allthingseurope:

Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria (by abac077)

(via justisse)

illustratosphere:

The Nightmare Academy by J. P. Targete

artmastered:

Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, 1890s

(Source: thegestianpoet, via infamousnfamous)

rainbowbuttcake:

Oh dear, another tiny food post. Because I love tiny food.

(via justisse)

darksilenceinsuburbia:

Fussreliquiar. Gold-plated copper. For the relic of one of the innocent children of Bethlehem. Goldsmith Oswald About Linger Eberler, Basel. Silver. Origin: Basel (BS), Cathedral Treasury, ca. 1450.

The National Swiss Museum.

(via cabinet-de-curiosites)

goodolarthistory:

Artist: Tamara de Lempicka

Title: Madam M

Date: 1930

hadrian6:

Sunrise in Syria. 1874.  Frederic Edwin Church. American. 1826-1900.

oil on canvas.  

(via cabinet-de-curiosites)

cavetocanvas:

George Catlin, Medicine Man, Performing His Mysteries over a Dying Man, 1832

From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:

In 1832, George Catlin witnessed a dramatic ritual at Fort Union, two thousand miles northwest of St. Louis. According to the artist, the medicine man began the healing by administering roots and herbs. If this failed, he would try “shaking his frightful rattles, and singing songs of incantation.” Catlin wrote that the medicine man’s clothing often consisted of “the skins of snakes, and frogs, and bats,—-beaks and tows and tails of birds,—-hoofs of deer, goats, and antelopes,” each possessing “anomalies or deformities,” which gave them their healing power. This healer wore the skin of a yellow bear attached with the hides of snakes. Catlin actually owned the costume, and he sometimes wore it to enhance the spectacle of his Indian Gallery.

cavetocanvas:

George Catlin, Interior View of the Medicine Lodge, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony, 1832

From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:

The centerpiece of the Mandan religious calendar was the annual enactment of the O-kee-pa, a four-day ceremony that included the painful initiation of the most promising young men of the tribe. Their ordeal began with a four-day fast, strictly supervised by a priest in the medicine lodge. George Catlin witnessed the ceremony on his travels of the Upper Missouri in 1832:

“I seized my sketch-book, and all hands of us were in an instant in front of the medicine-lodge, ready to see and hear all that was to take place … There were on this occasion about fifty young men who entered the lists, and as they went into the sacred lodge, each one’s body was chiefly naked, and covered with clay of different colours; some were red, others were yellow, and some were covered with white clay, giving them the appearance of white men … When all had entered the lodge, they placed themselves in reclining postures around its sides, and each one had suspended over his head his respective weapons and medicine, presenting altogether, one of the most wild and picturesque scenes imaginable … the medicine or mystery-man … was left sole conductor and keeper; and according to those injunctions, it was his duty to lie by a small fire in the centre of the lodge, with his medicine-pipe in his hand, crying to the Great Spirit incessantly, watching the young men, and preventing entirely their escape from the lodge, and all communication whatever with people outside, for the space of four days and nights, during which time they were not allowed to eat, todrink, or to sleep, preparatory to the excruciating self-tortures which they were to endure on the fourth day.” 

cavetocanvas:

George Catlin, The Last Race, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony, 1832

From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:

The O-kee-pa ceremony, which George Catlin witnessed on his travels along the Upper Missouri in 1832, was the centerpiece of the Mandan religious calendar. The annual enactment of the O-kee-pa was a four-day ritual that included the painful initiation of the most promising young men of the tribe. Catlin documented the ceremony in a series of paintings that were among the most important of his scenes of Native American rituals. The O-kee-pa began with the men sequestered inside a medicine lodge (see 1985.66.504), where the initiates underwent a four-day fast and feats of endurance that required them to be suspended from the roof of the lodge by chords anchored in their chests and shoulders. Outside the lodge, members of the Mandan tribe wearing buffalo robes performed the Bull Dance, to petition the Great Spirit for fertility and abundant bison (see 1985.66.505). The final part of the ceremony, shown here, was called the last race. The men were ushered out of the medicine lodge (“pale and ghastly from abstinence” as Catlin later wrote), and in one last test of their strength and courage, ran (or were dragged by the wrists) around the “Big Canoe,” shown here in the center of the circle. 

opinion-moment:

centuriespast:

William Blake (1757–1827)
America, a Prophecy
Copy A
Lambeth, 1793 (i.e., 1795)

The Morgan Library

For those who can’t read the passage:

In thunders ends the voice. Then Albions Angel wrathful burnt
Beside the Stone of Night; and like the Eternal Lions howl
In famine & war, reply’d. Art thou not Orc, who serpent-form’d
Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children;
Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;

Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of Gods Law;
Why dost thou come to Angels eyes in this terrific form?

(via viva-moment)

monsieurleprince:

Vittorio Reggianini (1858 - 1938) - The recital

scinerds:

Making art from stripped-down dead animals

“SOMETIMES I go to pet shops and ask whether I can receive dead creatures.”

And then 29-year-old Iori Tomita, from Yokohama, Japan, does incredible things to them. Taking up to a year, he gently rinses the animals with enzymes that break down soft tissue and protein. What is left is what he calls the transparent specimen: cartilage, which he dyes blue, and bone, dyed purple. “People are attracted by the beauty of creatures,” he says. “Formalin specimens look grotesque.”

Most of the material that Tomita uses in his art comes from fishermen – he used to be one until he was 25 – discarded dead crabs, squid, unsold deep-sea fish, unwanted tiddlers. And then there are the macabre packages from pet shops. Tomita still fishes, but his life changed when he visited an art gallery for the first time two years ago and realised that he could fuse his love of nature with what was regarded as art.

There is a moral dimension to the work, too. He quotes a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report showing that a third of all food produced for human consumption each year is wasted. “Do you think about how many lives that is?” he asks.

Tomita – who says he has thought about but rejected the idea of making transparent artworks of dead humans – sells prints and, in Japan, bottled specimens of stripped-down animals. 

(Images: Iori Tomita/2013 New World Transparent Specimens)

jaded-mandarin:

Miguel Cabrera. Allegory of the Virgin Patroness of the Dominicans.