Austrian painter Egon Schiele was born in Tulln on the Danube on the 12th of June 1890 and died of pandemic influenza in Vienna on the 31st of October 1918. He was 28 years old.
Look Here: Three by Schiele
Category: Fine Art
Look Here: Max Beckmann’s “Self-Portrait with Saxophone”
Self-Portrait with Saxophone is not only my favourite of Max Beckmann’s many self-portraits but also one of my favourite self-portrait paintings of all time. Beckmann’s painting technique, which in his later works can sometimes be a bit messy and offhanded, is beautifully controlled and economical here. The quilted (silk?) robe, which in real life would be soft but sort of slick to the touch, reminds me also of the tough protective skin of a pineapple or a pangolin, though here the underbelly, so to speak, is open and unprotected, with the casual posture, meaty hands, steady gaze, and set jaw of the artist projecting boundless confidence and creative power such that even the ordinarily rigid metallic musical instrument seems to bend and twist in conformity with the artist’s pose and grip rather than vice versa.
ABOVE: Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Saxophone (1930), oil on canvas, 55 1/8 x 27 3/8 in., Kunsthalle, Bremen.
Look There: Evan Spiridellis’s Drawings
— VIA —
Look Here: Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1976
Yesterday at Sotheby’s, Francis Bacon’s masterful Triptych 1976 (oil and pastel on canvas in three parts, each 78 x 58 in., 198 x 147.5 cm., 1976) sold for US$86 million at a Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art, thereby setting a record for postwar art and contributing mightily to a record-setting total of $362 million in sales (including commission) for the event.
Who says the filthy rich have no taste?
Here’re some close-ups…
Ragged Claws Network 