The Downside Of Knowing Thyself

Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) - Study of Truncated Limbs, c. 1818


"Biography lends to death a new terror."

Oscar Wilde

Nightfall In The Forest Of Philosophy

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Evening, 1820-1


'An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.'

Albert Camus

The Court Jester Of Kitsch

Jeff Koons (b. 1955) - Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988


"I'm a messenger."

Jeff Koons

The Memories That Last The Longest Are Also Our First

Mary Cassat (1845-1926) - The Boating Party, 1893-4


'Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.'

Arthur Rimbaud

The Art Of Seeing With Someone Else's Eyes

Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) - Sidelong Glance, 1948


"Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists."

Gaston Bachelard

Intoxicated By Images

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) - Absinthe, 1876


'Art isn't what you see, but what you make others see.'

Edgar Degas

Day Dream Believer

Gillian Wearing (b. 1963) - Dream Mask, 2004


'The necessity of dreaming should already be beyond question by the very fact that we dream.'

André Breton

The Clown Of Colour

Joan Miró (1983-1983) - The Harlequin's Carnival, 1924-5


'I try to apply colours like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.'

Joan Miró

To Awaken, Perchance To Dream

Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (1844-1910) - The Dream, 1910


'The eye which dreams does not see, or at least it sees with another vision.'

Gaston Bachelard

The Girl With Looking-Glass Eyes

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) - A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882


'Detail contradicts sentiment.'

Robert Hughes

Brought To You By The Number 5 (May Special)

Charles Demuth (1883-1935) - I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

William Carlos Williams

Savouring The Arrows Of Outrageous Misfortune

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) - The Little Deer, 1946


'Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.'

John Berger

Criminal Injustice

Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) - The Third of May, 1808


'War does not determine who is right - only who is left.'

Bertrand Russell

Icarus On A Leash

Louis Michel Eilshemius (1864-1941) - Afternoon Wind, 1899


'Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.'

Immanuel Kant

Time In A Bottle

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) - Bottles, 1916

'Humility is attentive patience.'

Simone Weil

See Paris And Sigh

Brassaï (1899-1984) - Foggy Paris, 1934


'A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.'

Oscar Wilde

The Ripples Of Being Have No Alpha Or Omega

Jasper Johns (b. 1930) - Target, 1958


'Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.'

Blaise Pascal

The Lazarus Machine

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) - Falling Stars, 1995


'I'm interested in reconstituting symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.'

Anselm Kiefer

He Sang The Body Electric

Jaques-Louis David (1748-1825) - Patroclus, 1780


'Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.'

Aldous Huxley

Life After Gravity

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) - Mlle La La at the Circus Fernando, 1879


'The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.'

Michelangelo