Three postcards from Hamburg

The Sartorialist recently said in a short, stimulating documentary film:

"I feel very lucky to get part of my day leading a visual life. (...) to go on just be in the world you are in, see it, keep your eyes open, and really relate to what you're seeing, react to what you're seeing".

I feel touched by his words, since I have became more and more conscious about the importance of visual life the last three or four years.

Obviously he refers to real world, but since I just wake up minutes ago and have seen just this flat where I am staying these days in Hamburg and, of course, the internet, I want to post three powerful images, two of the XIX century, one of yesterday.

When I saw this, I first thought it was a photograph. And I thought it was perfect in its composition. It is known that Maximilian brought the first photographers to Mexico, he was object of the first photographs in that country, and it is also known that the first photographers had a strong artistic education, mostly based on painting. So, it could be possible, that this dramatic composition had been captured by a master photographer. The black/white image did the trick.

But looking carefully it is just impossible to have such a drama in a picture, I thought. Indeed, it is rather a painting by French artist Jean-Paul Laurens called Les derniers moments de Maximilian (1882), which hangs in the Hermitage. It rather looks like this:

 

Then, while checking out the website of Hamburg's Kunsthalle to prepare my visit, I found this beautiful, minimal, super modern painting by Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) called Hund, den Mond anbellend. In fact, you can barely see the moon, which is being mostly covered by a bank of clouds (cirrus and nimbus "wrongly" sorted).

Runge, Hund, den Mond anbellend (undated)

Later, in 1926, Miró painted the same motive in a very different way, also modern, but without that breaking spirit of Runge. Rufino Tamayo did the same in different occasions, but Runge's is still my favorite.

 Joan Miró, Perro ladrando a la luna (1926)

 Rufino Tamayo, Perro ladrando a la luna (?)

And finally, an image by The Sartorialist, a fashion-blogger, who took last week this picture of a boyish girl in Florence. Red shoes are definitely my favorite, and in this case the match with her lips, hair lace and wrist band is just perfect. Her most feminine and shy attitude contrasts completely with her masculine outfit and selbstbewusst elegance. A great shot!

The Sartorialist, Black, White, Red, Florence -- Cristina  (2011)