Author Archives: ArtLark

February 20

Wonder Woman: Feminist Role Model or Male Fantasy?

posted by

On the 20th of February 1893, American psychologist Elizabeth Holloway was born on the Isle of Man, subsequently immigrating and growing up in Boston, Massachusetts. Elizabeth and her husband William Moulton Marston – scientist, psychologist and writer, formed a peculiarly creative pair. He ended up making an important scientific discovery when his wife told him […]

»»
February 19

“Blue is Darkness Made Visible”: Derek Jarman’s Descent into Death

posted by

Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of English film director, stage designer, artist, gardener, author, and active advocate for gay rights, Derek Jarman. Considered one of Europe’s greatest independent film-makers, he died on the 19th of February 1994, after a six-year battle with AIDS.  In his films Jubilee (1977) – arguably the first […]

»»
February 18

Racial Dilemma in Twain’s Huck Finn

posted by

On the 18th of February 1885, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in the United States. Twain’s picaresque novel set in the 1840s, is about a young boy called Huck who runs away from home and floats down the Mississippi River. On his way he meets a runaway slave  Jim and […]

»»
February 17

Sadeq Hedayat: Forbidden Voice of Iranian Literature

posted by

On the 17th of February 1903, the Iranian modern writer Sadeq Hedayat was born in Tehran, Iran. A child of Iranian aristocratic parents, Hedayat went to a French catholic school, and in 1925, was selected together with a few other students to travel to Europe to continue his studies. There, he pursued various unsuccessful enterprises […]

»»
February 16

De Sade, Pornography and Women: A Reappraisal by Angela Carter

posted by

On the 16th of February 1992, Angela Carter, one of England’s most valuable female writers of picaresque fiction, magical realism and cultural thought, died in London of lung cancer at the age of 51. In her obituary in The Telegraph, she was remembered for “the exuberant fantastic invention, the interest in archetypal fairytale patterns, and […]

»»
February 15

Art and Science: Galilean Influences in Artemisia’s ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’

posted by

On the 15th of February 1564, the Italian astronomer, philosopher, mathematician and physicist Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy. Often considered the father of science, Galileo established a new perception of the physical world. Fascinated by the invention of telescope, he constructed one himself and conducted observation of such celestial bodies as the Moon, […]

»»
February 14

Artist Nina Hamnett, Jazz Age’s Wildest Party Girl

posted by

On the 14th of February 1890, Welsh artist, writer and bohemian party girl Nina Hamnett was born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Her emerging artistic skill helped her escape an unhappy childhood. She moved to London where she studied at Pelham Art School, then the London School of Art and in 1914 she went to Montparnasse, […]

»»
February 13

Landscape Painting in Postwar Britain

posted by

February 1954 is one of Roger Hilton’s non-figurative works held in the Tate Collection, London. The artist made a number of such paintings claiming to have been influenced by the work of Piet Mondrian whose abstractions in primary colours within black and white grids he had seen in Amsterdam. The difference was though that Hilton’s work […]

»»
February 12

Art Theft: Munch’s Oslo Museum ‘Scream’

posted by

 On the 12 of February 1994, the day of the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, two men broke into Oslo’s National Gallery and lifted its version of The Scream. The painting had been moved down to a second-level gallery in honour of the Olympic festivities, presumably to become more accessible to the […]

»»
February 11

Elizabeth Siddal: The Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel

posted by

On the 11th of February 1862, Elizabeth Siddal, an English artists’ model, died in London of a self-administered overdose of laudanum. In the early 1850s, as a young woman, Siddal was painted extensively by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She sat for Walter Deverell’s Viola in Twelfth Night (1850), for William Holman Hunt’s British Girl in A […]

»»