theres a guy in my asian art hist. class who is visually the epitome of a redneck stereotype except hes an art history major and is very clearly passiomate about it
imagine a bowlegged white guy with a beard wearing flannel, a belt buckle, and cowboy boots talk about the intricacies of a hindu temple in sri lanka. this is the future liberals want
Yeah that’s why they all died at 30 because they were so unhealthy but cool
Pretty sure it was the plague not heart disease.
Pretty sure it was the Plague, childbirth, food spoiling, maltreated infections, smallpox, pneumonia, and/or generally unsanitary living conditions (such as dumping sewage and waste in the streets) and not health conditions caused by excess body fat.
Not to mention that the Renaissance standard of female beauty being plumpness and full-figured forms came from the fact that it was a status symbol. Plump, pale, full-figured women were wealthy women who didn’t have to spend their days in hard labor or raising children (or both) and stood a better chance of bearing healthy babies than commoner women did.
Also let’s actually take a look at what they looked like… and realise that they’re not even ‘fat’ for the most part, just REALISTIC. Rolls, boobs, muscles and cellulite – which are all normal and natural no matter your weight.
(Rubens, Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, c. 1616-17. Technically closer to Baroque style but you get my point.)
They had not been seen together in the museum galleries for quite a while. Monet’s “Women with Umbrellas” are once again side by side in the Impressionist gallery.
AND THEN THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END!!!!
ok every time this post comes by i resist geeking out on it but NO LONGER so these women are probably the same woman and that woman is monet’s wife camille doncieux. he painted her a LOT. but fun fact: monet had this asshole friend named ernest hochede, and ernest racked up some debts, and like an asshole he basically just fled the country, leaving his wife alice and their six kiddos behind. monet immediately got alice and kids to move in with him, camille, and their two kids. at this point, monet, alice, and camille became my favorite probably historic poly threesome. they lived together, taking care of the kids. they were so poor that alice and camille took turns wearing the nice dress so they could go out with monet. when camille got uterine cancer and began dying, alice helped monet cope and took care of things while he painted camille over and over. when camille died, alice is the reason monet was able to survive. when ernest finally died, monet and alice married, and remained married until alice died. at that point, blanche, the oldest daughter, took care of monet until he died. anyway, the point is, the umbrella ladies are probably the same ladies, but as far as i’m concerned, there WAS a historically queer poly family in that household and they were wonderful.
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
– Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.”
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire
In case anyone needed a dramatic reading of the above historical letter.
I’m dying!
Oh my god.
I’m now dying to know what happened next.
Period invective at its finest, even if it may not be quite as period as you think.
(NB – Peter Capaldi’s reading is probably NSFW without headphones.)
Here’s a link to much larger versions of the painting. Take a look at the full-size one: the facial expressions are a treat.
Also, check out Repin’s later, revised but uncompleted “sketch” version, which seems to have Vlad Dracula as a guest star just right of centre.
Listening to Capaldi’s reading you can really imagine this crowd of bros around a table yelling at the guy with the pen not to forget their favourite insult.
Friendly reminder that Vincent van Gogh willingly checked himself into an asylum so that he could get better, resulting in him creating some of the most iconic paintings of his entire career, done in the asylum, when he was being treated 24/7, because he finally didn’t have to struggle with his demons and could instead focus on his muse, WHICH WERE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!
Remember this little insignificant painting?
How about this one?
Check this one out:
All of these and more were painted in the asylum when he was receiving treatment for his mental illnesses and I know I just said that but I said it again and I’m saying it a third time until you dramatic abled assholes understand!
VINCENT VAN GOGH
– KNEW THAT HE WAS MENTALLY ILL
– WANTED TO CHANGE THAT
– WENT TO AN ASYLUM
– GOT THE HELP HE NEEDED
– PAINTED SOME ICONIC MASTERPIECES AS A RESULT!
SO DON’T YOU DARE COME OUT HERE WITH THIS, “I WISH I WAS DEPRESSED SO I COULD BE AS CREATIVE AS VAN GOGH” BULLSHIT BECAUSE EVEN HE KNEW THAT HIS DEMONS WERE HARMING HIS WORK, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, HIS HEALTH, AND HE DID EVERYTHING WITHIN HIS POWER TO FIGHT THEM EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HIS LIFE, UNTIL THEY ENDED UP WINNING!
This is also incredibly important for any creative persons dealing with mental illness, and their parents.
Receiving mental help improves your craft, not hurt it. Before getting put on medication for the first time to treat my mental illnesses, my mom expressed to me how she’s worried about my getting treatment because of my art. Regardless, your mental health should be more important anyway, but, honestly, it’s a lot harder to produce good art when you struggle getting out of bed, let alone creating masterpieces. When you’re in more health, improving your craft comes much easier!
Personally I think the most beautifull painting of him was this one:
He made it when he heard about the birth of his nephew who was named after him. Still in the asylum but really happy for his brother!
“How glad I was when the news came… I should have greatly preferred
him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much
these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I
started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom,
big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.”
Oh I have sucb rants about how “good” art comes while suffering.
No.
look at me.
The idea of the “suffering artist” comes from bunch of alcholic, drug abusing, womanizers trying to justify their bad life choices as some sort of artistic angst.
IT IS 100% BULLSHIT
Take your meds, get your therapy, be happy, and live life
A Pennsylvania museum has solved the mystery of a Renaissance portrait in an investigation that spans hundreds of years, layers of paint and the murdered daughter of an Italian duke.
Among the works featured in the Carnegie Museum’s exhibit Faked, Forgotten, Found is a portrait of Isabella de’Medici, the spirited favorite daughter of Cosimo de’Medici, the first Grand Duke of Florence, whose face hadn’t seen the light of day in almost 200 years.
Isabella Medici’s strong nose, steely stare and high forehead plucked of hair, as was the fashion in 1570, was hidden beneath layers of paint applied by a Victorian artist to render the work more saleable to a 19th century buyer.
The result was a pretty, bland face with rosy cheeks and gently smiling lips that Louise Lippincott, curator of fine arts at the museum, thought was a possible fake.
Before deciding to deaccession the work, Lippincott brought the painting, which was purportedly of Eleanor of Toledo, a famed beauty and the mother of Isabella de’Medici, to the Pittsburgh museum’s conservator Ellen Baxter to confirm her suspicions.
Baxter was immediately intrigued. The woman’s clothing was spot-on, with its high lace collar and richly patterned bodice, but her face was all wrong, ‘like a Victorian cookie tin box lid,’ Baxter told Carnegie Magazine.
After finding the stamp of Francis Needham on the back of the work, Baxter did some research and found that Needham worked in National Portrait Gallery in London in the mid-1800s transferring paintings from wood panels to canvas mounts.
Paintings on canvas usually have large cracks, but the ones on the Eleanor of Toledo portrait were much smaller than would be expected.
Baxter devised a theory that the work had been transferred from a wood panel onto canvas and then repainted so that the woman’s face was more pleasing to the Victorian art-buyer, some 300 years after it had been painted.
Christ men have been Photoshopping women to make us more “pleasing” since for-fucking-ever.
Also, Isabella de’Medici is nice looking, but also has that look in her eye of all Medicis: “I haven’t yet decided whether I’m going to kick your ass, buy you and everything you own, or have sex with you. Perhaps all three.”
Yet another example of why art restoration is SO IMPORTANT.
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
My violin teacher, the day I started: So we still use horse’s hair for the bow because if 4 centuries we haven’t found anything better
Steel Phoenix Studios 
