Narrate

Stories in art. Just for fun.

Even though I fell in love with art history and got my PhD in early modern art, it turns out that it was never the academic stuff that interested me. I’d look at a Caravaggio painting and imagine how the flickering torchlight might create a dance of shadows on the wall. I’d imagine the dampness on that wall surface or its crumbling plaster. Then my mind might go to the street. What’s happening out there? What is this world and what might it mean? Every work of art seems to be shouting at me with some story or other.

That’s what I do in this section of my blog: I tell those stories. Completely letting go of formal art history, I allow my imagination to run wild. Click on the titles for more.


Félix Vallotton, La Valse, 1893

Félix_Vallotton,_1893_-_La_Valse

Sergei Avdeev, Evening Outdoors, 2014

Cynthia W. Iliff, Untitled (Men Playing Cards), 1942

Cynthia W. Iliff, Untitled (Men Playing Cards), 1942, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Jerome and Anne Kaplan, 1992 (https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/86967.html?mulR=1407603385|12)

Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth, Children by the Christmas Tree, early 20th Century

Kalckreuth_Children_by_the_Christmas_tree


Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk, The Raampoort in Amsterdam, 1809

Wouter_Johannes_van_Troostwijk_-_Het_Raampoortje_te_Amsterdam


Dorothea Lange, End of an Era: Funeral Cortege in a Small Valley Town, California, 1938

End of an Era


Dormition Cathedral, Vladimir, 12th Century

Dormition_PD


Anne Brigman, The Breeze, 1910

The_Breeze_by_Anne_Brigman


Giuseppe Pellizza, Il Sole, 1904

Giuseppe_Pelizza_-_Il_Sole


Gravestone from the Taifa Kingdom, Almería, Spain, 1044

Gravestone

 


Pyotr Konchalovsky, First Snow. Blue Dacha, 1938

First Snow Blue Dacha


Pieter Breugel the Elder, Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap, 1565

Breughel, Winter Landscape


Isaak Brodsky, Fallen Leaves, 1929

Brodsky


Otto Marseus van Schrieck, A Forest Floor Still Life, 1666

Otto_Marseus_van_Schrieck_-_A_Forest_Floor_Still-Life_-_WGA21061


Rebecca Davis, Honeycomb Quilt, 1846

Quilt,_Hexagon_or_Honeycomb_pattern_MET_DT1817


A. E. Staley Pump House, 1919, Decatur, Illinois


Agnes Martin, Flower in the Wind, 1963

agnes-martin-flower-in-the-wind-1963-daros-collection-switzerland


Winged Victory of Samothrace, 220–185 BCE


Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940

Hopper-Gas-1940.png


Chi Rho Iota page, Book of Kells, 800

Chi Rho Page


Vasily Perov, The Last Tavern at the City Gates, 1868

last-tavern-at-the-city-gates


© Copyright 2022 Ellen A. Hurst Writing & Editing