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Showing posts from July, 2025

"Composition, Balance and the Invisible Frame of Art”

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  Author-Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                             Blau - Deutsch. Black- English. There are certain words—composition among them—that are uttered so often in studios, classrooms, and books that they begin to shed their meaning like an overhandled coin, dulled by repetition. And yet, the concept they name remains as fundamental and elusive as ever, haunting the edges of every canvas, whispering behind every gesture of the hand. For what is composition, if not the silent music that arranges not only form and colour, but the very possibility of emotion, tension, and memory within a picture’s bounds? Gustav Klimt "The Embrace". Every space in the composition is carefully considered and filled accordingly. It is not a rule, nor a doctrine, but ...

Modern or Contemporary? The Slippery Semantics of Art in Dresden and Beyond

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 Author- Brian Hawkeswood.                                     Scroll down for English Version. Modern oder zeitgenössisch? Über die sprachliche Unschärfe eines kunsthistorischen Unterschieds – mit Blick auf Dresden Unter den vielen stillen Missverständnissen, die den Kunstbetrieb durchziehen, gehört wohl keines zu den beharrlichsten – oder folgenreichsten – wie die Verwechslung von moderner und zeitgenössischer Kunst . Für den flüchtigen Betrachter mögen diese Begriffe austauschbar erscheinen; doch bezeichnen sie in Wahrheit zwei verschiedene Epochen, unterschiedliche ästhetische Prinzipien und grundverschiedene künstlerische Haltungen. Besonders im deutschen Sprachraum – auch in Dresden – verschwimmen diese Begriffe häufig, selbst (oder gerade) dort, wo man es besser wissen müsste: in Museen, Fördervereinen, Katalogtexten.                   ...

The Eternal Smile: On the Fame of the Mona Lisa

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  Author - Brian Hawkeswood.                                                              Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung It is a curious thing, the way a single face, long since turned to dust, should come to haunt the consciousness of centuries—should float, undiminished, above the whirlpool of time, like a lily set adrift on the eddies of history. The Mona Lisa , or La Gioconda , that most silent of women, who neither speaks nor sings, whose lips—half-parted—suggest a murmur that never comes, is everywhere and nowhere. She hangs behind glass and security and the barriers of cameras raised like votive candles, but she also inhabits ashtrays, T-shirts, toilet doors, even the ghost of our childhood memories, as though she were always already known to us, before we even learned her name. And yet, in all this fami...