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Wheelchairs in Art
It was a difficult topic to research. There are not of lot of paintings featuring wheelchairs in western art. There are a couple of vases from Greek Times. They made a resurgence during the Renaissance. The wheelchair went through a lot of revisions, until it acquired its modern form. The folks depicted in these paintings are a King, a Cardinal and a few painters. Sometimes folks were pulled from the back and then from the front. It was close to the 19th century, when the wheelchair that doesn’t require a person to push it was invented. It was commonly used by...
Blindness in Art
One of the first blind persons that was depicted in art appeared in an Egyptian mural. They started the cliché of blind musicians. Homer was another blind folk that was depicted often in ancient art, and even in neoclassical paintings. During medieval times, only blind folk that appeared in the bible were depicted. This changed with the Renaissance period. Mythological folks and poor blind folks started appearing in western art. Sometimes they were depicted in satirical fashion. Europeans were quite meanspirited back in the day. They would love to poke fun at anyone that was blind. Blind folk depictions started...
Clever Use of Mirrors in Art
Mirrors have made sporadic appearances in art, since their inception. Around the Renaissance period, mirrors started to be used to have paintings within paintings. They were also used to engage the audience. In the Arnolfini wedding, the tiny mirror shows the spectators of the wedding. We are also there within it. In Caravaggio’s Narcissus, the mirror effect is done with the lake. Based on the angle, he is seeing a shimmering reflection of the audience. The same thing was done in the Mirror of Venus of Rubens. In Las Meninas, it uses a mirror similar to the Arnolfini wedding. In...
Ophelia in Art
Ophelia is a character from Hamlet. It is said that you can remove her from the play and it works just fine. Hamlet in a sense is a study of madness. Both Ophelia and Hamlet lost their fathers. Hamlet started to hallucinate ghosts that told him to kill. He went on a murder spree. Ophelia reacted by singing and gifting flowers. In a sense, she suffered a childhood regression. She dies by falling from a branch and landing in a river. With her cumbersome dress she drowns or she freezes to death. It depends on the story. On her funeral,...
Artists Transformed by Debilitating Illness or Injuries
The first artist I wanted to talk about is Frida Kahlo. She used to paint for the fun of it. Originally, she was going to be a doctor. One day, her bus crashed. A steel pole pierced right through her. This gave her chronic back pains. Since she had nothing better to do, she started to paint more. Her style didn’t change much, just her subject matters. She got into symbolism a lot. She also tended to depict skulls often, to show her fear and respect of death. When her big exhibition opened, she was in too much pain. Her...