art & culture

A Souvenir from Scotland by Gustave Doré

The fall of the rebel angels by Gustave Doré

For Gustave Doré, born in Strasbourg, France's defeat by Prussia in 1870, and the consequential loss of Alsace-Lorraine, was a great source of distress. Just after the end of the war he produced three monumental works: The Enigma, The Black Eagle of Prussia and The Defence of Paris, all in shades of grey and presented under the general title of Souvenirs of 1870, when the contents of the artist's studio were sold posthumously in 1884. Of these three paintings, The Enigma is undeniably the most tragic. At the top of a hill, strewn with bodies, there stands a sphinx, a mythical monster with the body of a lion and the head of a human. In the distance, plumes of smoke rise up from a Paris set ablaze by enemy cannon. Under the dark sky, a winged woman, perhaps the embodiment of France seems to be asking the sphinx for answers. The sphinx appears to be compassionate, closer to the sphinx of Egyptian religion, guardian of the underworld, rather than the monster Oedipus came across in Greek mythology.

Unrevealed feelings by Denis Sarazhin

Masha by Denis Sarazhin

Will you tell her by Denis Sarazhin

He painted in the homes of the poor people he depicted. His work attracted much attention and praise in the more socially conscious publications of that time, and he became a close friend of Jakob Smits, who was also involved in social issues. Some less sympathetic commentators referred to him as the "painter of misery and pain".

This humanist interest in ancient allegories culminated in The Birth of Venus and Primavera—two tempera paintings starring Venus, the Roman goddess associated with love and beauty.

The Mask of Sorrow is a monument perched on a hill above Magadan, Russia, commemorating the many prisoners who suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. It consists of a large concrete statue of a face, with tears coming from the left eye in the form of small masks. The right eye is in the form of a barred window. The back side portrays a weeping young woman and a headless man on a cross. Inside is a replication of a typical Stalin-era prison cell. Below the Mask of Sorrow are stone markers bearing the names of many of the forced-labor camps of the Kolyma, as well as others designating the various religions and political systems of those who suffered there.