Showing posts with label rudolf schlichter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rudolf schlichter. Show all posts

Somewhere in Time

When you gaze at period portraits, do you ever insert your own face into the painting? (I do.) For some reason, I always feel a spiritual kinship with women who look like this.
(Christian Schad, "Maika", 1929)

Or this.
(Portrait of Julia Strachey by Dora Carrington, 1925)

Or this. With her, it's all about the contrast between her soft gossamer looks and that deep unflinching gaze -- she looks as though she has a story or two to tell, doesn't she?
(Fraulein Mulino von Kluck by Christian Schad, 1930)

It's interesting to remember that some of these subjects were the mega-celebrities of yesterday.
(Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783)

(Princess Mary Tudor and the Duke of Suffolk, c. 1516, unknown artist)

All this preamble is just a lead-in to showing you the next four fabulous portraits. Looking at them never fails to give me an inordinate amount of joy.
(Amy Winehouse via here)

(Brangelina via here)

(Drew Barrymore via here)

(Jennifer Aniston, via here)

Have a cheeky Monday.

(Celebrity portraits from How to be a Retronaut, via the Photoshop geniuses at Worth1000.)

The Art of The Softened Gaze

She looks at a place neither near nor far away, a destination in her mind's eye that only she can see.
(Portrait of uber-chic Marguerite Kelsey by Meredith Frampton, 1928)

He gazes softly downward, seeing nothing...and everything.
(Photographs of the alluring Duncan Grant by A. L. Coburn, 1912 )

He stares calmly ahead, book forgotten, absorbing the peace that slowly suffuses the tunnels of his mind.
(Photograph of debonair Mark Twain in 1909 via The Retronaut)

Somewhere in the middle distance, between the madding crowd and the noisy whirring of your brain, lies the land of meditation.

It's easy to get to.
Just relax, breathe and unfocus your attention.
(A little more.)
(A little more.)
(A little more.)
(A little more.)

Shhhhhhhh.

You're there.
(Portrait of singularly bohemian Karola Neher by Rudolf Schlichter, 1929)

I highly recommend it for taking the sting out of a manic Monday.