperdinck!) Stephen King worked with a publisher to do a retelling of the story, with illustrations drawn from Sendak's scenery designs. Sounds pretty good, right? Just published a couple of months ago. Hansel and Gretel (Drawings with hand coloring, 1997) by Maurice Sendak

Today, we look again at the work of Josef Albers, who was best known for a theory of color. Today is his second image I've shared, and the second black-and-white piece. It's fascinating, and it doesn't easily map to a really possible physical configuration, though it looks like it should. As such, I would classify it as trompe l'oeil, like some of Escher's work.

The title of this post is after the title of a book by Haruki Murakami. Murakami, a well-known novelist (Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), started running not long after he started writing. He describes running for him as both exercise and a metaphor for his writing. The book is a memoir, reflecting on his running as metaphor. "Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day."

In Venice, in the Castello district (northeasternmost of the six districts of Venice, called sestieri), there's a street called the Calle del Paradiso. This is named after a Paradiso family who apparently owned many of the houses on this short street, although which Paradiso family is disputed. The street deadends at its northern end at a canal called the Rio del Mondo Novo, which is crossed by a bridge--the Ponte del Paradiso.

One of the first American Impressionists, Lovell Birge Harrison (1954-1929) studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He admired the French Impressionists but felt like their colors were too intense, so he adapted the style to soft lighting and muted colors for a quieter style. He was one of the early practitioners of what came to be called tonalism--landscapes with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist, typically in dark neutral colors.

The current administration is cutting funds and eliminating much of the governmental support for arts and humanities. It is forcing arts organizations to increase fundraising from private donors. Artist Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) portrayed such a meeting back in the '60s, with two elaborately dressed matrons serving tea to a petite figure in a suit and tie. "One lump or two?" you can almost hear the rightmost matron saying.

Jewish congregations around the world read the Torah (The Five Books of Moses) in an annual cycle, starting with Genesis 1:1, and reading prescribed chunks each week until the end of Deuteronomy is reached, and then start over again with Genesis. Today the scheduled portion of the Bible is the story of Noah and the ark . Today's image comes from a children's book by Norma Farber called…

Origami is an ancient art form that involves turning a flat sheet of paper into a finished sculpture by folding, with no cutting or adhesive allowed. Origami purists feel quite strongly that cutting or gluing are part of a different paper art, and it makes sense to me. Just as many forms of poetry benefit from constraints (number of lines, rhyme schemes, meter--the sonnet, the limerick, haiku, etc), origami is a particular art form governed by constraints.

The creator of the most successful art print of the 20th century (per the National Museum of American Illustration) is an American commercial artist who I'm featuring here for the first time. Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) did illustrated childrens' books, did greeting cards and calendars, and when he was more famous lots of murals in public spaces. He's well known for emulating classical mythology as well as for intensely saturated colors He employed and developed a variety of innovative techniques especially around intensifying colors.

I recently read a book called I, Leonardo, a fictionalized biography of Leonardo da Vinci with both text and illustrations by Ralph Steadman (Hunter S. Thompson's partner in creating the medium of gonzo journalism via the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). We saw some of Steadman's work during my themed Alice in Wonderland week a few weeks back.