Bite 151: Antonio & Piero del Pollaiuolo - Tobias and the Angel, c. 1469

Tobias and the Angel, c. 1469

Tobias and the Archangel Raphael are depicted as finely-garbed travellers, a vast landscape stretching behind them. The story is taken from the early Biblical Book of Tobit, written around 100 BC, in which the angel is sent to protect Tobias, the son of the blind Tobit on his trip with his dog to a distant city to collect a sum of money.

After a perilous journey - in which they sieze a fish which attacks them and save a young girl named Sarah from a demon who has killed seven men whom she wished to marry - they return home, with Sarah as Tobias' wife, money in hand, and heal Tobit of his blindness. In a narrative popular among wealthy Florentines the young Tobias is rewarded for his courage and piety and becomes a man.  

Painting as prayer, the work was likely commissioned by a family on the release of their son to travel abroad, wishing him a safe journey and protection from a guardian angel.

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Bite 150: Sir Joshua Reynolds - Cupid and Psyche, c. 1789



Cupid and Psyche, c. 1789, oil on canvas, 139.8 x 168.3 cm, Courtauld Gallery, London

Candlelight illuminates the corpse-like figure of the sleeping Cupid. Psyche, seeking to discover the true identity of her lover, sneaks into his bedroom under the cover of darkness. She reaches out her hand, touched with the light of her candle, in surprise or wonder, toward the revealed body of her lover - his wings curled beneath him, the tip grazing one side; his bow - useless without an arrow - clasped against the other. The angel's skin is cold and white, his seemingly lifeless body heavy upon his pillow. The cool light of the moon helps illuminate the mysterious scene.

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Bite 149: Zed Nelson - Dolly Parton, 2011

Dolly Parton, 2011

"Well I can't tell you where I'm going, I'm not sure of where I've been
But I know I must keep travelin' till my road comes to an end
I'm out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it
I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit

Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home
Where that is no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' on

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru."

                                        - Dolly Parton, Travelin' Thru

Currently on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London as part of the Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize 2011.

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Bite 148: Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818



Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on canvas, 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg

"The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within then he should stop painting what is in front of him."
                                                        - Caspar David Friedrich

A turbulent sea of fog: a reflection of inner emotion. Turned from the viewer, the subject is the artist himself, while, at the same time, us before the sublime power of nature.

One foot forward, toward the distant horizon, bold and apprehensive, the 'wanderer' gazes out at a mysterious landscape, wide and threatening. Like much of Friedrich's work this painting is mystical and melancholy, religious and quietly profound.

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Turning One

I cannot yet say which direction this blog will go in, or even if it will survive its first postings (many blogs don't and Blogger begins to look like a graveyard of forgotten cyber-ambitions). None-the-less I choose to see these points positively: I have an open, indefinite, intangible place from which to muse. It's kind of like buying a Lotto ticket: You know it will almost certainly amount to nothing - but still, you gotta' be in it to win it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         - My First Post

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Bite 147: Andy Warhol - Dollar Sign, 1981

Dollar Sign, 1981, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen inks on canvas, 228.6 x 177.8 cm, Private Collection

"Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy."

                                                                                - Martin Amis

A work of simple honesty, presenting art as the deceit it too often becomes reduced to, a purely commercial venture. This is art as Warhol saw it: Opportunity.

Could Warhol have chosen a single symbol more loaded with meaning for our society? The double image hovers in green space, an apparition by which our lives are dictated if we let it. Purely a concept, non-existent and slippery, a dominant, moving goal.

Perhaps this work should be titled £1,553,250, the price 'realised' for this work when sold at auction by Christie's in June 2008. In reaching this sum, becoming part of a private collection, long after the artists' death, the work achieves its true conceptual potential; an irony but also a celebration of money itself. There is a reason Warhol remains so attractive to a wealthy, collecting audience of claimed art-lovers - making up a staggering 20% of the contemporary art market: the world he presents is not only unthreatening to those in the 1%, but glorifying of the trivialities that come with excessive monetary power.

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Bite 146: Charles Burton Barber - Suspense, 1894

Suspense, 1894, oil on canvas, 78 x 98.5 cm, Private Collection

A  faded reproduction of this image sat on the windowsill at the end of my family kitchen growing up. Seeing it now, in it's gentle humour and nostalgic familiarity, brings back that whole space - alive with the noise of crowded domestisity.

Two loyal pets stare down the quaint breakfast of a young girl, laid out on her bed, as she diligently offers a prayer, staring distracted herself at something out of frame. What more appropriate image to grace the benchtop in the heart of a Christian home? The perhaps simple subject-matter belies a complex composition, maintaining a delicate tension between the players in this warm, homely drama.

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