“Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.” Ludwig van Beethoven I’ve mentioned Evelyn De Morgan’s painting The Storm Spirits on this site once before, when I was talking about how my moods are often directly tied to the weather. I love a good thunderstorm, there is something dramatic yet comforting to…
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On Aging
Jane Morris was swept into the Pre-Raphaelite world at age eighteen. She was La Belle Iseult to William Morris, who declared “I cannot paint you; but I love you”. Then she was Pandora, Mnemosyne, Astarte Syriaca and other assorted goddesses to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Years later, after the Pre-Raphaelite bloom had faded from her cheeks, we see Jane on canvas again in Evelyn De Morgan’s The Hour Glass (above). Her…
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A Pre-Raphaelite Look at Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Warning: This post contains spoilers. If you have not seen Vertigo, you might want to back away slowly because I do not want to ruin your experience You have been warned. “Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?”–Gavin Elster to Scottie in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Vertigo is,…
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The Personification of Love
Today I have been pondering allegories of love in art. Namely, the choices artists make when representing the concept of Love in physical form. It is usually male and I assume that the root of this lies in Greek myths of Eros, god of love, or his Roman counterpart, Cupid. Seen above is Hope Comforting Love in Bondage by Sidney…
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Music is Hope
Have you ever noticed that Pandora is a lot like Eve? Eve is to blame for being cast out of Eden, Pandora is to blame for unleashing evil into the world. Both stories can be ways to judge women harshly for their curiosity and instinctive need to pursue knowledge. Yet if Pandora is to be blamed for unleashing all those…
