Vakhtang Kakulia approached by out of the blue about posting his artowork on ArikiArt so I don't know him at all other than what he provided me in his bio. (Read
Vakhtang Kakulia's biography) So as I post his works and study them to I'm finding it very intriguing and frustrating to understand what is behind his symbolism, what are his life experiences that inspire his artwork, etc. So my comments are all drawn from my own interpretation and may be far from the mark since I am flying blind. I wonder what
Sister Wendy would come up with? Anyhow, in this painting which Kakulia entitles "
Moonlit Boat" you get quite a surprise to find that the boat in question actually appears to be under a spotlight on a stage! The boat looks a little "tempest-tossed" with the sail blown out from the mast. You wonder where the people are: the boat is empty and there's an empty chair sitting beside the boat too. Towards the back on the right side there is what I first thought was a street lamp, which is an image I've noticed in a few of his paintings, but after working on his "
Liberation" painting last night, I'm wondering if perhaps it's the guitarist's microphone that is part of the entanglement in that painting.
What are your interpretations of the painting? Post your thoughts.
Here's a book published by the Getty Center called
Symbols and Allegories in Art (Guide to Imagery Series) about interpreting images in art. It gets good reviews at Amazon.
I referred to Sister Wendy Beckett above. If you are not familiar with her, I thouroughly recommend her. This remarkable diminutive Carmelite nun with glasses and bucked teeth, was made famous by her series for British public TV in which she travelled widely to art museaums interpreting and reviewing the masterpieces of art. I think many people became fans of hers for how she handled herself calmly and without embarassment on TB when reviewing nudes and other racy material. She also did a series for U.S. public television (PBS) entitled
Sister Wendy's American Collection.
Here are a few of her many books and DVDs available at Amazon.
The subject matter of Vakhtang Kakulia's paintings are typically of mundane objects of daily life. They are presented in compositions that suggest deep symbolic meaning, and are typically painted in a style in which flat planes are broken down into patchwork pieces that give the impression of cubist construction.