adopted daughter
The naked Christ, a corpse on his hands, strange perspectives for a little daughter. What shocked famous artists
We are used to perceive famous artists through brief explanations of their paintings. This makes their images almost ethereal. As if there was nothing but painting in their life, and as if their painting immediately became a sacred classic. But the artists were full-blooded people. Their work was sometimes puzzling, and their actions – condemnation.
Zinaida Serebryakova
The daughter, granddaughter, niece of some artists, mother, aunt and grandmother of others, she herself seems to be the embodiment of purity and love of art. So, in general, it is. Serebryakova was not prone to drunken revelry and all those sins in which it is usually customary to reproach Bohemia. Continue reading
What was the fate of “Big Sue”, which posed Freud’s grandson for the scandalous paintings that made him a millionaire
Lucian Freud and Sue Tilly: The Story of a Scandalous Muse.
If the fame of the artists could be measured in kilograms, then the scales of Lucien Freud (yes, that scandalous grandson of the great psychoanalyst) would have increased by 127 kg immediately. That was exactly what Big Sue had, the so-called model artist Sue Till, whom he depicted in one of his most famous paintings.
The woman, completely naked, seems to be sleeping soundly. And the artist is fascinated by her body: fat, not muscular and not fit, with, as Freud loved “100% made of flesh.” The folds of her massive body seem to flicker with all shades of brown, pink and white. As an artist, she crept up to her … and is the goddess angry when she wakes up? Continue reading
Immoral Art: How Kitagawa Utamaro became famous for depicting geishas and offended the Japanese government in one engraving
Kitagawa Utamaro is an iconic Japanese artist whose engravings are world famous. He devoted his life to portraying the inhabitants of the “merry quarters” – geishas and the maids of tea houses, and he worked, despite the prohibitions. His name meant “the river of abundant happiness,” but the artist’s life was not happy.
During the Edo period, during the reign of the Tokugawa clan – around the 17th century – an art movement appeared that became the hallmark of Japanese art in the eyes of the entire Western world.
The term itself originally meant “mortal world” or “vale of sorrow”, but the engravings of ukiyo-e are not at all sad. At that time, life in Tokyo was in full swing: those city blocks were rebuilt where the Kabuki theater flourished and the houses of geishas and courtesans were located. The first ukiyo-e artists portrayed the diverse inhabitants of these “fun neighborhoods” – beautiful geisha, stern sumo wrestlers, Kabuki theater actors with their masks and costumes, and therefore the word itself changed its meaning and began to mean “a world full of love.” Continue reading
