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View Article  A DIMA DRJUCHIN FOR TODAY


Dima has a blog now -- derealization.
  Cool stuff there -- check it out.
View Article  A CÉZANNE FOR TODAY


Nature morte . . .

View Article  A ROBERT MCGINNIS FOR TODAY


[Via  Golden Age Comic Book Stories]
View Article  A COMIC BOOK PANEL FOR TODAY


We forget that large rock concerts are often occasions for shattering heartbreak . . .

[Via  Golden Age Comic Book Stories]
View Article  A BENDA FOR TODAY


A study in green by W. T. Benda, Polish-American artist and illustrator from the first half of the 20th Century.  He later became more famous for making exquisite masks used in theatrical productions.

[With thanks, as so often, to  Golden Age Comic Book Stories, the greatest web site known to humanity.]
View Article  A BÉRAUD FOR TODAY


Jean Béraud's portrait of remorse -- but for what?  Thus did the Victorians tease and titillate . . .

View Article  A PULP COVER FOR TODAY


[Via  Golden Age Comic Book Stories
]
View Article  AN N. C. WYETH FOR TODAY


This is one of Wyeth's illustrations for Children Of the Bible.  The tale it illustrates is curious.  In Mark's account of the incident at Gethsemane, where Rabbi Jeshua was arrested by the Roman soldiers, there's a little aside about "a young man" dressed only in a sheet.  When the soldiers tried to seize him they tore the sheet off and the young man fled naked into the night.


This is such an odd detail, and so scandalous, since nakedness was a real scandal in the culture of that time and place, that many scholars cite it as an example of something that must have been reliably reported from the earliest times and widely known, since no later chronicler would have included it otherwise.



According to Mark it was a cold night -- so what was a kid doing out there dressed only in a sheet?  No one knows, of course, but scholars have speculated that the young man (often identified as Mark himself) was sleeping in the house where the last supper was held, and seeing the rabbi and his disciples head off to Gethsemane, decided on an impulse to follow them.

That moment of impulse is clearly what Wyeth is depicting -- in a dramatic tableau where the rabbi, touched by moonlight, walks off into darkness.

[With thanks to PZ for illuminating the incident, and to
Golden Age Comic Book Stories for the Wyeth illustration.  The painting above, by Gérard Douffet, from around 1620, clearly owes a lot to Caravaggio's masterpiece The Taking Of Christ, painted about 20 years earlier and a far greater work.]
View Article  COMMIE JESUS


If you're not familiar with it yet, check out the amazing graphic art of Dima Drjuchin -- in which many wondrous traditions somehow converge into something new.  Mexican lotoría cards and lucha libre
ads and Día de Los Muertos imagery get mixed up with Catholic devotional art and 60s psychedelic concert posters and comic book panels, all inflected with a truly eccentric imagination defying category.

It's cool.

See more of Dima's art here:

Dima Drjuchin
View Article  THE DEPARTURE OF THE WITCHES


Wait -- come back!


At first glance, this looks like a painting by Bourguereau gone stark raving mad, or something Frank Frazetta might have done if he'd been a Victorian academic painter.  In fact, it's a work from 1878 by Luis Ricardo Falero.  Falero did a lot of supernatural-themed paintings with voluptuous nudes, but from what I've seen, this is his masterpiece.

The depth of the image, and the smarmy but delightful eroticism of the scene, are wonderful.

[With thanks to Boing Boing.]

View Article  A CLOWN FOR TODAY


Illustration by Maxfield Parrish for Kenneth Grahame's Dream Days.


[Via
Golden Age Comic Book Stories]
View Article  A BOUGUEREAU FOR TODAY


Work Interrupted
View Article  A NORMAN ROCKWELL FOR TODAY


Breaking Home Ties
, cover, The Saturday Evening Post, 1954.
View Article  A ROBERT MCGINNIS FOR TODAY


Gold Dust
-- with thanks to
Golden Age Comic Book Stories . . .
View Article  A PIETER BREUGEL THE ELDER FOR TODAY


Beekeepers -- with thanks to Amy Crehore . . .