SHINE Mural Festival 2015- Shark Toof

 Art, Artists, Florida Street Art, Public Art, St. Pete, St. Petersburg Street Art, Street Art
Jul 242023
 

This mural by Shark Toof was created for the 2015 edition of the SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.

About the mural from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance website–

The artist hails from Los Angeles and is known around the world for his iconic shark illustrations. Although the shark’s reputation is fearsome, Shark Toof uses the image of a shark to give strength, optimism and possibility to the viewer. He sees the shark as a voice of rebellion, and a conduit for the unheard.

At the artist’s request, the wall was painted red before he got to St. Pete. Even so, the mural took four days and almost one hundred cans of aerosol paint – and it was a challenge because of wires and the architectural details of the wall.

When the painting was done, the artist stepped into the doorway on the bottom right, closed the iron grate and said, “See? Now I’m in a shark cage!”

For more of Shark Toof’s work also check out his Instagram.

Thomas Couture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jan 302023
 

Thomas Couture’s Soap Bubbles, ca. 1859, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From the museum’s website about the work-

A schoolboy, identifiable by the books on the desk, contemplates soap bubbles, traditional symbols of the transience of life. A wilting laurel wreath on the wall behind him suggests the fleeting nature of praise and honors. The word “immortalité,” inscribed on the paper inserted in the mirror, reinforces the painting’s allegorical content.

Couture was an influential teacher known for his opposition to strict academic instruction. Among his pupils was Manet, who in 1867 painted his own, more naturalistic, version of this subject (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon).

Interestingly, there is a very similar painting to this one, Daydreams, 1859, also by Couture, that is on view at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

This time the writing on the paper in the mirror reads “Le Parasseux indigne de vivre”- the lazy one unworthy of living.