Author: penwithlit

“A scintillating vision of the domestic everyday, Nature morte from 1939 embodies the expressive possibilities of light and color. A superlative example of Pierre Bonnard’s late still lifes, the present work dates to the year in which the artist permanently relocated to the Côte d’Azur as a consequence of the Second World War and subsequently experimented with his most radically vibrant palettes. Nature morte typifies the revolutionary vitalization of still life scenes that positions Bonnard as among the greatest twentieth-century pioneers of this genre…Communicating a potent dialogue between forms, Nature morte evinces Bonnard’s radical approach to spatial design. The voluminous modeling of the fruit contradicts the surrounding interior, whose myriad juxtaposing patterns defy a fixed sense of perspective. Instead of recessing towards a vanishing…

“…As Paul Gauguin, the original owner of Young Lady in a Loge Gazing to Right, reflected after viewing another painting in the series, “Mlle Cassatt has as much charm, but she has more power” than her female contemporaries (as quoted in The Queen Bees: The Women Who Shaped America, New York, 1979, p. 117). It is this exceptional combination of beautiful execution and eloquent perspective in Young Lady in a Loge Gazing to Right that established Cassatt’s status as an art historical icon and has compelled audiences since the work’s likely debut at the 1879 Impressionist exhibition…”

Christie’s

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If trauma can become a gift, first understanding it is imperative.

Left on her own, with no one to look after her, Annie wonders what she’s done wrong. Why don’t her parents care enough about her to check in? She stares at the empty floors lined with barren walls, symbolizing the vast space inside of her tiny heart. Trying to make sense of her predicament, Annie reasons that she must have been a bad girl. For if she were different, she’d be loved. In her book, The Unexpected Gift of Trauma, Dr. Edith Shiro argues, “The trauma itself comes not from the event, but from how we interpret the event, the resources we have to deal with it, and the way we process it. Our response is connected to the meaning we make of the experience we have, but it’s not necessarily proportional to the intensity of that experience.”