“But like, do we have to return any of their calls?”
arthipstory
makin' art real talk
Category Archives: Art
just…no.
There was a time a few months ago where I found old works of Gauguin’s that I didn’t absolutely hate. Well, thank God, because I’m getting the karma of some truly atrocious quotes in this book I found at an estate sale. And they are total gold:
“I love Brittany. I find wildness and primitiveness there. When my wooden shoes ring on this granite, I hear the muffled, dull, and powerful tone which I try to achieve in paintings.”
Jesus. Gauguin, I think you mean the sound of nails on a goddamn chalkboard.
“Yesterday I was in Pont-Aven. It is ridiculous countryside with little nooks and cascades, as if made for female English watercolorists.”
WHAT DOES THIS SEXIST REMARK EVEN MEAN?
Don’t worry, the same journal entry gets so much better…
“The maidservants in the inns wear arty ribbons in their headdresses and probably are syphilitic.”
And people want me to think the guy didn’t have syphilis?
europe bridge
Move over, Rainy Day! There’s a new favorite Caillebotte in town.
On the Europe Bridge is from 1876, and was exhibited with the third Impressionist exhibition in the spring of 1877. Monet tag-teamed this train station theme and displayed seven of his Gare Saint-Lazare paintings. (FYI: The GSL is one of the busiest train stations in Paris.)
Lots of Salon critics and scholarship applaud Caillebotte’s attention to the geometrical aspects of the bridge. Even Emile Zola goes ahead and says,
“Caillebotte, a young painter who shows the greatest of courage and does not shrink from tackling modern subjects life-size.”
What’s funny is, when I read this quote, I can really only think of this:
#nobillnobreak
“For months, even for years, through seven sessions of Congress, I wondered, what would bring this body to take action?” Lewis said while Democrats slowly surrounded him at the microphone. “We have lost hundreds and thousands of innocent people to gun violence. Tiny little children. Babies. Students. And teachers. Mother and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Daughters and sons. Friends and neighbors. And what has this body done? Mr. Speaker, not one thing.” – Rep. John Lewis
Sometimes, art is standing up sitting in on what you think is right.
totally accessible
“Totally accessible as it is, you will leave unwillingly the banks of a river, so charming, so luminous, so verdant…” – Victorien Sardou
Yeesh, Sardou! Aren’t you being a little dramatic? I mean, I get it, you’re a dramatist, but come on…you’re talking about a river.
Alfred Sisley’s The Seine at Bougival (a pretty popular town for Impressionist painters; see Renoir’s Dance of it here) was painted in 1872. Please marvel at how there are no boats or people to muck up the landscape, as was usually the case for the Seine.
Preach, Sisley. People are always ruining it for me when they get in my way at the bar.
heaven
“Her heaven will be a love without betrayal.”
some strawberry moon something
Everyone seems to be posting about this strawberry moon (like, what is this?), so I’m gonna skip it and post some mid-seventeenth-century still life of strawberries instead.
UPDATE: I dragged my best friend outside with me, and this moon is LEGIT.
vacay
There are 3.5 more days of work before vacation, but you might as well just go ahead and change the phrase “3.5 more days” to “3,598 more years.”
Until then, can I just stay in bed?
that’s a wrap
Woman in a Fur Wrap is attributed as a work by sixteeth-century painter El Greco. Scholarship suggests that it is a portrait of his great love Jeronima, with whom he had a child, but never married. Other (less important? more controversial? idk) scholarship points to this being a work of other contemporaries.
Whatever. Do we need rings in the 1500s when we have this fur? Personally, I don’t. You’re welcome, lads!
arthipstory 