Life is Short, Art is Long lasting, Eternity is Forever

Today I visited the National Gallery and saw this famous painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. Painted in 1533, The Ambassadors is a painting about the brevity of life and the vanity of human accomplishments. What amazed me is the skull at the bottom of the painting. It is purposefully distorted and appears as a giant orb when looking straight at the painting. But as the viewer moves toward the right of the painting, the skull appears in clear view. It is a masterful handling of distortion. I highly recommend seeing this painting in person if you ever get the chance. You can see more information at the following link. www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/h/holbein/hans_y/index.html

I also went to the Tate Modern today. The Tate Modern is extremely resourceful. There are three floors of open galleries and one floor for galleries with a fee. Currently there is a special exhibition on Kandinsky which I hope to visit after school starts. I found out today that the Tate Modern is the most visited modern art museum in the world, and they are currently building on to it in order to increase the space by 60%.


Today at the Tate I saw some very old graphic design pieces from a magazine entitled USSR in Construction. The magazine was printed in 5 different langauges and promoted Stalinism. The various artists Lissitzky, Rochenko, Hartfield, and Troshin used avant-garde techniques to illustrate the magainze. This included photo montage. The magazine was successful for a few years until Stalin signed a pact with Hitler in 1939. It was amazing to see such old graphic design techniq