Botticelli and the Mystic Nativity

I happened to catch a few minutes of this BBC series last night on TVO, (props to the government funded arts acronyms!) its called The Private life of {insert artwork or artist here} they featured one on Botticelli's Mystic Nativity which is in the National Gallery in London. It seemed like the history of the painting is really rich and incorporates the history of Florence in the turbulent times after the Bonfire of the vanities and Savonarola being burned as a heretic.

I have always looked at this image with a lot of care when I was spending time in the gallery, the demons which peak out of the cracks of the earth are fascinating and I love how Botticelli thought the world was coming to an end in 1500 AD because all the problems in Italy at that time. I had a huge chat with my friend Jan years ago and I used this painting as an example of how we always think things are getting worse in life, no matter what the evidence, we think we live at the end of days as it were.

As per usual, she thought I was full of shit and thought it best to let me know, another reason why we all miss Jan- daily.

I digress.

Anyways, when I was a student in Florence back in 1992, I was really into the compositional poetry of the large paintings in the Ufizi galleries there. I went so far as to base a painting of mine on Botticelli's Primavera....However my painting was based on a series of disturbing dreams I was having at the time about US POWs after Viet Nam (wow, i am outdoing myself on the acronyms ce soir!)

man, another picture I do not have a slide of, 20 years ago, I have to see if I can find any reference to that painting of mine and I'll insert it here at some point.
Yup, I remember it well, these Pows had the attributes of 1970s men, moustaches and such, as it turns out Freddie Mercury died at that time and he really resembled one of my characters, or visa versa.


Back to the topic, the Nativity painting, it is really strange and wonderful and makes reference to a speech by Savonarola and his visions of Mary (Click here if you would like to know more about this Dominican friar).

Boy did this drag on, anyways look, I could not fins the doc on youtube but I found others on the series here, look at the sidebar for ones on Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Degas, Picasso, Rodin and the Japanese artist Hokusai of the wave painting, of which I will shamelessly insert my own version of that image as part of my mixed media painting/photography.

The TV series shows you an image in a different light, ok, they don't examine contemporary work which would be awesome but what can I tell you?

Please have a look at the National Gallery UK's site the collection is terrific, there is so much stunning work there, every time i am in the UK, I walk in that gallery and it feels like I am visiting a relative, I'll spend the day there.

Long Time No Post

OK OK, I have been meaning to make about 10 million posts but where does the time go I ask you in the most rhetorical fashion?

A few weeks ago, I went to NYC via the Megabus, and frankly, meh is my pronouncement on this cheap way to get down there. But when it comes to New York City, unlike much of life, it is not the journey but the destination that matters so don't worry about the crappy bus ride, devoid of the much promised free Wi-Fi and electricity.

No, its more about going to the Neue Galerie on the edge of Central Park, the German art centre which has Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka paintings and a traveling Otto Dix show which will be in Montreal soon.



Otto Dix's series of prints made from his harrowing experiences in WW1 are as terrifying as they are hilarious and sad.

This is where the paintings purchased from the Bloch-Bauer heirs now live. The Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait and some of Klimt's last paintings are here.

check out the Gallery here



This a little sketch from an Egon Schiele painting that was so simple and utter perfect in it's sense of contour.



I sat in the cafe Sabarsky, named after the Klimt art expert who curated a Klimt show I saw 1991 in Florence, it kinda blew me away- you know all about the finished paintings, but it was the sketches that were so simple and stunning. The show was in the massive Fortezza della Basso, which is sort of on the edge of the city.

It is also on a ring road where tranny hookers ply their trade. As students, we had to walk past here every day to get to school, which was fine in the day as we could navigate the insane "Italian Job" Style driving, dog shit and used hypodermic needles which were part of the everyday (Florence, in the early 1990s was apparently the Heroin capital of Western Europe). At Night, however, Fiat Puntos would slow to a crawl, looking for just the right combo of white fur coat, black wig and shiny fuck me boots that made that irresistible Tranny. We would walk past it all in amazement.