Tag Archives: mythology

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Meret Oppenheim, Daphne and Apollo

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daphne and apollo by meret oppenheim
Photo By Gail

Meret Oppenheim drew broadly on stories from the past, including Greco-Roman and medieval sources. She reimagined these narratives and the fates of their female protagonists in ways that reflected her views on the role of women in society. In Daphne and Apollo (1943), she reinterpreted the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, in which the wood nymph would rather hunt than become the god’s lover. Unable to escape him, she turns into a laurel tree. In Oppenheim’s version, the artist subjects Apollo, too, to a vegetal transformation, depicting him as a potato-like form, surrounded by flies.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Bertold Loffler, Youth Playing the Pipes of Pan

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youth playing the pipes of pan photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Bertold Loffler’s most important painting, Youth Playing the Pipes of Pan (1912), reveals his passion for classicism, from the garlanded youth and draped female attendants to the vase at their feet, depicting Pan, the Greek god of untamed nature, playing a double flute. The flat, stylized composition and the bold patterns on the women’s cloaks reflect Loffler’s work as a designer for the cutting-edge Austrian artists’ association the Wiener Werkstätte. Eduard Ast, a major patron of the group, acquired the canvas and hung it in the dining room of his newly-built villa in Vienna, across the hall from Gustav Klimt’s painting of the mythological heroine Danaë (1907 – 08), which is in a private collection.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

 

 

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: The Judgement of Paris By Johan Joachim Kandler

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the judgement of paris photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Kandler’s brilliantly composed figural group, The Judgement of Paris (1762) was intended as a table centerpiece that would appear with dessert. It depicts the story of the shepherd Paris awarding the golden apple to Venus, whose charms he preferred to those of Minerva and Juno. The splashes of color add a frivolous note, in tune with the frothy rococo spirit of the sculpture. Moreover, hints of naturalistic coloring deny these goddesses the timelessness of idealizing sculpture, making them instead into modern beauties who perform a titillating after-dinner entertainment.

Photographed in The Met Breuer (Now Closed) as Part of the 2018 Exhibit, Like Life: Sculpture, Color and The Body.

Pop Culture, Theater and Live Comedy

Theater Review: The Lighting Thief, The Percy Jackson Musical

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Lightning Thief Marquee
Above Photo and Playbill Image By Gail. All Other Performance Photos By Jeremy Daniel.

You just can’t keep a good thing down. Nine years after it debuted as a major motion picture, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical – based on the New York Times best-selling book, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, is back with a national theater run. The two-act rock musical, written by Rob Rokicki and Joe Tracz (Be More Chill), first played in NYC in 2017 for a short run. Due to the show’s popularity, fans of the book series demanded that the play be available to a larger audience, and a National Tour was launched in January. This past week, the tour made a four-day stop at NYC’s Beacon Theatre, and I was able to check it out.

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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Max Ernst, The Nymph Echo

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Nymph Echo
Photo By Gail

The diminutive nude female figure in the upper right area of  The Nymph Echo (1936) is often identified as Echo — a mountain nymph of Greek Mythology. Far more dominant, however, is the monstrous green vegetal creatures —  or is it creatures — in the foreground. This wildly imaginative hydra-headed creation may represent Narcissus, whom Echo loved.  Famously, Narcissus fell in love with his own beautiful image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, whereupon he was transformed into a flower. The various delicately colored floral effusions in Ernst’s painting recall this moment of metamorphosis.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC