nodamncatnodamncradle:

Can we all take a minute and appreciate that hundreds of years ago a person poured hours of hard work into painting cherubs making human fart bubbles. 

///////////////////////////////////////

So, this image has crossed my dash several times today, and each time I have been increasingly suspicious. At first glance this looks like a baroque painting – the nude, the putti, the ambiguous interior/exterior space are conventional baroque elements – but several aspects are off. First, the light looks artificial, there is no indication of the reds, oranges, or yellows one associates with an oil lamp, a candle, or the sun as one would have in a baroque painting. Second, the figures are rendered with almost photographic clarity, in a linear style out of step with baroque painting (think Rubens). Third, baroque and humor certainly aren’t mutually exclusive terms, but I have never seen scatalogical varieties employed in baroque painting (prints are a whole other game). Finally, the bubble wand strikes me as anachronistic (though I suppose 16th century bubble wands are not impossible).

A reverse image search later, and I find myself here, at the website of Latvian artist Arthur Berzinsh. A brief perusal of his portfolio pages confirms my suspicion that he is indeed some variant on the postmodern pop-surrealist. [TW “artistic portrayals” of rape] Additionally he is a gross misogynist, no doubt moments away from being championed by Hi-Fructose magazine. Also, he is an antisemite (romantic portrayals of Nazis are gross).

Can we all take a minute and consider that today, a man poured hours into painting a sexualized nude woman being groped by children who also happen to be making human fart bubbles in a style meant to look as if it had been created hundreds of years ago and that this reflects something about gendered power relations as produced in the West?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Art Historian,

Saltdragon

[Edit] Can we take a minute and consider that, at this time, nearly 40,000 tumblr users were taken in by this image?

[Edit] I feel silly in learning that this image looks photographic, because, in fact it is a photograph (well, a photomanipulation). Doesn’t change anything though.

Art 364b
November 25, 1969
I am changing the subject of the Art 364b seminar to: The Image of Women in the 19th and 20th Centuries. I have become more and more involved in the problem of the position of women during the course of this year and think it would make a most interesting and innovative seminar topic, involving materials from a variety of fields not generally included in art historical research. This would be a pioneering study in an untouched field. Among fields and areas to be included might be:
1. Woman as angel and devil in 19th century art
2. The concept of the nude through history with special emphasis on 19th and 20th century (anatomy; must a nude be a female? What is shown and what is not shown)
3. Pornography and sexual imagery
4. The social significance of costume
5. Social realities and artistic myths (i.e. women working in factories and the Birth of Venus in the Salons)
6. Advertising imagery of women
7. The theme of the prostitute
8. The Holy Family and the joys of domesticity (imagery of the secular family as nexus of value in bourgeois art in the 19th century)
9. Socially conscious representations of lower class women (almost always in “low” art rather than “high”)
10. Freudian mythology in modern art; Picasso and surrealism
11. Matisse and the “harem” concept of women
12. Women as artists
13. The Vampire woman in art and literature (in relation to social, psychological and economic factors)
14. Women in Pre-Raphaelite painting and Victorian Literature
Most of this territory – and a great deal more – has never been touched. It would involve work in history, sociology, psychology, literature, etc.

Linda Nochlin Pommer

Looking back from the vantage point of almost a quarter of a century, I am struck by the remarkable combination of ambition and naiveté characterizing the project. Did I really think I could cover all those topics in the course of a single semester? Why did I confine “women as artists” to a single class? (Actually, there were several sessions on women artists in the class as it was taught.) And why was I so fixated on the Vampire woman? Alas, since I have never kept a diary and only minimal evidences of that first seminar remain in my keeping, I cannot answer specific questions about what I had in mind. My fuzziness about these issues is a poignant reminder to historians about the unreliability of witness accounts, especially when the witness is identical with the historian in question. Nevertheless, I am struck by the fact that many of these topics have continued to be of major importance to feminist art historians and critics, and, equally, that they have served as the basis for much of my own work in years to come.

[Linda Nochlin, Starting from Scratch: The Beginning of Feminist Art History, 1994]

Look alike does not equate to mean alike. How many fucking times do we have to have this conversation. Putting objects together because they have “formal affinities” or whatever you want to call it is ahistorical. Cut that shit out, objects both reflect and inform the particular historical moment in which they were created. Art doesn’t have some kind of magical history independent of the rest of history. It’s because of shit like this that other sorts of historians treat us like a joke.

…everyone for the Macdonald sisters rapid-fire posting. Had to get them out there and I really didn’t feel like messing with the queue. At least you now get to bask in the glow of almost all of their known work in one handy place! And you probably didn’t even know that was something you wanted (you totally want it now, right?)! Because you probably didn’t know the Macdonald sisters existed and were awesome artists! They were awesome!

Assorted post-1900 design, by Margaret and Frances Macdonald – sisters, artists, collaborators, vanguards of both Scottish and international Art Nouveau.

Preparatory watercolors after 1900, by Frances and Margaret Macdonald – sisters, artists, collaborators, vanguards of both Scottish and international Art Nouveau.

Late watercolors by Frances Macdonald – innovator of Art Nouveau in Scotland and internationally.

Watercolors from the post-collaborative years by Frances Macdonald – innovator of Art Nouveau in Scotland and internationally.

Watercolors from the post-collaborative years by Margaret Macdonald – innovator of Art Nouveau in Scotland and internationally.

Design for Fritz Waerndorfer’s Vienna home, by Margaret and Frances Macdonald – sisters, artists, collaborators, vanguards of both Scottish and international Art Nouveau.