Art is the Solution

If you’re living in the US, you know that today is the day of the 2020 presidential election. I’m perfectly aware that everyone is going to be watching the results come in, and, therefore, won’t have much time for art. So, today, I’m just going to share a few paintings that celebrate American elections. Enjoy! Undecided Voter by Norman Rockwell - You’re probably very familiar with the work of Norman Rockwell. More than any artist, Rockwell crafted the visual culture of American life in the twentieth century. His drawings, illustrations, and paintings are what most of us think of as classic Americana. His painting entitled The Undecided Voter appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post just before the 1944 presidential election. Here, we see a man in a voting booth who is busily considering if he should support Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Thomas E. Dewey. Undecided Voter Source: The New Yorker Election Day 1844 by Edward Lamson Henry - This piece, which I discovered in the colle...

A Jig Beyond the Grave Source: Museum of Modern Art Today is the last day of Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead festival, and, to celebrate, I want to share a rather wonderful print by Mexican illustrator José-Guadalupe Posada. Although The Day of the Dead has only recently become well-known in American pop-culture (and is drastically misunderstood), it is in fact an ancient festival with roots in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. The iconography surrounding the festival is similarly well-established. However, there are few artists who have had a bigger impact on how we see the Day of the Dead than José-Guadalupe Posada. Posada was primarily an illustrator, creating over twenty thousand drawings and lithographs for pamphlets and books. However, he returned to one theme over and over again: calaveras . Calaveras are decorative skulls that are often used to celebrate the Day of the Dead. Posada included them in much of his work, using them as a means to express cultural and political cri...

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “ Five Female Artists You Should Know .” I enjoyed writing the post, but it didn’t give me nearly enough space to talk about all the female artists I wanted to mention. So, today, I’m going to give you five more! The world of art is vast and varied. However, in almost every culture around the world, female artists have been undervalued or dismissed at some point in history. That being said, female artists have persisted in creating amazing art throughout the ages, and we’re going to continue discussing that today. Lavinia Fontana - Lavinia Fontana was one of great Italian mannerists of the sixteenth century and also happens to be one of the first Western, female artists with a well-documented career (there, of course, were many female artists before the sixteenth century, but their work was often anonymous or misattributed). She was (and is) quite famous in her home city of Bologna and was much in demand as a portrait artist as well as a ...

Pumpkinhead Self Portrait Source: Wiki Art Today, I want to celebrate Halloween by talking about a very fun painting by Jamie Wyeth: Pumpkinhead Self Portrait . Jamie Wyeth is a member of the famous Wyeth family, and is the son and grandson respectively of celebrated painters Andrew Wyeth and N.C. Wyeth. Although he’s probably not as well known as his relatives, he’s certainly a famous and talented painter in his own right. I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition of art by the Wyeth family at the Brandywine Conservancy several years ago, and one of my favorite pieces in the collection was Wyeth’s Pumpkinhead Self Portrait . Aside from being very entertaining, this painting challenges the tradition of self portraits in Western art. I read this piece as an expression of formalist ideas, a literary theory that divorces the artist/author and their intentions from their art. In this painting, Wyeth removes himself from his own self portrait, a somewhat self deprecating gesture...

Witches' Sabbath or the Great He-Goat Source: Museo del Prado Spanish art Francisco Goya is one of my favorite painters. Throughout his long career, Goya produced hundreds of highly original paintings and prints. His work is often disturbing and frightening, but it is always imaginative and fascinating. Modern art historians usually regard Goya’s work to be ahead of its time; his art would not be amiss in an exhibition of Modernist or Surrealist paintings.  I had the privilege of seeing one of Goya’s most haunting masterpieces, Witches' Sabbath (also called The Great He-Goat ), in person when I visited the Prado Museum for the first time in 2012. It’s a massive painting that has a huge visual impact when you see it in person. It also made my skin crawl a little bit; I found it to be a highly creepy painting. The Great He-Goat is one of Goya’s “Black Paintings,” a group of fourteen images that he created while living in a house called Quinta del Sordo (which translates to the...

Puss in Boots Source: Wikipedia I’m told that today is National Cat Day, so I’d like to celebrate that with a particularly entertaining piece of cat art: Puss in Boots by Gustave Doré. Doré was a French artist who was best known for his illustrations of books and poems. He created this engraving of Puss in Boots to accompany the cat’s story in a book of fairy tales. The illustration depicts the character of Puss in Boots raising the alarm as another character drowns in the background; the original caption for the image read: "Help! The Marquis of Carabas is drowning." Although the engraving clearly displays Doré’s artistic skill (he was an acknowledged master of the woodcut-engraving technique), its true charm comes from Doré’s creative use of detail. The cat is resplendent in a pair of truly extraordinary boots, a necklace of bird’s heads, and a brace of dead mice hanging from his belt. The cat stands on two legs with an animated, almost human expression. Doré’s de...

The Ambassadors Source: Wikimedia Commons Today, Hans Holbein the Younger is primarily known as one of the greatest portrait artists of the sixteenth century. He is particularly famous for a rather striking painting of King Henry VIII. However, today I’m going to be talking about Holbein’s spookiest masterpiece: The Ambassadors . At first glance, The Ambassadors is a straightforward portrait of two french diplomats named Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve. The two men probably commissioned the painting while working in London, as Holbein spent a considerable portion of his career working in England. The painting depicts the two men standing in a richly appointed room. Between them, a table holds musical instruments, scientific tools, and books. One of the ambassadors was a member of the clergy, while the other was a landowner. These items represent the secular and sacred knowledge that the two men possess. The items could symbolize the way these two types of knowledge complement ...