Inktober 2018, Day 28 "Gift"

Day 28 of Inktober, prompt word "Gift." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 28 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Gift." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. I was feeling pretty despondent about "what is the point of art" when I made this; it's a bit sarcastic. When you think about it, there really ISN'T any point to art, and throwing your hat in the ring along with the greats really IS crazy. We all just do it anyway, that's how it works. [Image description: black and white line drawing of a mountain of motifs from famous paintings, including Artemisia Ghentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes, Matisse's Blue Seated Woman, Vermeer's Maid Pouring Milk, Manet's Bar Maid, Monet's Bridge, Velasquez's Infanta, Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son, Sargent's Madame X, Sophie Calle's self portrait covering one eye, Tamara de Lempicka's self portrait while driving, Degas's Woman Using Binoculars, Cassatt's Woman in Loge Using Binoculars, Cezanne's Still Life With Fruit (with a tiny figure skiing over the edge of the white tablecloth like the famous dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound designed by Dali), Matisse's leafy cutouts, da Vinci's sketch of a helicopter-like device, Man Ray's iron with spikes, Toulouse-Lautrec's dancing woman, Lee Bontecou's welded hole sculpture, Odilon Redon's Cyclops, van Gogh's Starry Night, Degas' ballerina fixing her shoe, and Yayoi Kusama's polka dots, and Duchamp's Urinal. A small cartoon woman stands atop the pile of famous motifs holding a paintbrush and palette in one hand and holding up a finger to speak with the other. She's squatting under some sort of ceiling or roof because there's not much more room for anything else on the page. A word bubble comes from her mouth reading, "Ehh, I think I can do better."]

Two self portraits by Albrecht Durer

*Durer's name has an umlaut over the U but I can't be troubled to type it in.

Durer, self-portrait at 26.

Durer, self-portrait at 28.

Durer was notoriously vain. Guess which spun-gold flowing feature he was proudest of? In the first portrait we'd probably call those "Taylor Swift barrel-curls," while I think the second may be classified as, "beachy waves" or a "tousled boho" 'do. His mod black and white outfit with taupe capelet and provocative decolletage is quite sharp but only Janis Joplin could pull off the Davy Crockett-meets-Shakespeare costume below.

Durer's work is always off-putting because it reminds me of math class, but still absorbing because he belonged to that very early generation of representative artists in whose work you can see them struggling to see the world. In other words, his work reveals the act of him visually learning, which is what I enjoy most about da Vinci, Giotto, Michelangelo and van Eyck as well. European painting lost that a bit once stylistic conventions solidified in the late 1600s.