GOYA
Caged birds, a leashed magpie, three watchful cats and a child just past the threshold of consciousness. Goya’s portrait of the son of Spanish nobility is amongst the greatest painting of a child ever produced, his mastery on full display as the boy’s porcelain skin glows against the bright red of his suit, the restrained brushwork of lace creating an ethereal quality that captures the dream-like state of childhood. But as is so often the case with Goya, the real portrait exists around the subject. The kept birds are a marker of innocence, while the cats, considering their pounce, a harbinger of loss for the very things the birds represent. Magpies, across culture, are creatures of superstition and can be substitutes for the soul. A young boy has his soul under control, but it is caught between two planes, one of innocence and one of experience, and all the necessary danger that will bring.
KLEE
‘First of all,’, said Paul Klee when asked what was most important for a good life, ‘the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.’ Of course, Illustrations were more than mere income for Klee, they instead became some of the most important works of the 20th Century, but his tongue-in-cheek response has more truth than he lets on. Klee was a wildly individual artist, refusing the modes of the day and merging influence into a unique style. A soldier, a thinker, a writer, and a teacher at the Bauhaus School alongside his closest friend Wassily Kandinsky – Klee’s genius moved across mediums, but it is perhaps, against popular knowledge, his writing that was his greatest impact. Klee’s notebooks are amongst the most important pedagogical documents of modern art, his perspective exists beneath so much of the post-war and contemporary works we know today. Chiefly, that art was a serious pursuit best pursued unseriously, like a child approaches the blank page.
CASSATT
Cassatt was in the first generation of ‘New Women’, riding the waves of early 19th century feminism to universities and freedom. The only American impressionist, she had a close, likely platonic, relationship with Degas, each fuelling, critiquing and improving the other. Yet, after 10 years with the group, she abandoned him and the movement. Cassatt was fiercely independent, across every element of her life, and she resisted the constraints of working within a group of artists. Instead, she turned her eye to the domestic, feminine scenes she saw around her. The latter years of her life were dedicated to painting scenes of mothers and daughters – dignified and quiet, without drama or politics, they are contemporary versions of renaissance compositions, Madonna and Child updated to the tribulations of contemporary motherhood.
Chris Gabriel May 11, 2024
The World card is a cosmogram, meaning it depicts the whole of the cosmos. We find a naked woman floating within a ring, her legs crossed and something flowing about her. She is Maya, the embodied force of creation and illusion. Her dancing and spinning manifests the material world. The Four Cherubs frame the corners as symbols of the states of matter…
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Matthew Maruca May 16, 2024
In 1917, halfway through a career of developing theories and equations that changed our understanding of the world, Albert Einstein famously said “for the rest of my life, I will reflect on what light is.”
Saturday 18th May 2024
Today, the moon transitions into the constellation of Virgo, marking an auspicious time to prepare vegetable beds for planting. A core principle of biodynamics emphasizes the significance of revitalizing our gardens and farms. Composting stands out as one of the most effective methods for converting decaying matter into life. It truly is a miraculous process. With the moon in Virgo, today is an ideal day to turn a compost pile, or to start one. The length of the composting process varies according to climate conditions, but it's essential to ensure that the compost is neither too wet nor too dry, as either extreme can impede the breakdown process.