War, Water Lilies, Creatures, and Christmas
Welcome to your Yuletide edition of Signified
Art is a great talking point. Why not start a conversation by forwarding this newsletter to someone you know who shares your love of art? And, this time, we have included ‘Friends Links’ so if you forward this to a non-subscriber, they can enjoy it just as much as anyone🎄
Weird and Wonderful Creatures take over the December exhibition at : six : shot : gallery
Zel Cariad on ‘Creatures’
I find the complexity and weirdness of mythology and folklore fun and fascinating but nature and real animals are often just as strange, if not more so. I regularly draw the critters I find interesting, both the real and mythical ones including cryptids, which sometimes turn out to be both. For this six shot showcase I have chosen works based on mythology — one from ancient angelic lore, three from Norse — and two illustrations featuring real animals from nature…
Continue reading and see the art at : six : shot : gallery
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For the Love of Water-Lilies: Monet’s Final Masterworks
Claude Monet’s series of grand paintings known collectively as Water-Lilies were described as “the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism,” by fellow artist André Masson in 1952. Among the most important and well-loved works of the French Impressionists, they have inspired many artists, notably American abstract painters Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko who were impressed by their monumental scale and the joy of creation...
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Fat and Felt, Fact or Folklore
There’s no denying that Joseph Beuys is among the most important artists of the twentieth-century. He can be thought of as the spiritual successor to Marcel Duchamp — both artists made art that pushed the very definition of what art was and what it could be. The major innovation embodied in their work is that art can exist as a concept beyond materialism and the moment. With them, art became a process…
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‘Disasters of War’
The Disasters of War is a series of 82 prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746–1828). Although we do not know for certain what Goya’s intention was behind these prints, art historians generally view them as a visual protest against the violent conflicts between Spain and Napoleon’s occupying French forces in the early nineteenth-century…
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Henri Matisse: from Illusion to Emotional Truth
Most artists realise that they want to be painters or sculptors early in life and because of this they reach an early maturity. Henri Matisse (1869–1954) had come to painting comparatively late and at first there was no sign of the revolution he would help to bring about. A fellow French artist, Paul Gauguin had also come to painting late but began by imitating those artists who were at that time the most revolutionary…
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Solstice Salutations: from the archives of Signifier
Spotlight on some of our most popular or trending articles…
Yuletide Greetings Across the Centuries
Hunters in the Snow is an icon of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and rightly so. Skillful in its composition and use of colour, it seems a bridge between the medieval ‘book-of-hours’ and our modern ‘graphic-novel’ sensibilities. It’s considered the first large winter landscape of European art, often reproduced as a popular print — especially at this time of year…
More Than a Christmas Card
The Virgin Eleousa of Vladimir was painted in the early 1100s and it’s one of the most famous, and most copied, Christian icons depicting the subject of the Holy Mother and Child. It originated in Constantinople, then the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In the 1130s it was gifted by the Church to Yuri Dolgorukiy, a Grand Prince of Russia. It was displayed in the city of Vladimir from 1155 until 1395 when it was moved to Moscow…
Mother & Child in Devotional Art
Some of the earliest depictions of mother and child date back almost 10 millennia and survive in numbers that indicate they were produced as celebratory or devotional objects. As I mention in a previous article for Signifier, the earliest representations of the human figure were abundant women with features that emphasised their fertility. Among the earliest portrayals of a mother nursing a child are those found at Tell al’Ubaid…
Deep in the Wood — Trees as Art
Many cultures around the world have adopted natural trees as shrines. The tradition of tying coloured ribbons to their branches dates back to pagan times, but persists in many religions today. The Bodhi prayer trees represent the sacred fig that the Buddha was sitting beneath when he achieved enlightenment. Some of the indigenous peoples of the Americas tie ritually prepared cloths to trees in their sacred places…
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’Tis The Season: Art-Related Gifts
Our Redbubble online store offers three collections of artistically taste-tested objet (a.k.a. mugs) and there’s even a button badge of our distinctive Signifier/Signified dynamic diagram for all you media theorists and students of semiotics!
If you’re feeling generous, and know anyone who enjoys reading “imaginative fiction at its best”, you can further support our editor and curator by recommending or purchasing their latest novels in the series, This, That, and The Other, written by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad and published by The Red Sparrow Press.
“Bursting at the seams with magic!”
“…will be enjoyed by fans of fantasy of all ages, particularly those who like classics, like the ‘Narnia’ saga.”
Calling All Artists — Six Shot Showcase Slots are Available for 2024
We are now inviting submissions for The Signifier : six : shot : gallery.
Every month we showcase just six images by each artist, or creative entity. These six images are linked in some understandable way — perhaps from the same project, series, or dealing with related subjects. They may be linked by aesthetics, techniques, processes, philosophies, formal or conceptual elements. The six images are accompanied by an artist’s statement that does not necessarily explain the work but lends insight into meaning that informs deeper engagement.
As we approach the close of our third year, you can read an overview of the gallery’s first two years here.
We look forward to receiving some exciting art from you!
There are example exhibitions to see here.
🌟 Best Wishes for the Festive Season 🎄 and Happy New Year 2024 ️🍾
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