A roundup of the most popular art prints for 2024. It's always fun to see what quotations are resonating - truth, hope, authenticity, purpose. And a little Shakespearian bear humor to mix things up.
Our full art collection includes over 150 original illustrations inspired by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Nietzsche, Rumi, Austen, Frost, Fitzgerald and more.
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The final line of The Great Gatsby, the Fitzgerald novel that defined the jazz age. It was the era that ushered in modernity, a time of material excess, liberation, and intoxication. But even in the midst of the party, Fitzgerald could sense the toll such decadence takes on the human soul.
Like so many other Fitzgerald fans, we adore this quotation and its kaleidoscopic meanings. Gatsby, surrounded by unimaginable wealth, prestige and fanfare, dreams only of a future with Daisy that will recreate their past. And yet, his past is what prevents him from attaining that bright future. All pomp and circumstance aside, Gatsby is deeply relatable. Everyone, in their own way, aspires to their own vision of “one fine day.” Everyone is reaching toward the green light. And like Gatsby, we are all eventually borne, against our will, into the past.
In our illustration, a figure rows toward an ethereal, glimmering girl as her dress forms the bay. Her belt resembles a shining city, and a green jewel dangles from a string of pearls.
With one hand she sets the sun, with the other she lifts the moon.
For this illustration, we used Emily Dickinson's own words as line elements to create the "thing with feathers" she describes in this extraordinary poem. The source of hope she depicts is a bottomless well of creative inspiration and strength, which for her manifested in poetry. Visually, her handwriting is a remarkable combination of beautiful flourishes and swooshes combined with an almost frantic energy - a pen racing to keep up with a quicksilver mind.
In Meditations, Aurelius distills the central pillars and tenets of stoic philosophy. Although it was essentially a journal and never intended for a general readership, it has become one of the most widely read philosophical works in the world.
In our illustration, we drew inspiration from one of Notre Dame's stained glass rose windows, a fractured relic in the shape of a Legionnaire's helmet. Like the stoic's ideal state of mind, stained glass is at once orderly and beautiful. Ideas radiate out from central first principles in a natural and inevitable succession of deductions and balancing forces. At the helmet's edge I added six pictograms, representing the four pillars of stoicism (Courage, Justice, Temperance and Wisdom) as well as two central stoic concepts: Memento Mori ("Remember Mortality"), and Amor Fati ("Love Fate").
From his classic poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Like many, this poem was one of the first we learned in school, and there's something magical and nostalgic about it. Frost is known for his use of down-to-earth, colloquial language to explore complex social, philosophical, and natural subjects.
The final line "and miles to go before I sleep" is repeated twice at the end of the poem. The repetition implies a double meaning, both a literal and metaphorical journey to be taken. We wanted to capture both in our illustration.
To capture this sense of sisterhood, we drew inspiration from the Three Graces (Charites) of Greek mythology. Portrayed many times by painters and sculptors alike, they have come to represent many things, ranging from the feminine (charm, beauty, creativity) to the moral (faith, hope, love) to the agonistic (Hera, Aphrodite and Athena), to the creative (experience, inspiration, craft) to the unbreakable bond of kinship (Foedus Inviolabile).
The desolate and beautiful landscape surrounding their Yorkshire town of Howarth served as the setting for their most famous stories, and was the inspiration for our illustration. Like their characters, the landscape was untamed and as romantic as it was unforgiving.The fierce independence expressed in the quote is paired with the solidarity of the three graces. Instead of birds in a tree, delicate and fearful, the sisters form the unshakeable base of the tree itself. The central figure's dress becomes the trunk, utilizing the same pattern as the branches. The side figures' floral dresses mirror the foliage in the tree.
From The Brothers Karamazov. This passage is so awesome, we included the entire excerpt in our design to provide context for Dostoevsky's stunning insight into personal responsibility.
A face comprised of text has been partially redacted, creating a self-inflicted blindfold.
The entire passage reads:
"And above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all… You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don't give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don't give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above all—don't lie... Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill—he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing..."
This poignant quotation is from Chopin's beloved novel, "The Awakening,” and in our illustration, a woman slips off the words that once defined her. Kate Chopin was a feminist before her time. “The Awakening," which was published in 1899, was controversial and considered a failure. It wasn’t until the 1970s feminist movement that it became more widely read and recognized as a pioneering work in women’s literature.
This line comes at a point in the story where the protagonist is at her most triumphant. If the garment in the illustration represents the expectations and conventions she is compelled to assume, this is her most authentic, naked self. I love that she’s engaged in making art as she discovers herself.
Millay was every bit the rebel that you’ve heard. After winning the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (first lady to do so, btw), she ventured into a life of Bohemian abandan that would have made Kerouac blush, a generation before he stepped on the road.
She scandalized finger-wags everywhere with her cigarettes and affairs and crowds of poetry fans (remember those!?). She made Greenwich Village cool, then made moving upstate cool, then made gardening cool for pete’s sake. And all the time she wrote gorgeous poetry. Yeah, I’d say she burned at least twice as bright, wouldn’t you?
In our illustration, the twin flames of a candle merge into the billowing dress of an intrepid dreamer.
"Exit, pursued by a bear" is a stage direction from Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale" that is infamous for its hilarity and difficulty to stage. It's one of the best literary inside jokes (welcome to the club!).
Generally, Shakespeare limited his stage directions to the most basic instructions - [Exit Hamlet], [Enter Ophelia], [Dies] - simple enough. But in this particular direction, a lot of things happen at once without any warning or supporting dialogue. Antigonus has been tasked with abandoning the baby Perdita in a desolate place, but he's having second thoughts. Suddenly a storm wrecks his ship, and then… he "exits, pursued by a bear."
Wait WHAT? So, apparently there’s a bear in the woods, and it has entered. Hungry. Without so much as an “O help!” he is chased off stage and dispatched. How can this sudden deluge of violence and fur not be funny? How do you stage it without destroying the tone of the scene? Do you embrace the surprise and have a little fun?
From The Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer
First: How awesome is that title?
Nietzsche's idea that hardship is not alleviated by reducing the burden of life, but by increasing our conviction to bear it with purpose strikes a chord.
For the illustration, a constellation is depicted in the shape of a globe. The hand reaching across the star map reveals a figure who willingly bears the weight.
