11 Works, RELIGIOUS ART - Contemporary Interpretation of the Bible! with Footnotes - #9

Joyce Tenneson
Angel and Lit Wings - 2016
Archival Pigment Photograph
30 × 24 in, 76.2 × 61 cm

Joyce Tenneson (born in Weston, Massachusetts on May 29, 1945) is an American fine art photographer known for her distinctive style of photography, which often involves nude or semi-nude women. Tenneson earned her master's degree in photography from George Washington University after starting as a model for Polaroid. She left her job as a photography professor at 39, and moved from Washington to New York. Tenneson shoots primarily with the Polaroid 20x24 camera. As a child, her parents worked on the grounds of a convent, which is where she grew up with her two sisters. She and her sister "were enlisted to be in holiday pageants and processions. It was a mysterious environment - something out of Fellini - filled with symbolism, ritual, beauty, and also a disturbing kind of surreal imagery."  Tenneson moved from Manhattan to Rockport, Maine in 2004.

Her work has been displayed in more than 100 exhibitions around the world.[4] Tenneson has had cover images on several magazines including Time, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Premiere, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. More on Joyce Tenneson

Thomas Bijen (b. 1980)
Devotion
Stained glass fresco

An iconic artwork of two women, emblazoned across a stained crimson and turquoise-blue glass layer. The shot mimics a portrait style photograph, taboo in its insistence of evoking religious imagery. Are these two women lovers? Sisters? Although the connection is brief, the mystery of their touch endures. More on this painting

Thomas Bijen (1980) is a Dutch Artist. For the past ten years he has been living and working from his studio in The Hague, The Netherlands. In 2007 Thomas acquired his Masters of Science in Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. Coming from a diverse background originating in the creative technical sciences, the arts have always been his prime interest.

More recently, he has been commissioned to create his art live to the public, through murals and large art objects. For Thomas, creating art is an expression of his quest for mystery, playfulness and innocence, in which he strives to recapture his childhood days. More on Thomas Bijen


Jessica van Haselen
Higher Power I
Photographic Print
Private collection

The pose is commanding as the strong arms self-embrace. Her head looks up as if uniting with a higher power while her eyes are closed to underline the spiritual connection and release from reality. 

Jessica van Haselen is a Dutch designer and artist originally from a small town in the Netherlands. A deep interest in foreign cultures, languages, and countries has led her to travel and live all over the world. Her style developed as she absorbed these cultures, translating her experience into the visual medium. Originally trained as a master goldsmith, her work always contains a high level of precision, detail, and technique. Later studying Interactive Media Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and Art History at the University of Amsterdam, she likes to combine new and unconventional digital media into her artwork while focusing on the story and historical significance that inspires each work. More on Jessica van Haselen 

Frantisek Drtikol
Woman crucified , 1913
Gelatin silver print on bromide paper
22 x 16.4 cm. ( 8 ¾ x 6 ½ in.)
Private collection

František Drtikol (3 March 1883, Příbram – 13 January 1961, Prague) was a Czech photographer of international renown. He is especially known for his characteristically epic photographs, often nudes and portraits.

He had his own studio, until 1935 where he operated an important portrait photostudio in Prague. Drtikol made many portraits of very important people and nudes which show development from pictorialism and symbolism to modern composite pictures of the nude body with geometric decorations and thrown shadows, where it is possible to find a number of parallels with the avant-garde works of the period. 

He began using paper cut-outs in a period he called "photopurism". These photographs resembled silhouettes of the human form. Later he gave up photography and concentrated on painting. After the studio was sold Drtikol focused mainly on painting, Buddhist religious and philosophical systems. In the final stage of his photographic work Drtikol created compositions of little carved figures, with elongated shapes, symbolically expressing various themes from Buddhism. In the 1920s and 1930s, he received significant awards at international photo salons. More on František Drtikol

Iva Troj, United Kingdom
What Noah Forgot
Acrylic on Sound.
15.7 H x 23.6 W x 0.4 in

Iva Troj seamlessly incorporates her vast experience of traditional painting techniques with postmodern elements to create engaging Renaissance-style works that challenge the notion of societal conformity. Born in Bulgaria, based in Scandinavia and the UK, Troj creates work originating fundamentally in the crossing of two realities: the one she grew up in and the one she has embraced. 

“I’ve been told I have artistic talents since I was a little girl. The problem was I spent most of my time worrying about the meaning of it all. I grew up in a rough neighborhood, in the outskirts of Plovdiv. At times it felt like the whole place was full of violent men. My family was very strict, loving and protective of me so I managed to keep my head above water. More on Iva Troj 

MPUMELELO “LAYZIEHOUND” COKA
A mere Nephilim (Fallen from grace), 2017
Mixed media on canvas
39 3/5 × 28 1/10 in, 100.5 × 71.5 cm
Private collection

Mpumelelo “Layziehound” Coka. South African, Bilanyoni A, Frischgewaagd, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, based in Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. 

His work seems to be a social commentary of sorts, but perhaps what works best is his loose mark-making and almost direct use of paint. The influence of graffiti, which the artist has practised for many years, is evident. Yet he also employs methods of a pre-Renaissance drawing style, such as outlines, a certain flatness and symbolic colour.

He uses signs; incisive line and figures that convey emotional discord. Text sometimes is included and adds to the drama, a sense of a system that is failing or that has failed. It appears that such a failing may be because of a drive for power, coercive force and ideological and institutional might. More on Mpumelelo “Layziehound” Coka.

MPUMELELO “LAYZIEHOUND” COKA
The Devil made me do it, c.  2017
Charcoal and acrylic on canvas
51 1/5 × 47 in, 130 × 119.5 cm
Private collection

MPUMELELO “LAYZIEHOUND” COKA
She makes salvation scream, c. 2017
Mixed media on canvas
54 9/10 × 50 2/5 in
139.5 × 128 cm
Private collection

PAUL INSECT
Psychedelic Saints, c. 2012
Acrylic and gold leaf on panel
14 1/5 × 11 in, 36 × 28 cm
Private collection

Paul Insect is UK street artist, who is most famous for his 2007 solo show Bullion exhibition at London's Art gallery, Lazarides Gallery. Damien Hirst is reported to be a fan of Insect, having purchased the show days before it opened. Insect, who also goes by the name of PINS, worked alongside artist Banksy at the Cans Festival, the Santa's Ghetto project in Bethlehem, and on the separation wall in Palestine.

Insect is well known for his collective named 'insect' which started in 1996, and disbanded in 2005. Insect held an exhibition at London's Kings Cross area in 2008 in partnership with Lazarides Gallery. 

Insect created the artwork for San Francisco-based hip hop producer DJ Shadow's 2006 The Outsider album More on Paul Insect

PAUL INSECT
Psychedelic Saints, c. 2012
Acrylic and gold leaf on panel
14 1/5 × 11 2/5 in, 36 × 29 cm
Private collection

PAUL INSECT
Psychedelic Saints, c. 2012
Acrylic and gold leaf on panel
13 4/5 × 11 in, 35 × 28 cm
Private collection

GEE VAUCHER, b. 1945
Our Father (Gold)
Screenprint in colours
19 7/10 × 27 3/5 in, 50 × 70 cm
Private collection

Gee Vaucher is a visual artist who was born in 1945 in Dagenham, Essex. Her work with Anarcho-punk band Crass was ovular to the 'protest art' of the 1980s. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change, and has expressed her strong anarcho-pacifist and feminist views in her paintings and collages. Vaucher also uses surrealist styles and methods.

She continues to design sleeves for Babel Label, and also designed the sleeve for The Charlatans (English band)' Who We Touch album. Vaucher has exhibited at the 96 Gillespie gallery in London. In 2007 and 2008 the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco and Track 16 in Santa Monica ran exhibitions entitled "Gee Vaucher: Introspective", showing a wide selection of Vaucher's work.

In 2016, Vaucher was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex. More on Gee Vaucher






Please visit my other blogs: Art CollectorMythologyMarine ArtPortrait of a Lady, The OrientalistArt of the Nude and The Canals of VeniceMiddle East Artists365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

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08 Paintings, RELIGIOUS ART - Interpretations of the Bible! by Paul Gauguin, Louis B. Davis, Callisto Piazza, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, With Footnotes # 56

Dante Gabriel Rossetti,  (1828–1882)
Lady Lilith, c. 1866-68 (altered 1872-73)
Oil on canvas
97.8 × 85.1 cm (38.5 × 33.5 in)
Delaware Art Museum

Lilith, the subject of this painting, is described in Judaic literature as the first wife of Adam. She is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children. The depiction of women as powerful and evil temptresses was prevalent in 19th-century painting, particularly among the Pre-Raphaelites. The artist depicts Lilith as an iconic, Amazon-like female with long, flowing hair. Her languid nature is reiterated in the inclusion of the poppy in the lower right corner—the flower of opium-induced slumber.

A large 1867 replica of Lady Lilith, painted by Rossetti in watercolor, which shows the face of Cornforth, is now owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (below). More on this painting

Dante Gabriel Rossetti,  (1828–1882)
Lady Lilith, c. 1867
Watercolor and gouache on paper
51.3 × 44 cm (20.2 × 17.3 in)
Metropolitan Museum

The subject of Lilith can be found in Babylonian mythology from the Third and Fourth Centuries and was retold in Hebrew scripture in the Alphabet of Sirach, which explains how she was created from the same earth as Adam before the creation of Eve. In a variation of her story from the Thirteenth Century, Lilith had refused to be subservient to Adam and had abandoned the Garden of Eden and coupled with the archangel Samael. By the nineteenth century the name Lilith had become synonymous with powerful female independence and primordial sexual allure and she was identified either as a demoness or enchantress, the original femme fatale. Rossetti seems to have regarded her as the latter. More on Lady Lilith

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris. More on Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Callisto Piazza, (1500–1561), LODI
NOLI ME TANGERE
Oil on panel
47,5 x 34,5 cm ; 18 3/4  by 13 1/2  in
Private collection

Noli me tangere, meaning "don't touch me" or "don't tread on me", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection.
The biblical scene became the subject of a long, widespread and continuous iconographic tradition in Christian art from Late Antiquity to the present. More on Noli me tangere

Callisto Piazza (1500–1561) was an Italian painter, was born in Lodi, Lombardy.

In 1523 he was working in Brescia. His first dated and signed work is from the following year, and shows a typical Brescian style. This style was then emerging, and included artists such as Romanino and Moretto. Piazza shows influences from contemporaries such as Dosso Dossi and Ludovico Mazzolino of the Ferrarese school, as well as Giovanni Agostino da Lodi.

In 1529 he formed a workshop with his brothers Cesare and Scipione (died 1552). In 1538, while in Crema, he married the noblewoman Francesca Confalonieri. Later Callisto moved to Milan, where he received numerous commissions, largely executed with the assistance of his son Fulvio. He also worked in Lodi at the Incoronata (1454), Novara, at the Abbey of Chiaravalle and other areas of Lombardy.

His graphic style is often confused with that of Romanino, who exerted a deep influence on his work. More on Callisto Piazza

Paul Gauguin,  (1848–1903)
Te Tamari no Atua / The Birth of Christ the Son of God ', c. Tahiti, 1896
Oil on canvas
96 × 128 cm
Neue Pinakothek,  Munich, Germany


Te tamari no atua ("The son of God", in Polynesian ) is a painting by the French painter Paul Gauguin realized in 1896 . 

Paul Gaugin, who has always been attracted by "primitive" societies , embarked in 1891 for Polynesia . He remained there until 1893. It was during his second stay (from 1895) that he painted Te tamari no atua . Gauguin found in Tahiti his terrestrial paradise: a colony sufficiently distant from a Western civilization which horrified him.

Te tamari no atua is undoubtedly one of the most surprising Nativities: no Magi or Joseph , the divine child relegated to the background, and a Marie en pareo lying on her Bed decorated, seeming exhausted by childbirth.

The model is a teenager of 14 years, mistress of the painter then 48 years old. Waiting for a child who was to come into the world around Christmas, she inspired him with this iconoclastic representation of the birth of Christ. It was not the first time that Gauguin, who had received a religious education, was delivering "a radical reinterpretation of an image of Christianity": eight years earlier he had painted in Brittany the Vision after the sermon (below), Was represented in Jesus on the eve of the crucifixion, which had led to his break with Van Gogh. More on Te tamari no atua

Paul Gauguin,  (1848–1903)
Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel), c. 1888
Oil on canvas
73 × 92 cm (28.7 × 36.2 in)
Scottish National Gallery

Among Gauguin's masterpieces painted in Brittany are the Vision after the Sermon (1888) and the Yellow Christ (1889) (below). In both paintings Breton peasants, to whom Gauguin was attracted as exotic, noncultivated types, figure prominently. Gauguin's usual bright colours and simplified shapes treated as flat silhouettes are present, but these paintings also reveal his symbolist leanings. Objects and events are taken out of their normal historical contexts.

In the Vision Breton women observe an episode described in Genesis: Jacob wrestling with a stranger who turns out to be an angel. Gauguin suggests thereby that the faith of these pious women enabled them to see miraculous events of the past as vividly as if they were occurring before them.

The painting is divided into two parts by the large diagonal tree-trunk, an arrangement taken from Japanese woodcuts. The foreground is filled by group of women, dressed in traditional Breton costumes, as they return from the Mass. The background depicts the biblical scene of Jacob's battle with the angel. More on Vision After the Sermon 

Paul Gauguin,  (1848–1903)
The Yellow Christ, c. 1889
Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo

In Yellow Christ, Gauguin returned to religious subject matter for the first time since painting The Vision a year previously. In fact, the two works have a number of similarities. Both are essentially synthetic, distilling the essence of the subject in order to render it as forcibly as possible, and relying on the use of colour to symbolic ends. They share the same theme; of the naivety of the allegedly simple Breton peasants, who by their faith transform what was simply a statue of Christ into a living embodiment of his suffering. The use of this kind of folk art, part of his repertoire of 'primitive' imagery, was used in the slightly later Green Christ (below). He painted this cross also in the background of his self-portrait. More on Yellow Christ

Paul Gauguin,  (1848–1903)
The Green Christ or The Calvary, c. 
1889
Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Like the statue in the Yellow Christ, the Green Christ had an identifiable source in a mossy stone calvary that Gauguin had seen at Nizon near Pont-Aven. He has again treated the impact of religious faith on the Breton woman, who crouches in the foreground in front of the deposition, a graphic blending of the real and the illusory that had already been explored in both The Vision and the Yellow Christ. Again, the counterpoise of the quotidian is suggested by expressive, apparently uninterested background figures, here a seaweed gatherer returning from the beach.

The picture may be seen as a later event in Christ's Passion - the bright colours of the Yellow Christ have given way to sombre tones, as his dead body is lifted down from the cross. Again, the face is a thinly-disguised self-portrait, another in the line of works in which Gauguin has dealt with the theme of martyrdom, likening his suffering to that of Christ. More on the Green Christ

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death.

He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. More on Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin


Louis B. Davis, 1861-1941
ST. GEORGE, STUDY FOR A WINDOW AT WYNYARD PARK
Coloured chalk with black ink
135 by 49cm., 53 by 19in.
Private collection

Saint George (circa 275/281 – 23 April 303 AD) was a soldier in the Roman army who later became venerated as a Christian martyr. His parents were Christians of Greek background; his father Gerontius was a Roman army official from Cappadocia and his mother Polychronia was from Lydda, Syria Palaestina. Saint George became an officer in the Roman army in the Guard of Diocletian, who ordered his death for failing to recant his Christian faith.

In the fully developed Western version of the Saint George Legend, a dragon, or crocodile, makes its nest at the spring that provides water for the city of "Silene" (perhaps modern Cyrene in Libya or the city of Lydda in Palistine, depending on the source). Consequently, the citizens have to dislodge the dragon from its nest for a time, to collect water. To do so, each day they offer the dragon at first a sheep, and if no sheep can be found, then a maiden is the best substitute for one. The victim is chosen by drawing lots. One day, this happens to be the princess. The monarch begs for her life to be spared, but to no avail. She is offered to the dragon, but then Saint George appears on his travels. He faces the dragon, protects himself with the sign of the Cross, slays the dragon, and rescues the princess. The citizens abandon their ancestral paganism and convert to Christianity. More on Saint George 

Louis Davis (May 1860 – 1941) was an English watercolourist, book illustrator and stained-glass artist. He was active in the Arts and Crafts Movement and Nikolaus Pevsner referred to him as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites. He was born and raised in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. His father was a manufacturer, with an interest in the Davis Engineering and Launch Building Company, which built and refurbished boats, barges and canals. Gabriel Davis was also a grain, alcohol and coal merchant. Louis Davis had two older brothers, Arthur and David, and a younger brother named Oliver.

Davis married the much younger Edith Jane Webster in 1901 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Due to the similarity between the faces of women in his works and that of a picture of Edith, it is probable that she was his model for much of his glass work. The couple never had children.

Edith and Louis were both injured due to an accidental gas fire and the resulting fumes in 1915. Davis seemed to have suffered a stroke, lost his ability to speak, and occasionally required a wheelchair for mobility. Edith fully recovered from the incident.

Davis died in 1941 after which Edith sold their home and studio and returned to East Anglia where she was raised. She died in the late 1970s. More on Louis Davis





Please visit my other blogs: Art CollectorMythologyMarine ArtPortrait of a Lady, The OrientalistArt of the Nude and The Canals of VeniceMiddle East Artists365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.