From the annals of visual allusion (bordering on parody or burlesque), this David Sipress cartoon in the 2/12&19/24 New Yorker:
(#1) A stripped-down, cartoonized, goofy reinterpretation of a key work of modern art, Matisse’s 1910 painting La Dance (the cartoonist is an old acquaintance on this blog; there is a Page here about my postings on his work)
The occasion. Today is DoMQoS Day, recognizing the death of Mary Queen of Scots on this day in 1587. But, like Monty Python’s MQoS, I’m not dead yet, though I’ve been out of commission for a while, thanks to two days in succession on which the atmospheric pressure plummeted in the morning, leaving me incapacitated by joint pain and mentally confused. This morning feels better, so I’ve gingerly returned to posting, putting aside what is now an overwhelming accumulation of already committed postings in favor of this brief pleasure from the latest New Yorker.
The Matisse. From Wikipedia:
(#2) The 1910 paintingDance (La Danse) is a painting made by Henri Matisse in 1910, at the request of Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, who bequeathed the large decorative panel to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The composition of dancing figures is commonly recognized as “a key point of (Matisse’s) career and in the development of modern painting”. A preliminary version of the work, sketched by Matisse in 1909 as a study for the work, resides at MoMA in New York City, where it has been labeled Dance (I).
… The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse’s incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist color palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the “Dance of the Young Girls” from Igor Stravinsky’s famous 1913 musical work The Rite of Spring. The composition or arrangement of dancing figures is reminiscent of Blake’s watercolour Oberon, Titania and Puck with fairies dancing from 1786.
(#3) The Midsummer Night’s Dream Blake
