Willy Claflin’s “Pegamoose and the Gorgonzola Medusa” is a mythological adaptation of the classical myth of Perseus and Medusa, a kind of doggerel pastiche passing familiar details but veering into a novel account of a heroic moose. Whether or not the result is comic brilliance …
Neofotistos’ new-age Andromeda, subduer of fish
The work called “Perseus and Andromeda — a role reversal” reworks the central premise of the familiar moment in the Perseus and Andromeda rescue. Here two nudes participate heroically in the rescue of a victim on a sea-side cliff. A desiccated piscine seamonster rises between the …
Hozier & Bronzino … thinking alike
Agnolo Bronzino executed in 1539 a commission and painted Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, arguably Europe’s most eligible bachelor. The cocksure portrait (vid. left; link) was intended to convince Eleanora of Toledo of the desirability of her becoming a new Eurydice to Cosimo’s Orpheus. The …
the Galatea from Meissen
Galatea2.0100_MeissenKaendler Johann Joachim Kaendler, designer, Galatea tureen, part of the Swan Service produced at the Meissen Porcelain pottery (Staatlich Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen), 1740. Kaendler’s elaborate soup tureen depicts the mythological sea-nymph Galatea atop a fish and attended by other marine divinities and several swans. Attributes are …
Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of Eurydice on Fire, by Amelia Ferry
——— post by Amelia Ferry* Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu; dir. C. Sciamma, 2019) adapts the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Set on an island in 18th-century Bretagne, Sciamma’s screenplay paints the …
Aeschylus’ Oresteia (Peter Hall, director) available again
Students of Aeschylus’ Oresteia at Brigham Young University once again have cost-free access to a landmark production of the trilogy. Working through the lib.byu.edu/databases with BYU authentication credentials, student can view all three plays of this powerful tragic sequence in their entirety. Even if the video’s …
Sisyphus2.0016_Kim, “Sisyphus 6”
Myung Sook Kim, 1987 “Sisyphus 6” painting with mixed media on paper. Ownership: Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, Korea https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/sisyphus-6/bgES3fwZk5YOlw http://ogcma.byu.edu/Sisyphus1.0000_Reid.htm Sisyphus tells a story of a man who disrespected the gods and was punished with the futile task of pushing a boulder up a hill, …
Pandora and the President
BYU President Kevin J Worthen cited the Pandora myth in his opening devotional to bolster students’ sense of hope in a season of trials. “This story [of Epimetheus and Pandora] – and the use of the term ‘Pandora’s box’ to refer to a multitude of …
Iphigenia and Pan’s Labyrinth at IC
International Cinema — a powerhouse program, a jewel in BYU’s crown — will bring three or four films to registered viewers every week of the Fall semester. Two of the Fall2020 films treat classical mythological themes, one as a reception and one as an adaptation. …
Sirens2.0101_Morrow — Bethany C. Morrow’s A Song Below Water
Bethany C. Morrow (2020), A Song Below Water (Tor Teen) — two adolescent sirens in and off-shore contemporary Portland, Oregon encounter challenges not unfamiliar to the adolescent and YA readers who will read the novel. I CONFESS*: I am not in the demographic readership for whom Bethany …