arthipstory

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.

Picasso’s Femme Assise spent the last four decades in private hands, and yet went on to be one of the most significant auction items from Sotheby’s items of 2016.

Really? Because I’ve been about the fat-face-beady-eye-pursed lips look since about Christmas, and it’s not a good look. Spring Break diet starts like, three days ago.

Behold the fright: Paul Gauguin, in year 1896, with a doctor and what appears to be his mistress Pahura.

Also, the Smithsonian article that relays this information includes Gauguin having syphilis. And they’re like, a national institution…I’m gonna believe ’em.

Remember when I said I was going to take back hating his work? Well (and, for the love of all, I don’t know when I’m even surprised), he looks like a trashed frat boy with this toga/laurel thing.

I do have to say, though: Pahura’s expression is everythingggggg.

Not really sure why the federal budget’s hatin’ on arts programming lately, because there are some real SMARTIES involved with its scholarship. For example, there’s all this work going on with contesting the authenticity of a recently-discovered work painted between 1600 and 1610.

People wanted to claim it as an original Caravaggio, but scholars are like, nah, because of the way the blood’s pouring out of the scene’s decapitation. Above is the discovered “Toulouse Canvas,” which is undergoing analysis. Below is an attributed Caravaggio, called Judith and Holofernes.

Art history rules.

Since it’s almost happy hour on Friday, I’m not gonna bore you all of the trivia you could master regarding Raphael’s Young Woman with Unicorn. 

But I WILL SAY, x-rays of this work suggest there was a DOG in the picture before the unicorn. 

I know what you’re thinking: I treasure my dog as equal to, if not more so, than any unicorn.

My birthday was last week, and I started to think to myself, hmm, let’s be more open to things I used to despise. I dunno, something with the President-Trump-vernacular (plus the whole shutting down arts programming, period) has me like, yeah, let’s start fresh.

Anyway, I started thinking I should seriously (seriously!) reconsider Paul Gauguin’s work. And every though I can’t–like, legit, can not–support any of his personal choices or history, I say I don’t quite loathe this portrait Jeanne Goupil.

Maybe it’s less Gauguin’s talent, and more just Jeanne’s hair is on point, and that puffy sleeve has really stood the test of time.

I heard some Trump rally dumbo interviewed on NPR this morning, and she said, “Y’know, I really support his giving 110%, because if he gets even 75% back, what is there to lose?”

Uh, 35%, duh. Well, similarly, I’ll pretend I gave it all to support Gauguin and I’m gettin’ a bit back on these blunt bangs.