![doloresdepalabra:
Edgar Degas - Four Dancers [c.1899]
Degas frequented the ballet and opera, where he found subjects not only in performance but also within the unexpected frames created by the angles of stage wings and practice-room mirrors.
He never accepted the label impressionist, and his momentary, snapshot-like views result, not from spontaneous improvisation, but from deliberate arrangement. An avid photographer, his compositions were often influenced by that new medium. Here, for example, the figures are clustered to the left, some cut off at the picture edge. We cannot even be certain that it is four dancers we see - perhaps, instead, this is a single figure, moving as in the sequential photographs of running horses and men by Eadweard Muybridge
The sketchy background of the stage set, painted in a broad, almost blurry manner, is typical of Degas’ late works, but he trains a sudden sharp focus on the dancers’ backs. Our eye follows the linked movements of their arms, as Degas described in a sonnet: “The ribbon of her steps twists and knots….”
[Oil on canvas, 151.1 x 180.2 cm]
via](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4sji5ePGf1r05oujo1_500.jpg)
Edgar Degas - Four Dancers [c.1899]
Degas frequented the ballet and opera, where he found subjects not only in performance but also within the unexpected frames created by the angles of stage wings and practice-room mirrors.
He never accepted the label impressionist, and his momentary, snapshot-like views result, not from spontaneous improvisation, but from deliberate arrangement. An avid photographer, his compositions were often influenced by that new medium. Here, for example, the figures are clustered to the left, some cut off at the picture edge. We cannot even be certain that it is four dancers we see - perhaps, instead, this is a single figure, moving as in the sequential photographs of running horses and men by Eadweard Muybridge
The sketchy background of the stage set, painted in a broad, almost blurry manner, is typical of Degas’ late works, but he trains a sudden sharp focus on the dancers’ backs. Our eye follows the linked movements of their arms, as Degas described in a sonnet: “The ribbon of her steps twists and knots….”
[Oil on canvas, 151.1 x 180.2 cm]
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both sides now. (by aga_d)
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life:
Not published in LIFE: Queen Elizabeth II in Ethiopia, 1965.
See more photos here.
(Source: jimihendrixinparadise.blogspot.com, via jimi-paradise)
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(Source: impaulite, via a-turtle-boy)
Maurice Denis, Springtime, c. 1897
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
With Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Denis was a founding member of the Nabis group in France, active from 1888 to 1899. Denis, the group’s spiritual leader and chief theoretician, called for a new pictorial language in response to the rhythms of nature. In date and sensibility, his work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as shown here, he had a firm grasp on modernist thought. He once said, “Remember that a picture, before being a war horse, a female nude, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”
Springtime, a double-sided canvas, describes a purification scene set deep in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris. Several pairs of young women-representing the sacred and the profane-blend into a bucolic landscape where one of them stands nude in a stream. Denis draws a parallel between the flowering sapling in the center (a symbol of spring, renewal, and Easter) and the maidens.
Rawrrrrr!!
(Source: hopeleftuntouched)
Maurice Denis, The Muses, 1893
From the Musée d’Orsay:
In the guise of women dressed in contemporary clothing, Maurice Denis updates a subject taken from classical mythology – the muses who inspire the arts and sciences. But he transforms the theme profoundly, stripping the muses of the traditional attributes which allow them to be identified.
In the group of three women sitting in the foreground we can see the figure of Marthe, whom the painter married in June 1893 and who inspired his art until her death. In a device common in Denis’ work, she is shown twice: in profile in red and from the back, sitting on the chair. Maurice Denis has set the scene on the terrace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the town where he lived all his life. The century-old chestnut trees give the composition rhythm and decorative power. The regular strokes of the tree trunks are a pretext for a play of vertical lines which contrast with the curves and ornamental arabesques of the branches, the leaves strewn on the ground, and the patterns and folds of the dresses. The graphic play of lines and interlacing is intensified by the unreal, autumnal colours, painted in areas of flat colour and neatly outlined. The flattened space is that of a “sacred wood”, the setting for a revelation and the figures’ mysterious communication with nature and supernatural powers. An enigmatic tenth muse in the background (while traditionally there are only nine), with one arm raised to the light of the sky, convinces us of that.
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f
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Valerie van der Graaf & Johanna Fosselius by Jeff Hahn for Tatler Hong Kong
reminds me of an outfit Daenerys Targaryen would wear of Game of Thrones~ Awesome :)
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Vogue UK cover ~ Sasha Pivovarova
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Teresa Wright
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“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.” — (via dazed—confused)
(Source: pennygolightly, via workman)