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
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
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
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
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
15 Apr 2013 | 1 Comments
Understanding how you are God
If you want a short and concise explanation of how today's mystical Christians think about God, read Carl McColman's excellent post on Does God = Consciousness? He responds to the letter of a theoretical physicist trying to reconcile his
03 Apr 2013 | 3 Comments
Art as a Spiritual Guidebook
Some readers may wonder - not many, I hope - how and why I describe so many different figures in art, from the Middle Ages to Picasso, as yet another representation of the artist. It can seem repetitive and boring, even simplistic. Yet it is a b
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
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
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
09 Nov 2012
Creation Theology
The painting above by an artist little known outside of Italy, Benedetto Bonfigli, is often titled The Annunciation of the Notaries and is dated to the middle of the fifteenth century. St. Luke who can be seen writing his gospel between the Virg
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
10 Oct 2012 | 1 Comments
Art, Generalization and Sight
One of the keys to understanding art is generalization because many of the most creative artists donate their ideas not to contemporaries or to those in the generation afterwards, who might not even understand, but to other great artists centuri
20 Sep 2012
Mondrian’s Esoteric Interests
The spiritual and esoteric knowledge passed down in Western art from one generation to the next seems to remain constant regardless of which spiritual path the artist is interested in. There are dozens of possibilities, some more likely in one a
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
12 Jul 2012
Ink Flies in a Mind
If anyone doubts that St. Sebastian holds a special place in the creative mind as a symbol of the artist’s self and the idea that every painter paints himself, then take a look at Jaff Seijas’ self-portrait above. It is not proof but it is t
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
04 Jul 2012
How a user of this site discovered a visual illusion
A few weeks ago Maaike Putman, a regular user of this site and an accomplished artist herself, sent me an extraordinary photo of a small wooden crucifix she had found hanging in a side chapel of the Santa Trinità church in Florence (above
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