5. Mostly, it's a testament to my utter and total symbolism-geekery. Vanitas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas) is a style of still-life painting popular in Northern Europe, from about the time Robin Hood was hopping around stealing from the well-off and giving to the minorly impoverished, to around when torture was outlawed. (<-- Ha, no.) Which is to say, 1600s-1700s. It was a very melancholy era, really. Lots of plague-ing and war.
En vanitas, every object and its placement are significant; popular are things like skulls, bubbling cauldrons, the US-exchange rate, etc., which remind us of the futility of all things. The word itself means "emptiness" in Latin, which is also a shout-out to the fact that everything is insignificant and such. 's quite cheerful, really.
So, vanitas + haze = seeing everything through a bunch of morbid symbology.
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dancing_serpent
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Date: 2008-05-14 09:52 pm (UTC)En vanitas, every object and its placement are significant; popular are things like skulls, bubbling cauldrons, the US-exchange rate, etc., which remind us of the futility of all things. The word itself means "emptiness" in Latin, which is also a shout-out to the fact that everything is insignificant and such. 's quite cheerful, really.
So, vanitas + haze = seeing everything through a bunch of morbid symbology.
...I am such a geek.