Sometime in late 1792, Spanish painter Francisco Goya fell ill with an undiagnosed malady. It was a long and painful period that started with headaches, dizziness, auditory problems, and depression. During this time of agony, the painter suffered from severe hallucinations as well. The cause of his illness was never determined, though his friend Martin Zapatero noted that “the nature of this illness [was] of the very worst kind.” He was forty-six, and he did survive, but with permanent hearing loss.
Tag: Degree Critical
After Manet: The Wife, the Fish, and the Philosopher
She had fair and healthy skin, slightly red on the cheeks, and flawlessly taut around the eyes. Her aquiline nose was the most prominent feature of her face, protruding over shapely lips. Brown eyes, light like unripened almonds, were half-covered by sleepy eyelids, and framed subtly by modest brows.
A Space of Pure Imagination: Swoon’s CICADA at Jeffrey Deitch
A cardboard dollhouse cracks open in the middle, revealing a nude, pregnant woman also of cardboard. Her legs are spread and vulva dilated and, surrounded by flowers, bushes, and other flora, she clutches her rounded belly.
Writing-by-Proxy: A Conversation with Lucy Ives
“My interest is less in making a fake protagonist who might stand in for me,” says Lucy Ives over iced coffee one hot Sunday afternoon, “than in having independent characters who produce writing.”
At World’s End: Non–Vicious Circle at Paula Cooper Gallery
In Feng Shui, a wind chime is a symbol of good fortune and peaceful spirits. One hangs inside the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea.
A Man Who Dreams: Walton Ford’s “Barbary”
On a foggy, grim October evening in 1913, the famous Barnum’s Circus was transporting its animals and equipment through the cobblestone streets of Leipzig, Germany, when a streetcar collided with one of its carriages. Inside this particular carriage were eight Barbary lions from North Africa, all of whom escaped and disappeared into the mist. For four long hours, wild beasts haunted the city’s dark alleyways, before the lions were hunted down and killed by local police. […]
The End of Writing, or Ursula Monkton
This is a story about monsters. I met one on a hot summer day on the subway to Coney Island. While listening to an audiobook, ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ (HarperCollins, 2013), read by its author Neil Gaiman, he gave a name to someone I already knew well: “The thing that called itself Ursula Monkton hung in the air, about twenty feet above me, and lightnings crawled and flickered in the air behind her.” […]
An Interview with Taner Ceylan
One of the most prominent figures in Turkish contemporary art, Taner Ceylan is renowned internationally for his hyperrealist paintings. What he strives for, though, is something beyond simple reproduction of reality—he’s after the sentiment. […]
