09 Dec 2013
Getting Dressed for the Last Supper
True art, Oscar Wilde said, is “the soul made incarnate”, a proposition with which EPPH agrees. The mind, rid of the ego and its daily obsessions, is the soul. If great art depicts the creator’s soul at the moment of the work’s conceptio
26 Nov 2013 | 2 Comments
Tips to Tell Art from Illustration
My definition of art, as I've said before, is not as wide as that used by the public and most scholars. I do not believe, for instance, that children create art nor the vast majority of adult painters. True artists paint themselves; they paint i
24 Nov 2013
How a Dumb Skull Spoke
The difference between my method of looking at art and the conventional one is, in essence, quite simple: I spot-the-same while most others spot-the-difference. I notice this all the time which is why a recent advance in paleontology also caught
20 Nov 2013
Picasso Hid a Sword in Nazi Loot
Sometimes I do no work at all. Things just pop in my face. I suppose I'm so used to looking for certain features that my eyes know what to look for subconsciously. That's what appeared to happen last week as I read the news that the Germans
18 Nov 2013
Giacometti’s Visual Illusion Blows My Mind
Yesterday, after posting the entry on Giacometti’s Self-portrait with Brush (above), I saw something astonishing. It's a good reminder that even when you think you understand, there's still more to know. And it comes with perserverance and the
15 Nov 2013
Can All in Art be One?
If new visitors to EPPH wonder how landscapes, still-lifes, portraits and scenes of battle can all have a single theme, think not whether the wide variety of art can really be a single subject but whether the proposed subject, a view of the soul
12 Nov 2013
Where on earth is the Kingdom of Heaven?
Occasionally, while studying art, I achieve a breakthrough quite unlike my normally slow and incremental progress. One of those moments was discovering that key words and phrases in the Bible and other esoteric texts intentionally mislead, allow
10 Nov 2013 | 3 Comments
Why Art is So Similar
Some readers question whether the common themes of art explained here really exist because, in their minds, art is a product of individual expression. No wonder. That is what children are told and art lovers too. Picasso, for instance, is said t
04 Nov 2013
Do artists still keep secrets?
Is there, as EPPH proposes, a secret tradition, handed down in virtual silence over many centuries, from one artist to another but which is still completely unknown to art historians? I admit that seems unlikely and though I have revealed it in
31 Oct 2013
A Sioux Story on Creation
Every painter paints himself is not just an expression of a poetic method but an insight into the nature of reality. That’s why it’s so important. You can only see in front of you what you already know or feel inside you. Thus, we too p
25 Oct 2013 | 2 Comments
Focus on Great Art. Don’t waste time!
One of the most important features of EPPH is that all the content is based on certain underlying ideas, some quite novel. Eight of the most important are listed on the Principles page. I have just realized, though, that another of particular im
14 Oct 2013
The Error of Art History
Yesterday I wrote about how some errors make the world interesting and beautiful. This one does not.
Read the Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who rarely saw great art, and you will learn about it on every page because the truths
13 Oct 2013
Higgs Boson and Mistakes
So, not long after the discovery of the Higgs boson and half a century after they predicted its existence, Higgs and Englert win the Nobel Prize in Physics. I don't often relate to advances in science but this one's a biggie. Last year, on news
09 Oct 2013 | 1 Comments
Artist Crucified in his Studio
No-one you know thinks of themself as Christ which may be why most people find it so impossible to believe that artists do. My continual harping on this theme can sound like madness. One new reader, clearly dedicated to her Church, complained vo
02 Oct 2013
Blindness Lets People See
"The blind can see" sounds like a biblical myth but it is true. The blind and the visually impaired can see visual art for what it is, at least the idea of it, while the sighted generally cannot. In paintings and sculptures over many centuries,
28 Sep 2013
How Manet and other artists shoot their paintings
Have you ever shot your mother? Directors shoot movies and nearly everyone has made a snap-shot with a camera but few imagine that artists shoot paintings. In fact they have shot nearly every canvas with a gun in it since the devilish implements
21 Sep 2013
Pens, Palettes and their Visual Metaphors
Thoth was an Egyptian god best known in art as having the head of an ibis (above left). He had many functions but was perhaps most celebrated as the scribe of the gods, the inventor of heiroglyphs and writing, and who, when people died, wrote do
18 Sep 2013
A Hair-raising Tool to Understand Art
It's interesting to learn something new about an artwork but even more exhilarating to learn the craft itself by acquiring the mental tools used to interpret what few can see. We all paint the world the way we think it or are told to think it by
09 Sep 2013 | 2 Comments
Art’s Unknown Frown
Artists frown. Constantly. Why? Charles Darwin considered the corrugator, the muscle which results in a frown, as the most remarkable of the human face because it irresistably conveys the idea of mind.1 And that's why, in my opinion, artists hav
10 Aug 2013 | 2 Comments
Soak it up! The Story of Degas’ Sponge.
Degas was a well-known miser so some people might still think of him as a sponge. That would be appropriate. Artists don't always handle brushes; they use anything that works, sponges included. A selection sold for use by artists is il
09 Aug 2013 | 2 Comments
Did even St Paul follow the Inner Tradition?
Theology and theological studies are so focussed on the Establishment Churches who appeal to the masses, that followers of the Inner Tradition are often ignored or have their testimony skewed to support what they did not say. Esoteric (ie., secr
05 Aug 2013
Why Creative People Are Eccentric
Giorgio Vasari's account of the lives of great artists is full of odd behavior. But even if Vasari's history is part-fiction - as we now know it is - eccentricity is a good sign in a creative mind and quite common. Shelley Carson, a psychologist
25 Jul 2013
Is Kanye West a God?
Kanye West has a new song out, "I Am a God." Very few people can imagine Kanye West as a God. I can. EPPH has been arguing for years that important artists consider themselves God. This is not just, I believe, for delusions of grandeur (though n
22 Jul 2013
The Imaginative Advantages of Self-Deception
"A serious human life….can hardly begin until we see an element of illusion in what is really there and something real in fantasies about what might be there instead." Northrop Frye (1912-1991)1
Frye, a well-known literary critic (abo
17 Jul 2013 | 1 Comments
Michelangelo Rocks in The Battle of Cascina (1504)
This post explains additional obervations not included in the original article here on Michelangelo’s The Battle of Cascina, a 1504 cartoon for a never-completed mural in the civic heart of Florence. It is one of the most celebrated and influe
14 Jul 2013
Resemblance in an Animated Face
Can two quite different faces each resemble the artist? The answer is yes, because the visual processes of the brain do not need to see similarity in all features. Your visual cortex is clever and can color in what you cannot see or have not see
13 Jul 2013
Hockney Draws Rain or Shine
When an artist paints a subject, what is most likely to dominate their thoughts: the subject, the process of creating it or both? Well, you all know the answer to that one. Still, it was sweet to read David Hockney confirm it while discussing
05 Jul 2013 | 3 Comments
Art’s Etymology
The successful Germans are not very popular at the moment in France, Italy and Great Britain, all suffering economically. But who do you think understands art better? Well, if language is anything to go by, it's not the Romance languages an
26 Jun 2013 | 2 Comments
How Inner Christianity has changed in 40 years…
Carl McColman whose blog I have recommended before has just posted a video of a very interesting discussion about the development and growing popularity in recent years of Inner Christianity or what they call in the video "Contemplative Christia
13 Jun 2013
Nature and Us
Great artists may follow dogma out of social etiquette or necessity but they think freely, leading them somewhat paradoxically to a similar conclusion.1 They know in unison, as do poets and other sensitive types, that our minds trick us into thi
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