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Golden Gashes Glitter Brighter than Perfection in Porcelain

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    Life is one hard knock after another.  Every challenge we face chips and batters us just a little bit more every time, and sometimes breaks begin to form.  However, the healing and acceptance of these breaks help make us better and realize ourselves.  This philosophy is beautifully represented by the Japanese art form known as Kintsugi. Drunken Clarity , Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy, 2011, New South Whales  Hori Mishima Tea Bowl, Late 16th Century, Korea Mishima Ware Hakeme-Type Tea Bowl, 16th Century, Korea     Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer, usually dusted with gold.  The art intends to highlight the history of the object, treating breaks and chips as something to wear with pride rather than something to repair and hide.  The exact origin of Kintsugi is debated, however, one of the more widely accepted origins for the art form is a story from the 15th century, where shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a broken tea bowl to be repaired in China
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Art Bleeds in the Mid Modern Shadow of War

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     Death was on the minds of many after World War II.  The recoil and reconstruction process left after the horrific crimes committed by the Nazis left the world and the popular culture wounded in an irreversible way. Beksiński     One of the best examples of the cultural wound left by WWII is the haunting, disturbing, and outright bloodcurdling paintings created by Polish artist  Zdzisław Beksiński .   He was born in Sanok, Poland in 1929, a city whose population was nearly 30% Jewish at the time, leading to  Beksiński as a child having front row seats to the atrocities committed during the war.   Beksiński is most well known for his self-proclaimed "Fantastic Series", an array of paintings created from the late 1960s to the early 1980s that depict breathtaking and horrific landscapes.  His unique brand of gothic surrealism leaves one hell of an impression on whoever lays eyes on his work, his level of detail is nearly beyond comprehension on first viewing.       Beksiński
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The Great War's Effect on the Early Modern Era

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      World War I, or the Great War, was one of the most catastrophic events to happen in the 20th century.  The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off a dense chain-reaction of political rivalries and alliances through all of Europe and Asia like throwing a bowling ball into a room full of mousetraps.  From Serbia to Germany to the United States to the Ottoman Empire to Australia, the only continent on the planet left unscathed by the conflict was Antarctica. John Singer Sargent, Gassed , 1919, Oil on Canvas     One of the most horrific factors in WWI was the invention of chemical warfare, specifically the use of  bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, or mustard gas, depicted above in John Singer Sargent's Gassed , painted 1919 in London.   Gassed  was commissioned in 1918 by the British War Memorials Committee for the Hall of Remembrance, a series of artworks created to memorialize the lives lost in the Great War.   The painting depicts a line of wounded soldiers surrounded by d
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Romanticism

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     The Romantic Era is my favorite segment of Art History.  It's my personal philosophy that all great art elicits some sort of emotion out of the viewer or can communicate the emotion to the viewer and a lot of romantic artists seem to agree.  One of the biggest hallmarks of the Romantic Era was the heavy use of emotions and emotional subjects as a reaction to the Neoclassicism style that came before it. Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog , 1818 Alexandre Cabanel, Fallen Angel , 1847     Two great examples of the Romantic style are Caspar Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog  from Germany, and Alexandre Cabanel's Fallen Angel  from France.  I chose these pieces to illustrate the emotional aspects of the Romantic style because they both portray emotions in a beautiful way, but as nearly polar opposites of each other.  Friedrich's work is deeply foreboding, the dense fog underneath the wanderer gives the rocky landscape an unearthly feeling, a l
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Classical Revolt

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     The 18th century to mid 19th century was a political firestorm worldwide.  Also called the "Age of Revolutions", in just around 150 years we got Circassian, Industrial, American, French, Haitian, and Serbian Revolutions, just to name a few.  Revolutions are many things, but one thing they are most certainly not is clean.  Social and political upheavals are messy and brutal, especially during this time period.  American soldiers fighting and dying for freedom en masse, and only a few years later the French aristocracy starts coming in 1st place at the Headless Horseman look-alike contest thanks to  Joseph-Ignace Guillotin 's most famous invention .  This was a gritty and savage period in history, which is why it's very interesting to me that dozens of artists depicted moments from this period through a brighter, more glorious lens. Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People , 1830, Oil on Canvas     A fantastic example of this is Liberty Leading the People by E
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If It Ain't Baroque...

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     The Baroque Period is a very interesting section of Art History. Around the mid to late 1500s, the Catholic Church was starting to get a bit worried about the increasing popularity of Lutheranism in the populace. In response, they convened the Council of Trent, the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, in Trento, Italy.        The Council's main objective was to be a counter-reformation to the Protestant reformation and revitalize the public's interest in Catholicism.  One of the ways it went about doing this was, in essence, advertising to the uneducated masses through visual art.  Since a very large portion of the population was illiterate, it made sense to try to connect to them through mediums that didn't require reading.  There was a sudden push from the Church to the artists of the time to create works that inspired awe in the public, while at the same time grounding iconic biblical scenes to make them more relatable. Possibly the exemplar of
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Northern Renaissance: Bosch's Garden

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  Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 1505      Hieronymus Bosch is known for many things, the many works he created in the late 1400s and early 1500s, having a name that sounds like a spell from Harry Potter , and creating possibly the most famous triptych to come out of the Northern Renaissance, The Garden of Earthly Delights .  However, while we know of his many works, knowledge about the man behind the brush is surprisingly scarce.  Even so, much of Bosch's character and beliefs come through when examining The Garden of Earthly Delights.     The work is a triptych, oil paintings created on three hinged wooden panels, the two outer panels folding in on the inner panel.  What is surprisingly rarely discussed is the fourth panel of the triptych, only viewable when the outer panels are closed. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (closed) Starting with the triptych closed is how I believe that Bosch intended the work to be viewed, as it
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