The Smallest Weird Number

cavetocanvas:

Francesco Clemente, Scissors and Butterflies, 1999
From the Guggenheim:

Scissors and Butterflies, although from a later stage in Clemente’s oeuvre, exemplifies the most sensual and visually forceful aspects of this style. The painting reveals recurrent themes in Clemente’s work: a sense of the exotic; explicit sexual imagery; and metamorphoses between human and animal forms. The eyelashes of the female figures have been transformed into elongated insect antennae, echoing the sharp, curving forms of the scissors blades. Individual limbs are difficult to distinguish as the women’s writhing bodies merge with and seem to penetrate each other. The pervasive sense of anxiety and violence—accentuated by the open scissors—intensify the composition’s eroticism, as does the heated red and electric green palette. A radical take on the three graces, Clemente’s provocative nudes are more than a fanciful trio in a dreamlike setting. At once feminine and masculine, whimsical and savage, passive and hostile, these muses transgress traditional boundaries.
Clemente’s metaphoric vocabulary is deeply rooted in the body, and the artist’s many variations on the human form indicate its primacy as a symbol for how he envisions the world. Representing both wholeness and fragmentation, freedom and constriction, the body is Clemente’s ultimate vehicle for expressing life’s dualities, especially in the many portraits and self-portraits produced throughout his career. In this painting, the fragile delicacy of butterfly wings is juxtaposed with the women’s salacious positions and the sharp, menacing scissors. As in much of Clemente’s work, bodily orifices—eyes and genitals—are prominent. For him, these sensitive regions serve as channels between the interior realm of the psyche and the exterior world of nature, culture, and “the other.” An artist with close ties to Italy, America, and India, Clemente has always used the influence of foreign cultures to explore the interface between self and surroundings.

Francesco Clemente, Scissors and Butterflies, 1999

From the Guggenheim:

Scissors and Butterflies, although from a later stage in Clemente’s oeuvre, exemplifies the most sensual and visually forceful aspects of this style. The painting reveals recurrent themes in Clemente’s work: a sense of the exotic; explicit sexual imagery; and metamorphoses between human and animal forms. The eyelashes of the female figures have been transformed into elongated insect antennae, echoing the sharp, curving forms of the scissors blades. Individual limbs are difficult to distinguish as the women’s writhing bodies merge with and seem to penetrate each other. The pervasive sense of anxiety and violence—accentuated by the open scissors—intensify the composition’s eroticism, as does the heated red and electric green palette. A radical take on the three graces, Clemente’s provocative nudes are more than a fanciful trio in a dreamlike setting. At once feminine and masculine, whimsical and savage, passive and hostile, these muses transgress traditional boundaries.

Clemente’s metaphoric vocabulary is deeply rooted in the body, and the artist’s many variations on the human form indicate its primacy as a symbol for how he envisions the world. Representing both wholeness and fragmentation, freedom and constriction, the body is Clemente’s ultimate vehicle for expressing life’s dualities, especially in the many portraits and self-portraits produced throughout his career. In this painting, the fragile delicacy of butterfly wings is juxtaposed with the women’s salacious positions and the sharp, menacing scissors. As in much of Clemente’s work, bodily orifices—eyes and genitals—are prominent. For him, these sensitive regions serve as channels between the interior realm of the psyche and the exterior world of nature, culture, and “the other.” An artist with close ties to Italy, America, and India, Clemente has always used the influence of foreign cultures to explore the interface between self and surroundings.

Photo 6479
Notes

adventuretime:

Holy buns, this is too cool for words.

adventuretimefan:

Nyan Time!

(Source: trueloveistruepain)

Photos 62914
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(Source: ttimeturner, via wilwheaton)

Photo 4194
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alicexz:

Another Doctor Who commissioned piece, this time of Ten. I did this over Livestream awhile back and never posted it!

(via lmnpnch)

Photos 1296
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whiskey-in-a-teacup:

My memory…finally came back, but nothing good came of it. There was no place for me to return to, this was the only place I could go, and now you’re leaving, just like that!

(via cowboy-bebop)

Photo 301
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cavetocanvas:

Julie Heffernan, Self Portrait as Infants in Purgatorium II, 1999

Photo 25968
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drawnblog:

Dave Cooper + Adventure Time is a match made in heaven.

(via adventuretime)

Photo 1679
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suicideblonde:

What The Water Gave Me (1922) by Frida Kahlo

Florence Welch of Florence and The Machine was inspired and titled a song after this painting by Kahlo.

(Source: Wikipedia, via cavetocanvas)

Photo 740
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(via whattbbttaughtme)

Photos 807
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23rd-block:

Calvin and Hobbes on art-making. Comics by Bill Watterson

(via cavetocanvas)