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Ludovic Bassarab (1868–1933) was a Romanian artist who studied in Germany and France. He returned to Romania and primarily painted scenes of rural life in that country. His brush work is often heavy, and he frequently employs a simple pallet of colors in his works. I like his focus on everyday scenes and common people. You really get a feeling for a specific time and place from his paintings.
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| Ludovic Bassarab |
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David de Coninck was a 17th century Flemish artist. He specialized in painting animals. He started his career in Antwerp and moved first to Paris, then later to Rome before returning to Antwerp via Vienna. Unlike the later Romanticists, and for that matter our day, his animals were not cute and idyllic, instead his view of nature was red in fang and claw.
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Unless you bag some moose to lay in protein for the winter, as well as having a productive back 40, you need to buy your food. Assuming you have refrigerator grocery stores allow you to do a weekly shopping trip, while markets are more day by day. Either way, they are very much woven into the fabric of our life.
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This is a collection of paintings featuring bicycles. In selecting them I avoided mobs of latex clad bicycle enthusiasts and racers. Instead, I focused on the more generic types of bikes that are so common. Also, for some reason a lot of paintings featured baskets of flowers to give them a more romantic look; I avoided those as well.
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In the early half of the 20th century there were two Film Fun magazines, one British and one American. These are from the American Film Fun magazine. It was mainly a comic book with the strips featuring movie stars and other celebrities. From the pulp cheesecake covers, all of them done by the artist Enoch Bolles, it appears it was aimed at men.
Edited to add: after posting I realized that one of the covers, the one of Charlie Chaplin, is actually from the British Film Fun.
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These are paintings of people doing laundry. Either washing or hanging the clothes out to dry. It was hard to find images of men doing laundry, which says something, I guess. I did like the image (below) of the pipe smoking guy in his suit and tie at the laundromat as the amused women looked on. I think it was an ad from the 'men are silly chuckleheads' school of advertising.
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Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) was an English artist. He primarily painted landscapes and figure studies. His early work was heavily influenced by French impressionism. Later he evolved into a more naturalistic style, although the play of light was still a feature of his paintings. In his later years he became more minimal in his work, at times so simple they almost seemed abstract.
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| Philip Wilson Steer |
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Sanzo Wada was a 20th century Japanese artist. He was a painter (I previously featured his painting South Wind as the second image in the series of Sailor paintings), worked on color theory, and was an educator. After the war he eventually also did set and costume design, winning an Academy Award for his work on the film Gates of Hell.
He is best known for his Showa Shokugyo E-zukushi (Sketches of Occupations in the Showa Era), a series of wood block prints which show both modern and traditional occupations. These images are from that series.
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| Sanzo Wada |
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The story of the Garden of Eden is a well-known tale and so it has appeared in art. When God created the world, he then created Adam, the first man. He decided Adam needed a companion, so he created all of the animals, but none were suitable companions for Adam. God then yanked a bone out of Adam and created Eve, the first woman, to be his companion.
They moved into the Garden of Eden which was a veritable paradise on Earth. The only rule was that they couldn't eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge or the Tree of Life. However, one day a snake approached Eve and told her, I guess snakes could talk back then, that if she ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that she would attain God-like wisdom. She then nagged (I assume it was the first historical example of wifey nagging) Adam into munching on the fruit as well.
Well, it turns out that didn't go according to plan because the knowledge they got was the knowledge of misery and death. Plus, their breaking of the rules pissed God off and he booted them out of the Garden and consigned them to a life of toil, hardship and death. Thanks a lot Eve, who knew that listening to a snake instead of the Creator would be a bad decision.
However, I'm a glass half full sort of a fellow and so, aside from the disease and poverty that Eve's snack unleashed, I'll try to highlight the positives from it. For example, in perusing the pictures of the Garden of Eden I noticed that all of the animals, hunter and hunted alike, frolicked about with each other implying that, as well as being paradise on earth, the Garden was also a hellhole of veganism. So, we can thank Eve for steaks, fried chicken and bacon. Bacon alone excuses a lot, right?
