Twisted Bodies

I don’t know when I developed my fascination for the human form when it’s been contorted or twisted, for whatever reason or by whatever force.

Maybe it was at the Rodin Museum on an icy late-December day in Paris, where I saw this:


It depicts the fate of Ugolino the Count of Gherardesca, who while immured in Pisa’s Muda Tower, was driven mad by hunger and ended up eating his own children to survive.  I remember standing there, frozen to the bone, but unable to escape the tragedy.  (Nice story, but pure fiction.  When Ugolino’s bones were exhumed and examined for DNA traces of cannibalism, none were found.)  Of the Burghers Of Calais, we will not speak:

In warmer climes (Vienna, also in December but indoors), I saw a couple of paintings by Austrian Egon Schiele, who after WWI was unable to see any kind of future for mankind, and his artistic vision was distorted thereby in his depictions of people:


That’s The Lovers’ Embrace, and one has to have pity on them — which was his intention.  Even his own wife Edith wasn’t spared:

…nor his mistress, Wally [sic] :

And so to the modern day, where others — perhaps sharing Schiele’s attitude, or maybe just having their own mordant view of the human form, have produced works such as this:


I don’t know who the artists are, but their work fascinates me still.

Never Mind The Bureaucracy

I was not familiar with 19th-century artist Giovanni Segantini, but I like his story, for obvious reasons:

In the spring of 1865, his mother died after spending the past seven years in increasingly poor health. His father left Giovanni under the care of Irene, his second child from a previous marriage, and again traveled in search of work. He died a year later without returning home and leaving his family nothing. Without money from her father, Irene lived in extreme poverty. She was forced to spend most of her time working menial jobs while leaving Giovanni to maintain on his own.

Irene hoped to better her life by moving to Milan, and in late 1865 she submitted an application to relinquish Austrian citizenship for both her brother and her. She either misunderstood the process or simply did not have enough time to follow through, and although their Austrian citizenship was revoked she neglected to apply for Italian citizenship. As a result, both Segantini and his sister remained stateless for the rest of their lives.

Segantini met Bugatti’s sister, Luigia Pierina Bugatti (1862–1938), known as “Bice”, and they began a life-long romance. Although Segantini tried to marry Bice the next year, due to his stateless status he could not be granted the proper legal papers. In opposition to this bureaucratic technicality, they decided to live together as an unmarried couple. This arrangement led to frequent conflicts with the Catholic church that dominated the region at this time, and they were forced to relocate every few years to avoid local condemnation.

And they stayed together for life — and the hell with both the Church and the bureaucracy.  As for his paintings, I like these ones the best:

Lovely stuff.  And like Delacroix (two weeks ago), Segantini’s work proved to be a bridge, only this time between Divisionism and Impressionism.  I get the idea, though, that style or “school” was unimportant to him:  he painted according to his own mood and feeling, blazing his own path.

My kinda guy.

The Importance Of The Bridge

Everyone knows about French artist Eugène Delacroix, who painted so many works which later became iconic that his value to Fine Art (not to mention civilization) is pretty much unchallenged.


Liberty Leading The People

And yes, many feel that he was the bridge, artistically speaking, between Classical and Romantic art and is therefore Very Important:


Massacre At Chios

Me, I just like the way he painted women:


Mademoiselle Rose

Death of Sardanapelus


Medea About To Kill Her Children


Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi


Louis of Orleans Revealing His Mistress

Delacroix’s style, to my eyes anyway, changes from piece to piece, from Classical to Romantic to almost-Impressionist — all depending on the topic he’s depicting.  Heck, the Louis of Orleans  painting above is almost Rococo in its playfulness.

And considering that he lived and worked during the hidebound early nineteenth century, that is one hell of an achievement.


Barque of Dante

Landscapes Extraordinaire

Ever since I took a few Art Appreciation classes during my belated university career*, I have been an admirer of Corot’s landscapes — sheesh, okay, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot — because for some reason, they seem to me to straddle the hyper-realism of the Academy and the later swirling Impressionists like Monet.  Here are a few which typify this part of his work:

A Farmyard near Fontainebleau

A Farmyard in the Nievre

The Path leading to the House

Trees and a Swamp

A View Near Volterra

Smyrna, A Boat

A Sudden Gust Of Wind

I love this last one most of all, because it’s almost a photograph, so well does he capture the effect of wind on both the trees and the walker.  But I would be happy to hang all the above on my walls.

In fact, what I think I’d do is get four small 18″x12″ Corot landscapes from, say, iCanvas and arrange them on a wall, thus:

Hey, it’s not too bad a dream, is it?

Corot also did portraits and such, but to be honest, I don’t care for them at all.  Here’s one which I think is his best:

…and another more like his others:

Sorry, but no.  I have high standards when it comes to portrait paintings, what can I say?


*The appreciation of art was truly a neglected part of my education.  Art classes at high school gave me an understanding of movements such as Impressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and so on, but I never learned to appreciate art properly.  So when I went back to university in my early 50s, I took one such class, realized that I needed to take another, and then took a couple more.

I just wish I’d taken them earlier on in life, because I’ve missed so much.

Perfect Something

And another fine and wonderful thing comes under attack:

Michelangelo’s masterpiece, The Creation Of Man, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is a symbol of white supremacy, according to one woke writer.

The world-renowned piece of art which features a white-skinned Adam reaching out his hand to God, has come under fire.

It has been called ‘the perfect convergence’ of Caucasian dominion.

My idea of “perfect convergence” would be that of an axe with this fuckwit’s head, but no doubt someone is going to have a problem with this.


Update:  Never mind;  it’s Robin DiAngelo.  Should have known.  Not even worth a rant, although I had one ready.  Every time this human shithole speaks, she lessens humanity’s sum of knowledge and goodness.

Worthless sack of wokist shit [redundancy alert].

Next…

Irrelevant Protest

Talk about misplaced priorities outside Rome’s Colosseum:

Alexis Mucci, who has 7.5million followers on Instagram, donned nothing but satin robes and black lingerie sets with fitness model Issa Vegas. In the clip, which has gained more than 134,000 likes, the pair untied the belts on their robes to reveal their skimpy outfits.

Dark-haired beauty Alexis was seen in a strappy bra that barely covered her cleavage with a lacy thong and pair of patterned fishnet stockings. Meanwhile, Issa wore a black lace bra with a matching thong and similar stockings.

So far, so good.

However, some Instagram viewers took to the comments begging the OnlyFans model and her fitness star pal to “cover up.”

One user said: “Cover yourself it’s cold.” Another added: “Move I can’t see the colosseum.” A third commented: “What a shame they have to sell themselves like this.”

It’s the last comment which got me shaking my head.

Anyone who’s ever been to the Colosseum knows that it’s a hive of hucksterism:  people offering tourists “private tours” of the place, and gawd knows how many assholes dressed up as Roman legionaries offering to pose with said tourists in front of the ruins, all for a (horrifying) price, of course.

So in fact the Colosseum is the perfect place for two houris  to sell themselves.

Feel free to scrutinize them via the link, but be warned that they’re nastier than cheap Italian red wine.