Mendelog

So you want to be part of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).

Five simple rules:
1. Dabble in all art forms but test, defy, and violate conventional views of both proper style and subject.
2. Have many muses who become allegorical subjects of your painting and poetry.
3. Follow an art demigod (e.g. 19th century art critic John Ruskin, who claimed that artists were the revolutionary spiritual leaders of a new age).
4. Look to the past for inspiration. Drawn upon medieval legends, techniques, and attitudes.
5. Live a totally decadent, anguished, and ruinous life (or risk growing old and becoming part of the establishment!).

The Pre-Raphaelite Botherhood was founded in 1849 by William Holman Hunt, D.G. Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and F. G. Stephens to revitalize the arts. Others such as Christina Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris, were later part of what was considered the Pre-Raphaelite Circle. Although the young would-be art revolutionaries never published a manifesto, their works and memoirs show that having read Ruskin’s praise of the artist as prophet, they hoped to create an art suitable for the modern age by defying the rules and embracing a romanticized medievalism. These English bohemians sparked a few new art trends including the Arts and Crafts, the Aesthetic, and Decadent movements.

Join fellow Pre-Raphaelites (and a host of artists, writers, scientists, engineers, politicians and business leaders, and more) at the Salon on July 7th. Your dear Ruskin may grace us with his presence.