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
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,
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
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
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
21 May 2013
Plays on the Mind
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Richard Foreman, an experimental playwright for more than four decades "has presided over heady spectacles that mingle the conventions of theater with ... stroboscopic stage sets designed as embodim
11 May 2013
Emerson on Mind
When I started out I soon realized that every true work of art fulfilled the Renaissance saying that titles this site. EPPH, in short. Now, in more recent years, I have come to recognize that every artwork, like every church and temple from the
20 Apr 2013
Do you know what it means to come home?
Think differently. The old ways are often dull and didactic. Take, for instance, paintings and prints that seem to illustrate Bible stories. Why treat them as a narrative when mystical Christians, among whom must be counted many great Western ar
23 Mar 2013
Drawings as Ideas in the Mind
Concepto, concetto, esemplo, modello. Michael Cole and Mary Pardo, writing about the studio in the Italian Renaissance, have pointed out that the terms artists then used for a working drawing, what we today might call a sketch or study, were the
20 Mar 2013 | 2 Comments
How Degas drew a top hat…
Art is so pregnant that even in a "simple" sketch like Degas' Edouard Manet at the Races (c. 1865) there is always something more. I thought I had drained the drawing when I finished writing about it yesterday (see entry). And, then, this m
16 Mar 2013
Is this Roy Lichtenstein’s new coat of paint?
Puns, word-play, double-entendre, homonoyms....painters pun like poets and almost as frequently. The chances that Roy Lichtenstein did not think of a "coat of paint" while drawing this image are so small that we should assume he did. Turn to the
09 Mar 2013
Proust’s and Degas’ Disappearing Models
Literature and its methods are a useful yardstick by which to judge our knowledge and understanding of the visual arts. For instance, the known fact accepted by literary critics that many friends and acquaintances of Marcel Proust, the great Fre
13 Feb 2013
Logos (no, not that one!) and Art
Foreign words can sometimes sound more intellectual than those we use in English. That's why when logos is mentioned in reference to art it generally refers to the beginning of St. John's Gospel and is set in italic…"In the beginning
02 Feb 2013 | 15 Comments
Roy Lichtenstein’s Plagiarism
Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Let no-one else's work evade your eyes! Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.....
Tom Lehrer's comical lyrics from the 1950's were pierced
29 Jan 2013 | 5 Comments
2nd Self-Portrait Found in Same Met Gallery!
After discovering a self-portrait by Picasso four days ago (see blog), I think I've discovered another one, this time by Bonnard.....hanging right opposite the other one at the Metropolitan Museum! The "coincidence" demonstrates, if nothing else
16 Jan 2013 | 2 Comments
Sotheby’s Head Turner
Two years ago, shortly after I began this website, Christie's sold one of the most important Old Master paintings to come on the market for years: Poussin's Ordination from the collection of the Duke of Rutland. The auction house helped by Pouss
23 Dec 2012
1, 2, 3. Please start here.
"The poets", a great literary critic once wrote, "do not read the same books as the academics or do not read them in the same way." She added, to explain how all great poetry is on the same path, that the gnosis of mind, or inner wisdom they sea
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