Interesting Paintings by Artists I haven't looked at in a long while



Henri Rousseau, 'Boy on the Rocks', 1895 - 7
Its very hard to tell whether this is a 'real' boy, a life-like doll, or some kind of wierd cross between the two like Pinocchio. He / it doesnt look quite human in that the head floats above the black void of the torso, the face looks too old for the rest of the body, his right hand fingers look as if they have been chopped off, and the size of the legs are grossly exagerrated. Also, is he standing, sitting, or hovering on / above the rocks? I hope hope for his sake he's not sitting on them. Anyway, if he was sitting on these jagged rocks we would no longer see the serene/lifeless expression on his face. The same if he were standing; it would take a lot of concentration and physical effort to stand still on a landscape such as these rocks. So then, he/it most be hovering or floating.  Usually, it is easy to see whether a painting depicts a 'live' person, but not with 'Boy on the Rocks', which leaves us with an intriguing yet uncanny uncertainty. Obviously, Henri Rousseau was a frikkin genius! 



Rene Magritte, 'The Art of Living', 1967
Nothing much to say about this one, apart from the fact that it cracks me up every time I look at his smug face, he looks smug for having such a great round head...that can float! The fact that I find him smug looking could mean that there is a mind emanating from that mad head (or from the 'picture plane' -Guston, or from somewhere in or beyond the image (I still havnt worked this out yet)), that meets me half way and makes me laugh.




Salvador Dali, 'The Madonna of Port Lligat', 1949
This image can be seen as a painting of reliquary statues. Reliquary statues have cavities within them in which is placed some kind of 'potent' relic that 'activates' the statue and makes it 'work'. Here, the cavity within the Madonna contains the baby Jesus, making the image of her (on fisrt inspection) 'work'. However, there is a cavity within the chest of the baby Jesus that is yet to be filled, and so his image does not yet 'work', and his bowed head may testify to this. If this is the case, does the non-working image of Jesus within the Madonna make her work as was first proposed? The image of the Madonna seems to disintegrate and fade (her head), and fall apart (at the arms) before our eyes. so it may be that because the image of Jesus within the reliquary image of the Madonna is useless, this inturn makes the image of the Madonna crumble and become useless.