Enfant au hibou (1892)
Pastel by William Degouve de Nuncques via Il Giornale Nuovo.
Nocturne au Parc Royal de Bruxelles (1897)
Notice the similarities between Degouve’s (1867 – 1935) Rainbow (pictured below) with some of the landscapes by American regionalist Grant Wood (1891 – 1942) who is much better known for his iconic 1930 painting American Gothic.
See also this Google gallery.
Etching of the bones, muscles, and joints, illustrating the first volume of the Anatomy of the Human Body. 2d ed. London, 1804. Etching. National Library of Medicine.
Further to my post More Géricault I tried to find the source of the Géricault Severed Heads painting and I found John Bell at the classic Dream Anatomy site. I couldn’t find the pictures I was looking for, that’s why I am giving you the above (there is one more over at my Flickr stream). I did find the story behind the Severed Heads painting of Géricault:
Théodore Géricault‘s painting Severed Heads (1818) [2] painting of two severed heads on a white cloth, turns out to be, not a painting of two heads fresh from the guillotine, but a painted elaboration of an illustration to a book on anatomy (Engravings, explaining the Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles and Joints ) by British surgeon John Bell. This site on France and Scotland in the Arts gives a detailed explanation how Délacroix’s Severed Heads is a painted elaboration of the work of John Bell, not an image of guillotined heads.
Also from dreamanatomy : “John Bell criticized “the subjection of true anatomical drawing to the capricious interference of the artist, whose rule it has too often been to make all beautiful and smooth, leaving no harshness….” His own drawings and etchings are notably harsh.”
Brigitte Courme photographie
In 1969 Balthus starts to draw from photographs taken by himself and by Brigitte Courme (1934-1982) . Shown above is a picture by Brigitte Courme.
Balthus was a French artist of Polish origins whose work was figurative at a time when modern art was surrealist and abstract in nature, making him one of the first anti-modernists. His distinctive brand of nymphesque erotica (Thérèse rêvant, 1938) with lesbian overtones (The Guitar Lesson, 1934) has been influential to many present day erotomaniacs. Detractors accuse him of pedophilia and pornography but Balthus insisted that his work was not pornographic, but that it just recognized the discomforting facts of children’s sexuality.
Image sourced here
From left to right Monomanie du vol des enfants, Monomanie du commandement militaire, Monomanie du vol, La monomanie du jeu, Monomanie de l’envie.
The Monomanies is a series of ten paintings by Théodore Géricault produced between 1821 and 1824 of the patients of Étienne-Jean Georget, head physician at the Salpêtrière Parisian psychiatric ward. The paintings were commissioned by Georget so that his students could study the physical traits of these “monomaniacs“, in a sort of scientific realism that parallels the literary realism of that time.
Translation from left to right: a child kidnapper, a man obsessed with the military, a kleptomaniac, a gambling addict and a woman suffering from obsessive envy.
More on monomania.
Mazeppa (c.1820) by Théodore Géricault
Ivan Mazepa was a Cossack leader in Ukraine, one of the first Ukrainian leaders to take a stand against the Russian Tsar. The historical events of Mazepa’s life have inspired Mazeppa by Lord Byron, made famous by Adah Isaacs Menken. The events were also beautifully rendered in the painting by Géricault shown above.
The Museum Tinguely presents the most extensive exhibition hitherto on the Situationist International that was founded on July 28, 1957. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its foundation, 400 exhibits will illustrate this last important avant-garde movement that counted 72 artists among its members, with sections in Germany, Holland, America, North Africa and elsewhere, rescuing it from oblivion.
More visuals of the book here.
The title of the exhitibion, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni is a 1978 French language film by Guy Debord. This film, which was meant to be Debord’s last one, is largely autobiographical but begins with a thorough and pitiless critique of the spectator.
The title of the movie is a palindrome known as “the Devil’s verse.” It is Latin for “We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”, and was said to describe the behavior of moths. It is likely from medieval rather than ancient times.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs]
” It is all over the place… but if you haven’t seen this, you should. It was the shift into the Mona Lisa right there at the beginning, that lifting of the gaze outwards, that set the hook for me.” The Laughing Bone via [1]
