A Sinful Catharsis

Marina Abramovic (via Lyssa humana)

(via kusamapyjamas)

Rene Magritte

(Source: nothingtodowithexplosions)

The Loathers

(Source: jennahilary)

The Treachery of Images, By René Magritte

Translation: “This is not a pipe.”

(via wadethroughthewater)

Francesco Clemente, Scissors and Butterflies, 1999

From the Guggenheim:

Scissors and Butterflies, although from a later stage in Clemente’s oeuvre, exemplifies the most sensual and visually forceful aspects of this style. The painting reveals recurrent themes in Clemente’s work: a sense of the exotic; explicit sexual imagery; and metamorphoses between human and animal forms. The eyelashes of the female figures have been transformed into elongated insect antennae, echoing the sharp, curving forms of the scissors blades. Individual limbs are difficult to distinguish as the women’s writhing bodies merge with and seem to penetrate each other. The pervasive sense of anxiety and violence—accentuated by the open scissors—intensify the composition’s eroticism, as does the heated red and electric green palette. A radical take on the three graces, Clemente’s provocative nudes are more than a fanciful trio in a dreamlike setting. At once feminine and masculine, whimsical and savage, passive and hostile, these muses transgress traditional boundaries.

Clemente’s metaphoric vocabulary is deeply rooted in the body, and the artist’s many variations on the human form indicate its primacy as a symbol for how he envisions the world. Representing both wholeness and fragmentation, freedom and constriction, the body is Clemente’s ultimate vehicle for expressing life’s dualities, especially in the many portraits and self-portraits produced throughout his career. In this painting, the fragile delicacy of butterfly wings is juxtaposed with the women’s salacious positions and the sharp, menacing scissors. As in much of Clemente’s work, bodily orifices—eyes and genitals—are prominent. For him, these sensitive regions serve as channels between the interior realm of the psyche and the exterior world of nature, culture, and “the other.” An artist with close ties to Italy, America, and India, Clemente has always used the influence of foreign cultures to explore the interface between self and surroundings.

(via cavetocanvas)

(Source: allmyideasaretaken)

Charles August Mengin, Sappho, 1877

Sappho was a Greek poet who lived around 600 BC. She wrote about love, yearning and reflection, often dedicating her poems to the female pupils who studied with her on the island of Lesbos. Mengin has chosen to paint a legend narrating that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for unrequited love of Phaon, a ferryman. This legend is regarded as unhistorical by modern scholars, but it may have resulted in part from a desire to assert Sappho as heterosexual.

(via fckyeaharthistory)

“She kisses her first on one cheek, then on the other.”

Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1881. 

(Source: treselegant, via fuckyeahvictorians)

 Silviu and Irina Székely. In The Midst of Great Disorder II.

(Source: darksilenceinsuburbia)