Tuesday, November 4, 2008

subject echo: magnum contest (and the terror of beauty)


Alec Soth, blogging again over at the Magnum Photos blog, proposed a contest this week: match an image from the Magnum archive with a famous painting from art history.

it's a good game to play in between hitting refresh on all the news sites today...  and the commenters have some pretty great suggestions already.

above, fun with Steve McCurry and Caravaggio.   

i suppose these two images of Medusa continue this week's ugly/beauty theme.  after all, Melville (and many other poets and writers) have celebrated Medusa's "beauty strange with horror allied," while Structuralist mythologist Jean-Pierre Vernant describes Medusa as a symbol of where "the strange beauty of the feminine countenance, brilliant with seduction, and the horrible fascination of death, meet and cross."  my classicist friend points out that the Greeks were always crazy for terrible beauty.  and so am ihot stuff.

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