Wisława Szymborska | Ogni caso / Could have, 1972

Poteva accadere.

Doveva accadere.

È accaduto prima. Dopo.

Più vicino. Più lontano.

È accaduto non a te.

Ti sei salvato perché eri il primo.

Ti sei salvato perché eri l’ultimo.

Rene Magritte

Patrizia Cavalli | La primavera / The spring

You arrive like this, as always,

To spread the suspicion of paradise,

And before I open the window

I know you from the gentler light,

From the dust that hangs in the air,

From the bird’s obsessive performance,

Charles Courtney Curran | Summer, 1906

Vito Maurogiovanni | Le albe di mio Padre / My Father's sunrises

1930.

Mio padre non ha mai dormito la notte: il suo caffè di via De Rossi rimaneva aperto notte e giorno.

Solo nel pomeriggio andava a trovare nel gran letto matrimoniale il riposo che non poteva avere la notte. Lo ricordo, la sera, dietro il bancone a manovrare la macchina espresso, a mescere bibite, limonate, aranciate.

Non erano molti gli avventori della notte.

Capitavano viaggiatori che arrivavano dalla stazione e coloro che erano in procinto di partire, con grosse valigie, per terre lontane.

Hans Brasen

Fernando Pessoa | Presagio / Presságio, 1928

L’amore, quando si rivela,

Non si sa rivelare.

Sa bene guardare lei,

Ma non le sa parlare.

Chi vuol dire quel che sente

Non sa quel che deve dire.

Parla: sembra mentire…

Tace: sembra dimenticare…

Antonio Nunziante

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Dance at Bougival, 1883

The open-air cafés of suburban Bougival, a town on the river Seine west of Paris, were popular recreation spots for city dwellers, including the Impressionists.

Here, at one such café - its floor littered with cigarettes, burnt matches, and a small bouquet of flowers-an amateur boatman in a straw hat sweeps his stylish partner along in a waltz.

The touch of their gloveless hands, their flushed cheeks and intimate proximity, suggest a sensuous subtext to this scene.

The son of a dressmaker and a tailor, Renoir delighted in capturing intricate details of contemporary fashions, such as the woman’s red bonnet trimmed with purple fruits. | Source: © Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Dance at Bougival, 1883 | Museum of Fine Arts Boston

6 artworks to look out for at Tate Britain

Tate è un gruppo di gallerie d'arte con sede a Londra, Liverpool e Cornovaglia, note come Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate St Ives e Tate Liverpool + RIBA North.

Quando la Tate aprì per la prima volta le sue porte al pubblico nel 1897, aveva una sola sede, che esponeva una piccola collezione di opere d'arte britanniche.

Oggi dispone di quattro sedi principali e della collezione nazionale di arte britannica dal 1500 ad oggi e di arte moderna e contemporanea internazionale, che comprende circa 70.000 opere d'arte.

Sir John Everett Millais | Mariana, 1851 | Tate Collection

This painting by British painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896) is of Mariana, a character from Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure.

The story goes that Mariana’s fiancé Angelo leaves after her family’s money is lost in a shipwreck.

Still in love with him, she hopes they will be reunited.

Millais shows Mariana pausing to stretch her back after working at some embroidery, with the autumn leaves scattered on the ground marking the passage of time.

The stained-glass windows in front of her show the Annunciation, contrasting the Virgin's fulfilment with Mariana's frustration and longing.

Sir John Everett Millais | Mariana, 1851 | Tate Collection

Sibilla Aleramo | La Rosa

Eccoci!

Facci posto,

oh sole!

A noi due

e ad una rosa.

Fra il mio seno

e il petto forte che amo,

sta una rosa,

sola.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema | The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888 (detail)

Salvatore Quasimodo | Dammi il mio Giorno / Grant me my Day

Dammi il mio giorno;

ch’io mi cerchi ancora

un volto d’anni sopito

che un cavo d’acque

riporti in trasparenza,

e ch’io pianga amore di me stesso.

Antonio Nunziante | Cometa

Jane DeDecker | The Women's Suffrage

By Jane DeDecker / The concept of this proposed women’s monument was inspired by a letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Lucretia Mott in which she wrote about the power of words and deeds:

"Every word we utter, every act we perform, waft unto innumerable circles, beyond".

I wanted to capture the collective energy from all women who have made this happen, as well as acknowledge that we still need to keep moving as we strive for equality.

When a water droplet impacts a body of water it pushes waves outward and rebounds upward as a smaller droplet. This droplet, called the daughter droplet - gains height - then falls back to the water in what is called a coalescent cascade.

This describes the height, breadth, and lasting impact of the Suffragists’ work.

Mitsuru Ichikawa, 1983 | Magic Realism painter

Mitsuru Ichikawa 市川光鶴 is a Japanese painter, born in Nagoya-shi, Aichi Prefecture.

She has been aspiring to be a painter since he was a child, and has been exhibiting mainly at group public exhibitions.

He completed the oil painting course at Musashino Art University Graduate School of Art and Design.

Currently is an associate member of the Independent Art Association.

Anna Sahlsten | Genre painter

Anna Sofia Sahlstén (1859-1931) was a Finnish painter, primarily known for portraits and genre scenes.

Her father, Clas Vilhelm Sahlstén (1826-1897), was a Chamber Counselor who later became a writer.

Her mother was Edla Elisabeth Heinricius.

When she was eight, her family moved to Helsinki, where she attended a Swedish girls' school; receiving her certificate in 1877.

She then studied at the Finnish Society Drawing School from 1877 to 1880, then at a private school operated by Adolf von Becker, from 1880 to 1882.

Bella, Chagall's Eternal Muse

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of LOVE" - Marc Chagall

The love story between Bella Rosenfeld (1889-1944) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a profound, almost mystical connection that began in 1909 in Saint Petersburg.

Bella, a 19-year-old from a wealthy Jewish family, crossed paths with Chagall, a 26-year-old aspiring artist still in art school.

Their love was instantaneous, a moment both would later describe as love at first sight.

Bella, who would go on to become a writer, was captivated by Chagall’s deep blue eyes, describing them as if they had “fallen straight from the sky” and floated independently.

Marc Chagall | Les Amoureux, 1928

Mariangela Gualtieri | Se la parola amore è

Se la parola amore è

uno straccio lurido,

se non ho altra lingua per dire cosa

amo, se l’anima adesso è un ingombro

e il cielo un posto come un altro

se dormiamo e dormiamo

Alfred W. Elmore (1815-1881) | A Greek Ode | Christie's

René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

Painted in June 1945, René Magritte (Belgian surrealist artist, 1898-1967) himself described the scene in L'utopie in his publication, Dix tableaux de Magritte précédes de descriptions, published the following year.

There, he explained that, 'The rose is alone on an island'..

This sense of the solitude of the flower, already emphasised by the span of the distant horizon and the vastness of the ocean, is thus reinforced by Magritte's statement and his own declared intention.

How did the rose reach this island?

René Magritte | L'utopie (Utopia), 1945

This strange and solitary bloom is a glimpse of the poetic and the mysterious, even the miraculous, and is all the more striking as an image of hope in the wake of the Occupation of Belgium, which had only recently ended.

The promontory and the rose in L'utopie appear to have been painted in the mock-Impressionist style that Magritte referred to as Surréalisme en plein soleil.

Where his earlier works had deliberately avoided a sense of 'style' in the rendering of their strange and incongruous subjects, he now added an extra layer of the incongruous by emphasising the painting's status as a subjective representation of the world, while also taking advantage of the association between Impressionism and Realism.

He thus introduced a tension between a style of painting associated with capturing a moment of fleeting 'reality' and his own surreal, poetic universe, while also providing a glimpse of sunlight during the dark days of the Second World War.

At the same time, he revelled in shocking even his most ardent followers by deliberately and irreverently adopting a style that was then associated with bourgeois taste.

Magritte's Surrealism was intended to jolt his viewers out of a complacent understanding of the world around them, but he was aware that his own admirers and followers had developed expectations of his works.

L'utopie and its sister-works of sunlit Surrealism shocked his viewers out of their complacent understandings of his pictures and of the universe alike.

The first owner of L'utopie was Achille Chavée, a writer, friend of Magritte and leading member of the Hainaut group of Surrealists who owned several of the artist's pictures.

During the period that L'utopie was painted, the pair collaborated extensively on a large exhibition of Belgian Surrealism that was held at the Galerie des Editions La Boétie in Brussels, an exhibition that was dominated by Magritte's own works, a fitting reflection of his importance to Surrealism in that nation. | Source: © Christie's

Rene Magritte in front of his painting, 1964 | Christie's

Dipinto nel giugno 1945, René Magritte (Artista surrealista Belga, 1898-1967) stesso descrisse la scena in L'utopie nella sua pubblicazione, Dix tableaux de Magritte précédes de descriptions, pubblicata l'anno seguente.

Lì, spiegò che "la rosa è sola su un'isola".

Questo senso di solitudine del fiore, già enfatizzato dalla distanza dell'orizzonte lontano e dalla vastità dell'oceano, è quindi rafforzato dall'affermazione di Magritte e dalla sua stessa dichiarata intenzione.

Come ha fatto la rosa a raggiungere quest'isola?

Questa strana e solitaria fioritura è uno scorcio del poetico e del misterioso, persino del miracoloso, ed è tanto più sorprendente come immagine di speranza sulla scia dell'occupazione del Belgio, che era appena terminata.

Il promontorio e la rosa in L'utopie sembrano essere stati dipinti nello stile finto-impressionista che Magritte chiamava Surréalisme en plein soleil.

Laddove le sue opere precedenti avevano deliberatamente evitato un senso di "stile" nella resa dei loro soggetti strani ed incongrui, ora aggiungeva un ulteriore strato di incongruo enfatizzando lo status del dipinto come rappresentazione soggettiva del mondo, sfruttando anche l'associazione tra impressionismo e realismo.

Introduceva così una tensione tra uno stile di pittura associato alla cattura di un momento di "realtà" fugace ed il suo universo surreale e poetico, offrendo anche uno scorcio di luce solare durante i giorni bui della seconda guerra mondiale.

Allo stesso tempo, si dilettava a scandalizzare persino i suoi seguaci più ardenti adottando deliberatamente e irriverentemente uno stile che era allora associato al gusto borghese.

Il Surrealismo di Magritte intendeva scuotere i suoi spettatori da una comprensione compiacente del mondo che li circondava, ma era consapevole che i suoi ammiratori e seguaci avevano sviluppato delle aspettative nei confronti delle sue opere.

L'utopie e le sue opere gemelle del Surrealismo illuminato dal sole sconvolsero i suoi spettatori dalla loro comprensione compiacente dei suoi quadri e dell'universo.

Il primo proprietario di L'utopie fu Achille Chavée, uno scrittore, amico di Magritte e membro di spicco del gruppo surrealista dell'Hainaut che possedeva diversi quadri dell'artista.

Durante il periodo in cui L'utopie fu dipinto, la coppia collaborò ampiamente ad una grande mostra del Surrealismo belga che si tenne alla Galerie des Editions La Boétie di Bruxelles, una mostra che fu dominata dalle opere dello stesso Magritte, un riflesso appropriato della sua importanza per il Surrealismo in quella nazione. | Fonte: © Christie's

Stefan Draschan, 1979 | Coincidences at Museums

Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan is a self-confessed flâneur(a French term popularized in the 19th century for a type of urban male "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer").

Draschan commutes between Vienna, Berlin, Naples, and Paris.

His penchants for museum-going and people-watching blossomed into a wildly successful blog-turned-book: Coincidences at Museums (2019), in which he photographed other museum-goers who inadvertently matched with the paintings in front of them.

Walter Crane | Precursor of Art Nouveau

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was an English artist and book illustrator.

Together with William Morris, Walter Crane was a leader in the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts artistic movements

.

Walter Crane is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come.

Émile Zola: "I would rather die of passion than of boredom"

• "[Johann Strauss jr] Ha mostrato come il mondo può essere bello, io invece ho scritto come il mondo può essere brutto".

• "Il talento del Signor Manet è fatto di semplicità e di esattezza. Senza dubbio, davanti alla natura incredibile di alcuni dei suoi colleghi si sarà deciso ad interrogare la realtà, solo con sé stesso: avrà rifiutato tutta la perizia acquisita, tutta l'antica esperienza, avrà voluto prendere l'arte dall'inizio, cioè dall'osservazione esatta degli oggetti. Si è dunque messo coraggiosamente di fronte a un soggetto, ha visto questo soggetto per larghe macchie, per opposizioni vigorose, e ha dipinto ogni cosa così come la vedeva".

Édouard Manet | Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868 | Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Eugenio Montale | Accade

Accade

che le affinità d'anima non giungano

ai gesti e alle parole ma rimangano

effuse come un magnetismo. Ѐ raro

ma accade.

Daniel Gerhartz | Home

Claude Monet | Alice Hoschedé au jardin, 1881

Monet's magnificent depiction of his garden at Vétheuil exemplifies the visual splendor of Impressionism at its height.

Monet painted this work in 1881 as a new chapter of his life was unfolding, and this picture expresses the exuberance and renewed passion of the artist during this important period.

Seated among the flowers is Alice Hoschedé, the artist's thirty-seven year old lover and the wife of his close friend and patron Ernst Hoschedé.

The composition is lavished with all of the hallmarks of a great Impressionist composition, with its vivid color palette, intermingling of the natural elements and interplay of light and shadow.

Claude Monet | Alice Hoschedé au jardin, 1881

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Fragments and studies

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was fascinated by hats and their infinite array of trimmings.

To quote the model-turned-painter Suzanne Valadon: "Renoir particularly loved women's hats... he never ceased buying lots of hats".

The millinery trade was a thriving industry in Paris during the second half of the 19th century.

When the vogue for hats reached its peak, Paris was home to about 1,000 milliners.

Since hats represented the most variable accessory in a wardrobe, even women with moderate means owned several.

In this kaleidoscopic sketch, Renoir lavished his attention on the hats, while the heads are no more individualized than mannequins.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Study of Heads, 1890 | Barnes Foundation