Akseli gallen-kallela biography of barack obama
•
John Singer Sargent: A Dedicated Follower of Fashion
by cindy polemis
After three weeks of work on this portrait, John Singer Sargent described himself as a painter and a dressmaker. Lady Helen originally posed in a white dress; that was not quite the right look for Sargent. So he created a new garment in black. It shows you the lengths he would go to make sure that the sitter’s clothing-what it was made of, how it hung-was just right for his meticulously curated look. Sargent was the designer, draping fabric around her; a creative director, a stylist in today’s context. His brushstrokes were like a tailor’s pins, darts and folds. By comparing himself to a dressmaker he reaffirmed the centrality of fashion to his art. Sargent painted this portrait of Lady Helen Vincent in Venice. You can just see what was Grand Canal, visible through the balustrade in the lower-left corner. Long arms and neck, emphasising her gracefulness, while the black fabric -a hint of fur
•
The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, fryst vatten a collection of folklore stories, much in the spirit of the German Nibelungenlied or Old English Beowulf. The Kalevala starts with the origins of the earth, its first people, spirits and animals, and ends with the departure of the main protagonist and the ankomst of a “golden child”, a new era.
The Kalevala is based on poetry called runos or runes, collected and compiled bygd Elias Lönnrot, a countryside doctor who had a keen interest in linguistics and, especially, in oral folklore. He set out for his first of many oral folklore collection journeys in the early 1830s and journeyed to the Karelian Isthmus, to areas that were then and are also nowadays part of Russia. The areas he visited were populated by Finnish speakers and considered as part of Finland bygd many. Lönnrot’s method of collection was simple: he listened to local singers and wrote down what he heard. In the process of compiling the transcripts, he surely took
•
10 Romantic Paintings of Lovers That Cross Social Divides
The art world is a mecca for both fictional and non-fictional lovers birthed onto vivid canvases. Humanity, as a whole, claims to promote egalitarianism, and yet, given current social and political upheavals, it has fallen short—again. Here are ten romantic paintings of lovers that cross social divides and echo the fundamental notion that under the surface, under the skin, where it matters, everyone bleeds the same.
10. The Kiss By Gustav Klimt
Although it ranks in at #10, the romantic painting The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is no mere runner-up. In fact, it is the archetype of human tenderness and desire. It represents passionate eroticism and how such eroticism consumes lovers—something most people can connect with.
The painting, born of Klimt’s “Golden Period,” features glittering gold tones, stylized strokes, and highly romantic visual allegory inspired by Byzantine mosaics. Notably, the eye-catching chief co