Best products from r/museum

http://www.cegur.com/html/frameAlbright.html
http://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Albright-Courtney-Graham-Donnell/dp/1555951368
"I'm not trying to make a pleasant aesthetic experience;" Ivan Albright once commented. "I want to jar the observer into thinking—to make him uncomfortable:" Albright's mature paintings have succeeded at this: many critics have attacked them as the height of gruesomeness. Among Those Left, one of his early canvases, is less grisly than many of his mature works but anticipates them in its somber coloration, spooky lighting, and emphasis on transience and mortality.
Albright was born in Chicago in 1897, the son of a painter who had studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and who trained him from an early age to draw in the academic tradition, copying models and plaster casts. This, more than his later enrollment in art schools, provided the foundation for his finely crafted paintings. In 1926, after taking some painting classes at both The Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Albright won an Honorable Mention at the Annual American Art Exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago. This success encouraged him to concentrate on art, and in 1927 he and his twin brother Malvin, who produced sculpture under the name Zsissly, began sharing a studio in an abandoned church in Warrenville, Illinois, where they worked together for the next twenty years.
Beginning in 1928 Albright exhibited in many Carnegie Internationals, and Among Those Left was shown in the 1939 exhibition. Ten years later Albright presented the work to Carnegie Institute, because according to his dealer, "he was impressed with the fine job of representing contemporary art which he feels [the Institute has] done" Among Those Left was painted in the summers of 1928 and 1929 in the studio in Warrenville. It shows a blacksmith with sad eyes and rumpled clothing, who holds a hammer and tongs and rests his hand on the iron rim of a splintered wagon wheel. He gazes directly at the viewer, without emotion, while to his left a glistening spider awaits its prey. Albright's model was Hugo Kleinwachter, an immigrant blacksmith in Warrenville who spoke very little English and whose eyes, the artist recalled, "were always sort of shedding tears" The title Among Those Left refers to the disappearance in America of simple craftsmen like Kleinwachter.
To create the unsettling mood he desired, Albright underpainted in black, added blue to the fleshtones, and then highlighted the agitated outlines of the objects with white, making the figure seem ghostly and unreal. He also tipped up the floorboards of the smithy toward the picture plane, flattening the figure's legs between the wagon wheel and the background for an effect of irrationality and compression.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/on-ivan-albright/Content?oid=902743
Who are the best artists of an era? You have to explore to find out.
Art teachers have a very important and respectable role, but out of necessity must narrow their focus.
Clearly most people have never heard of him.
Most people have never heard of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, even though every major jazz musician has tremendous respect for them, and many call them the best jazz combo in history.
Keep digging , young folks.

I remember seeing this piece in a random book, and I spent the past few hours digging through my history of what I have checked out at the art library.

It is interesting to contrast this description that was originally written in Cantonese and translated into English:

> This piece is made of many detachable parts. Different carving techniques including carving-in-the round, relief and open work are used. The circular base is carved with three dragons in clouds on the side and four bands of decorations on the top, each with a different design. The decorations consist of dragons in clouds, chrysanthemums, floral sprays and stringed pearls. A total of three sets of decorations appear on the vertical pole. At the bottom is the immortal magu presenting a birthday gift. Further up is a ball of nine concentric layers. The surface of the ball is carved with two soaring dragons in openwork and twelve round holes through which eight spherical layers can be seen inside. Above the ball is a grooved cylinder carved with openwork decoration. Connecting the three sets of decorations are solid ivory columns that look like bamboo joints. On top of the pole is a tray on which rests an ivory ball of fifteen concentric layers carved with openwork floral designs. The design of this ivory carving is highly innovative, skillfully made, and represents the great achievements of Guangzhou ivory carvers.

Gems from the South: Traditional Crafts of Guangdong Province (2002), pg. 75.

The Chinese Language (Mandarin) and Chinese culture is so particularly rich that it is somehow similar to this complicated artwork, a sort of ivory enigma. If you follow Churchill's famous quote about Russia to the core, you will find the beginning to China (the quote: "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.")

It is published by HKU press, where I first saw it. It can be ordered from amazon but it is also available here:

http://www.hkbookcity.com/showbook2.php?serial_no=89033

For an additional example as to how different Westerners come to view and know China (not that it is a particularly wrong view) is evident in the difference in the description for the book on amazon vs. 香港書城 (hkbookcity)

A:

> Traditional Guangdong crafts are well known for being decorative and utilitarian. They demonstrate a unique style, distinct from that of North China. This catalogue presents a selection from the Guangdong Museum collection.

香港:

> This volume documents an exhibition at the University of Hong Kong of presenting 94 representative pieces of crafts selected from the Guangdong Provincial Museum collection, including ceramics, inkstones, embroideries, ivory, stone, brick and wood carvings, enamel wares, glass wares, clocks andfurniture.

> Guangdong, situated in the south of China, has always been a rich province with favorable geographical conditions. It has developed its own unique civilization, both materially and spiritually, since ancient times. The industry, dexterity and ingenuity characteristic of the people of Guangdong have encouraged the creation of exquisite and distinctive handicrafts, full of the spirit of their age. During the Ming dynasty, the development of handicrafts grew alongside that of economy and culture in Guangdong, and continued to flourish in the second half of the Qing dynasty. This had a profound influence on the history of arts and crafts in China.

> The volume aims to promote greater appreciation of the civilization of the Lingnan region in China.

I have just one more fucking surprise. Behold the entire artwork:

http://i.imgur.com/bFANXHJ.jpg?1

(Sorry to be slow to respond; I just got back from work.)

Thanks for your long, thoughtful comment.

My critique of the painting grows out of the long history of paintings like this and how they were used. There's a ton of writing on paintings like this -- just as there were a TON of paintings like this -- which were hung in men's bedrooms/private spaces. Such paintings might now seem pretty tame but at the time they were not. According to art historians, they were painted precisely to help with male desire. (See, for example, T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life, about painting in Paris in the 19th century; the book shows page after page of paintings just like the The Massage and discusses their "uses." Another commenter here mentioned John Berger's Ways of Seeing (book or video. Or watch Hannah Gadsby's amazing Nanette on Netflix.)

But even through they seem pretty tame now, such paintings still feed attitudes about women. And the attitude toward women this painting presents is all in-line (for me) with what we are seeing now in the Kavanaugh hearings, for example: The attitude toward women of this painting, like the apparent attitude of Kavanaugh and the other "Renate Alumni" guys, is that women exist for men. Women are supposed to be passive objects for male desire.

Compare this painting to Manet's Olympia, for example, which also shows a white woman and a subservient black woman. The white woman looks directly at viewers, meeting their eyes, making it hard to think of her as just an object to look at; in the painting we discuss here, by Debat-Ponsan, the white woman's face isn't even shown. Both paintings put women of color in secondary, passive positions.

One painting alone is not going to teach men to believe that women are passive objects. But it is precisely because there are THOUSANDS of paintings like this, shown over and over and in different places, that they can teach attitudes I think we don't want to have toward each other.

So I clearly disagree with you that this painting and the current male-dominated-political drama have nothing to do with each other. This painting, as part of a long tradition of representations of women in art and film, has a large part to play in how men learn to think women are their playthings.

Oil, tempera and colored chalk on canvas, 110.5 x 141 cm/43.5 x 55.5 in

• Krumau is now incorporated into Český Krumlov, quite close to Prague, where Mozart occasionally lived and composed, and premiered his Don Giovanni 125 years ago on 29 October of this year.
  
  "Meine Prager verstehen mich" ("My Praguers understand me") ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  
  
• A landscape painting looted by the Nazis fetched a record $19.1 ()m at auction in London yesterday (23 June 2003).
  
  The work by the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele went under the hammer at Sotheby's as part of the Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale.
  
  It was bought for $20,150,263.15 (), including buyer's premium, by an anonymous bidder - a record for the artist at an auction and the most expensive restituted impressionist work ever sold at an auction.
  
  Painted in 1916, Krumauer Landschaft (Stadt und Fluss) or Landscape at Krumau, is a vibrant depiction of the small town of Krumau on the banks of the Moldau river in Bohemia, which was Schiele's mother's birthplace.
  
  The painting was seized by the Nazis from the home of Wilhelm and Daisy Hellmann in Vienna in 1938. They had bought it directly from Schiele, who was a personal friend.
  
  The work was put up for sale in Vienna in 1942 and bought by Wolfgang Gurlitt who sold it to the Neue Galerie in Linz in January, 1953, where it had been on public display until its restitution earlier this year to Mr and Mrs Hellmann, the heirs of the original collectors.
  
  "At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants..." ~Egon Schiele
  
  
• This painting sold for 12,661,600 Pounds (21 million USD) at Sotheby's London in 2003.
  
  Schiele had a close link with the town of Krumau, which was the birthplace of his mother, and was often a refuge for the artist when he was experiencing difficult times in his life. In March 1911 he was making plans to move to Krumau for an extended stay and n the summer of that year he rented a cottage in Krumau. In June 1915 Schiele was called up for military service in Prague, and during his army years used his precious spare time for painting and drawing. Between March and September 1916 he kept a war diary, which allowed the scholars to date the completion of the present work to the first three months of 1916.
  
  Rudolf Leopold writes of Schiele's vibrant depiction of his maternal home in this work: "Schiele achieved a very effective integration of the coloring [...] by contrasting the blue-green of the meadows with the decoratively distributed bright oranges and reds of some houses and numerous chimney stacks, and with the grey, white and lilac of other façades". This rich coloration is typical of the artist's most powerful works from this late period in his career when his artistic voice had reached a new, strident intensity and dramatic boldness of composition and atmosphere.
  
  In Krumauer Landschaft (Stadt und Fluss), the compositional format displays that elevated perspective typical of Schiele's townscapes, captured as if the artist - and, in turn, the viewer - has the vantage point of a soaring bird or a visionary, godlike being, hovering above the landscape and looking down on the town from the heights. In reality, this perspectival trick results from a carefully planned and calculated study of the town's topography. Jane Kallir writes: "Schiele's favorite landscape subject [...] was the town of Krumau (today Cesky Krumlov), to which he referred most frequently as the 'dead city' (but also as the 'old city' and the 'city on the blue river').
  
  Krumau, his mother's birthplace, was indisputably an old city, a medieval time capsule whose winding streets and crumbling buildings embodied for Schiele an eternity of human decay and persistence. Situated around and within a tortuous bend in the Moldau river (now called the Vlatava), Krumau has a compact, island like configuration that Schiele found compositionally intriguing. He liked especially to perch on the high left bank of the river and draw the old town from above. He told one friend that this bird's-eye perspective influenced all his work, and, indeed, even his nudes were often viewed from the vantage point of a tall stool or ladder'.
  
  Krumauer Landschaft (Stadt und Fluss) from 1916 is one of Schiele's great townscapes from the last years of his career, tragically cut short by his death from the Spanish influenza epidemic that spread throughout Europe in 1918. With its life-affirming richness of coloration and its clustering of images drawn from life and from the imagination - juxtaposing the town's houses shaped by man and the nature shaped by God around them - this masterpiece becomes a metaphor for Schiele's own artistic vision. It unites the imaginary and the real, bringing both to a transcendental intensity that epitomizes Schiele's unique contribution to the development of modern art in the first decades of the twentieth century.
  
  
  "Compositionally exuberant and chromatically exquisite, (Schiele's landscapes) are an affirmation of (his) vision of the urban reconciled with the rural, of the man-made as a manifestation of the organic.*"
  
  Egon Schiele: Landscapes (at Amazon)

Ooh ooh! I have some books for you, then :) I assume that you can probably find a lot of these through your school library:

• Inside Designed for Pleasure the essay "Suzuki Harunobu: The Cult and Culture of Color". (IMO, if you get nothing but this and read this essay, it'll probably write whatever you're researching for you.)
  
• Inside The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking the essays "The Cultural Milieu of Suzuki Harunobu" and "'This is What We Accomplished': An Osaka Print Collector and His Circle" (the second one isn't about Harunobu in particular but it can help you understand the dynamic of poetry circles, of which Harunobu was an active participant).
  
  I also have two catalogues of Harunobu prints, Harunobu and his age (British Museum) and Suzuki Harunobu (Philadelphia Museum of Art) (out of which the latter is the better book, when in doubt, go with the book that was more-recently published, Ukiyo-e scholarship has greatly improved over the past 40 years). I really want to find this catalogue: Suzuki Harunobu (Chiba City Museum) but haven't been able to find one yet.
  
  Hope this helps and enjoy - Harunobu is fascinating! Let me know if you have any questions.

Part of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation:

>The monumental gown of the Virgin, replicated in Jesus' garb, is free of the drapes and the folds in which European eyes would have expected to see Our Lady enwrapped. Morever, it is painted in the 'wrong' colour: not the dark blues and reds favoured by Renaissance and Baroque artists, but a pale cream with gold trimmings. It has been argued that the bell-like shape of the dress recalls the mountain worshipped as Pachamama -- the Andean goddess of the land -- and is typical of the work of the Cuzco school. The Virgin's wide skirts may have held another meaning for local people who, encouraged by missionary priests to dress statues of Mary, hid pagan offerings within them. The Cuzco Virgin, therefore, records the hybrid character of devotion in the Andes.

From The Colonial Andes: Tapestries And Silverwork, 1530-1830:

>Unlike the Ecuadoran school painting, in which the red robes are covered with a baroque pattern traced in gold paint — very much in the style of the polychromy on the Ecuadoran sculpture — the Cuzco [school] examples all show the Virgin and Child in robes patterned with versions of one of the most popular of southern Andean designs, the quatrefoil rosette, set into the same curving, European-inspired lattice that indigenous tapestry weavers employed as a framework for that pattern.

>To date no print has been identified as a source for this particular south Andean spin on the model, and one must wonder what supports its link to the Quiteiio cult. It is tempting to imagine that the fame of the image outpaced any knowledge of its appearance, at least none beyond the idea that it represented the Virgin of the Rosary. Perhaps an association was made between the Guapulo cult and the particular riches of the northern Andean region, such as the emeralds produced in the fabled mines of Muzo. Indeed, in addition to the ropes of emeralds hanging across the gowns of Virgin and Child in this painting are pendant crucifixes and other lavish jewels, and each rosette in the lattice cells of their garments is centered with an emerald dress ornament.

Samuel Morse, now famous for helping to develop the telegraph, began his career as an aspiring young American artist who moved to Paris to develop his craft.

He was born to a pastor in Massachusetts and set off on the arduous Atlantic crossing at the age of 26. When he arrived, he dove deep into his studies of the masters at the Louvre. He could be found there copying paintings from opening to closing every day of the week.

In the early 1830s he decided to demonstrate his skills as a copyist by creating an enormous collage of all of his favorite pieces in the Louvre. The central focus of the piece is a hallway in the Louvre which, at the time, was one of the longest single rooms in the world at over a quarter mile in length. The pieces which he was especially fond of were clustered around the door frame.

Painting on such a large canvas (180x274cm) was a huge undertaking. The canvas as well as his scaffold had to be moved around the Louvre from painting to painting as he slowly added each one. His close friend and fellow American James Cooper spent hours each day keeping him company and discussing his project (James Cooper was at the time the most accomplished American author abroad after The Last of the Mohicans became a huge hit in Paris). To add to the trying circumstances, cholera made its way to the city and began wreaking havoc on its residents. Tens of thousands were dying on the streets but Morse continued his task.

Once nearly complete, Morse brought the painting to New York and finished all of the frames of the paintings and added people in the foreground. Like the selected paintings, Morse chose only his favorite subjects including, prominently himself teaching a young woman to paint.

The painting sold for ~$1200 which, much to his dissapointment, was substantially less than he expected it to earn him. The next year, he began his work on the telegraph. The painting would later be purchased by the Louvre for over $3M in 1982 which was at the time the largest price paid for an American painting.

-----

*Note: I learned about this piece from The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. It's a great book that follows some of the now-famous Americans that traveled to Paris during the mid 19th century.

Other side notes: Morse studied under Benjamin West in Paris. Morse founded and served as the first president of the US National Academy.

-----

Here is a list of paintings included from left to right [Numbered map]:

1. Paolo Caliari, known as Veronese (1528 – 1588,
   Italian), Wedding Feast at Cana
   
   
2. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617 – 1682, Spanish),
   Immaculate Conception
   
   
3. Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet (1644 – 1717, French),
   Descent from the Cross
   
   
4. Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto (1518 – 1594,
   Italian), Self-Portrait
   
   
5. Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665, French), Deluge
   (Winter)
   
   
6. Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio
   (1571 – 1610, Italian), Fortune Teller
   
   
7. Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1490 – 1576,
   Italian), Christ Crowned with Thorns
   
   
8. Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641, Flemish), Venus
   Asking Vulcan for the Arms for Aeneas
   
   
9. Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorrain
   (1604/1605 – 1682, French), Disembarkation of Cleopatra
   at Tarsus
   
   
10. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617 – 1682, Spanish),
    Holy Family
    
    
11. David Teniers II (1610 – 1690, Flemish), Knife
    Grinder
    
    
12. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669, Dutch), Tobias
    and the Angel
    
    
13. Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665, French), Diogenes
    Casting Away His Cup
    
    
14. Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1490 – 1576,
    Italian), Supper at Emmaus
    
    
15. Cornelis Huysmans (1648 – 1727, Flemish),
    Landscape with Shepherds and Herd
    
    
16. Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641, Flemish), Portrait of
    a Lady and Her Daughter
    
    
17. Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1490 – 1576,
    Italian), Portrait of Francis I, King of France
    
    
18. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617 – 1682, Spanish),
    Beggar Boy
    
    
19. Paolo Caliari, known as Veronese (1528 – 1588,
    Italian), Christ Carrying the Cross
    
    
20. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519, Italian), Mona Lisa
    
    
21. Antonio Allegri, known as Correggio
    (1489/1494 – 1534, Italian), Mystic Marriage of
    St. Catherine of Alexandria
    
    
22. Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640, Flemish), Lot and
    His Family Fleeing Sodom
    
    
23. Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorrain
    (1604/1605 – 1682, French), Sunset at the Harbor
    
    
24. Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1490 – 1576,
    Italian), Entombment
    
    
25. Eustache Le Sueur and his Studio (1617 – 1655,
    French), Christ Carrying the Cross
    
    
26. Salvator Rosa (1615 – 1673, Italian), Landscape with
    Soldiers and Hunters
    
    
27. Raphael Santi, known as Raphael (1483 – 1520,
    Italian), Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John the
    Baptist, called La Belle Jardinière
    
    
28. Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641, Flemish), Portrait of
    a Man in Black (the artist Paul de Vos?)
    
    
29. Guido Reni (1575 – 1642, Italian), The Union of
    Design and Color
    
    
30. Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640, Flemish), Portrait
    of Suzanne Fourment
    
    
31. Simone Cantarini (1612 – 1648, Italian), Rest on the
    Flight into Egypt
    
    
32. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669, Dutch), Head of
    an Old Man
    
    
33. Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641, Flemish), Jesus with
    the Woman Taken in Adultery
    
    
34. Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714 – 1789, French), Marine
    View by Moonlight
    
    
35. Guido Reni (1575 – 1642, Italian), Dejanira and the
    Centaur Nessus
    
    
36. Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640, Flemish), Thomysris,
    Queen of the Massagetae
    
    
37. Pierre Mignard I (1612 – 1695, French), Madonna
    and Child
    
    
38. Antoine Watteau (1684 – 1721, French), Pilgrimage
    to the Isle of Cythera
    
    
39. Unidentified Greco-Roman urn
    
    
40. Attributed to Leochares (2nd century BC?), Artemis
    (Diana) Hunting, called Diana of Ephesus and Diana of
    Versailles, Roman marble copy of a Greek original
    
    
41. A case of unidentified miniatures, possibly
    paintings and carved gems
    
    
42. Morse’s signature appears on the back

Given your nom de plume, Vercingetorix, you have probably already seen this info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vercingetorix

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Alise-Sainte-Reine_statue_Vercingetorix_par_Millet.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Statue-vercingetorix-jaude-clermont.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwTIjnIOnME - The movie is fairly cheesy (the YouTube title is weird), but it is interesting to watch.

The book of the same title by Morgan Llywelyn is better: https://www.amazon.com/Druids-Morgan-Llywelyn/dp/0688088198/

<br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 1 - In the Beginning<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU1dKfMIEUQ<br />
<br />
In the debut episode of the series, the program looks at how the Celts were the first European people north of the Alps to rise from anonymity. This program looks at who the Celts were, where they came from and what made their culture so distinctive.  [This goes into DNA, particularly as Bryan Sykes envisioned the Celts.  Some people who study DNA discount Sykes.]<br />
<br />
For 800 years, a proud, vibrant, richly imaginative warrior people swept ruthlessly across Europe. The ancient Greeks called them &quot;Keltoi&quot; and honored them as one of the great barbarian races. Follow their fascinating story from their earliest roots 2,500 years ago through the flowering of their unique culture and their enduring heritage today, enhanced with stunning reconstructions of iron-age villages, dramatizations of major historical events and visits to modern Celtic lands.<br />
<br />
The Celts were the first European people north of the Alps to rise from anonymity. This program looks at who the Celts were, where they came from and what made their culture so distinctive.<br />
<br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 2 - Heroes in Defeat<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVovskAh5QA<br />
<br />
In the third [sic - second] episode of the series, the program examines the heyday of the Celts, the La Tene era. It was tribal, and women were often the leaders: warriors, bards, druids, artists and craftsmen. Their little known settlements as well as their massive hill forts tell of inhabitants who traded within and beyond Europe. But then the Celts clashed with the Romans and highly developed culture fell apart.<br />
<br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 3 - Sacred Groves<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsHghGwdWNg<br />
<br />
In the third episode of the series, This episode discusses Celtic mythology, legend, and belief, namely the pagan religion, Druidism, and then the introduction of Christian faith to the Irish and Scots.<br />
 <br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 4 - From Camelot to Christ<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfY4-2zKY-g<br />
<br />
In the third [sic: fourth] episode of the series, the program looks at the slow collapse of the Roman Empire saw the arrival of new cultures which threatened the Celts. The program claims that the British king, Vortigern, invited the Anglo Saxons into Britain to help fight the Picts but they betrayed his trust and gradually took over the island.<br />
 <br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 5 - Legend and Reality<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_l5yFlEYds<br />
<br />
In the fifth episode of the series, the program looks at the 8th century onwards when the Celts were hammered by invasions by the Vikings and then the Normans. Following the Reformation in the 16th century, Celtic communities in Wales, Ireland and Brittany were marginalised in the push for political and religious unity in England and France.<br />
 <br />
The Celts - BBC Series Ep 6 - A Dead Song?<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl7X4A_mNeU<br />
<br />
In the sixth episode of the series, this program examines the emergence, history, meaning and threats to the Celtic identity. Today the struggle to define an identity continues. This final segment is a discussion on the degree to which modern people may view themselves as Celts, with examples of modern Celtic-inspired practices like military discipline and warfare, the Welsh Eisteddfod, modern Irish music and art, and the efforts of the Bretons and Cape Bretoners to preserve their native languages in the face of societal assimilation by their ruling nations.<br />
 <br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<br />
Neil Oliver has a thick Scottish burr to his voice, so sometimes he's a bit difficult to understand until one gets used to the cadences with which he speaks.<br />
The Celts Blood Iron And Sacrifice With Alice Roberts And Neil Oliver - Episode 1 of 3<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-itb5NwDU<br />
<br />
The Celts: Blood, Iron And Sacrifice with Alice Roberts And Neil Oliver - Episode 2 of 3<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGI6gud8MUo<br />
<br />
The Celts: Blood, Iron And Sacrifice With Alice Roberts And Neil Oliver - Episode 3 of 3<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhkuLeobhXo<br />

Thanks for posting this :-)
Repin is amazing, the studies for this painting are also brilliant, so simple and yet so complete.
I have a copy of this book and it's one I frequently pick up for inspiration.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Russian-Vision-Ilya-Repin-1844-1930/dp/9085860016/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347662637&sr=1-4

de Lempicka is definitely one of my favorite artists. Ellis Avery wrote a novel about the artist and one of her muses. It's basically fan fiction but I really enjoyed it! It started me on a binge of artist biographies.

here's the book

>Interesting, any literature on this part of his life you'd recommend?

Yes, Andrew Graham-Dixon's A Life Sacred and Profane is a great read.

If anyone's interested in Aesthetics, Lessing wrote an amazing book centered around this sculpture about the respective limits of poetry and painting (or more accurately, art without a "body", including music, and art with a "body", including sculpture and architecture).

http://www.amazon.com/Laocoon-Limits-Painting-Hopkins-Paperbacks/dp/0801831393

Get it from yo' library and your mind will be blown.

A few years ago I read this amazing book about Diane Arbus called Revelations. It was great because it discussed (with a multitude of photographs) her process and the day to day things that transpired. Often it would have an entire contact sheet of the images made, with a famous photo (like this one) right there. Like them or not, she really worked hard to get them. One day I have to buy that book. Its kind of expensive though. Relevant link if anyone is interested: http://www.amazon.com/Diane-Arbus-Revelations/dp/0375506209/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375458513&sr=1-1&keywords=revelations+diane+arbus

I really enjoyed The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland. Here is the Amazon page with the summary.

I encountered it in Ways of Seeing, but I don't think they originated it.