Red Aries #33: Cynthia Nixon

Taking a page from Lady Gaga's (#32) playbook, Cynthia Nixon (April 9, 1966) in a red leather dress!

Red Aries #34: Brenda Starr

Brenda Starr, flaming red-head reporter, created by cartoonist Dale Messick, born April 11, 1906.

Red Aries #35: Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960), provocative English artist /perfomer, here in male costume -- note: the Aries sign is a phallus!

 

Red bow!

Red shoes! (c.f. Aries in Red #21: Hans Christian Andersen)

"Himself"

Red Aries #36: Francisco Goya

Another great court portraitist, (like Anthony VanDyck, Red Aries #18), Francisco Goya, born on March 30, 1746, had a penchant for bright red, especially as an accent: red cape, red ribbon, red collar, red corsage, red boutonniere, red cuff, feather, box, flag, flame, hat, pants, ember, blood. He painted the Duchess of Alba twice, once in a white dress and once in a black one, each with a red sash. The painting above, Goya's most beloved, unites the color with his favorite theme, childhood. At the lower left, his frequent touch of the macabre, the three cats ready to pounce on the bird.

Here he equates the Aries bodypart, the head, and the Aries color.

The haunting portrait of Count Floridablanca is profound meditation on identity. The ostensible Subject is the central figure in bold red, but his existence is diffused, appearing also in his oval portrait dimly looming above him. There is also a self-portrait of the artist, humbly dressed on the left, whose profile is 'fortuitously' highlighted, while the individuality of an insignificant secretary seems to have struck the artist as more interesting than the Count, who is comparing his painted image with his image in a mirror. So there are at least six self-images present or implicit. Other important Aries images in Goya's work: Boy on a Ram, The Disasters of War series, The Massacre, and the hacked and bloody butcher's still life, "Head and Quarters":

Red Aries #37: Lips

James Franco, 19 April 1978

Tim Curry, 19 April 1946

Heath Ledger, 4 April 1979

Marcel Marceau, 22 March 1923

Red Aries #38

Bette Davis, 5 April 1908

Marc Jacobs, 9 April 1963

Pride of Lions: one male and six females

I am remiss in sharing new astrological data. Just picked up an addition to the Leo file. Turns out that the radical modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 22 Aug1928), one of the pioneers of electronica, was polygamous. Three other important, charismatic Leos were similarly all-embracing in their love lives.

Carl Jung (26 July 1875), like Stockhausen center of a cultish circle, was famously shared by his wife and his pupil/colleague Toni Wolff, who was also said to  manage his harem of Jungfrauen. For the last 40 years of his life he was commonly accompanied by both women  at public and private functions.

Erwin Schrodinger (12 Aug 1887) the great physicist and Einstein colleague, a Vedantist with deep theories about the role of sunlight in the creation of life on the subatomic level, lived openly with two women, because of which several universities terminated his engagements. Oddest of all, perhaps, the great Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich (20 Aug 1886), author of ‘The Courage to Be’ (such a Leonine title) agreed with his wife early on to an ‘open marriage’ but according to his son, “this arrangement got out of hand. He wouldn't stop and she didn't like it anymore.” Nevertheless they did not divorce, and his promiscuity was unconcealed.

What particularly strikes me is that all four of these guys, in addition to being Leos, are German (yes Jung was Swiss, but German-speaking Lutheran and self-identified as Aryan). Needless to say, the lion in the wild is virtually a symbol of authoritarian maleness. He is also the Blond Beast.