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Robert Desnos: Contrée

Jul 19, 2026 / terry / No comments

Robert Desnos (both ‘s’ pronounced, 1900-1945) was a Surrealist French poet. During World War II, after initially serving in the French army, Desnos became an active member of La Résistance. The illustration shows a photograph taken in 1943. On 22 February 1944, Desnos was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz. From there he was transferred to the Flōha labor campe, and finally, in April 1945, to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Though Theresienstadt was liberated on 8 May, Desnos died there of typhus on 8 June. Contrée (“Against the Grain”), a book of 25 poems celebrating the land of France and its resistance to oppression, was published in 1944.

Category: History, Language, Literature, Poetry / Tags: Andre Breton, Concentration Camps, Deportation, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, Resistance, Rrose Selavy, Sonnet, Surrealism, Theresienstadt, Vichy France, Youki

Vincent Van Gogh: The Double-Square Paintings

Jul 11, 2026 / terry / No comments

After a period of severe depression at the hospital at Saint-Rémy in the spring of 1890, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) asked to be discharged. He left Saint-Rémy on May 16, 1890, and visited his brother Theo in Paris for a few days, before travelling to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town about 30 km northwest of Paris, where Charles-François Daubigny had lived, and where several Impressionists, among them Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne, had painted. Auvers was also the home of Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a kindly physician whom Theo had asked to accept his brother as a patient. Van Gogh arrived in Auvers on May 20, 1890. Over the next ten weeks he created 74 paintings. Among these, twelve used a “double-square” format: 100 by 50 cm. In these paintings, Van Gogh attempted to express his new vision of the world. Unfortunately, his depression persisted and on the evening of July 27, 1890, he shot himself with a revolver, dying from the injury two days later. The illustration shows his last self-portrait painted in Saint-Rémy in September, 1889.

Category: Art, History, Medicine, Painting, Psychiatry / Tags: Auvers-sur-Oise, Depression, Doctor Gachet, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, suicide, Theo van Gogh, Tree Roots, Wheatfields

Su Shi: The Poetry of Exile

Jun 26, 2026 / terry / No comments

Su Shi (蘇軾; simplified 苏轼; Sū Shì, literary name 東坡 dōngpō “east slope,” 1037-1101) was a poet, calligrapher, painter and statesman during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). After criticizing some of the new government policies in his poetry, he was indicted in 1079 for treason. After the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial (烏臺詩案), he was found guilty and condemned to death. The emperor commuted his sentence, and Su was exiled to Huangzhou in Hubei Province. There he converted an old army camp on the eastern slope of a mountain near the city into a farm. During his exile from 1080 to 1084, he adopted the name of his farm as his professional pseudonym, practised Buddhism and wrote poetry.

Category: Art, History, Language, Painting, Poetry, Politics, Religion / Tags: Battle of the Red Cliffs, Calligraphy, Cao Cao, East Slope, Huangzhou, Mount Lu, Su Shi Dongpo, Sung Dynasty, Wang Anshi

Modern Chinese Calligraphy: Wang Dongling

Jun 10, 2026 / terry / No comments

Chinese calligraphy began over 3000 years ago. Over the years several distinct styles of writing evolved: oracle, bronze, seal, clerical, regular, semi-cursive (running) and cursive (grass). The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) overturned the respect shown to these traditional modes. However, calligraphy flourished in the format of the big-character posters (大字报, dàzì bào). In the years following the revolution, Chinese calligraphy became more abstract. One of the most important modern calligraphers is Wang Dongling (王冬龄). Among his many achievements is a new writing style that he calls “chaos script” 亂書 luànshū.

Category: Art, Language, Literature, Painting, Photography, Poetry / Tags: chaos script, Cultural Revolution, Daodejing, Heart Sutra, Lin Sanzhi, Lu Weizhao, Sha Menghai

Bright is the Ring of Words: English Art Song

May 17, 2026 / terry / No comments

During the 19^th Century, composers began to set poems to music. In these “art songs” or Lieder, the piano accompaniment accentuated the emotions and complemented the meaning of the poem. Although Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (1816) was the first cycle of art songs, Schubert was the composer who definitively established the genre. He was followed by Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, and Mahler. In the British Isles, a golden age of art song occurred in the first 20 years of the 20^th Century. Young composers, many trained in the German tradition, set to music both the lines they had learned in school and the poems of their contemporaries. The illustration is a wood cut from 1903 by Wassily Kandinsky.

Category: Art, Language, Literature, Music, Painting, Poetry / Tags: Battle of the Somme, Butterworth, de la Mare, Denis Browne, Gallipoli, Gurney, Kelly, Lieder, Masefield, Schubert, Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, Stevenson, Tennyson, Vaughan Williams, W.B. Yeats

Caravaggio: The Contarelli Chapel

May 8, 2026 / terry / No comments

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was born in small community called Caravaggio just east of Milan. He first became recognized as a painter of genius in 1602 when he completed a set of three paintings on the life of Saint Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Caravaggio had a ferocious temper and in 1606 he killed a man in a brawl and was banished from Rome. After a period of exile in Malta, Sicily and Naples, he negotiated a pardon. However, in Naples in 1609 he was violently assaulted by his enemies. He died in Porte Ercole as he tried to return to Rome. The portrait by Ottavio Leoni derives from the time when Caravaggio was in Rome at the height of his powers, though it was likely completed later.

Category: Art, History, Painting, Poetry, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Calling, Creation of Adam, Giuseppi Cesari, Inspiration, Jacques Cobaert, Karen Fish, Martyrdom, Matthieu Cointreau, Michelangelo, Saint Matthew, San Luigi Dei Francesi, Tenebrism

Bai Juyi: Pearls Falling on Jade

Apr 27, 2026 / terry / No comments

Bai Juyi (白居易, pinyin Bǎi Jūyì, or Po Chü-i in Wade-Gilles transliteration, 772-846 CE) was a Chinese poet. In 815, after inappropriately advising the emperor, he was exiled from the capital Chang’an to JiuJiang on the Yangtze River. One night, at a farewell party on the river for a friend, he heard a musician playing the pipa. Entranced by her music, he found out that she had once been a sought-after courtesan in the capital. After her beauty had faded away, she had retired to the provinces, where she played her music and lamented her lost youth. Moved by her plight, Bai Juyi composed his Pipa Xing (琵琶行, “Ballad of the Pipa”). The illustration shows a drawing of the poet and the pipa player from a scroll by Guo Xu (1456–1532).

Category: Art, History, Literature, Music, Painting, Poetry / Tags: Calligraphy, Chang'an, Jiujiang, Li Bai, Liu Dehai, Orient Pearl Tower, Pipa, Tang dynasty, Wu Man, Xunyang, Yangtze River

Silk Roads: Paths for the Faithful

Apr 12, 2026 / terry / No comments

The Silk Roads were overland routes connecting China to the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed the trading of silk, paper, gold, jewels, horses, and other goods. These began during the 2^nd Century BCE at the time of the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Dynasty in the East. The Silk Roads remained active until the 15^th Century CE, when they were largely replaced by maritime trading routes. At present they are mainly used for archeological research and tourism. The illustration shows a modern camel caravan in the desert near Dunhuang. As well as trade goods, the Silk Roads facilitated the movement of religious ideas. Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity, and Islam followed the Silk Roads into China. Mithraism, Manichaeism and Islam spread into Europe.

Category: Architecture, Art, History, Painting, Poetry, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Abbasid Caliphate, Buddhism, Central Asia, Church of the East, Dunhuang, Gandhara, Han Dynasty, James Elroy Flecker, Judaism, Manichaeism, Mithraism, Roman Empire, Samarkand, Sogdians, Tang dynasty, Tauroctony, Zoroastrianism

Zoroaster: Struggles between Good and Evil

Mar 21, 2026 / terry / No comments

Zoroaster, a legendary prophet who probably lived toward the end of the 2^nd Millennium BCE, proclaimed a new religion based on a belief in a supreme god Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom) who fights for truth and order (asha) against the forces of deceit and chaos (druj) led by Angra Mainyu (Evil Spirit). Since fire is the symbol of asha, Zoroastrian temples contain an eternal sacred flame, which represents the presence of Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest organized religions of the world and one of the smallest, with only about 120,000 adherents in the world today.

Category: Art, Ethics, History, Language, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Achaemenid Empire, Ahura Mazda, Asha, Dakhma, Dariu the Great, Dualism, Eternal return, Final Judgement, Mani, Manichaeism, Mithra, Mithraeum, Mithraism, Monotheism, Nietzsche, Parsis, Sasanian Emprire, Slave Morality, Tauroctony, Ubermensch, Zarathustra, Zoroastrianism

Antonello da Messina: Sicilian Master

Feb 24, 2026 / terry / No comments

Antonello da Messina (~1430-1479) was born in Messina, Sicily. While studying in Naples, he became aware of a technique of painting using oil-based pigments that had originated in the Netherlands with Jan van Eyck (~1390-1441) and his followers. Antonello soon became a master of this new method. He was an expert portraitist able to capture his sitters’ distinct identities and depths of feeling. The illustration shows a painting from 1473, that was once thought to be a self-portrait, but there is no real evidence for this. Although many of Antonello’s works have been lost, three absolute masterpieces have survived: Saint Jerome in his Study, The Virgin Annunciate, both dated to around 1474, and Saint Sebastien from about 1478. Read more

Category: Art, History, Language, Literature, Painting, Philosophy, Religion / Tags: Annunciation, Ecco Homo, Giovanni Bellini, Humanism, Humanities, Jan van Eyck, Oil Painting, Petrus Christus, Renaissance Portraits, Saint Jerome, Saint Sebastian

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