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Feature Post.

The Slave Market and the Theatre of European Anxiety

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Author Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                                                   Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung https://artelbestudio.blogspot.com/2025/04/orientalist-beautiful-form-of-realism.html When Jean-Léon Gérôme exhibited The Slave Market in 1871, Europe was not an innocent observer of slavery. The Atlantic system had only recently been dismantled in parts of the Western world; Brazil would abolish slavery in 1888. European empires were expanding across Africa and the Middle East. Racial hierarchies were being codified in pseudo-scientific language. Anthropology, colonial administration, and academic painting shared an overlapping visual culture.         ...

The Forgotten Splendour of Men’s Dress: A Reflection on Beauty, Gender, and History

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  Author - Brian Hawkeswood                                                                           Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung There are moments, often when I linger before the mirror in the half-light of morning, that I find myself pondering an unspoken injustice—why beauty, in the language of dress, should have become the near-exclusive province of women in the modern world. For one cannot forget that this was not always the case. History, when turned back like the heavy pages of a forgotten missal, reveals centuries in which men rivalled women in their sartorial splendour, where garments were not merely coverings but declarations of power, sensuality, and the desire to belong to the theatre of the beautiful. In the Baroque courts of Europe , it was not the women who were m...

Prince Heinrich of Prussia: The Other Enlightenment.

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  Author- Brian Hawkeswood.                                                                                         Scroll Down for English Version. Prinz Heinrich von Preußen: Die andere Aufklärung In dem Kupferstich von 1767 – dessen feine Linien noch den Atem seines Stechers zu tragen scheinen – erscheint Prinz Heinrich von Preußen nicht als der soldatische Bruder Friedrichs des Großen, sondern als etwas Seltenes: ein Mensch, der zwischen der strengen Vernunft der Aufklärung und der zarten Poesie des Rokoko schwebt. Sein Blick, vergeistigt und zugleich nach innen gekehrt, gehört weniger einem Feldherrn als einem gebildeten Geist, der von Schönheit, Ordnung und dem unerreichbaren Ideal der Harmonie heimgesucht ist. Wer dieses Bild heute betrachtet, erahnt das and...

A Child’s Painting.

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  Author - Brian Hawkeswood.                                                Nach unten scrollen für die deutsche Übersetzung It had been arranged beforehand, and permission had been given by the school’s administration. In the West, such excursions would have required forms to be printed, sent home, signed by parents, and returned with the solemnity of bureaucratic consent—though, in truth, I have never known a parent to refuse.                                                                        Grade 5. Pupil. Baku, Azerbaijan. But we were not in the West. The children spoke English—beautifully, naturally—but we were walking through a loose thicket of pine trees on the outskirts ...