Artist: David Shrigley

Orchids and Rocks 

Artist: Gu Mei (1619-1664)

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Bologna Towers from 1200-1300

 during the time of Dante

Kouros of Apollonas, also called Colossus of Dionysus, a 10.7m tall unfinished statue of light grey Naxian marble with a weight of around 80 tonnes. It is located in an ancient quarry near Apollonas, a small town in northern part of Naxos, on one of Cycladic Islands in the Aegean Sea.

The statue is a kouros, a type of free-standing statue of a naked young man that dates to the Archaic period of Ancient Greece, around the turn of 7th-6th Centuries BC. It was originally believed to pay homage to Apollo until 1930s, when archaeologists noticed its beard and realized the figure was actually Dionysus. It’s made of rough-hewn marble and is unfinished, thought to be too heavy to transport.

Candy-striped man 

by Rodolfo Morales (1925-2001) 

 The Reader  

by Edouard Manet (artist) French, 1832 - 1883

Frederick Burnaby

 by James Tissot (1836–1902)

 National Portrait Gallery, London

Old City of Sana'a

Yemen

Sana’a has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years. In the 7th and 8th centuries the city became a major centre for the propagation of Islam. This religious and political heritage can be seen in the 103 mosques, 14 hammams and over 6,000 houses, all built before the 11th century. 

 Photo by J Otto Seibold  

2023

 A detail from an 18th Century CE, Oil Painting' depiction of the 'Dance of Death'; purchased by Henry S. Wellcome, 1900-1936 CE; now preserved at Wellcome Collections.

"Dance Macabre" : Skeletons have been dancing people to their graves since at least 1424 CE :

Dance of death originates in medieval plays and folk rituals performed on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December), and in funeral sermons. In the most popular version, Death (in the form of a skeleton) dances in succession with people representing particular social ranks (Pope, emperor, king, lawyer, peasant, etc.) and takes away each in turn, demonstrating that nobody however exalted in this life, can escape death. Conversely, nobody, however humble in this life, is in the end worse off than the rich and mighty. The theme lent itself to long mural paintings in which the entire sequence is depicted: examples (now destroyed) were the walls of the cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris, 1425 CE, or the of the Predigerkirche in Basel, 1440 CE. It could also be painted in the bays within a cloister, where the monks and pilgrims would pass each scene in turn as they walked around the cloister (as in Old St Paul's Cathedral, London)

In 1485 CE, when printed books were still a novelty, the Dance of Death was first published as a series of woodcuts (to be succeeded later by engravings), in which each individual scene occupied a separate page of a book. The vivid woodcuts of this subject by Hans Holbein (1538) were studied throughout Europe. As a result most people viewing the Dance of Death would be using media in which they could only see the episodes one at a time.

In 17th Century CE, painters and print makers created versions of the Dance of Death which represented all the episodes in one painting or engraving, often together with other motifs such as skulls and clocks added to reinforce the message. In Germany, five such engravings are known from the 17th-18th Centuries CE, and many paintings with the same general composition are known from churches in Poland, Croatia, Germany, Slovakia and elsewhere. The paintings and prints have many variations from each other, which may eventually permit their origins to be known through a family tree of earlier versions and copies. Many of them were commissioned by the order of Observant Franciscans (Order of Friars Minor) for the sacristies or waiting rooms of their churches. The present painting in the Wellcome Library is one these, and another, larger version is in the Church of Saint Bernardino of Siena in Kraków.

Gaffarel, Jacques (1601-1681) 

Gafferel shows letters in Hebrew as representing celestial constellations, postulating that the night sky could be read like a book.

Edward Hopper 

Night Shadows 

1921

 Martin Lewis

Relics (Speakeasy Corner)

1928

Rows of ancient Greek helmets stacked in the storeroom of the Archaeological Museum of Olympia in Greece. 

The photo gives some idea of ​​the numbers in which these helmets have survived.

 Untitled 

 by Chris Johanson  

year 2000

Portrait of Llewlyn LLoyd, oil on canvas 89x88, 1907

By Oscar Ghiglia 

 

FRÉDÉRIC BRULY BOUABRÉ

(1923-2014)

Branches

 by Leon Spilliaert  

1912

A small statue of Tutankhamun (1341-1323 BC), of gilded wood, depicting Pharoah wearing red crown of Lower Egypt, standing in a papyrus boat made of green painted wood, and gilded, where papyrus details are supposed to appear.

Here, Tutankhamun appears - according to legend of Isis and Osiris - in person of Horus, avenger of his father, ready to throw a spear at his enemy Set, who is represented in form of a hippopotamus or a crocodile.

Statue is held by a coiled chain of bronze, to restrain animal Seth after it has been stabbed. Statue was found in a box dyed black, wrapped in linen.

Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Red Sail in the Sound

by Robert Stark Jr. (1933-2014)

David Hockney and William Burroughs – at Naropa

by Allen Ginsberg

Early Hellenic Alphabet, painted on the body of an Attic black-figure Kylix Cup 

5th-4th Century BC

National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Morning horseback ride on the beach (1876) 

 by Anton Mauve 

 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Two drawings by Robert Indiana

 

Dalla cartella: Un viale di alberi diversi. 

BRUNO MUNARI  (1907 - 1998) 

 

The Argo 

by Constantine Volanakis

Priscilla  

Photographer: Joseph Szabo

by Marcel et Marie-Puck BROODTHAERS

around 1971

Original drawing in colored marker and pencil (69 × 87 cm), under glass.

Very large drawing with four hands in pencil and brown, yellow, red and orange marker, signed in green marker "Marie-Puck Broodthaers 9 years old", in the upper left corner.

It represents a crowned eagle, wings spread on a branch, adjoined, on either side, by two miniature eagles.

We know the importance of the figure of the eagle, symbol of authority, in the work of Marcel Broodthaers – especially when he dedicated his Museum of Modern Art to it. In 1972, he was to carry out a major exhibition at the Kunsthalle der Düsseldorf around the figure of the Eagle, made up of 300 paintings, objects and sculptures (Der Adler vom Oligozän bis heute).

 Jeff Shelton, Architect  

website

ADOLPH GOTTLIEB

(1903-1974)

Mood Indigo

1946

 by Alfred Jensen

 Self Portrait of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

 The Fountains at Night, World's Columbian Exposition 

by Winslow Homer 

1893

Frank Sinatra on the Boardwalk, Miami 

by photographer Terry O'Neill

(1938-2019)

 Portrait of Guy Pène du Bois  

by Isabella Howard 

1945-50

 Portrait of ELT Mesens

 by Reinier Lucassen

 by Jacques Carelman

  by Joe Tilson

From Sainsbury's Design Studio  

 View from the window (Schöneberg) 

Artist: Eva Stort (1880 - 1936)

Codex d'un Visage II. 

VICTOR BRAUNER

 1963

 Victor Hugo

by Auguste Rodin

 Erik Satie  

by Francis Picabia

1924

 Artist:

Simon Albert Bussy (French, 1869–1954)

Title:

Portrait de Zoum , 1919

 Photo of Leon Spilliaert