This looks like it could leap straight out of a modern tiled surface – that’s the enduring legacy of Islamic tile.
Month: February 2020
Tuesday
Look at these. Look at them. These aren’t just bowls: these are works of the finest craftsmanship. They transcend art. They outlast their maker and their commissioner and the world they were made in; they are still important to the world even today. They are a special kind of beauty.
Monday
This is not a candlestick made for a puny little taper. This is for a pillar candle thick as an arm that would generate enough light to work by in the late evening and even late into the night. This was the first real attempt at artificial lighting – this and oil lamps. Bigger, faster, harder.
Sunday
Say what you will: Islamic metalwork holds up really well. I think it has to do with the desert and sand corrosion v. salt corrosion from the ocean (aka, from most of western Europe), but most examples have weathered remarkably well.
Saturday
Look, it’s Monet! But not just any Monet: this is stereotypical Monet, in the style that would come to define him. You can see the choppiness of the water in the reflections, the sketchiness of the grass (that would later be emulated by van Gogh), and the bitter carelessness of the clouds in the sky as if he just doesn’t give a penny farthing of shits anymore about them. This is Monet before he got famous, when he was out testing his trainers and playing the club scene.
Friday
Nothing to see here but a little man titty on Valentine’s Day…
Thursday
On the one hand, this is extremely gorgeous and a wonderful example of enameling. On the other hand, the Virgin Mary looks like she’s going, “Oh shit, are you fucking kidding me?” in response to the news that she’s going to have the baby Jesus. Guess it’s not just the modern teenaged mothers with the elements of shock and awe on their side, eh?
Wednesday
This icon not only shimmers, it glows. It’s a unique kind of enameling process and a unique outcome, and definitely a hell of a result.
Tuesday
I’m not convinced that Joan of Arc would’ve looked attentive as she listened to the heavenly voices. Certainly not like this, in a raptly ecstatic state. It’s vaguely pornographic. It’s also vaguely creepy, as she’s portrayed as far more innocent as she was, but that’s definitely the 1880s hypocritical morality coming out to play.
Monday
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why art has no color. It has no color, it has no silence, it is one howling voice in the wilderness. Art doesn’t care what you are, who you are, only that you give your voice to the need within you to create.