#so I added magritte's signature

[secondbeatsongs]

#personal #meme #the treachery of images #rene magritte #this is not a pipe #id in alt text #ceci n'est pas une pipe #now that's what I call music #had to make this #just had to #ETA: the bottom right corner looked empty #so I added magritte's signature #I think it balances it out

[astronomyparkers]

Silence {VII}

Warnings: Language

Pairing: Vigilante!Tom Holland x reader

Word count: 3k

A/N: so it’s been a hot minute since I last updated, but I have a very good reason, which is school has been killing me. I swear to god, this semester wants me dead.  this semester is an evil sea witch that wants my voice. literally. I lost my voice the week before my recital.  but anyways, before I head into two weeks of non-stop papers, studying, and exams, here is an update on Silence.  I hope you enjoy! please drop your theories into my inbox because I l o v e hearing them!! and as always, thank you to @harryrholland for my header and please note I DO NOT HAVE A TAGS LIST!!!!! THE REASON WHY IS IN MY FAQ!!!! ANY/ALL MESSAGES REGARDING THIS WILL BE DELETED!!!!

{masterlist}

{silence: a mixtape}

Sleep didn’t come easy to you that night.  As you lay in bed, listening to the rain pour down, you replayed Tom’s words and abrupt, out of character exit over and over.  You couldn’t understand what had made him react that way; was he really so offended that you didn’t like PDA at work?  Why had that been such a big deal?  

Whatever the answer was, it didn’t come to you.  It was clear that you were exhausted when you made it to work, and you stayed hidden away inside your office for most of the day, answering emails, researching exhibits, and doing whatever you could to avoid human interaction.  You instructed Felicity to keep all humans away from you that day, saying that you had important research to do, and couldn’t be disturbed.  Really, you just couldn’t handle the thought of interacting with people.  All you wanted to do was stay in your office, secluded, and not deal with any stress from the outside world.

However, that didn’t stop people from trying to disturb it. You could almost swear that your phone was ringing more than usual, with crisis after crisis popping up, and everyone seemed to depend on you to solve them.  You felt bad for poor Felicity; you remembered what interning was like, and with the amount of work and scheduling getting pushed onto her plate, you were considering getting her an intern of her own when your phone rang again. You stared at it in distaste for a moment before answering with a sigh.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Holland is here to see you.” Felicity’s voice rang through the phone. “Shall I send him in?”

You sit up straighter in your chair.  Why would Tom be here?  After all, he was the one who told you to have no contact with him.

“Um, no.” You said after your moment of confusion cleared. “No, I…I’m busy.  I don’t have time to talk to him.”

“Are you sure?” Felicity questioned. “He says it’s important—”

“No.  Whatever it is, it’s not important.” You said flatly, remembering how he had stormed out of your apartment last night. “And please add Mr. Holland to the list of people I don’t want to take calls from anymore.”

You hung up the phone before Felicity could respond, sitting back in your chair.  Why on earth was Tom calling after what he had said last night?  What could be so important?  He must know you had no desire to see him.  Yet here he was.

Just then, there was a knock at the door, pulling you out of your thoughts.  You got up with a frustrated groan, pulling the door open wide.

“Felicity, please, just tell Mr. Holland to leave before—” You cut off abruptly as you looked up into Tom’s warm and worried brown eyes.

He was dressed in his usual suit and tie, his Rolex watch and T ring visible on the hand that was pressed against the frame of your door. His curls were slicked back as they always were, save for one stray strand hanging down in front of his face, as if he were frazzled.

“Why do you want Mr. Holland to leave?” He asked in a confused voice.

You huffed at his words. “Jesus, Tom, I don’t want to do this—”

“Did I…” He cleared his throat. “I-I’m sorry—”

“You should be!” You exploded, losing your composure for a split second.  Taking a calming breath, you pulled Tom into your office and shut the door behind him. “After what you did last night…Look, you know I’m not comfortable with PDA. My job is important to me, and I can’t have rumours about me dating museum donors flying around.”

“Of course.” Tom nodded quickly. “And when you said that, I…reacted poorly?”

His phrasing of the sentence made you pause.  It wasn’t so much a statement, but a question.  As if he couldn’t remember his exact reaction. You looked at him, confusion beginning to tinge your features as it did his.

“Yes, Tom.  You reacted poorly.” You cocked your head to the side. “Do you not remember…?”

“Of course I do.” Tom grabbed your hand, pulling you closer to him. “And I sincerely apologize, darling.  I was…stressed yesterday.  I took it out on you.  I overreacted.  That wasn’t right.” He gave you his signature charming smile. “Forgive me?”

“You really…you really hurt my feelings.” You said slowly. “A quick apology won’t make that better.”

“Of course not.” Tom agreed, squeezing your hand once. “No, I…I came here with an invitation, actually.  A peace offering.”

You bit your lip, hesitant but curious. “What…sort of peace offering?”

“I’d like for you to join me at my childhood home for dinner tonight.” Tom said in a confident tone. “All my brothers will be there, as will my mother…my father might even make an appearance, if work permits.”

Your head snapped up. “Your father?”

“Of course.  It is his home, after all.  And I am his eldest son.  I want you and him to get along.” Tom tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Is that alright?”

The truth was, it wasn’t alright.  Something about it didn’t sit well with you.  If Tom was trying to undermine his father’s business, expose his dirty dealings with Corewell, why would it matter if you got along with him?  Wouldn’t he expect you not to get along with him?

Your eyes flickered to the T ring on Tom’s hand again. Something about this wasn’t adding up, but you couldn’t place your finger on what it was.

“Y/N?” Tom interrupted your thoughts, chuckling. “I’m kind of waiting on an answer here…?”

“Alright.” You agreed faintly. “I’ll…accompany you to dinner.” You cleared your throat and looked back at your desk. “I just…I have some work to finish up, alright?  Will you wait?”

Tom nodded. “I can bring the car around, or—”

“Or,” You interrupted, an idea forming in your mind. “Why don’t we meet…where we first met?  Do you remember where that is?”

Tom laughed. “Of course I do.  I’ll never forget it.”

You nodded. “Right, so…I’ll meet you out there in a bit, alright?  I’ll be quick, I promise.”

Tom pressed a quick kiss to your lips before leaving. The moment he was gone, you quickly strutted to your desk and grabbed your laptop, closing it and tucking it in your bag.  The gun from the first assassin was still in your bag as well, and it clicked against the laptop.  After what had happened to you in the last few days, you hadn’t felt safe leaving it at home.  Once your computer was secure, you went to your filing cabinet and opened the H drawer, thumbing through the files until you reached “Holland.”  You pulled out the file hastily, and tucked that in your bag as well, glancing over your shoulder as you did so.  If there was something strange going on, you were certain the answer was in these files.  It had to be.

You grabbed your jacket and slipped it on, slinging your bag over your shoulder.  Locking your office behind you, you began to make your way to the back alley where you and Tom first met, when he was the Silence.  When he saved your life.  You tried to sneak out without being noticed, but you were never able to walk through the museum without someone flagging you down.

“Ms. Y/L/N!” One of the interns called out to you. “Do you have a moment to answer a question for me?”

You sighed in frustration internally, but pasted a smile onto your face.  It was important to you that younger employees felt like they could rely on you. “Yes, Michael?  What is it?”

“I was looking at one of the paintings in the East wing earlier, and I think one of the info cards is incorrect?” Michael said nervously. “I—I don’t mean to say you made a mistake, but—”

“It’s okay, Michael.” You laughed a bit. “I’m human. I make mistakes.  Can you show me?”

Michael sighed in relief. “Yeah.  Yeah, I can.  Follow me.”

Michael led you down the hallways, past guests and various paintings. “It’s just up here, on the left.  It’s an impressionist—”

“Y/N!” You heard Tom call you from across the room. “There you are!  I’ve been waiting!”

You frowned in confusion as Tom smiled at you.  Your eyes flickered between him and the painting he was standing in front of—The Lovers II by Magritte.  The painting you met him and his brothers in front of at the investor’s gala.

Your suspicion that something was wrong increased.  Why would Tom come here, and not the alley? This wasn’t the place you first met. Maybe he meant the place you really met him, as Tom?  Somehow, you didn’t think that was true.

“Michael, I have to go.” You said quickly, pulling your bag closer to you. “Sorry, I—go find Angie, alright?  She’ll be able to check that for you.”

You quickly made your way to Tom.  He smiled and pressed a kiss to your cheek once you reached him.

“Here, love, let me take that for you.” He tried to grab your work bag from you, but you kept a hand on it.

“N-no!” You said urgently.  Tom gave you a strange look at your reaction, and you laughed it off, albeit nervously. “It’s—it’s alright, Tom.  Don’t worry.”

“Well, alright.  But if someone tells me I’m not being a gentleman, I’m blaming you.” He laughed, taking your hand.  “Come, darling.  The car is waiting.”

 The entire drive to Tom’s family home, you were anxious. You couldn’t stop feeling like something was off, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on what.  You felt like you were missing the bigger picture, and you weren’t used to it.  You hated it.

When Tom pulled into the driveway of his home (which was huge, of course.  It was expected), he turned the car off and turned to you. “Alright, darling.  What’s wrong?  Are you really so scared to meet my family?”

“A-a little.” You said, taking the excuse. “I just…don’t understand why it’s important for me to meet your father.  Isn’t he…evil?  He’s working with Corewell—”

“My father isn’t evil.” Tom cut across you, his voice sharp. “He’s a good man.  And he’s done a lot for me.”

“I’m sorry.” You said hastily.  Tom immediately looked closed off. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.” Tom cleared his throat. “Just…come on.  Come inside.”

Despite your reservations, you followed his instructions, allowing Tom to take your hand and lead you inside the house.

He opened the large double doors with ease, and your eyes widened as you took in the interior of the house.  It almost seemed like a modern Versailles inside, with large pillars and marble floors.  There was so much art on the walls it made your art historian heart skip a beat. You could pick out a few different famous artists from just a quick glance, and despite your reservations about art by such iconic artists being kept privately, you were impressed.  

Your heels clicked against the shiny floor as Tom led you towards a grand staircase, two steps ahead of you.  He began walking you up the steps, and you looked up at him in confusion.

“Tom, where are we—”

“Thomas!” A voice called from the bottom of the stairs. “Who is this?”

You turned around and saw a middle aged man in a suit waiting at the bottom of the stairs.  Glasses were perched on his face, and despite his unassuming appearance, Tom paused, his shoulders tensing at the voice. “Father.” Tom turned around, a smile forming on his face. “Hello.”

“Who is this?” Tom’s father repeated as you began walking down the stairs. “You know it’s proper to introduce your company to your parents.”

“Right.” Tom cleared his throat. “Father, this is Y/N Y/L/N, the assistant curator at the MoMA.  Y/N, this is my father, Dominic Holland.”

You swallowed hard, extending a hand out to him. “Hello, sir. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Ms. Y/L/N.” Dominic shook your hand.  His touch was cold, and his handshake hard. “I’ve heard…so much about you.  The pleasure is all mine.”

Something about his greeting unnerved you.  Maybe it was because you knew how he really made his money, but it felt as if it was more than that.  It felt like, as much as you knew about him…he knew as much about you. That made you uneasy.

You just smiled again, trying to hide your feelings.  Tom cleared his throat again.

“Y/N will be joining us for dinner, Father.” Tom said, looking down.  Around his family, his demeanor changed than from what you knew. “But first…may I have a word with you about business?”

Dominic glanced at you again but nodded. “Of course.  Let’s head to my office.”

Tom leaned down and kissed your cheek, but it felt so much colder than it ever has before. “Why don’t you head to my old bedroom, hm? I’ll meet you there.  Just wait for me, alright?”

Your smile faded. “Wait for you?”

“Yeah.  Just wait.” Tom walked past you to his father and walked off with him.

 You watched as they disappeared around the corner of the stairs.  What could they need to discuss?  You pulled your bag tight against you, so aware of the information that was inside it. For some reason, you knew that you needed to keep your bag tight to you all night.

Still, you walked up the stairs and down the hallway, searching for Tom’s childhood bedroom.  As you walked, you realized that for all the priceless art all over the wall, there was not one photo of Tom, the twins, or Paddy, let alone William.  Why would there be no photos of the child who went missing?  The longer you were in the Holland house, the more you felt like you were walking into some sort of elaborate set up.  Everything was too perfect.  Like it had been carefully manipulated to look that way.

At the end of the flawlessly decorated—and flawlessly cold—hallway, you found two doors parallel to each other.  Both doors were monogrammed, the one to the left with a W and the one to the right with a T.  Your hand reached for the door with a W first, but paused just before touching the handle.  Walking into the bedroom of a dead teenager…you felt like that would be crossing a line.  Instead, you turned around and opened Tom’s bedroom door.

As you walked in, you were struck with the same impression that the rest of the house gave you.  Everything was immaculately decorated, expensive looking, and without any rough touches.  It was heartless.  There was nothing in here that gave any personality.  There was no hint of Tom in the grey bedspread or curtains hanging around the four poster bed.  There wasn’t even a speck of dust on the desk.  It was like the bedroom hadn’t been lived in, like it was just a showroom model in a furniture store.

You sat down on the bed, almost frightened to crease the sheets.  You had no idea how Tom could’ve bore growing up in a house that was built like a museum. Granted, he was away at boarding school a lot, but home should be home.  Not a catalogue picture.

As you looked around the room, you noticed one difference in Tom’s bedroom from the rest of the house.  Sitting on his bedside table was a picture of him and William. Judging from all the photos of William that you’d found online and in news articles, the picture was taken close to the time he disappeared.

You picked up the picture frame, smiling to yourself.  Tom and William had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and they were both wearing jerseys with their boarding school’s crest in on the shoulder.  Their foreheads were sweaty, and their curls messy.  You guessed the photo was taken after one of their soccer games.

But the longer you looked at it, the more something about the photo, like the rest of the house, seemed off.  You lifted the photo closer to your face, examining its every detail. What was it?  What was strange?

Finally, you found the needle in the proverbial haystack. In the photo, neither Tom nor William had a scar at the top right corner of their lips.  When you pulled the mask off Tom, right before you kissed him for the first time, you noticed the scar.  Because there was no scar in the photo, it meant he got it after the photo was taken.  That wasn’t what alarmed you.

What alarmed you was that you finally realized why you always thought Tom looked different when you didn’t see him as the Silence.  It wasn’t because of his aura, or his attitude, or his clothes.  What made him look different was the lack of a scar on his lip.  A small detail, easy to miss when you weren’t looking for it. But now?  It seemed so obvious.  Someone was lying to you.  Someone wasn’t who they said they were.

You thought back to your fight with Tom, how he appeared to have no memory of it the next day, the words he said to you before he left your apartment.

“I’m not Tom.  I never was.  Not really.”

You dropped the photo onto the floor, the glass shattering as the frame hit the ground.  Your hand went to your mouth as your mind raced, and you grabbed your bag, reaching to pull out the Holland file.  Before you could grab it, however, you heard a noise outside.  You ran to the door and locked it before turning back to the bed. But the noise didn’t disappear.

The knock came again, and with a shudder, you turned back to the only other place it could be coming from.  The window.

And you saw the masked face of the Silence staring back at you.

{part VIII}

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #tom holland fanficti #tom holland fic #tom holland imagine #peter parker #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x you #peter parker x reader #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker fic #peter parker imagine #spider-man #spider man x reader #spider man x y/n #spider man x you #spider man fanfiction #spider man fic #spider man imagines #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #avengers imagines #avenger fanfiction #avengers fic #marvel fic #spider man: homecoming #spider man: far from home #writing

[voidsettle]

Warm Flanders

Indulging our traveling desire and continuing the newly developed tradition of European Christmas markets, we bought tickets to Belgium. This trip had its peculiarities - and a unique aftertaste. Welcome to the capital of Europe!

Panorama of Bruges from Belfry (I assume, the point where Brendan Gleeson's character jumps off in the movie 'In Bruges'

I don't know how we chose Belgium - but it all started with just Brussels, and then grew to another three towns. I suspect we may have a psychological condition.

After Brussels, Bruges was an obvious addition to the trip. Possibly the most well-known of tourist destinations in Belgium, it features a well-preserved medieval town so quaint like it crawled out of a fairy tale.

The movie 'In Bruges' (a nice piece of popularized arthaus) added to the fame of the place. The town in this flick is a character of its own - it serves as the premise and the plot twist, it helps to make hard choices and aids the protagonist. Besides, the film has gorgeous cast. Seriously, look it up if you've never seen it - or rewatch if you have.

Being in Belgium (and, more importantly, its northern part, Flanders - probably the most history-heavy region), I absolutely had to see Antwerp. Ghent was a curious little addition that we didn't plan - but that happened between Bruges and Antwerp just because we had time and opportunity. Stay tuned for more.

Brussels: Art and Chocolate

Rue de la Chaufferette/Lollepotstraat, LGBTQ art street in the inner City of Brussels

Brussels is a weird city. Commonly I enjoy places that don't mind you roaming the streets (think Rome, Bangkok, New York). Brussels is however different. It etched into my memory as grey and rainy (I barely got a chance to snap a photo), and multifaceted to the point of utter incomprehensibility.

That is partly on national communities. Our free-tour guide mused on the immigration agenda of the city: nearly 80% of the current population (first and second generations) are not native to Belgium. The city, being the administrative and political center of Europe, is the very definition of a cultural melting pot.

Only a day before we arrived, French workers had a strike against ever-growing prices - thus all of Brussels was covered in barricades (not sure about the name, but something like Cheval de frise or knife-rest (aka Spanish rider) obstacles; all cold metal and barbwire, brutal).

But Brussels also flaunts its historic heritage and celebrates its art. The whole city is covered in street art - most notably scenes and characters from comics and statements in favor of LGBTQ community. Street decorations and overhead lamps of different designs and splendor turn the city into an exhibition of light.

Altmejd, 2015. Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique/Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van Belgie

The more traditional artistry is spread within the cluster of museums of Mont des Arts/Kunstberg, most notably the Royal Museu of Fine Arts that features both old masters (David, Rembrandt, Rubens - and a whole hall and Google-partnered tour program dedicated to Bruegel) and new masters (some of my beloved Impressionists including Van Gogh, Serat, Gaugin, and a couple of Rodins). Another pearl, Magritte's museum is just down the stairs.

We've also followed one of the most bizarre quests I've ever had, looking for all three pissing monuments of Brussels - the symbol-status Manneken Pis, his female version Jeanneke Pis and a non-fountain canine variation Het Zinneke. Belgian people are weird.

We had some hysterical fun trying to decipher one of the ads on a bus stop. It claimed certain Subea was the best gift for your loved ones on Christmas. Passersby undoubtedly believed us crazy as we tried to identify the thing - and never came close to guessing. Look it up, it's hilarious.

Blue street art, Brussels

Built on the time-tested principles of trading cities, Brussels preserves the tradition of market squares. In early December, the downtown is covered in Christmas towns and motley crowds, framed in softly shimmering lights. It's full of flavors of waffles with cream, and frites, and gluhwein, and seafood, and sausages.

Brussels is full of cyclists (even more so than Copenhagen), full of churches, and homeless, and nationalities - cuisines, skin tones, languages. The signs duplicated in French and Dutch do not help location purposes in any significant way.

Nevermind the confusing feelings I developed for Brussels, there is one thing I should mention with firm praise - chocolate. Walk the streets and have a cup of hot chocolate - it's literally chocolate of your choice melted in hot milk. Eat warm Liege waffles topped with chocolate and cream. Buy a set of (regular) chocolate boxes with discount - or pay a visit to Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert to learn about chocolate as art. It's expensive, yes, but oh is it worth every cent!

Break a chocolate bar of preference - dark works best - into pieces, add to the cup and pour with hot milk. Stir until it melts. Enjoy the taste of Belgium.

St Michael and Gudula Cathedral, Brussels

What to see in Brussels:

Grand Place

Brussels Town Hall

Residence of the Dukes of Brabant

Maison du Roi/Broodhuis

Manneken Pis

Jeanneke Pis

Het Zinneke

Bourse/Beurs (stock exchange)

Galleries Royales Saint-Hubert

St Michael and Gudula Cathedral

chapelle de la Madeleine/Magdalenakapel

Mont des Arts/Kunstberg

Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique/Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van Belgie (Musee Oldmasters, Musee Magritte, musical instruments museum)

Royal Palace

Parc de Bruxelles/Warandepark

eglise Notre-Dame au Sablon/Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ten Zavelkerk

eglise royale Sainte-Marie/Koninklijke Sint-Mariakerk

National Basilica of the Sacred Heart

Atomium

Royal Palace of Laeken

Bruges: The Belfry and the Waffle Houses

Rozenhoedkaai, Bruges

Belgian capital is the least Flemish city among those I've visited. Bruges, on the other hand, seems to bear the imprint of one of the richest regions of medieval Europe. The town is neat and cute, full of waffle houses with stair-step facades, all red brick and yellowish stone. The streets are carefully crafted and well-groomed; they stretch in slow curves, and the houses crowding each side chant their stories to the tourists in a never-ending lullaby.

Houses plaster all over each other - it feels like each street has only one building that was actually constructed with 4 walls. The rest figured 'hey, here's a perfectly good empty wall right there, with nothing attached, why not stick to the side'.

The whole country is like that, one of the signature traits of Belgium, alongside angry cyclists and painted waffle houses.

Before walking to the main attraction (Belfry, naturally), we've decided to have a glass of beer in Halve Maan, one of the oldest breweries in town. We were pleasantly surprised by the sleepy emptiness, the fireside couches and craft beer (I've never had an 11° beer before, it felt almost as a shot of whiskey). In a slumbery, sheepish haze we walked around the Minnewaterpark with its swans and gardens dipped in green moisture.

Minnewaterpark. After the rainy, grey-ish Brussels, Bruges met us with sun-through-the-clouds and warmth worthy of mid-October. I finally got out my camera and snapped my way through the cute medieval city

The territory of Bruges is covered in canals - no wonder it's called the small Venice of the North, and the centuries-old architecture covers the town in a romantic blur. Even the long queues of Belfry (one person in, one out, and around half a hundred waiting for their turn) didn't disturb our dreamy mood. The view from above maps the whole town on the palm of your hands, and the stone parapet is covered in numbers and names of cities with arrows pointing the direction.

Carillon, a fascinating musical instrument that has several dozen bells connected to play melodies. The Belfry carillon plays a different melody every quarter of an hour

Belfry is gorgeous at sunset, especially observed from Grote Markt - towering, starkly contrasted against the fading skies.

Bruges is probably best-known for its streets - after you've seen the main attractions, there's no clear itinerary, but just wander around and get lost in the medieval brick labyrinth. You can visit the old windmills - each with its own unique name - and the corner of Groenerei, which is less romantic in winter but still a nice place for a romantic rendezvous. Or just roam the streets and inhale the ambiance of this old town that looks like it jumped straight out of a fairytale with enchanted castles, simplistic plotline where good always conquers evil and a set of enjoyably cardboard characters.

Sometimes it's fun to experience something so far from real life. Can't disagree with the philosophic view of Fiennes's character from 'In Bruges'.

What to see in Bruges:

Kasteel de la Faille

Sashuis

Minnewaterpark

Sint-Janshospitaal-Memlingmuseum

St Salvator's cathedral

Church of Our Lady (featuring Michelangelo's Madonna met Kind)

Bonifaciusbrug

the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Rozenhoedkaai (the most photographed spot in Bruges)

't Brugse Vrije

City Hall

Basilique du Saint-Sang

Brugge markt

Belfry and Market Halls

Provinciaal Hof

Jan Breydel en pieter de Coeninck memorial

St James's church

Jan Van Eyck memorial

windmills (de Coelewey, de Nieuwe Papegaai, Sint Janshuismolen, Bonne Chiere)

Sint-Annakerk

Gronerei

Train Tales

​Belgium is unexpectedly bad at doing trains. We heard the first bell as we tried to get out of Brussels. The Northern train station has a clear division between two worlds. The ground floor belongs to hobos and (most probably) unemployed immigrants - this is the world of half-light, scary coughs and little noises, empty food wrappings, garbage, people wrapped in multiple layers of dirty blankets and coats. The upper floors are obviously European, well-lit, with shops, 24/7 information desks and wending machines. The contrast is so stark that it's frightening.

(Under)ground floors of Antwerpen-Centraal

Yet this was but a warning. For some unknown reason, the schedule of Belgian trains is really complicated - we couldn't make sense of it using just timetables and scoreboards. This was a shock for me specifically - I just went to Italy a month prior, where I didn't even need to talk to anyone to understand where to buy tickets and how to get from point A to point B.

Obviously we were not alone confused by the whole system - by the machine selling tickets, a nice lady was spending her working hours explaining stupid tourists how this works. She offered us a ticket we didn't consider - it could take us to 10 destinations (we needed 6, and decided to spend 2 more for a short detour to Ghent before Antwerp; profit).

The complications started when we failed to notice the class of the coach we were boarding. Truth to be told, there was a number '1' on the side - but the inside didn't look any different from second class, so I'm not sure what's the deal. 10 minutes into the ride, a railway employee walked in and aggressively started to demand extra payment to 'upgrade' our tickets - about 10 euro per person. None of us were allowed to leave the first class coach for the second.

The thing about that whole situation was: of all the people in the coach, only one woman was aware of its first class status. The rest were bewildered and looked like lost tourists (some of us surely were) who forgot to check the number on the side of the carriage. Which, frankly, didn't feel like the people's fault. A Spanish family nearly started a brawl with the guy - which earned my compassion but also a portion of solid mirth.

Hilarious experience - but also quite frustrating. Not too fond of Belgian train system.

Ghent: The Castle and the Histrionic Weather

Gravensteen, Ghent

I didn't expect this short detour would turn out this satisfying. Don't get me wrong, there's not much to do in Ghent in the evening. In a manner traditional for the whole country, life dies away after 6PM. As nightfall covers the streets, the shops and restaurants close, and the whole city seems deserted. There are some late passersby, some groups of youth and random tourists but they're not common, especially further from downtown.

But the architecture is spectacular nonetheless. Korenmarkt (basically, central square) with Church of Saint Nicholas is the heart of the city. The sites are mostly all on the same line - Stadhuis Gent and Belfort, Saint Bavo cathedral and a couple of nearby 'palaces' that were actually residences of (very) wealthy merchants, and Saint Michael's church on the other side of Korenmarkt, across the Leie river.

It was enjoyable to just wander the empty streets quite aimlessly, bumping into architectural sites curious things here and there

Gravensteen is exactly the prototype you imagine when someone says 'a castle'. It's the type of medieval structure you drew as a kid, with the battlements and turrets. This is where a valiant knight came to rescue a fair maiden from an evil king. It's The Ultimate Castle.

In yet another plot twist, the weather in Ghent was unpredictably fun. It made us giggle at its hysterical fits.

Rain, wind and damp autumnal warmth changed each other in bizarre epileptic seizures.

One moment, it decided to rain - and the downpour started as soon as we opened our umbrellas. 2 minutes later it all stopped as if nothing happened. Ten minutes passed - and terrible gusts of wind that nearly knocked us down. Sure enough, soon it was warm and mellow again. Best advice when the weather is in such a theatrical mood: keep an umbrella with you at all times.

The walk from the city center to the train station is quite long, about an hour. But at least the building of the train station is worth exploring - it has great inner decorations all over the ceiling that imitate medieval style. Outside, by the largest bike parking I've seen after Copenhagen's sleeping districts, a sad man was playing his wistful sax; there seems to be something about Belgium and saxophones.

What to see in Ghent:

Korenmarkt (basically, central square)

Church of Saint Nicholas

Saint Michael's church

Gravensteen

Stadhuis Gent

Belfort

Saint Bavo cathedral

Antwerp: The Train Station and the Sky

Antwerpen-Centraal Train Station, Antwerp

After the grey cold rain of Brussels and the crazy run of tourist-packed Bruges and (devastatingly) empty Ghent, Antwerp was all sunshine and warmth. Easily the most enjoyable time I've had in Belgium.

Antwerp is a mild, soft city, quite self-indulgent - it has less tourists than either Brussels or Bruges - and completely immersed in its own thoughts. Traces of the eternal, undying energy that preserves big cities can be found everywhere.

First things first, we went to see the jewel of Antwerp's sightseeing itinerary - Antwerpen-Centraal, the main train station of the city. It has 4 floors, with trains arriving on each of them - it is really impressive, especially as the whole structure is sunlit through the ribbed glass roof and the underground floors are dipped in orange-and-purple lights, the true impressionist study of light and color.

Antwerp has a clear itinerary, as if the city was built with the idea of easy navigation in mind. Starting from Antwerpen-Centraal and past the diamond district, the shopping streets of Antwerp start and run right to the heart of the city, Grote Markt. The walk there is short if one ignores the detour sites like the beautiful neoclassical Bourla theater with round-ish colonnade façade, the house of Rubens turned museum, the oldest house in Antwerp build circa 1480, completely wooden and still inhabited, or the baroque St Charles Borromeo church, which simplistic interior is decorated with astonishing woodwork.

The notorious diamond district of Antwerp is located right beside the train station. History has it that it all started with shops opening here so that rich people coming to Antwerp to buy diamonds could keep their incognito and leave as soon as the deal was sealed, without the need to visit the town.

Grote Markt and the nearby Groenplaats are connected with a short street that features another pearl of Antwerp, the Cathedral of Our Lady. This majestic Gothic temple is narrowly surrounded by the old houses of trading guilds glued to its every side. You cannot actually see the side walls of the Cathedral (which is another trademark feature of Flemish towns - a dead giveaway that trade was of utmost importance, and that secular and religious matters were closely connected).

Grote Markt itself looks just like other main squares in Belgium - a lot of space adapted for Christmas markets during this time of year, crowded by waffle houses with gilded statues and inscriptions dating back to the Autumn of the Middle Ages, and towering Brabantine Gothic spire, the cynosure of the city.

Stroh violin player. Stroviol is a popular instrument of street musicians, seen all over Flanders

The next thing I was agitated to see was Sint-Annatunnel - a 1/2 km tunnel under the riverbed, fully built for walking on foot, riding on bicycles and even for motorized vehicles. The escalators are wood-paneled and lacquered, the photos on the walls tell the history of construction of the tunnel as one descends.

Quay along river Scheldt, shipyard and windmills

On our way to MAS, we've taken a turn into the Antwerp red lights district. As I was quite shamelessly staring at the girls (literally) displayed in the windows, my friend surprised me, hilariously paying attention to some nesting boxes on a random tree instead. Some way to explore the city.

Don't miss on the chance to visit MAS museum. For a tourist, it's a golden opportunity: free entrance to the rooftop with stunning night panorama of Antwerp lights. From up above, the lights on the windmills twinkle red, painting an ominous image in the night skies. The walls of the interior are covered with posters of modern art (sometimes inspiring, sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening). Besides, MAS is open till 10 PM, a rare case for Belgium.

MAS pays the oddest homages, and one of them is to Harry Potter franchise: the building features floor 9 and 1/2.

While on the roof of MAS, the pragmatism and commercial genes of Flemish people deliver nothing but pure delight. The nearby houses host advertisements for the visitors of the museum: cafes and restaurants ornament their awnings with offers of hot drinks and rich meals.

What to see in Antwerp:

Antwerpen-Centraal

diamond block

Leysstraat 32-34 and 27 (twin buildings)

Meir (shopping street)

Rubenshuis

Bourlaschouwburg

Boerentoren

Sint-Carolus Borromeuskerk

Groenplaats

Cathedral of Our Lady

Grote Markt

Brabo fountain

Stadhuis Antwerpen

Het Steen and Lange Wapper memorial

Sint-Annatunnel

Stoelstraat 11 (the oldest house of Antwerp)

Sint-Pauluskerk

Schipperskwartier (red lights district)

MAS museum (rooftop viewpoint)

What to eat:

chocolate (in all forms, whether it's box of finest pralines, a chocolate bar, or a cup of hot chocolate)

waffles (fillings vary; I personally prefer dark chocolate and whipped cream. Belgian people however have plain waffle with sugar powder)

beer (one of the oldest and most important produces of the region; brewing beer is fine art here)

frites (basically French fries, but don't call them that - it's offensive, given the fact they were not invented in France; the locals still hold their grudge over the matter)

mussels (Brussels specialty, usually go with frites on the side)

Flanders As It Is

Wandelterras Noord, quay of Antwerp, near Sint-Annatunnel. The sun gave us its last warmth of the day as we strolled along the Antwerp quay, the dark silhouettes of seagulls scattering sunbeams as we scared them off the railings

The towns of Flanders are easily recognizable. The main square is always called 'Grote Markt'; the combination of a cathedral (usually of Our Lady), a stadhuis and a belfry impending over the town is mandatory. Old houses of stone (and sometimes even wood), with stepped roofs and intricate ornaments. Waffles and chocolate on every corner, infinite varieties of beer in any pub. Add cyclists during the day or bicycle parking at night, cobblestone streets, a culture co-depending with trade - and you have a perfect portrait of a Flemish city.

It was a little vacation we all need from time to time - not spectacular but fun, warm and surprisingly full of color in this grim, gray time of the year.

#belgium #brussels #bruges #ghent #antwerp #flanders

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Mask art research

1. Gillian Wearing, Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II, 1994

Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II is a colour video lasting slightly under thirty-six minutes that features ten scenes, each showing a disguised person telling a secret in an unedited monologue. All of the speakers are depicted from the shoulders upwards and are heavily lit, so that their strong shadow is projected onto a white wall behind them. In some cases they gaze directly at the camera, while in others they look away. The individuals’ disguises vary in character – some entirely cover their faces with masks, while others wear wigs and other accoutrements, such as sunglasses and a fake beard, but leave their faces wholly or partly visible. The costume elements look cheap and somewhat exaggerated, with the wigs generally being large and the masks sometimes appearing cartoon-like. The confessions vary in length and content and have loose structures, suggestive of improvisation. All relate to sexual acts, crimes or acts of revenge: for example, two speakers discuss experiences of sleeping with prostitutes and one talks about stealing a computer from a school. The voice of an interviewer is heard just once during the work, asking one of the speakers their age.

This is the second version of a work of the same name that was originally produced by the British artist Gillian Wearing in London in 1994. Wearing began the project by placing an advertisement in the magazine Time Out that contained the text that makes up its title (minus the appended ‘Version II’). When respondents met Wearing, she supplied them with a range of costume elements, allowing them to construct a disguise. She then filmed them relating a secret in whatever way they chose. Originally shot in Betacam format, the video was edited and then transferred onto VHS tape. In 1997 Wearing re-edited the work to produce this second version, partly because the sound had deteriorated during the transfer to VHS and partly because during the initial edit she had cut down two of the confessions and she subsequently decided to feature them all at full length, with the result being that the second version is approximately six minutes longer than the first. This later version is considered ‘unique’ in that it was not released as part of an edition, and Tate also owns one copy of the 1994 original, which was produced in an edition of ten. When exhibited, the work must be shown on a television monitor in a relatively small space measuring approximately 3 x 3 metres, with some form of seating provided, preferably a sofa.

The title of this work primarily makes reference to the advertisement Wearing used to attract participants, emphasising the fact that the speakers actively chose to contact the artist and appear in her video. 

The curator Russell Ferguson has argued that this work simultaneously involves an ‘uncomfortable’ level of intimacy and a feeling that ‘we have heard nothing we can be sure of’, since the speakers could be performing for the camera or simply lying (Russell Ferguson, ‘Show Your Emotions’, in De Salvo, Wearing, Ferguson and others 1999, p.36). Regarding the possibility that the speakers might somehow be performing in this work, Wearing stated in 1997 that ‘I noticed that they had taken time to mull over what they were going to say. One or two actually brought pieces of paper to prompt themselves. Things were set up, and it was ... ambiguous – that is where the art or the fiction came in’ (Wearing in Turner 1998, accessed 2 June 2015).

Further reading Grady T. Turner, ‘Gillian Wearing’, Bomb, no.63, Spring 1998, http://bombmagazine.org/article/2129/gillian-wearing, accessed 2 June 2015.

2., 3., 4., 5. Cindy Sherman, Untitled A, B, C, D, 1975

Untitled A, B, C and D belong to a more extensive series of photographs Sherman made while she was studying art at the State University College at Buffalo, New York (1972-6). She selected five images from the series and arbitrarily labelled them A to E. They were enlarged and reprinted in editions of ten. Sherman has explained the origins of this Untitled series:

These images were from a series of head shots that I made to show the process of turning one character into another. At that time I was merely interested in the use of make-up on a face as paint used on a blank canvas. I was experimenting with several types of characters – i.e. starting with an old person who then gradually became a drag queen. While the original series showed the entire process (about fifty 3” x 5” photos), later I chose a smaller group to make into slightly larger separate pieces. I unintentionally shot them with a very narrow depth of field, leaving only certain parts of the face in focus, which gives some of the features [a] malleable quality.

(Quoted in Contemporary Art, p.98.)

Sherman initially studied painting at Buffalo, making self-portraits and realistic copies of images she found in magazines and photographs. She began using photography after being introduced to Conceptual art by a teacher who inspired her to bring her childhood activities and obsessions into her work. She has said that as a child she was introverted, adding that ‘as a girl I used to always enjoy dressing up and being made-up. A lot of girls might like to look like their moms, but I would try to look like a monster or an old lady. Maybe I could have been an actress.’ (Quoted in Paul Taylor, ‘Cindy Sherman’, Flash Art, no.124, Oct. – Nov. 1985, p.78.) In this series of images Sherman combined painting (on her face) with photographic portraiture, assuming the personae of three female characters of different ages and one male. Variations in hairstyle and the use of hats in two of the photographs are the only props used. Below the chin the artist is bare. Two pale lines running down from either side of her neck, the result of being in the sun in a halterneck top, are clearly visible in each image and emphasise the theatricality of the work. The character in Untitled A wears a crocheted hat and has the most obvious make-up. Her dark eye-liner and lipstick, accompanied by heavy rouge just under her cheekbones to thin her face, suggest a woman in her thirties. Her submissive smile and the angle at which her head is tilted convey the sense of someone shy and anxious to please. The character in Untitled B, who is male, has joined-up eyebrows, and darkening under his eyes and chin and between his nose and mouth. For this image Sherman wore a cloth cap and pulled her chin into her neck to give the character a genial, comic air. The character in Untitled C has the least facial darkening. Her makeup mainly consists of thick mascara on her eyelashes, contributing to the wide-eyed innocent look she aims at the viewer from under her fringe. She appears only marginally older than the character in Untitled D, whose hair is held back with a pair of butterfly grips. For this pose Sherman darkened her face between the eyes, under the chin and in a line between her nose and the edges of her mouth. In all the images, Sherman has combined evident staging with the successful portrayal of a character type. This was later to become the artist’s signature technique, permitting her to evoke a wide range of emotional and thematic registers. Bus Riders 1976  is a series of photographs Sherman made shortly after leaving college, before she moved to New York and made her famous series of Untitled Film Stills 1977-80.

6. René Magritte, The Future of Statues, 1937

This work is made from a plaster copy of the death mask of the French Emperor Napoleon. A death mask is made by placing a mixture of plaster or wax over a person's face once they have died to create a mould. Magritte painted at least five of these casts, each with sky and clouds. The artist’s friend the surrealist poet Paul Nougé suggested an association between death, dreams and the depth of the sky. He commented: ‘a patch of sky traversed by clouds and dreams [can] transfigure the very face of death in a totally unexpected way’.

7., 8. John Stezaker, Mask XIII and Mask XIV, 2006

Mask XIII is a collage created by superimposing a postcard on a black and white photograph. The photograph is a film publicity portrait of an unidentifiable actress taken during the 1940s or 1950s. The postcard is a colour print mounted upside down over the actress’s face. It shows an image of a ruined stone building partially surrounded by trees. Stezaker has positioned it so that the inverted building appears framed within the actress’s face: the edge of the building matches the actress’s hairline at the right side of her face and a tree trunk and branches continuing the line of her face’s left side. Dark areas of foliage either side of the building align with her dark hair. A second tree in front of the ruin extends down the image to connect with the woman’s hand which is raised to her chin emerging from a narrow section of sky at the top of the postcard. At the bottom of the postcard, which traverses the subject’s forehead, the inverted caption ‘Nîmes – Le Temple de Diane’ identifies the ruin as the temple of Diana at Nîmes in France. The form of the inverted temple and its positioning over the woman’s face have the effect of evoking a skull: three rounded arches leading into darker spaces suggesting eye and nose-sockets and the broken upper edge of the ruin drawing the line of a broken and toothless jaw.

Mask XIV is a collage created by superimposing a postcard on a black and white photograph. The photograph is a film publicity portrait of an unidentifiable actor taken during the 1940s or 1950s. The postcard is a colour image mounted over the actor’s face. It shows a rocky cavern in which a sandy track curves around a central pillar. On the bottom left the card is captioned ‘Zig zag path, Folkestone’. At this point it covers part of the actor’s signature on his portrait above his right shoulder. Part of his first name – ‘Barry’ – is visible on the print. The postcard photograph appears to have been taken from inside a cave or under a bridge looking out through two openings towards the light. Stezaker has positioned the card on the actor’s face so that the dark silhouette of the rocky openings and the curvature of the cavern line up with the contours of the actor’s face. This placement causes an anthropomorphic reading of the postcard image – the two openings to the light suggest eyes connected by the rocky central column which covers the actor’s face in the position of his nose. Initiated around 1980, the series of Mask collages developed from the Film Still collages, such as The Trial, The Oath and Insert. The Masks all follow a similar and deceptively simple format: a film publicity portrait of a star whose face is covered by a postcard – ostensibly a mask – which opens a window into another space, paradoxically suggesting a view behind the mask constituted by the actor’s face. Initially the postcards were images of bridges and caves which in some instances united two or more protagonists. Over the years Stezaker has extended his range of imagery to include tunnels, caverns, rock formations such as stalactites and stalagmites, railway tracks, historic ruins and monuments (as in Mask XIII, 2006), woodland clearings and paths, as well as streams, waterfalls (as in Mask XI, 2005), lakes and the sea. Stezaker began collecting film stills in 1973 but was not able to afford photographic portraits of film stars until the early 1980s when their price dropped. The first portraits the artist used were damaged or of forgotten film actors, unnamed and anonymous. He has commented:

The Masks were inspired by reading Elias Canetti’s essay on masks and unmasking in his wonderful book Crowds and Power which inspired so much of my work at this time ... I was also teaching a course on Bataille and the origins of art which focused on the mask as the origin and point of convergence of all the arts. Canetti’s idea of the mask as a covering of absence and, in its fixity, as a revelation of death, alongside my discovery of Blanchot’s Space of Literature, was an important turning point in my thinking and in my approach to my work. I usually think of the key dates being 1979 and 1980 as marking a yielding to pure image-fascination and as a release from any function societal or transgressive in the work. The Masks were a response in practice to the Canetti/Blanchot idea of the ‘death’s space’ of the image and consolidated the sense of pure fascination and the desire for ‘exile from life in the world of images’, an ideal I saw in the practice of Joseph Cornell.

(Letter to the author, 26 October 2007.)

Stezaker shares with Joseph Cornell (1903-72) the Surrealist technique of apparently irrational juxtaposition and the evocation of nostalgia through his focus on outdated imagery, collected and pondered over many years. While Stezaker’s use of film stills and publicity portraits of the 1940s and 1950s stems from his boyhood experience of encountering these images on the outside of cinemas advertising films from which he was excluded because of his youth (letter to the author, 26 October 2007), his choice of postcards tends towards the Romantic tradition of nature and the sublime. The image of the zig-zag path relates to the woodland path or holzweg, a path leading – in German folklore such as that published by the Brothers Grimm in the early years of the twentieth century – to possible danger and death. Stezaker became interested in the historical phenomenon of the holzweg through his reading of Landscape and Memory (published New York, 1995) by the British art historian, Simon Schama (born 1945). The artist’s juxtaposition and careful alignment of the postcard image with the publicity portrait create an effect related to the concept of the uncanny as described by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in his 1925 essay, ‘The Uncanny’. Freud analysed the feeling of the uncanny aroused most forcefully by the fantastic stories of the Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), in particular his tale The Sandman (first published in Nachtstücke, 1817). He relates the sense of horror experienced by the protagonist Nathaniel not only to the mechanical doll Olympia, who appears real, but more significantly to a fear of losing ones eyes which he connects to the Oedipal castration complex. In the Masks the subjects’ eyes are covered; the collage intervention substitutes blankness or holes – dark and empty or leading into other spaces – creating the disturbing sensation of seeing death beneath the features of a living being.

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How surrealism affected modern artists?

Surrealism is truth beyond realism. A form of art which was born as a response to the harshness of reality, to the horrors of the war and tragic events which marked the early 1920s. What was specific about surrealism was the fact that like any unpreceded art movements, artists were making artworks under hypnosis & automatic writing, conscious put together with unconscious as they believed that surrealism is the symbolic language to the subconscious. The Surrealism movement extended in each cultural movement, including politics. Artists, like René Magritte and André Masson were determined and believed in the cause and concept of this movement. They believed that through this movement they can escape from the reality and creating a new one, changing the society, by giving them a subtle replacement. They taught the world to see the art not just visually and literally, but at a subconscious level using details of an inner reality.

In this personal study, I will aim towards finding a reasonable answer to how surrealism affected the contemporary art, more specifically the digital one and the reason why I made this choice is due to the fact that the surrealism gave to the world a completely different view on art using the science of the psychology. I will be looking at several artists’ works, especially Brooke Shaden, in order to find out how surrealism affected their style. I will cover their techniques and how their composition is meant to represent a specific thing so that I can apply some of the concepts in my own work as my project is about surrealism too. I will explore the use of the modern technologies in order to create art and how artists express themselves. Therefore I will look at the work of artists such as Kyle Thompson and Joel Robisson and how surrealism is represented in their works and with what aim.

Brooke Shaden

Brooke Shaden is an American fine art photographer. She became the youngest artist in The Annenberg Space for Photography’s ‘’Digital Darkroom’’ exhibition at the age of 24. Her works ‘’The Re-imagining of Ophelia’’ (from 10 images) were exhibited at the JoAnne Artman Gallery and the first image was used as the cover art for an adult novel ‘’A Wounded Name’’.

‘’My photographs are meant to be read and analyzed. (…) I explore death and surrealism through my photography in order to show that reality has intricate ties with fantasy.’’

I chose to look at her works because she represents the unusual and she makes sure that symbolism is present in her works as I want to create in my narrative project a little world of an adventurous girl going through different obstacles as often I imagine scenarios how people struggle with little things in their life, she places herself in different worlds where she would rather be in as the impossible things become achievable in those worlds. She is questioning the definition of life and what it actually means to be alive, which is significant for me learning more about surrealism because it pulls the viewer out of the common world by placing them in a space which feels more alive.

 Limitless

In this image there is a young girl falling in an abyss. The setting of the image seems to be in the nature at a certain height, because of the background which is blue and gives us the feeling of a place which is situated high. I would describe this image as breath-taking, particularly because of the obliquely girls position and her toes being exactly at the edge of the cliff which keeps the viewer in suspense.

The artwork is made through photo-manipulation. It suggests us that is made from several different photos which are placed together in Photoshop after which they’ve been blended to create a realistic effect. The artwork is quite realistic and it represents something possible, however there are details that prove that the image is not real because of the dream like setting. The action that takes place in this image is very real to the viewer, however due to the angle of the girl’s body position we can clearly tell that physically it could never happen in such a colloquial way.

The presence of the surrealism in this image is really strong because of the setting, composition and the concept behind it. Through this artwork Shaden is trying to illustrate a limitless world where everything is achievable, but not with the lack of really hard work. She is illustrating the risks that threaten us, as human beings, in order to achieve our full potential which become our limits that hold us back. This image is showing us that limits disappear once we stop believing in them because they are a construct of our insecurities and once we jump out we create new boundaries that we previously thought they were impossible.

‘’To stop putting limits on ourselves, the people around us, and even as far as the things we see everyday? When we finally take that pressure off of ourselves to fit the definition of who we are we become free to be the person we could be.’’

This image sends to the viewer a powerful message, because there are so many ways to represent how people feel restricted due to their insecurities and Shaden chose to represent how a person has no boundaries when it comes to self-imposed restrictions and this is the main purpose of surrealism, to spread a message to the society and to help them fight with problems which come from the inside, from the unconscious.

This is another artwork of Shaden’s where surrealism is vastly used.  The image shows us a person and its easy to deduct that it is a woman, even though almost half of the upper-body and the image is covered with numerous keys. The setting is a dark, mysterious room because of the patches present on the walls and the floor. Everything in this image is possible, but the concept behind this artwork is much deeper than just someone surrounded/trapped by big sized keys. Shaden covered only the upper part of the image with keys for a reason, because in this way she covers the head of the woman (of herself in this case) to show how one is creating thoughts to trap themselves. Also, she chose the setting to be in a room because the room represents one’s restriction/thought from which he doesn’t have a key to escape and when searching for one there are endless keys to open the door and we are still in the cell we trapped ourselves in.

Both images were created recently, a couple of months ago and are part of a project called ‘’31 Days of Self-Portrait’’. Shaden is well known for her signature style of pieces like the one used in these images because a lot of her work is similar due to her particular way of adjusting the colours in order to blend the images. She explores the concept of dreams and reality, which is what surrealism is about. Overall Shaden is an artist that uses Photoshop in order to bring her work to life. She edits carefully the images so that her work is surreal and challenge the idea of the reality. Her works tell a story, whether they are personal or what she notices in the society. She has a great level of narrative withing her images which is due to several thingss, especially to the motion that her work features.

By looking at her works, I gained a much better understanding as the message that she is sending through every single image is so strong and meaningful that it actually gets to the viewer. Seeing how surrealism is used in the digital era is really powerful because by itself ever since surrealism began it became such an influential and impressive movement that when modern artists use it in their own works, the impact keeps being as strong, taking in consideration the problems that nowadays society has to deal it. This is why, analysing the way surrealism influenced Shaden’s works was really useful for my own narrative project, because I want my works to have a concept behind the whole composition and setting, so that I create a little world where the actions that take place happen just in our imagination.

Kyle Thompson

Kyle Thompson is the next artist I will be looking at. He is a graphic designer from Chicago, Illnois. He describes himself as a ‘’surreal conceptual photographer’’. The location of his photographs are interesting which adds to the effect of the artwork and to the realism of the image, although the actions and the settings are impossible. When looking at Kyle Thompson’s artworks, it is easy to tell that the situations are very surreal because the subjects are doing unreal things and what is specific for Thompson’s works is a dream like effect. In some of the photographs he might be flying or being located in unusual places. Despite all of these, his work has a realistic touch to them which makes the viewer question even more his actions which intrigues the viewer. His works are a good example of how modern technology merged with surrealism to change the way a story is told in a piece of art.

 ‘’There’s definitely an inherent beauty in emptiness, and a curiosity in seeing how other people lived. Abandoned houses create this fragmented portrait of the people who used to live in them through whatever they left behind.’’

 And by doing so, he transports the viewer in his personal moments that exist only for a very short period of time. When capturing these mysterious and beautiful, quite surreal moments, Thompson produces images that live on in a never ending loop, making it even more personal, because art is personal, this is why he is doing auto-portraits.

 Most commonly, Thompson uses modern techniques as digital photography and digital editing with software and he still manages to give it a feeling of old and vintage, effect that he obtains by desaturating and adding a grainy feel to the photographs.

This image is a self-portrait taken in a forest and what is unusual about it is the presence of the sheets at the back of the character. They represent the wings of a person and it keeps him off the ground. The accuracy of this photograph has a great impact because the composition is kept really neat and simple, the only edits being made in the adjustment of the colours so that when the different photographs of the sheets and the person are placed together it looks realistic, however we still can tell that this can’t happen in real life. With this artwork, the viewer is questioning why is this person floating and what it might represent which is an important aspect within a narrative piece. The use of a landscape as his setting gives the illusion of him being lost within the place.

His works are another great example to show the impact surrealism has on contemporary artists who use modern technologies to express themselves in unimaginable ways, whether if it is by finding the right setting or using certain objects with a different purpose than initially intended.

 Kyle Thompson is an artist whose works are really valuable because they make the viewer question certain things ad very few artists manage to achieve this. Without any doubts, the presence of surrealism in his works is strongly present and it is there to catch the attention and to create controversy in one’s mind and this is achieved with the use of modern techniques, although the way this movement is present in his works is different than in Shaden’s works, as with Thompson is more about the setting and the location, rather than merging multiple objects and people on an image. Comparing with Thompson’s style, Shaden’s has a more powerful influence because they are more obscure and the setting is much more mysterious which fascinates more, but by looking at Thompson’s works I learnt how to create a concept within an artwork by keeping it simpler and observed a different adjustment of colours, keeping the design cleaner.

 Joel Robisson

The final artist I chose to look at is Joel Robison. Joel Robison is a conceptual portrait photographer living in Cranbrook, British Columbia Canada. He creates playful worlds where the size, scale, movement and the function don’t play the usual rules, therefore he creates different mediums. Mediums that illustrate our feelings and emotions like depression, anxiety and mental illness that are difficult to describe into words. His conceptual photographer is an attempt to cope with anxiety and to better understand himself. His works are for a larger audience as he is followed by millions on social media. The main characteristic in his works is how he is playing with objects and sizes to create a world that only exists in one’s mind and that affects an individual. This is the way he approaches surrealism in his works, by creating a playful, imaginary world. A world which is beautiful and innocent where one can easily find peace because of the subtlety one feels by looking at his works. His works have a strong link with narrative because of the presence of surrealism he has a story to tell behind the artworks he is creating and usually these stories have a well thought concept which is due to the fact that he gives a different function to certain objects, other than the usual one, which we normally would expect, in real life.

This image has been created recently, in March, and is part of a recently started project called ‘’Open the Door to Change’’ which is about embracing the unknown and people challenging themselves. Doorways will be the main element in this project because they symbolise a step. In the image above we see a man stepping towards an opened door that has clouds on the other side and butterflies coming out which symbolise change and growth. The scenario takes place in a dark place, like a forest, next to a river, the main focus being on the man and the door, due to the fact that there is like a ray of light pouring out from the door’s direction on the man. Even if mainly the setting is dark, it still gives the viewer a nice feeling and that is due to the fact that the photograph is adjusted with warm colours which sends feelings of sympathy. This new project that Robison is currently working on certainly demonstrates the use of surrealism because there are things that happen in the photographs which can’t happen in real life.

Comparing with the other two artists, Robison’s works is not as dark as their ones and this is deducted from the colour tones he is using which are warm and pleasant. Also, the way he is creating a new world is very ingenous and with finesse because most of the time his artworks have a touch of innocence and dreams that we as children used to have which makes him stand out. He definetely knows how surrealism works and he uses this movement for a good cause, for people with mental illnesses, because Robison, himself, suffers from anxiety which is his main inspiration for his works. He illustrates a world which happens in his mind and comes from the unconscious where the dreams are formed and this is what surrealism is about, to have an impact on others using imaginary worlds which are still based on

 Sometimes we need to challenge ourselves to face those things that scare us, so that we can prove that we're strong enough to overcome them.

Conclusion:

Throughout this personal study I have shown how surrealism affected several contemporary artists and how their work is based on a strong concept which is mostly linked to one’s psychology, whether it is self-imposed restrictions or mental illnesses. It is clear that with the use of technology artists approach surrealism in a different ways nowadays as their works look more credible and real to the viewer, even though we realise that things like that can not happen in real life. The three artists use photo-manipulation in their artwork and thrill the viewer, however the style of their images are very different, we can see a slight similarity between Shaden and Thompson’s works. To Shaden’s work there is a vintage style. Her outcomes involve the use of models and self-portraits. The settings that we see in her works are most of the times daily, simple objects which are transformed in something more mysterious and with a different function; she achieves doing that by editing them in photoshop and this is where the impact of surrealism on the contemporary artists is easy to notice, because Shaden, being a contemporary artist, uses the same concepts that surrealism movement is about and merges them with the use of technology to create a powerful outcome and another world which doubts the meaning of being alive. Her works are very often doubting our reality and what it actually means. Thompson’s works however are not as complicated as Shaden’s ones and might not be as conceptual, but he still illustrates action which can not take place in real life. Robison’s style is the one that differentiates the most because of the innocence which is present in all his artworks.

From the view of a graphic design student, I would say that the combination between surrealism and modern technology is very meaningful, because it intrigues the viewer and makes him question the artwork. Surrealism is about exploring the unconscious mind and putting it out there, so that it makes a change in society. After looking at Shaden’s work it affected the way I approached surrealism in my narrative project. I created a deeper concept behind my works and therefore this made me change the design of my final outcome. It taught me that whatever I design has an impact on the viewer, even if it is a slight one. With Robison’s work I got this touch of innocence from his works because he creates beautiful worlds that approaches modern society’s problems, which not a lot of artists can do. His works are calming and it is easy to tell what his concept is about because he makes it easy for the viewer. Researching in his works helped me explore a different approach to the surrealism s his one is not as rough as other artists’. In addition, the way each of the artists uses surrealism in their works is unique and different, making a different impact on the individual. They give us a slight replacement of the reality and teach us to look at art at a subconscious level by using the details of an inner reality, which happens in real life and this is how surrealism inspired the artists to create another reality.

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Artist: Sean Landers

Venue: Le Consortium, Dijon

Date: March 13 – October 18, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artist; Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Petzel Gallery, New York; and Le Consortium, Dijon. Photos by Rebecca Fanuele, Christopher Burke, Larry Beck and Larry Lamay. 

Press Release:

Sean Landers’ exhibition at the Consortium Museum, his first in France in over 20 years, offers a retrospective outlook on his pictorial work: about forty paintings created between 1993 and today, mostly from private collections, revisit the various series punctuating the path of this artist born in 1962 in Palmer, MA, and settled in New York since the mid-1980s.

Though Sean Landers is one of today’s greatest contemporary painters, in the 1980s he actually studied sculpture at the Philadelphia College of Art and later at Yale, where Vito Acconci was his teacher. As he explains, he learned painting from his mother and his grandmother, both painters. After graduating from Yale, he came to New York in the fall of 1986, settling in an East Village building with Richard Phillips and a few others—John Currin had a studio across the street, and Lisa Yuskavage wasn’t too far away. In the East Village, where neo-conceptual artists Peter Halley and Jeff Koons were beginning to blossom, other conceptual artists who had decided on figurative painting could be found. Ever since Yale, Landers had been making large wooden sculptures representing animal fights inspired by traditional painting: “to make figurative art in school was the ‘wrong’ thing to do back then at a time when Minimalism and Conceptual Art were taught. It was thought preposterous, laughable, so of course how could I resist?,” he said. He would write down notes directly on the walls of his studio, transforming them into a sort of more or less private diary, which took over any other kind of expression; then something happened when he transferred them on a writing pad.

“The first day I wrote on a legal pad and taped it to my wall as work, I got an immediate reaction. John Currin came by, and I could tell a light bulb went on in his head: this is not writing, it’s certainly not painting. It’s something weird and in-between and maybe it tries to make its own space.” In 1990, he exhibited around a hundred handwritten pages at Postmasters gallery in New York, excerpts from a journal narrating his heartbreaks as well as the life struggles of a young artist in the East Village, making use of a character bearing his name (“he’s 90% me”), or sometimes an alter ego. Sean Landers’ painting oeuvre is wholly encapsulated in this journal; between fiction and biography, it exposes its author in whichever manner he decides on, never shying from giving this persona center stage. In short, it foretells the self-staging that thirty years later became the mode of expression introduced by social networks, which is ultimately close to to the mode of reality television. Sanders himself mentions the influence of An American Family, a TV series created in 1973 and considered the very first reality show, which closely followed the Loud family in Santa Barbara.

The journal and handwritten notes were transposed on canvas. The artist displayed himself in these paintings in exactly the same way people display themselves on Instagram today, sometimes looking for the best angles, at other times for perspectives that would elicit self-pity, and at still other times moving away from reality to give the illusion of something other. In this way, Fart (1993), a 9-foot wide painting, is studded with a hundred notes among which “Goodwoman I love you,” “I went to an art party last night and couldn’t handle it,” “Helena just called me from the airport I love her,” “At least I don’t feel rejection anymore,” “Enough about you, what about me,” “I owe Germany an apology,” “I love myself so much,” ”Macaulay Culkin is my favorite actor,” “I’m not the loser you think I am,” “I need therapy but won’t get it to make my art crazier.”

Sloth (2001) tells another story: “I live within one mile of the World Trade Center. On September eleventh I was in my living room with my two-year-old daughter Penelope sitting on my lap when we heard the roar of a low flying jet liner. (…) I entered a prolonged period of inactivity. For nearly three full months I’d come to my studio here and just sit in a chair for eight hours. The most productive thing I’d do is jerk off to porn on the internet.” The text, whatever it is, then becomes a compositional motif, sometimes simply reduced to a sheer signature—well before Josh Smith. Images were progressively added to the text, as were alter egos, odd creatures, or even at times anatomical parts, as with The Ether of Memory (1994), dotted with breasts. “It was just so taboo in those knee-jerk politically correct times that I couldn’t resist,” confessed Landers, who also explained that any attempt to link aesthetics and politics in an artwork is a priori irrelevant.

Text is often present in Landers’s artworks; the notes were soon joined by numerous signposts indicative of anecdotes rather than directions, libraries with books displaying imaginary titles, birch tree forests with their tree trunks covered with carved inscriptions … It is easy now to mention all kinds of influences, but what is remarkable is that at the beginning of the 1990s Landers looked in the direction of Magritte, Picasso, and Picabia. “Basically, the 20th century in art was an argument between what was possible via Picasso and what was possible via Duchamp. Almost everybody wants to be on Duchamp’s team, because who’s going to roll up their sleeves, show their biceps, and say, ‘I’m a painter’? I did a whole series focused on Picasso and it culminated with a ‘Picasso, I want to be like you’ letter.”

Later, he painted animals whose pelts were replaced with tartan motifs, exploring a surrealist tradition he was not stepping back from and brilliantly demonstrating a quasi-limitless imagination.

Finally, the Consortium Museum exhibition presents in its entirety his most recent series centered on Plankboy, a character made of assembled wooden boards nailed together that appeared for the first time in a 2000 painting— also shown in the exhibition. Like a character on a TV show that would have been absent for a few seasons, Plankboy is now found taking part in simple activities referring to Greek myths such as Icarus, Narcissus, and Sisyphus. It becomes immediately perceptible how this charming marionette is probably a metaphor for the figure of the artist in general, and for Sean Landers most particularly. “He is like a more pure and sincere me. In these troubling times, it is nice to have him back. He is innocence, like something made by a kid. I try to make his construction feel innocent, similar to how I would have constructed a go-cart when I was eight years old. (…) When I first made him, I was thinking about not fitting in. He is a piece of milled lumber in a forest of natural wood. Kind of like an American returning to a country of their ancestry.”

Eric Troncy

  Link: Sean Landers at Le Consortium

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/3fqGt7c

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Art Quotes

Official Website: Art Quotes

• A Good artist has less time than ideas. – Martin Kippenberger • A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. – Hedy Lamarr • A good sketch is better than a long speech. – Napoleon Bonaparte • A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. – Albert Camus • A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. – Albert Camus • A picture is a work of art, not because it is ‘modern,’ nor because it is ‘ancient,’ but because it is a sincere expression of human feeling. – John F. Carlson • A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. – Oscar Wilde • A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. – Jorge Luis Borges • Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. – Al Capp • All art is autobiographical. – Federico Fellini • All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. – Federico Fellini • All art is but imitation of nature. – Seneca the Younger • Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: ‘Ah, yes, that’s how he sees the world, that’s his interpretation.’ – Gerhard Richter • An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all. – Paul Cezanne • An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all… feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique – all these are in the middle. – Paul Cezanne • An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. – James Whistler • An artist should have more than two eyes. – Alphonse de Lamartine • And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves ‘It’s pretty, but is it Art?’ – Rudyard Kipling • Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. – Khalil Gibran • Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. – Alfred North Whitehead • Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton • Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. – Rene Magritte • Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus. – David Hockney • Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home. – Gwendolyn Brooks • Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. – Andre Gide • Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb. – Hans Arp • Art is a jealous mistress. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man. – Michelangelo • Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling. – Leo Tolstoy • Art is a passion or it is nothing. – Robert Fry • Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. – Seth Godin • Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers… What we call art is a game. – Octavio Paz • Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud! – Barbara Kruger • Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life. – Jean Paul • Art is like singing. Some do it better than others, but everyone can and should be doing it for their soul. – Barbara Mason • Art is literacy of the heart – Elliot W. Eisner • Art is long, and Time is fleeting. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Art is made by the alone for the alone. – Luis Barragan • Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor. – Henry A. Kissinger • Art is never finished, only abandoned. – Leonardo da Vinci • Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: ‘binding back’, ‘binding’ to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real – and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself. – Gerhard Richter • Art is not a thing; it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard • Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience. – Brian Eno • Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist. – Seth Godin • Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. – Amy Lowell • Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. – Pablo Picasso • Art is the highest form of hope. – Gerhard Richter • Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. – Pablo Picasso • Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. – Oscar Wilde • Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature. – Susanne Katherina Langer • Art is the objectification of feeling. – Herman Melville • Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. – Twyla Tharp • Art is the proper task of life. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. … The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster. – Gerhard Richter • Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. – Leonardo da Vinci • Art is the signature of civilizations. – Beverly Sills • Art is the window to man’s soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within. – Lady Bird Johnson • Art is too serious to be taken seriously. – Ad Reinhardt • Art is whatever you can get away with. – John Cage • Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. – Marc Chagall • Art must take reality by surprise. – Francoise Sagan • Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. – Flannery O’Connor • Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. – Jean Cocteau • Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth. – Robert Browning • Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue. – Henri Matisse • Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. – Banksy • Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso • Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag. – Laurie Halse Anderson • Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. – Stephen Sondheim • Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Artists must be sacrificed to their art. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • As all Nature’s thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art’s wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Art', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_art').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_art img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Cookery is naturally the most ancient of the arts, as of all arts it is the most important. – George Ellwanger • Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams • Creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people. – Ron Carter • Creativity is often blocked by trying to be perfect. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Tony Robbins • Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. – Henry Ward Beecher • Every artist was first an amateur. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Every artist writes his own autobiography. – Havelock Ellis • Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. – Pablo Picasso • Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. – Miguel Angel Ruiz • God and other artists are always a little obscure. – Oscar Wilde • Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. – George Jean Nathan • Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall • I am an artist… I am here to live out loud. – Emile Zola • I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. – Vincent Van Gogh • I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it. – Federico Fellini • I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing. – Francis Ford Coppola • I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. “Labor,” he in effect said, “is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.” Turning then to another–“And you,” I inquired, “what do you consider as the great force in art?” “Love,” he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth. – Christian Nestell Bovee • I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. – Vincent Van Gogh • I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”. – Vincent Van Gogh • I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. – Gerhard Richter • If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. – Marc Chagall • Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do. – Elizabeth Bowen • In art as in love, instinct is enough. – Anatole France • In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period. – Edward Hopper • In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. – Henri Cartier-Bresson • It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise. – Homer • It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. – Oscar Wilde • It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. – Albert Einstein • It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection. – Oscar Wilde • It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. – Pablo Picasso • Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. – Igor Stravinsky • Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. – Stella Adler • Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. – Oscar Wilde • Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. – John W. Gardner • Love isn’t an emotion or an instinct – it’s an art. – Mae West • Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art. – Constantin Stanislavski • Man, there’s no boundary line to art! – Charlie Parker • Many are willing to suffer for their art. Few are willing to learn to draw. – Simon Munnery • Nature is the art of God. – Dante Alighieri • No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. – Oscar Wilde • Of all lies, art is the least untrue. – Gustave Flaubert • One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. – Oscar Wilde • Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. – Don Marquis • Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. – John Ruskin • Rules and models destroy genius and art. – William Hazlitt • Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. – Oscar Wilde • Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. – Tom Stoppard • The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation. – Francisco Goya • The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle • The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. – Paul Klee • The artist begins with a vision – a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage. – Henri Matisse • The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. – Novalis • The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. – Emile Zola • The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor. – Paul Getty • The big art is our life. – Mary Caroline Richards • The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art. – David Cronenberg • The highest art is artlessness. – Francis Alexander Durivage • The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. – Francis Bacon • The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist. – David Hockney • The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract. – Ellen Key • The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. – Vincent Van Gogh • The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. – Albert Einstein • The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. – Robert Henri • The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. – Alberto Giacometti • The object of Art is to give life a shape. – William Shakespeare • The object of art is to give life shape. – Jean Anouilh • The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.- Elie Wiesel • The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,–that is the secret of the fine arts. – Joseph Joubert • The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result. – John Mason Good • The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. – Piet Mondrian • The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. – Jerzy Kosinski • The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. – T. S. Eliot • The secret of life is in art. – Oscar Wilde • The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. – Michelangelo • The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books. – Charlie Chaplin • There is no must in art because art is free. – Wassily Kandinsky • There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge. – Friedrich Nietzsche • There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. – Georges Braque • To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect. – Alexander Calder • To be an artist is to believe in life. – Henry Moore • To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream. – Giorgio de Chirico • To me, art is the glorification of the human spirit. – Hans Hofmann • To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. – Kurt Vonnegut • Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. – Arthur Schopenhauer • True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. – Albert Einstein • True art lies in a reality that is felt. – Odilon Redon • Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. – Fran Lebowitz • Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible. – Jonathan Swift • We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. – Pablo Picasso • We have art in order not to die of life. – Albert Camus • We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. – Henry James • What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit. – John Updike • What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. – Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to His Brother – Hokusai • When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. – Paul Cezanne • Wherever art appears, life disappears. – Robert Motherwell • Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. – George Bernard Shaw • Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. – Albert Camus • You don’t make art, you find it – Pablo Picasso • You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. – George Bernard Shaw

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[equitiesstocks]

Art Quotes

Official Website: Art Quotes

• A Good artist has less time than ideas. – Martin Kippenberger • A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires. – Hedy Lamarr • A good sketch is better than a long speech. – Napoleon Bonaparte • A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. – Albert Camus • A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. – Albert Camus • A picture is a work of art, not because it is ‘modern,’ nor because it is ‘ancient,’ but because it is a sincere expression of human feeling. – John F. Carlson • A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. – Oscar Wilde • A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. – Jorge Luis Borges • Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. – Al Capp • All art is autobiographical. – Federico Fellini • All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. – Federico Fellini • All art is but imitation of nature. – Seneca the Younger • Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: ‘Ah, yes, that’s how he sees the world, that’s his interpretation.’ – Gerhard Richter • An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all. – Paul Cezanne • An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all… feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique – all these are in the middle. – Paul Cezanne • An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. – James Whistler • An artist should have more than two eyes. – Alphonse de Lamartine • And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves ‘It’s pretty, but is it Art?’ – Rudyard Kipling • Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. – Khalil Gibran • Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. – Alfred North Whitehead • Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton • Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. – Rene Magritte • Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus. – David Hockney • Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home. – Gwendolyn Brooks • Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. – Andre Gide • Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb. – Hans Arp • Art is a jealous mistress. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man. – Michelangelo • Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling. – Leo Tolstoy • Art is a passion or it is nothing. – Robert Fry • Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. – Seth Godin • Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers… What we call art is a game. – Octavio Paz • Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud! – Barbara Kruger • Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life. – Jean Paul • Art is like singing. Some do it better than others, but everyone can and should be doing it for their soul. – Barbara Mason • Art is literacy of the heart – Elliot W. Eisner • Art is long, and Time is fleeting. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Art is made by the alone for the alone. – Luis Barragan • Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor. – Henry A. Kissinger • Art is never finished, only abandoned. – Leonardo da Vinci • Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: ‘binding back’, ‘binding’ to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real – and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself. – Gerhard Richter • Art is not a thing; it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard • Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience. – Brian Eno • Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist. – Seth Godin • Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. – Amy Lowell • Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. – Pablo Picasso • Art is the highest form of hope. – Gerhard Richter • Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. – Pablo Picasso • Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. – Oscar Wilde • Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature. – Susanne Katherina Langer • Art is the objectification of feeling. – Herman Melville • Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. – Twyla Tharp • Art is the proper task of life. – Friedrich Nietzsche • Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God. … The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster. – Gerhard Richter • Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. – Leonardo da Vinci • Art is the signature of civilizations. – Beverly Sills • Art is the window to man’s soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within. – Lady Bird Johnson • Art is too serious to be taken seriously. – Ad Reinhardt • Art is whatever you can get away with. – John Cage • Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. – Marc Chagall • Art must take reality by surprise. – Francoise Sagan • Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. – Flannery O’Connor • Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. – Jean Cocteau • Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth. – Robert Browning • Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue. – Henri Matisse • Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. – Banksy • Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Pablo Picasso • Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag. – Laurie Halse Anderson • Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. – Stephen Sondheim • Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • Artists must be sacrificed to their art. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • As all Nature’s thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art’s wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Art', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_art').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_art img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Cookery is naturally the most ancient of the arts, as of all arts it is the most important. – George Ellwanger • Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams • Creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people. – Ron Carter • Creativity is often blocked by trying to be perfect. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Tony Robbins • Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. – Henry Ward Beecher • Every artist was first an amateur. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Every artist writes his own autobiography. – Havelock Ellis • Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. – Pablo Picasso • Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art. – Miguel Angel Ruiz • God and other artists are always a little obscure. – Oscar Wilde • Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. – George Jean Nathan • Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall • I am an artist… I am here to live out loud. – Emile Zola • I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. – Vincent Van Gogh • I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it. – Federico Fellini • I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing. – Francis Ford Coppola • I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. “Labor,” he in effect said, “is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.” Turning then to another–“And you,” I inquired, “what do you consider as the great force in art?” “Love,” he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth. – Christian Nestell Bovee • I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. – Vincent Van Gogh • I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say “he feels deeply, he feels tenderly”. – Vincent Van Gogh • I would like to try to understand what is. We know very little, and I am trying to do it by creating analogies. Almost every work of art is an analogy. – Gerhard Richter • If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. – Marc Chagall • Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do. – Elizabeth Bowen • In art as in love, instinct is enough. – Anatole France • In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period. – Edward Hopper • In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. – Henri Cartier-Bresson • It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise. – Homer • It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. – Oscar Wilde • It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. – Albert Einstein • It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection. – Oscar Wilde • It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. – Pablo Picasso • Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. – Igor Stravinsky • Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. – Stella Adler • Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. – Oscar Wilde • Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. – John W. Gardner • Love isn’t an emotion or an instinct – it’s an art. – Mae West • Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art. – Constantin Stanislavski • Man, there’s no boundary line to art! – Charlie Parker • Many are willing to suffer for their art. Few are willing to learn to draw. – Simon Munnery • Nature is the art of God. – Dante Alighieri • No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. – Oscar Wilde • Of all lies, art is the least untrue. – Gustave Flaubert • One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. – Oscar Wilde • Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. – Don Marquis • Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. – John Ruskin • Rules and models destroy genius and art. – William Hazlitt • Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. – Oscar Wilde • Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. – Tom Stoppard • The act of painting is about one heart telling another heart where he found salvation. – Francisco Goya • The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle • The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. – Paul Klee • The artist begins with a vision – a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage. – Henri Matisse • The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. – Novalis • The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. – Emile Zola • The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor. – Paul Getty • The big art is our life. – Mary Caroline Richards • The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art. – David Cronenberg • The highest art is artlessness. – Francis Alexander Durivage • The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. – Francis Bacon • The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you’re an artist. – David Hockney • The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract. – Ellen Key • The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. – Vincent Van Gogh • The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. – Albert Einstein • The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. – Robert Henri • The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. – Alberto Giacometti • The object of Art is to give life a shape. – William Shakespeare • The object of art is to give life shape. – Jean Anouilh • The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.- Elie Wiesel • The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth,–that is the secret of the fine arts. – Joseph Joubert • The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result. – John Mason Good • The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. – Piet Mondrian • The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. – Jerzy Kosinski • The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. – T. S. Eliot • The secret of life is in art. – Oscar Wilde • The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. – Michelangelo • The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books. – Charlie Chaplin • There is no must in art because art is free. – Wassily Kandinsky • There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • There is one thing one has to have either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge. – Friedrich Nietzsche • There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain. – Georges Braque • To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect. – Alexander Calder • To be an artist is to believe in life. – Henry Moore • To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream. – Giorgio de Chirico • To me, art is the glorification of the human spirit. – Hans Hofmann • To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. – Kurt Vonnegut • Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. – Arthur Schopenhauer • True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. – Albert Einstein • True art lies in a reality that is felt. – Odilon Redon • Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. – Fran Lebowitz • Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible. – Jonathan Swift • We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. – Pablo Picasso • We have art in order not to die of life. – Albert Camus • We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. – Henry James • What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit. – John Updike • What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. – Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to His Brother – Hokusai • When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. – Paul Cezanne • Wherever art appears, life disappears. – Robert Motherwell • Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. – George Bernard Shaw • Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. – Albert Camus • You don’t make art, you find it – Pablo Picasso • You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. – George Bernard Shaw

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