The seduction power of Venus by Samantha Keen

topics: feminine, femininity, Louvre, planetary forces, venus de milo

Venus de Milo, the Louvre

The statue of Venus took my breath away when I first saw her in the Louvre 20 years ago. I still vividly remember how I felt. I was touched by her beauty and the fact that she still seemed to be alive after 2000 years. I marvelled that I could be moved by a marble statue that Alexandros of Antioch was said to have created somewhere between 130 and 100 BCE, around 2000 years earlier.

There was part of me that resonated deeply with the archetypal values of Venus although I had not really had a chance to experience it in my life so far. The archetype of Venus is the Lover – representing passion and selfless devotion to another person. It also extends to the things that make our hearts sing, including art, nature and music. I now realize, almost exactly 20 years after first seeing Venus de Milo, that these feminine values are extremely important to me. I was largely unconscious of this at the tender age of 19, yet that statue breathed her divine essence into my heart and helped me to feel those qualities anyway.

She reflected the sweetness I felt in my heart that was there when I looked at the first evening star in those vulnerable teenage years, wishing to find love with someone wonderful (someone I had not yet met). And while swimming naked in the waves of the Indian Ocean in Western Australia when the sun set over the sea; it was like swimming in liquid gold. And in all those warm Sunday afternoons listening to my Dad’s wonderful records while my sister and friends played in the garden, I also experienced that joyful part of myself which had responded to the beauty of Venus’ curves.

It begs the question then: When you are touched by art, nature or music, what part of you is it that is touched? Take a moment to feel inside yourself and deepen the experience of appreciation of whatever it is that has moved you. You might find the experience enriches you even more when you ask yourself this question.

Couch in the city by Misha Lyuve

topics: lovenyc

A glance into a Buddhist ceremony in a Bhutanese temple by Misha Lyuve

What if there were no spring? by Misha Lyuve

topics: central park, creativity, inspiration, seasons, spring

What if there were no spring? If the earth forgot to awaken this year? If trees decided not to bloom? If flowers didn’t feel like opening up? If birds changed their mind about chirping?

If humans weren’t overwhelmed with exhilaration, excitement and anxiety for the newness of life? For its change? For falling in love or falling out of it? For being inwardly ripe with inspiration and pregnant with ideas that are just impossible to hold inside? 

Strolling though Central Park and its Conservatory Garden, I was simply blown away by the abundance, variety and ease with which nature produces its creations. And I am thinking why wouldn’t we all ride on the waves of this magnificent creativity? Why would not we take advantage of this influx of life by taking out our dry paints or opening unfinished notebooks or brushing dust off abandoned musical instruments or just starting some crazy new project that will entice our existence and those around us with art, beauty and life?

 And by the way, this is a call into action!

The world is full of color, music and rhyme
And not to feel them, I say, is a crime
And if you’re tired or bored or can’t see
Just talk to me, just talk to me, just talk to me!

The guard of a buddhist temple by Misha Lyuve

Modern art versus Modern mind by The Art Story Foundation

topics: Dr. Freud, Egon Scheiele, The Neue Galerie, Vienna, Vienna 1900: Style and Identity

The Neue Galerie is currently inviting its visitors to recline on Sigmund Freud’s couch – or so it seems. In one of the exhibition rooms at the museum, a Persian rug is draped over a couch, with a portrait of Freud perched behind it.  In fact, this is one of the few interactive parts of the museum, the only object you can actually touch.    

This is the conundrum that enlivens and frustrates in the Neue Galerie’s latest show, “Vienna 1900: Style and Identity.” The exhibition brings forward works from the gallery’s own fine collections and unites them with some impressive loans, to explore how the art of the period revealed the emergence of the modern individual. But what we come to realize from the show – and from a session on the couch – is that the good doctor’s ideas didn’t so easily translate into art. Theories of the subconscious weren’t so simple to render using the tools available to the period’s artists.    

Portrait Of Karl Zakovsek by Egon Scheiele

The problem lies with the traditional portrait format that had been inherited by the generation of artists that flourished in Vienna around 1900. An old-fashioned portrait places head on shoulders, and hence, and in ways we’re inclined to miss, it glues mind to body. Yet it was Freud’s purpose to demonstrate precisely the opposite. So it is that even the portraits by Egon Schiele – long considered the paragon of period torment – don’t capture Freud’s revolution, because ultimately they are still founded on the traditional head and shoulders portrait.  What would a portrait that puts the mind ahead of the body look like? Has it been done in Vienna in 1900 or over the subsequent 100+ years of art-making? (read the full article)    

Absract portrait by V. Zunuzin, digital art work (credits to Zunuzin.com)

Always make new mistakes by Misha Lyuve

topics: #bestbites2011

Unreal landscapes by Misha Lyuve

topics: #bestbites2011