arthipstory

Yeah, dude, I get it, I’m just not interested in what you’re sellin’ today.

Why do people think mansplaining is acceptable? Is there an equivalent phrase for women schooling men? I hope it’s just called “being right and spreading the wealth.”

William Glacken’s At Mouquin’s gifts us the absolutely bored presence of Louise Mouquin, (the wife of the restaurant’s namesake and owner) sharing a drink with a famed restaurateur James B. Moore.

I can’t tell what detail I love more: the absolute disdain she has for this guy, or the curve of her dress into the foreground. I’ll pick disdain.

Taken right after I found out I was tagged as my man’s #wcw (minus the dog, though: mine doesn’t look nearly this disheveled).

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In all sincerity, what did dudes write in the letters that have all of Fragonard’s women falling over themselves?  I mean, forget sonnets: all I need is a grilled cheese at 11pm on a Tuesday night and I am simply head over heels.

I can guarantee you there’d be nothing paler on the beach than these legs, but MAN OH MAN, I need a vacation.

Me regarding any of the following:

1. overhearing someone else’s grueling fitness regiment (idc re: your planks),
2. listening to anyone’s stories involving bottomless brunch,
3. getting assigned any (read: a single) responsibility outside my contractual obligations,
4. hearing someone going vegan Monday, and ordering sausage pizza Wednesday,
5. seeing reckless children…anywhere.

Don’t mind me while I just tuck in my double chin to my high collar and judge.

With this work, I can almost hear the quiet bird sounds and instrumentals that accompany Charles Osgood’s “Moment of Nature” intro on CBS Sunday Morning.

I’m going to pretend this is my view for the next few hours until it’s the weekend and I can drive to a similar scene see this when I leave Netflix paused too long.

Walt Kuhn‘s Clown with a Black Wig presents the viewer with a very serious-looking clown. The Met, where you can see this work, really wants us to juxtapose the frivolity of the circus with the severity of his emotion. Yes, why thank you, the Met.

Really, the only thing that comes to mind for this image is Joe Pesci in Good Fellas.

Norman Rockwell painted The Marriage License for the June 11, 1955, cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Turns out, Rockwell not only used familiar locations around his town of Stockbridge, MA (like the clerk’s office in this scene), but also models familiar (and related to!) his work.

The seated gent in Marriage License was Jason Braman. He was married to the model Rockwell used for Happy Birthday Miss Jones (seen here). Cute, right? The couple in the painted were actually engaged (!!!). Rockwell gave the work to them as a wedding present; in 1983, they donated it to the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Rockwell was very into documenting his subjects being staged, and took photos of everything in his scenes to study + perfect them later in his studio (even a photo of the cat that’s underneath Braman’s seat).

Usually being that detail-oriented is a pain, am I right?!

In or before 1892, Auguste Renoir was invited to build the collection of the Musée du Luxembourg, a place dedicated to artists who, well, weren’t dead. Renoir presents us with two girls at the piano, and Renoir freaked out so much at the idea of this submission he ended up making five different variations of the work (one of them used to belong to his contemporary Gustave Caillebotte).

I get it, Renoir: I practice like, eighty different ways of texting, “cool, see you soon, xo.” to the boy I like. Who knew five different group chats of “yeah, send that” is today’s art submissions of the nineteenth century?

Betsy Bloomingdale has a collection of personal affects up for grabs at Christie’s next week, and I need to admit, I’m not thoroughly impressed.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ll never turn down the chance to peek at some pretty dresses and antiques, but I just assumed that if you’re going to marry into the department store‘s chain of command (Betsy married the owner’s grandson in 1946), you’re gonna offer more than a set of 10 books on Reagan (that’s thing). Turns out Betsy and Nancy Reagan were BFFs: Vanity Fair reports she was called the “First Friend.” Cute.

What’s more though, is Betsy Bloomingdale’s husband Alfred was a big ol’ cheat, and took Vicki Morgan on as a girlfriend for like, 12 years. They met when she was a teen and he was in his fifties. Apparently, he promised her thousands of dollars after Betsy told him to call off the affair, and then, whaddya know, he died two days later. She went to court, and then was brutally murdered by her crazy roommate she met in rehab. Her son (his dad was some dude from her high school…I KNOW, I had to check on ancestry.com in order to make sure it wasn’t Alfred’s) inherited the remaining sum promised to Vicki before she died.

Is there anything of Vicki’s on the lots, Christie’s? I’ll be waiting.