#decadent movement

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Ramon Casas (1866-1932) "A Decadent Girl" (1899) Located in the Museum of Montserrat, Barcelona, Spain

#paintings #art #artwork #genre painting #female portrait #ramon casas #fine art #museum of montserrat #museum #art gallery #catalan artist #genre scene #portrait of a girl #portrait of a woman #side profile #black dress #dresses #clothing #clothes #green #decadent movement #1890s #late 1800s #late 19th century #a queue work of art #1k #2k

[anatomicalmartyr]

Book bindings for various editions of Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du mal”

#books #les fleurs du mal #book covers #decadent art #charles baudelaire #antique books #book bindings #art #literature #art noveau #the flowers of evil #old books #decadent movement #my posts #hannibalcore #faves

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friyay! 

This week we’re digging into our 1896 copy of Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) The Rape of the Lock: an heroi-comical poem in five cantos, which features decadent illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898). This crown quarto edition of 500 was issued in London by Leonard Smithers (1861-1907). It was printed on deckle edge paper at the Chiswick Press.  

This publication is an excellent example of high burlesque, a style of satire in which “a literary, elevated manner was applied to a commonplace or comically inappropriate subject matter.” Pope’s epic treatment of a minor event of social trespass- the theft of a lock of Arabella Fermor’s (1696-1737) hair by Lord Petre (1689-1713), her suitor at the time of the incident and soon-to-be ex-fiancée, mocked the excessive role of social mores and morality in European culture of the era through exaggerated imitation.  

Leonard Smithers was a London bookseller and publisher associated with the Decadent Movement, a 19th century Western European artistic and literary movement that prized aesthetic excess, artificiality, and hedonism. In addition to his support for Beardsley’s work, he also promoted the work of a number of controversial figure or the time including, amongst others, Max Beerbohm, Aleister Crowley, and Oscar Wilde.  

The Chiswick Press was founded in 1811 by Charles Whittingham (1767–1840), who found success in producing accessibly priced editions of classics. His nephew Charles Whittingham II (1795–1876), who took over in 1840, was known for printing William Morris’s (1834-1896) early work, and would establish the press as part of the Private Press Movement in England, which started in reaction to the mechanization of book production. Contributors to the Private Press Movement championed the material qualities of their publications, lending heightened consideration to aesthetic choices and reviving traditional techniques of typography, binding, paper making, and printing.

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

View more Chiswick Press posts

View more Alexander Pope posts

View more Aubrey Beardsley posts

view more Fine Press Friday posts.

#Fine Press Friday #Fine Press Fridays #Chiswick Press #Aubrey Beardsley #Alexander Pope #crown quarto #The Rape of the Lock #high burlesque #satire #Decadent Movement #Leonard Smithers #Private Press Movement #Arabella Fermor #Lord Petre #Ana

[boselliart]

#paintings #art #artwork #genre painting #female portrait #ramon casas #fine art #museum of montserrat #museum #art gallery #catalan artist #genre scene #portrait of a girl #portrait of a woman #side profile #black dress #dresses #clothing #clothes #green #decadent movement #1890s #late 1800s #late 19th century #a queue work of art #1k #2k #painting #oil painting #handmade

[diana-andraste]

Illustrations from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, Georges Rouault, c. 1937

And yet to wine, to opium even, I prefer the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself; and in the wasteland of desire your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

Charles Baudelaire, Sed non Satiata (Unslakeable Lust) trans. Richard Howard

#art #georges rouault #rouault #1930s #baudelaire #charles baudelaire #poetry #illustration #les fleurs du mal #sed non satiata #richard howard #decadent movement #the flowers of evil #etching #aquatint

[noovorous]

Is there a work of art more thoroughly decadent than a beautifully made greenhouse? I do not mean those low, simple constructions spanning many acres, meant for mass production of vegetables and flowers or tiny tunnels for producing those for one household. I talk about palm houses, about Eden Project in Cornwall, about Climatron in Missouri Botanical Garden, about Royal Greenhouses of Laeken. Cathedrals of steel, aluminum, glass and transparent plastic.

Duke des Esseintes spends a chapter of À rebours admiring his collection of exotic plants, fresh and bizzare when compared to what was common in his time and place. Further, he admires the work of gardeners who shaped those plants, well aware that their bizzare shapes, colours and textures are work of men who were daring enough to shape what was given to them from nature.

Isn't a fair orangerie, a splendid palmhouse an exagerration of this line of thinking? Isn't it what cathedral is to a wayside shrine? Plants placed where nature did not intend them to be, kept in a climate controlled by human artistry, sealed within a palace of transparent panes bound by filigree of metal. That temple to Apollo and Pomona, that palace of man shaped materials housing man shaped fruits and flowers. Trees growing near each other in defiance of geographic borders, species unchanged for million of years growing next to cultivars that would not exist without thousands of years of human gardeners shaping them. A piece of rainforest, desert and mediterranean orchard all next to each other, separated by a layer of glass from the bitter snow outside.

The Interior of the Palm House on the Pfaueninsel Near Potsdam by Carl Blechen

#aestheticism #art #decadent movement #joris karl huysmans #à rebours #des esseintes #flowers #joris-karl huysman #literature #nature #palm house #greenhouse #garden #painting #carl blechen #apollo #pomona

[lcrdbyron]

“For once he has inspired adoration, the old devil, it does tend to last forever.”

Jules Barney D’Aurevilly, Don Juan’s Crowning Love Affair

#engulfed in the flames of these words; #decadent #decadent movement

[daydreaming-effy]

The Young Decadent, Ramon Casas

#basically me #dark academia #art history #decadent movement #art academia #relatable

[a-book-is-a-garden]

The Injured Moon

by Charles Baudelaire

Oh Moon, discreetly worshipped by our sires, still riding through your high blue countries, still trailed by the shining harem of your stars, old Cynthia, the lamp of our retreats…

The lovers sleep open-mouthed! When they breathe, they show the white enamel of their teeth. The writer breaks his teeth on his work-sheets, the vipers couple under the hot hill.

Dressed in your yellow hood, do you pursue your boy from night to dawn, till the sun climbs skyward where dim Endymion disappears?

“I see your mother, Child of these poor times, crushed to her mirror by the heavy years. She cunningly powders the breast that nourished you.“

#Charles Baudelaire #Poem #Poetry #Literature #Decadent Movement #19th Century #French

[averagemachine]

These lines from Lionel Johnson's "A Dream" moved me profoundly this morning. Few writers nourish me quite like him, especially since he came into my life through one of my dearest friends ❤️

#lionel johnson #poetry #decadent movement

[akonoadham]

#malcolm x #malcolmx #quotes #black history #civil rights movement #decade: 1960s #60s #1960s #1964

[trans-axolotl]

also: I mostly switched over from saying "antipsychiatry" to psych abolition after I started to see more groups like CPA use it, and thought I'd share some of my thoughts on it.

antipsychiatry is a fundamental part of psych abolition for me, but i think my definition of psych abolition contains a lot more. first, there's a lot more things than just psychiatry that i want to abolish and transform--the whole mental health system and many different belief systems, types of providers, forms of treatment, and types of incarceration that are encompassed in that. i think it's important to name and identify the particular harms of psychiatry as a value system in the way it is the strictest example of pathologizing, medicalizing, and the strongest adherer to the purely biomedical model of illness and how this creates so much harm. but i think that there are also so many other harmful structures + belief systems within the whole mental health system. i also sometimes see therapists, for example, portraying themselves as alternatives to psychiatry, and while that's true in the sense that they are a different treatment option than a psychiatrist, they are often still harmful actors in their own rights and entangled with the state in an equally bad way.

second thing for me is that i think it's really important to intentionally build cross movement solidarity, especially with the prison abolition movement and to expand the way psych survivors currently support support people fighting for abolition of all forms of incarceration. (i drew inspiration from sins invalid and the 10 principles of Disability Justice). I see so many people in psych survivor spaces saying " I can't believe we were treated like prisoners on the ward" with the implication that it's fine if prisoners are treated that way, but it's bad when it happens to them. i think that's fucked up and i think that any psych survivor movement that doesn't actively support people incarcerated in prisons is a movement that does nothing to dismantle white supremacy. we need to be able to recognize the ways carceral logics operate in many different structures, and approach our activism as a shared struggle, where we constantly are led by those most impacted. so i think that naming what we're doing as "abolition" is important (with the important caveat that our organizing must then actually be abolitionist, and especially for white organizers, that we need to learn about the history of abolition, actively support the Black leaders and thinkers who have created the prison abolition movement and not center ourselves, that we actually have to be actively involved in supporting abolitionist work happening in your area, instead of just stealing the work of Black abolitionist scholars to use it for our own benefit without any credit or reciprocity, that we need to actively interrogate ways white supremacy culture and antiblackness are showing up in our movement places so that we aren't inviting our comrades who are people of color into spaces that are not safe for them, or exploiting our comrades of color by expecting them to do the work of dismantling the racism within our shared organizing spaces--don't call yourself a psych abolitionist if you still call the cops on your homeless neighbors, if your solutions to psych incarceration contribute to gentrification, if you refuse to support currently incarcerated comrades, for example.)

third thing is that antipsychiatry as a specific term is often associated with the sociologist theory from the 1960s, some of which i think is useful, some of which comes from antisemetic and racist psychiatrists who should not be given any legitimacy. antipsychiatry also often gets associated with cults like scientology. although i think that scientologists bastardize a lot of antipsychiatry stuff and weaponize it for their own ends, a lot of the public thinks of them if you say antipsychiatry, and it can cause misconceptions. also think that people sometimes assume antipsychiatry is inherently against medication and while i don't think that's our responsibility to clear up every time people misread our words on purpose, i think it's been a lot more helpful for me to talk about medication in the context of autonomy, harm reduction, war on drugs, and the ways that psychiatry creates issues to consent, autonomy, informed use, risk reduction, etc etc etc. and i think psych abolition helps me do that a little better.

i get in a lot of conversations with people who say "well from what i've seen you are just against institutionalization. why not just say that instead of attacking psychiatry?" and my answer is always if we want to end institutionalization, we have to end the structures, belief systems, and power dynamics of psychiatry--psychiatry is one of the logics that enables institutionalization to continue, and abolishing institutionalization without abolishing the structures that allow it to continue mean that it just pops up again in a new form with a new name (asylums to hospitals to group homes etc etc etc). so i think psych abolition to me is a clearer way to encompass the ways that all these systems are interconnected, and that when we're fighting for mad liberation, the right for mad/neurodivergent/mentally ill people to access care, support, healing on our own terms, to be free from institutionalization and violent treatment, and have the right to exist as mad people, whether or not we're "cured."

TL;DR: I switched to saying "psych abolition" rather than antipsychiatry even though there are many core ideas of antipsychiatry that I agree with. I think that for me, psych abolition helps clear up some misconceptions that people have about antipsychiatry, more clearly connects to prison abolition, and makes it clear that we need to transform more of the mental health system than just psychiatry.

#personal #psych abolition #antipsychiaty #psych survivor #surviving psych #mad liberation #mad pride #this is mostly just a ramble of some stuff i've been thinking on lately. terminology is not the most important thing to me #and as always i feel like what terms are the ones that are the most accessible to ppl given their own context #like i am not a huge fan of going up to people and saying YOU NEED TO STOP SAYING THIS BC I SAID so #i guess for me i've been really interested lately in seeing the growing psych abolition movement #and sort of the current era of psych survivior/mad lib activism. the ways its been growing and changing in the current decade

[a-typical]

— On Palestine, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé (2015)

#change cannot come from within israel. it might be decades before we see any sort of strong resistance movement inside israel FOR Palestine #and even more recent protests in Israel are similar to the one described here - and that's primarily due to israel's #diminishing democracy and disappearing middle class - which are (now) totally separate from Palestinian liberation #and of course nationalism/right ring has become more prevalent (globally) since this interview in 2014 #On Palestine #Noam Chomsky #Ilan Pappe #Frank Barat #Palestine #Israel #Palestinian rights #free Palestine #free Gaza #politics #atypicalreads #nonfiction #zionism #history #philosophy #political #nsnv #israli #rothschild demonstrations #cast lead #operation cast lead #antisemitism #victim complex

[roses--and--rue]

S I N

Franz von Stuck

#symbolist #decadent #symbolist movement #decadence #snakes #girls with snakes #european painting #fin de siècle

[battleslippers]

the vietnam fics for the outsiders drive me fucking crazy.. wdym it couldve shattered sodapop and/or steve beyond recognition.. wdym this might happen if one of the shepard boys got drafted..

#plus the whole hippie movement ggod #that decade sounds so crazy in retrospect #there was so much shit going on the potential is crazy #the outsiders #tim shepard #sodapop curtis #steve randle #i read one where tim is drafted and he kind of disappears for a few years and he comes back #i actually cried dude

[noovorous]

Beetles that des Eseeintes would keep:

Zopherus beetles would enable him to realise the project he attempted with a turtle with far greater success. Those beetles are frequently used in Mexico as living brooches, fake jewels glued onto them as well as a chain to pin to your clothing. Jean des Esseintes would definately glue some semi-precious stones to their exoskeletons and then enjoy a terrarium full of shining creatures. Perhaps he'd even wear one as a brooch.

Musk beetle (Aromia moschata) not only glimmers like a piece of stained glass in a cathedral, it also emits a musk like scent. That little gentleman is born a dandy already clothed and perfumed.

Madagaskar Giraffe Weevils (Trachelophorus giraffa) would be in eyes of many decadents a delightful display of unorthodox beauty. They move in a manner more reminescent of a clockwork toy than of a living creature and I think this appearance of artificiality would be so alluring to aesthetes and decadents.

With that being said I'm afraid a beetle collection in hands of duke des Esseintes would share the fate of his flowers, that is die of neglect as soon as he experiences his next period of malady.

#aestheticism #art #decadent movement #joris karl huysmans #literature #à rebours #des esseintes #huysmans #beetles #weevils #zopherus #maquech #ma'kech