Strange Islands.

Francis Bacon, Study for a Portrait. (1991)

From the National Galleries of Scotland.

via cavetocanvas:

This is one of the last paintings Bacon completed. It is the second in a series of three portraits of his friend, the artist Anthony Zych. Zych appears to be standing in a doorway, possibly that of the artist’s studio. The camera tripod is an element repeated from the central panel of a triptych painted in 1944. Bacon’s portraits were almost without exception of people with whom he was familiar. He preferred to paint his subjects not from life but from photographs.

(Source: nationalgalleries.org)

Francisco Goya was born on 30 March 1746 (d.1828).

The Third of May 1808 is the picture against which all future paintings of tragic violence would have to measure themselves. It is truly modern, never surpassed in its newness, so raw that although it was a state commission it remained in storage, unseen by the public for the first 40 years of its life.

The surface is ragged: no smooth finish. The blood on the ground is a dark alizarin crimson smeared on thick and then scraped back with a palette knife, so that it looks crusty and scratchy, just like real blood smeared by the twitches of a dying body. You can’t “read” the wounds that disfigure the face of the man on the ground, but as signs of trauma in paint they are inexpressibly shocking - their imprecision conveys the thought that you can’t look at them.

The man about to be shot faces martyrdom in a clean white shirt, throwing out his arms in a gesture that recalls the Crucifixion, a gesture of indescribable power, flinging out life in defiance. The coarse, swarthy, dilated face - all vitality. The faces of the pueblo , the Spanish people, keep their individuality right up to the edge of the mass grave which is their destiny. They are the opposite of the utter anonymity of the firing squad - all identical backs, braced into the recoil of those big .70-calibre flintlocks. The men featureless, the hill featureless. This is the first truly modern image of war, the first to register the machine-like efficiency of oppression. It is as unlike all previous war paintings as Wilfred Owen’s trench poems are unlike all Victorian war poetry. No glory; only pity and loss, and the defiant humanity of the victims.

- Robert Hughes

via The Guardian: Goya’s Unflinching Eye

Detail from The Battle of Alexander at Issus by Albrecht Altdorfer, c.1529.

via That’s How The Light Gets In

The Embrace.

An essay by John Berger on the paintings of Rembrandt.

“The human was no longer self-evident. It had to be found in the darkness.”

Part 2 below:

At The Dressing Table, 1909, by Zinaida Serebriakova.

If you were asked to write from memory what you can remember of a painting in words, it is quite a task, but quite a revealing one, because it highlights the details you focussed upon. I for example remember a young woman in her early twenties, sat before a mirror, she is attending to her hair. The painting is exuberant, even cheerful in its characterisation of the sitter and in the choice of the palette. I got the impression of youth and joy of life. It was a portrait of optimism and above all confidence in being a woman. The other impression was that it seemed very modern despite being painted a century ago.

Now I am looking at the portrait. It is an autobiographical portrait – the sitter is the painter herself, Zinaida Serebriakova (1884-1967). Notice the use of white in the modelling of the face and in nearly every object. It is white that reflects back to us as the viewer and gives us here a sense of the brightness – look how the linen in the reflection is used to contrast and delineate her face and hair, how the planes of white lead into each other.

More via: Escape into Life - Stephen Pain: Zinaida Serebriakova and The Soviet Nude

FRED TOMASELLI
Hang Over, 2005
(Leaves, pills, acrylic, resin on wood panel)

via

Floréal III

by Terry Haass, 1960.

via Adventures in the Print Trade

Georges Lacombe: Autumn - The Chestnut Gatherers (1894)

via The Blue Lantern: The Sculptor Nabi Who Painted

Thomas Alexander Harrison: Solitude (1893)

via lethebashar & voodoovoodoo

via lethebashar & art-documents:

Aiko Miyanaga

“Like precious gems, Aiko Miyanaga’s crystalline sculptures reflect light and shine with a brilliance that beguiles the viewer. But while diamonds are forever, Miyanaga’s carefully crafted forms are not long for this world. In fact, some of her pieces are gone before her exhibitions even come to a close.”

- Japan Times : Who Says An Art Work Must Exist?