GRAVEFLOWERS †

Gustave Doré

Xavier Ortiz

Eugène Thivier (1845–1920): The Nightmare.

Joseph Plateau — Phenakistoscope art (1887)

SPIRITED AWAY (2001) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

"Cats being instructed in the art of Mouse-catching by an Owl" By an unknown artist of the Lombard School, circa 1700

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), The Gates of Hell, modeled 1880–1917, bronze cast after the artist's death from the original plaster model. Musée Rodin, Paris. Commissioned in 1880 for a proposed Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, the monument remained unfinished throughout Rodin's lifetime. Conceived after Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the composition ultimately expanded beyond its literary source, incorporating references to Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and developing into an independent sculptural program. More than 180 figures are organized within a continuous, high-relief field that rejects Renaissance compositional hierarchy in favor of an unstable, expressive surface. Many of Rodin's most celebrated sculptures—including The Thinker, The Kiss, The Three Shades, and Ugolino and His Sons—originated as figures first modeled for this monumental portal before being enlarged and exhibited as autonomous works.

Bianca Sparacino

Calcite with Copper inclusions Quincy Mine, Michigan