The Moment After the Blow
Preface In 1885, the Russian painter Ilya Repin created one of the most unsettling images in art history: Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581.
The Mocking of Christ
" The Mocking of Christ " by Carl Bloch, ca. 1880 (Christ's) penetrating look breaks the fourth wall, turning us from observers into participants, forcing a confrontation with the suffering we witness. - Author Unknown I stop because something in the room has already noticed me. Not the guards. Not the crown. Him.
The Bookworm Reframed
Carl Spitzweg's The Bookworm Reframed: A Sociology of Knowledge An Explication by GBS jr 2024 Introduction: Knowledge as a Social Phenomenon
Baseball
Like the river in The Oxbow , the game bends without hurry - storm behind it, sunlight ahead, nothing to be won, only held.
Winter Still Finds the Poor
Preface This poem was inspired by Octave Tassaert’s painting Destitute Dead Mother Holding Her Sleeping Child in Winter (c. 1850).
The Dog on Helvellyn
Preface Sir Edwin Landseer’s The Faithful Hound (1830) captures a quiet yet devastating moment: a fallen knight lies motionless on a lonely mountainside while his loyal dog keeps watch beside him. The battle has passed; what remains is devotion that refuses to leave.
AN EXPLICATION OF THE OXBOW
Thomas Cole's The Oxbow View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836) An Explication by GBS jr 2013 Thomas Cole’s View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836), commonly known as The Oxbow , stands as one of the most intellectually ambitious landscape paintings in American art.
The Shadow She Held
Preface This poem was inspired by Edmund Blair Leighton’s painting The Shadow (1909). In the scene, a knight in chain mail stands quietly beside a castle wall while the woman he loves traces the outline of his shadow with a piece of charcoal.
