Grant Wood: Spring in Town, 1942
“Wood’s previous biographers have turned a blind eye to the demonstrable fact that he was a deeply closeted homosexual. Evans documents the always-chubby Wood’s infatuations (many of them apparently unrequited and sublimated into parental role-playing) with an unending series of slim, dark-haired young men who were his students, protégés, and secretaries. As the bartender in a famous Cedar Rapids watering hole Wood favored put it, ‘Wood was only gay when he was drunk.’” - Doug Ireland
Titian (Italian, 1485-1576), Portrait of Ranuccio Farnese, 1542, oil on canvas, 90 x 74 cm.
This portrait was painted when Ranuccio, age 12, was made a prior of the Order of Malta - that is represented by the white cross on the black cloak. When he was 15 he was made a Cardinal, and at 16 he was named titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. Of course, his grandfather Allesandro Farnese was the Pope. The Farnese family never matched the Borgias when it came to graft and corruption, but they lasted longer.
Kurt Vonnegut
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), Marionettes; Behind the Curtain, 1903. Oil on canvas, 29 x 21 3/4 in.
Vincent van Gogh（Dutch, 1853–1890, Landscape near Montmajour with Train, 1888. Chalk and ink on paper. British Museum, London.
