Diego Rivera

Happy Solstice to you! May the Sun shine brightly on all your endeavours. In astrology, associations often depend on your source. Yellow, for example, is attributed to Mercury, Venus or the Sun; Virgo, Leo, Gemini (a yellowish green), Libra or Aquarius — depending on which book you pull [...]

(Victor Oliver, editor of the Astrological Journal, has very kindly asked me to write a column loosely about “fashion”. I’ll be publishing them here too.) A squiggle of monobrow, two beady black eyes — it’s a shorthand for Frida Kahlo, the long-dead Mexican artist that just about everyone can [...]

Two Fridas (1939) Frida Kahlo’s paintings have become so much part of popular culture that it is possible to forget just how great they are. Her Venus is in Gemini, the sign of the storyteller, and it is closely conjunct Pluto, the planet of transformation. Her self-portraits tell the [...]

Dona Elena Flores de Carrillo by Diego Rivera. (1952) The Mexican muralist Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886. The British painter Lucian Freud was born on December 8, 1922. The sign of Sagittarius – half-man, half-beast. Centaurs were notorious for their brawling and rapine. Animal [...]

Truthfulness is a Sagittarius quality — for good or bad. Maybe that is why they make such brilliant self-portraits. There is the German-Swedish painter Lotte Laserstein with a tabby cat comfortably nestled on her arm. Her gaze is a little sardonic, but quite confident thank you, as [...]