desaturated: sun invisible.

“ Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground….They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn’t really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: ‘Put Impression.’ ”

Wanna tour the Sistine Chapel?

giftedpi:

This virtual tour is pretty awesome. You can see the famous frescoes of Michelangelo, Botticelli and more.

Being the history geek I am, I thought it was kinda spectacular 😛

1hollygolightly1:

2011 Pietà

(World Press Photo of the year 2011)

saturninevibes:

Pietà,Annibale Carracci
1599-1600
Oil on canvas, 156 x 149 cm
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

phassa:

William-Adolphe Bouguereau – Pietà

flommus:

Oskar Kokoschka, Pietà (Poster for Murderer, Hope of Women), 1909

‘Under the opposing forces of the sun and moon, a flayed, blood-red man collapses into the arms of a ghastly pale woman. In this poster advertising the premiere of his play ‘Mörderer, Hoffnung der Frauen’ (Murderer, hope of women), Kokoschka manipulates the Christian iconography of the Pietà, which traditionally shows a mother cradling her dead son.

‘Hung all over the city, the poster, with its graphic imagery, announced the brutal and bizarre events of the drama, which stages an epic, bloody battle between the sexes. Kokoschka’s deliberately crude lettering reinforces the barbarity of the events. As the poster suggests, the woman at first seems to slay the man, but in the end he emerges victorious.

‘The play befuddled, amused, and offended the audience of its single performance on July 5, 1909, at the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna, a venue otherwise filled with exquisitely refined designs by contemporary European artists. Kokoschka later reminisced, ‘If the term Expressionism has any meaning, then this is its earliest manifestation.”

Michelangelo’s interpretation of the Pietà is unique to the precedents. It is an important work as it balances the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism.

The statue is one of the most highly finished works by Michelangelo. The contemporary opinion about this work – “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture” – was summarized by Vasari: “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”