Musings. Ex Libris

One of my favourite love poems is one by John Donne, titled “The Flea.” In this intriguingly lusty poem a flea engineers a consummation between a clandestine couple by mingling their blood it sucks in its own body. Whenever viewing erotic paintings, Donne’s poem springs to my mind. I feel like that sneaky flea, serving as an intermediary between the fateful lovers, and being complicit in the sexual affair whilst not actively engaging in it. Then I check the distance between the painting and me, the discreet distance that prevents any hypnotized ones from absorbing too further and caressing the painting without noticing. I will be more prudent on my definition on eroticism and discuss only female nudity in art. Reclining nudes in painting fascinate me, and for a long time I have wanted to write on a piece that delves into a panoply of naked beauties. My personal favourite has always been Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (1510). It is the image that most reminiscent of a r...

The sky is ablaze with burning flames and the earth splits asunder- the image of an impending apocalypse looms. Those paintings are impregnated with forebodings of the demise of all living things, and can be served as memento mori- mostly cautionary tales that remind people of their mortality. Landscape paintings that depict the biblical scenes of eternal damnation (most often the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) are sometimes reinterpreted as prophetic visions of the end of the world. Painters as early as one in the Romantic period, John Martin, conjured up images that continued to awe and frighten the viewers of today. In John Martin’s The Great Day of His Wrath (1853) a volcano erupts and its ashes and fire surge towards the air, rendering the sky an infernal red. One can easily establish himself into the painting and feel the quake rumble under his feet. The earth takes a topsy-turvydom, where the ground and sky suddenly become one. There are people in the paintin...