Introducing a new experimental art game in the MeTA Museum.
It starts with a picture chosen at random. Participants reply with an image that reminds them of, or is associated with the original image in some way. When everybody has had a chance to post an image, we choose one of the replies, and the game continues based on the new image.
“Charlemagne, l’empereur à la barbe fleurie, is recognizable by his crown of fleur-de-lis.”
Théophile Gautier, Amateur’s Guide to the Louvre
“How natural, how inevitable is the gesture of St. Louis! He has just caught sight of his Lord in the act of placing the crown on the blessed Virgin’s head. He is enraptured at the sight. Full of awe and reverent love, he falls on his knees, and wonders, and adores.”
Robert Langton Douglas, Fra Angelico
The critics may not agree about the names of all the players in Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin, but they all like the painting.
“Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan.”
Read Charles Lamb on Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne
Plus a comic glimpse of Lamb partying with Wordsworth and Keats
And Anthony Van Dyck’s ‘Self-Portrait’ of Titian cozying up with his mistress
The Poggendorff Illusion is an optical illusion that involves the brain’s perception of the interaction between diagonal lines and horizontal and vertical edges. It is named after Johann Christian Poggendorff (1796-1877). In this illustration, a straight black and red line is obscured by a grey rectangle. The blue line, rather than the red line, appears to be a continuation of the black one, which is clearly shown not to be the case on the second picture. (From the Wikipedia article on the Poggendorff Illusion)
What does the Poggendorff Illusion have to do with Peter Paul Rubens? Visit the new object, The Descent From the Cross to find out. (HInt, the note on Poggendorff is in the last tab.)
And for those who haven’t yet visited Great Pictures As Seen and Described by Famous Writers, we invite you to explore the entire collection where you’ll learn why italians call thinly sliced food carpaccio and why Rodin disagreed with the Goncourt brothers about whether the revelers in the “Embarcation for Cythera” are coming or going.
