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signifier.bsky.social
Signifier
@signifier.bsky.social
180 followers 20 following 620 posts

quality writing on : art : design : media
also The Signifier : six : shot : gallery

🌐 https://medium.com/signifier

Editor & Curator: @remydean.bsky.social‬
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signifier.bsky.social
❄️ 🦃 🎄

" #Thanksgiving & #Christmas & other mid-winter traditions tend to dwell on reminiscences, thinking about the ancestors, honouring & celebrating their 'olde-world' customs. So, the nostalgia-saturated images of Grandma Moses are a perfect fit."

medium.com/signifier/wh...

#illustration #art
"Although Sugaring-off, painted by Moses in 1955, inspired a plethora of pastiche images marketed as Christmas cards, including her own ‘remix’ version for Hallmark, the activities portrayed are associated with early spring. Now, on first seeing this, I accepted it as a Christmas event because I had heard of the tradition of villages coming together to cook a huge communal gumbo in massive outdoor cauldrons. But that tradition correlates more with the southern sates of the USA where such thick snow is uncommon. So what’s going on? Of course, the title gives things away… Take note of the tiny documentary details that Moses includes, such as pots pegged to several of the trees in the background. This is the harvesting and boiling-down of maple syrup, traditionally carried out when the spring days bring the thaw, but the night still freezes, and the sap rises to swell the nascent buds. The harvesters are bringing their raw sap to add to the big pots where it is boiled until it begins to crystallise into sugar."
December 6, 2025 at 12:43 AM
signifier.bsky.social
🌄 🌊 🎨

'First Impressions of Claude Monet'

@remydean.bsky.social explores how the 19th-Century French painter strove to portray the world as authentically as possible… & how the humble ferrule helped

🖌️ medium.com/signifier/cl...

#art #ArtHistory #history #landscape #painitng #Impressionism
three examples from Claude Monet’s ‘Rouen Cathedral’ series (early 1890s) - detailed descriptions and analysis in article via link in post
December 2, 2025 at 1:11 PM
signifier.bsky.social
🪨 ⚒️ 🐄

'Body Beautiful?' a few Classical Greek statues established the western paradigms of masculine & feminine (even bovine) #beauty that have persisted for millennia

@remydean.bsky.social considers gendered aesthetics in some classical statues

💪 medium.com/signifier/bo...

#ArtHistory #art
photographs of two museum pieces: Roman copies, carved in pale marble, of the bronze Cow, originally by Myron and a figure from a group depicting Theseus and the Minotaur, attributed to Myron
November 24, 2025 at 1:14 PM
signifier.bsky.social
'The Explosive Quiet of Cornelia Parker'

@kimvertue.bsky.social considers an artist who "continues to use #art as a non-partisan discussion of important issues & cultural identities ... examining the relics of the past while addressing the present & the future"

🪡 medium.com/signifier/a-...
‘Page 1 from a 14th Century Manuscript’ stitched by Jane Drummond of the Embroiderers’ Guild (East Midlands Region), ‘King John Signs Magna Carta’ stitched by Janet Payne of the Embroiderers’ Guild (Eastern Region), and ‘1225 Magna Carta Issued by Henry III’ stitched by Ann Carrick and Elaine Dunn of the Embroiderers’ Guild (North East Region) [images courtesy of The British Library]
November 21, 2025 at 3:31 PM
signifier.bsky.social
"unusual for a woman to make it as an artist at that time but her own father said that she painted beauties more skilfully than himself ... he was Katsushika Hokusai"

'Hokusai’s Daughter' by @kimvertue.bsky.social

🏮 medium.com/signifier/ho...

#Japan #art #ArtHistory #history #illustration #イラスト
‘Beauty with Fan and Morning Glories’ (Edo Period) by Katsushika Ōi - a print of a young lady wearing a dark kimono holding a fan sitting near a decorative bowl containing flowers - the blank area to the top left is detailed with sparse calligraphy
November 18, 2025 at 7:28 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Illumined Thinking — Bright Ideas from the Bauhaus

@remydean.bsky.social remembers the first product from the Bauhaus as a sort of introduction, in itself, to what the influential design school were all about...

💡 medium.com/signifier/il...

#art #design #history #ArtHistory
photograph of two of the lamps - "...spherical dome of the shade balances with the circular base. The ball of its pull-switch, suspended mid-way between the two, is a design ‘comment’ on the visual transition from one to the other..." more analysis and description in article via link in post
November 17, 2025 at 1:35 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Claude Monet #BOTD 1840

Once reviled, now revered, his famous #paintings of Water Lilies reflect on the tragedy of war, express a hope for peace, & celebrate the joy of creation 🖌️

@kimvertue.bsky.social looks beyond the surface of Monet’s Final Masterworks of #art

🪷 medium.com/signifier/fo...
‘Water-Lilies’ (c.1916+) - a large painting by Claude Monet: "...a colourfield of subtlety. The mauve and gold, punctuated by red blossom and a deeper blue in one corner, allowed the eye to roam and the mind to immerse itself completely in contemplation of shimmering hues that only hinted at water-lilies and trails of weeping willow..."
November 14, 2025 at 1:51 AM
signifier.bsky.social
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'When Art Went Pop! in the USA'

"along with #Surrealism, #PopArt was among the 1st major Post-Modern movements to emerge in the mid-C20th & they share overlapping visual vocabulary"

@remydean.bsky.social 💥 medium.com/signifier/wh...

#art #ArtHistory #sculpture #history #illustration
"In 1962, with Five Feet of Colorful Tools, Jim Dine also crosses the boundaries between painting, collage and sculpture. We see an almost square canvas, with colourful silhouettes of DIY tools, such as hand saws, hammers, and screwdrivers, stencil-printed onto it along its upper edge. At the top of the canvas is a plank from which the tools hang on hooks."
November 12, 2025 at 10:54 AM
signifier.bsky.social
“In My Garden”

#art by Sharon Stone was our November 2023
#exhibition in The Signifier : six : shot : gallery :

6️⃣ medium.com/the-signifie...

#ContemporaryArt #painting
‘How I Love the Wind’ a five panel abstract painting made up of colourful gestural marks on a pale background by Sharon Stone [image courtesy of the artist and C. Parker Gallery]
November 11, 2025 at 3:33 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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'Cyrano de Bergerac, a Literary Oddity?'

Samuel Belleville-Douelle reflets on how the author Edmond Rostand caused such a stir in fin de siècle France with his 5-act play in verse & why it still resonates today

📖 medium.com/signifier/cy...

#art #ArtHistory #literature #movies #history
illustration for ‘Aventures prodigieuses de Cyrano de Bergerac’ (1900) by Henriot, published by Épinal, Pellerin & Cie - Cyrano stands upon a globe of the Earth, with his back to us, surrounded by fantastical characters riding through the sky on magical creatures - for example a hare riding a winged rabbit, a cavalier riding a flying giant snail and another on a flying fish, a squirrel, moth, dragon, stalks, cranes and a coffee pot?
November 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Are Ziggy Stardust & Thomas Jerome Newton the same person? Such parallels landed David Bowie a starring role in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' (1976)

@remydean.bsky.social discusses how two iconic personae fused multimedia fictions in a Pop Art cycle of creative feedback

⚡ medium.com/signifier/wh...
David Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton wearing a fedora and looking pensive in the closing scenes of the film 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' (1976)
November 9, 2025 at 6:56 PM
signifier.bsky.social
“Excuse Me, But Where Do You Come From?”

#art by Victoria Si Wah Dong was our November 2022
#exhibition in The Signifier : six : shot : gallery :

6️⃣ medium.com/the-signifie...

#ContemporaryArt #illustration #printmaking #weaving
art by Victoria Si Wah Dong - a colourful collage of woven paper, uncontained by a frame with irregular border elements of photography and text can also be seen among the bright lines, curves and chequer patterns
November 8, 2025 at 1:14 PM
signifier.bsky.social
Where we encounter art affects our responses to it. We may feel very differently about saleable objects presented as #art in a classy gallery than something unlabelled we encounter ‘in the wild’

Rodrigo S-C explores these notions by way of a short anecdotal sojourn...

🍷 medium.com/signifier/wh...
photograph by Rodrigo S-C of street graffiti dominated by large rounded white forms on vented metal panels
November 6, 2025 at 4:09 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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remember. remember...

'Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge' (c.1858) from Utagawa Hiroshige's 'One Hundred Famous Views of Edo'

learn about the artist's 'Road to Fame' in our article by @kimvertue.bsky.social

💥 medium.com/signifier/hi...

#art #ArtHistory #illustration #イラスト #fireworks
the woodblock print 'Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge' (c.1858) from Utagawa Hiroshige's 'One Hundred Famous Views of Edo' in which a silhouetted crown watch falling fireworks by lantern light, reflected n an expanse of water
November 5, 2025 at 3:02 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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A Small Thing But My Own

@kimvertue.bsky.social looks back on the technicolour emotions of Howard Hodgkin & how daubs of vivid colour & elusive forms represent intangible feelings about solid reality

💎 medium.com/signifier/a-...

#art #painting #ArtHistory #illustration #GraphicDesign
abstract painting by Howard Hodgkin called 'Night and Day' (1997-1999) is a frame in vivid green and yellow around a swathe of deep blue across orange...
November 4, 2025 at 4:01 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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Richard Long’s #landscape #art is the land itself

@remydean.bsky.social shares a long walk through some of the ground-breaking artist's oeuvre that spans the globe in distance & could also be interpreted as spanning a timeline of geological epochs

〰️ medium.com/signifier/a-...
two black and white photographs of expansive barren landscapes with large geological features in the distance and subtly altered terrain in the foreground: in the left image, stones have been moved to form a paler, clearer, circular area and in the right image, a darker, wavy line has been produced by repeatedly walking in a sandy looking plain.
November 4, 2025 at 2:11 PM
signifier.bsky.social
💀 dark #art & witches & #ghosts 👻

this week, our popular & trending section is stuffed with spooky stories ideal for #Halloween reading...

🦇 medium.com/signifier
six thumbnails from the Signifier landing page showing some spooky images
October 29, 2025 at 9:14 PM
signifier.bsky.social
🛡️ ☀️ 🌪️

'The Dazzling Vortex'

Some Vorticists flirted with Fascism but their #art also helped defend the allied navies.

@remydean.bsky.social finds "a rare example of art, abstract art at that, having a proven & quantifiable function..."

🏁 medium.com/signifier/th...

#ArtHistory #history #design
two black and white photographs of ships painted with bold geometric patterns: USS ‘West Mahomet’, November 1918 and RMS ‘Mauretania’ bringing troops home from Europe, December 1918
October 17, 2025 at 12:38 PM
signifier.bsky.social
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'David Hockney: Making a Splash with the Bigger Picture'

@kimvertue.bsky.social dives into the large-scale, immersive #art of the people’s painter who continues to please with new work more than six decades later…

💦 medium.com/signifier/da...

#painitng #ArtHistory #history #photography
detail of the splash from the painting 'A Bigger Splash' (1967) by David Hockney
October 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
signifier.bsky.social
it's #fungi season in the Eurozone so time to revisit:
'Beatrix Potter’s Field Studies' 🐸

@kimvertue.bsky.social on the #art & #science of a pioneering mycologist better known as the beloved children’s #author & #illustrator

🍄 medium.com/signifier/po...

#illustration #fungi #history #ArtHistory
two illustrations by Beatrix Potter: ‘Toad’s Tea Party’ (c.1905) - six toads gather around a small table, five sit on toadstools, and ‘Mycology Study’ - and accurate natural history illustration of fungi
October 13, 2025 at 11:47 AM
signifier.bsky.social
'Résumé'

#art by Géraldine Swatridge was our October 2021 #exhibition
in The Signifier : six : shot : gallery :

6️⃣ medium.com/the-signifie...

#ContemporaryArt #painting #drawing #landscape #illustration
two semi-abstract sketches in ink and watercolour by Géraldine Swatridge - one has tree forms in mainly orange, the other resembles a map of parkland in mainly greens
October 13, 2025 at 11:41 AM
signifier.bsky.social
'From Beyond the Grave — Unearthing Japan’s Forgotten Photographer'

@remydean.bsky.social finds a haunting beauty in the unique #art of Ukai Gyokusen which has finally surfaced after being, very literally, buried in the past

🔲 medium.com/signifier/fr...

#photography #ArtHistory #Japan #history
very damaged ambrotype photograph by Ukai Gyokusen - the image of a man with a shaven head can be discerned, a head and shoulders portrait, but a quarter of his face is obscured by damage to the image
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
signifier.bsky.social
French painter Georges-Pierre Seurat used Pointillism & Divisionism to point out divisions in society: "these ‘noble workers’ were as important as the people in grand historical paintings hung in museums"

@remydean.bsky.social considers early Modernist Masterpieces

🚣 medium.com/signifier/th...
The first Pointillist painting - the green grass, for example, is made up of dots of pure colours including yellow, pink, blue and orange, yet our eye mixes these colours to give the vivid grass green of summer meadows - though it is used alongside smoother, blended brushstrokes here - the scale of the figures in the group of bathers is inconsistent...
October 3, 2025 at 12:05 PM
signifier.bsky.social
'Victoriana-o-rama'

Lawrence Alma-Tadema enjoyed success in his lifetime but his #art suffered the the vagaries of fickle fashion since his death… @remydean.bsky.social discusses the life & times of an artist who influenced #comics #illustration & Hollywood #movies

🖼️ medium.com/signifier/vi...
‘The Finding of Moses’ (1904) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - historical painting of scene of a procession in which a lady is carried in a chair on the shoulders of servants and a baby in a wicker basket is held aloft
September 29, 2025 at 12:31 AM
signifier.bsky.social
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'Whose Shoes?'

@remydean.bsky.social takes us on a quick-step through some shoe symbolism in #art & #culture along the path from innocence to experience... from #FairyTales to #horror films

👠 medium.com/signifier/wh...

#art #ArtHistory #shoes #illustration #イラスト #fashion #movies #history
pop culture quoting red shoes cinematic imagery: album covers for 'Eldorado' by E.L.O. and 'The Red Shoes' by Kate Bush
September 28, 2025 at 1:39 PM