11 Dec 2012
Memory Holloway and Picasso
Memory Holloway, an art historian at the University of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, has written a wonderful book on a magnificent group of etchings by Pablo Picasso. It is titled Making Time: Picasso's Suite 347. Suite 347 is the name given to
24 Nov 2012
Creativity in Science and the Arts
Today we tend to think that creative people find employment in the arts while those whose minds are capable of rigorous logic are more suited to science. It is, of course, entirely wrong as many may sense without knowing exactly why. The average
19 Nov 2012
Seeing Through the Artist’s Eyes
Michelangelo's Art Through Michelangelo's Eyes (2005) was my first publication because it demonstrates how important it is to look at poetic art that way, through the eyes of the artist. I have continued to show how the same method works wi
13 Nov 2012
Six Tips on How to Look at Art
The idea, peddled by many, that you can just stand in front of a work of art and let it speak to you is wrong. What, for instance, happens inside you when you look at the Mona Lisa? Probably not much. Indeed, as an adolescent trying to figure ou
07 Nov 2012
Jacques Lipchitz as a Jewish Christ
Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) was mostly a follower of his period's more innovative artists but that does not mean that he lacked the visual perception to make sense of art. He had that in spades. The bronze, above left, of a Pierrot, a well-
04 Nov 2012
Art and the Human Mind
Rumi was a mystical poet born in what is now Afghanistan in 1207 and died in 1273. The world has learnt little since about being human that Rumi did not already know and his ancestors long before him. Technology and science may be new and
29 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
Andy Warhol: The Only Way Out is In!
Here for those familiar with the site is a late print by Andy Warhol. It provides the quotation of the week: "The only way out is in!"
25 Oct 2012
Jackson Pollock’s Poetry of the Self
“Painting is a state-of-being….Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” Jackson Pollock (1912-56)1
Like hundreds of artists since the early Renaissance, and probably from even before then, the true m
22 Oct 2012
Tiepolo’s Magic Well
I, a complete novice, was in an art class the other day copying as a watercolor a drawing done in ink by Giambattista Tiepolo. The copy is illustrated above (lower image). While working on the shadows, though, in the lower left corner where the
07 Oct 2012 | 7 Comments
Michelangelo’s Skull
In the three-part article on Michelangelo's Art Through Michelangelo's Eyes (2005) I argue that Michelangelo's Last Judgment is a scene inside the artist's mind with many of the figures formed into a giant view of his poetic hero, Dante Alighier
06 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
How Shakespeare Became a King
I demonstrated several years ago that many of the most iconic portraits of Europe's rulers, including those of many British kings and at least four of her queens, so closely resemble the artist's self-portrait that they are not portraits as we t
18 Sep 2012
For we are God
It's always thrilling to discover that yet another artist thinks alike. In 1927 the great German painter Max Beckmann published an article on the contemporary artist that covers many of the same ideas expressed here: the artist's vision
28 Aug 2012
Microbes & Man: The Essence of Art
Who we are, or rather who each artist was, is crucial to our understanding of art in ways that the literature on art rarely, if ever, addresses. Yet once the concept every painter paints himself is seen as central to understanding the artist&rsq
04 Aug 2012
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
I've been reading the Bhagavad Gita, India's gift to the world, and discovering how the themes and principles of good living that Krishna teaches are remarkably similar to those that both Christ and Buddha taught centuries later. No-one
18 Jul 2012
Errors! Errors! Errors!
This is a piece of advice that I need to keep giving in case some newbies on the site have missed it. Even I sometimes forget it but Its importance cannot be overstated and is regularly overlooked in conventional art history. Look for the passag
05 Jul 2012
Higgs boson and the Arts
The Higgs boson may have been found. The news today is circling the globe faster than the speed of light, attracting elementary fascination. Everyone has their own twist on its significance to them even those, like me, whose knowledge of science
29 Jun 2012
Should we look for Originality or Similarity?
Some of the interpretations revealed here are so self-evident that you might wonder why art scholars never saw them before. I think there are many reasons but one is key. While we look for what art has in common with earlier art, academics tend
14 Jun 2012
“Sir, rejoice with me, I have become God.”
The Inner Tradition in Christianity, the idea that Scripture and Christ’s teachings are allegorical in nature, is so little known that its impact on art has not been properly addressed. Those following the tradition know that God, as described
31 May 2012
Francis Bacon on Portraits and Crosses
I’ve just been reading a series of essays on Francis Bacon and have come across two quotes that I must pass on. A young doctoral student had some long conversations with Bacon in 1975 in which Bacon was saying that when he looks at a great pai
19 May 2012
Every sculptor…....
Following one medieval image with another, Villard de Honnecourt’s 13th.-century sketch (above) of a stone-cutter sculpting his own foot conveys a message that every craftsman knew by heart, even in a different medium: every painter paints
18 May 2012
Joseph Leo Koerner and the Artist as Christ
Occasionally I see an image that turns on a light and helps illuminate an artist's way of seeing quite concisely. Fittingly, an illumination is one of them. The best book ever written on self-portraiture is probably Joseph Leo Koerner’s The Mo
12 May 2012
Chaos as the Source of Creativity
Chaos is the source of creativity. Chaos – some might say “controlled chaos” – increases the likelihood that two disparate ideas or forms will merge to create something new. That’s at least one theory of orginality.
11 May 2012
Face-off. Keep an eye on the details.
I try not to write too much about portraiture because pointing out “face fusion” time and again can become a bit repetitive. Occasionally, though, it is worth reminding readers, especially new ones, that even portraits that do not re
08 May 2012
Is Painting Art?
This website, EPPH, is founded on a few principles that bear repeating, especially for new users. One of the most important concerns art’s definition. What is art? We believe that drawing and painting are crafts, not arts. Almost any motiv
03 May 2012
Art’s Tradition of Secrecy
Great poets are great poets because they have reached heights of spiritual understanding inaccessible to the crowd. The starting-point depends on the individual; some are born prophetic, others somewhere along the way. Those who begin at the bot
26 Apr 2012
Canvas is Canvas
Most of the visual metaphors for an artist’s implements revealed here are related to their referent in art through their form, their function or some other more abstract link. A rifle or sword is long and thin like a paintbrush. They must be a
21 Apr 2012 | 2 Comments
Rembrandt and His Crucifixion (1631)
I can be very blind. Some time ago I added an analysis of Rembrandt’s Crucifixion in which I showed that Rembrandt had portrayed himself as Christ not out of delusions of grandeur but based on Christianity’s most fundamental principles
11 Apr 2012 | 2 Comments
Words on Words and Songs on Sound
My beat is art history and I’ve spent15 years reading nothing but non-fiction loosely or closely related to art. My knowledge of contemporary literature is tenuous at best; my familiarity with music worse but I have a belief ba
31 Mar 2012
Shakespeare’s Triggers
One of Shakespeare’s semantic tricks is to change the function of a word but still have it make sense. In the lines “To lip a wanton in a secure couch / And to suppose her chaste” the noun lip becomes a verb while wanton,
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