#other than art is a part of nature

[official-saul-goodman]

Art is intrinsic to nature

#honestly just makes me not fucking mad the way art is devalued due to capitalism #it's not useless #it's everywhere #pufferfish are making art man what more is there to say #other than art is a part of nature

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt leo #rottmnt headcanons #rise leo #His aptitude with subterfuge sleight of hand stealth and speed really push how being a ninja really comes naturally to him. #it’s arguable that his desperation for the spotlight and validation is an act of subterfuge against himself #note that when he’s offered a job as a mascot he’s fine being unknown #when he and splinter win the battle nexus Leo immediately says ‘they love YOU pops’ #idk I think so much about how good a ninja Leo is #and how much his persona is more an actor #Leo as a tot is shown a natural skill at katana too so hear me out- #every Leo is a natural ninja but every Leo’s route in life is directly tied to their splinter so #since rise splinter is an actor Leo too aims for it #and he brings it into his whole life - masking always because a Leo makes what they do who they are #I think that Leo naturally falls more in line with that of a typical ninja #his eccentric performer self is his subterfuge skill just set to an 11 at all times #not that that’s NOT him - like I said it’s still undoubtedly a part of Leo #but? idk I think about little moments like Leo being the only one to choose stealth in bug busters #or Leo being the only one to almost get Gus’s dog tags in The Ninja Art of Hide and Seek (he was so close but luck was against him alas) #like- he’s clearly in his element there and he falls into those skills so easily #it’s like how everyone has skills in so many things but some exceed more in some than others do #like Raph? Raph’s the biggest Hero of the bunch of them let’s be perfectly real here. Raph is THE Hero #All the boys are smart in their own rights but Donnie is THE Genius. #and they all have mystic powers but Mikey is THE Mystic Warrior with immense untapped potential #likewise Leo I feel is THE Ninja #but yeah I love how much Leo goes for the spotlight anyway for better or for worse #he IS a performer again make no mistake! but again the way he does it still lines up with his natural ninja aptitude and I love it #Leo loving magic tricks and magicians so much works doubly well here because like #you’d think he’s focused solely on the performance flair - no it’s ALSO and ESPECIALLY the DECEPTION

[rotten7rat]

I wasn't happy with the scars so I added more on my phone photo editor which is why it looks jank djdjfj its okay

#jason todd #dc comics #dc universe #red hood #fanart #digital art #ginger jason todd #i know he's not canonly ginger anymore #but I just like the idea #and jay dick and tim all have the same colour scheme like xjdjf #i do imagine he dyes it black though #for a while still anyway #he eventually lets the natural colour stay #this was a colour study though #and i think the white part is from stress/genetics rather than the pit #coz so many other characters have used the pit and don't have a white streak #the crooked jaw was an accident but I kinda like it so he can just have a slightly crooked jaw

[liquidstar]

a friend who'd wait :)

#im posting this very late because i was sort of weary of how it came out and ended up messing w it until it was like 4am oops. #and i have plans tmrw so... oh well! i did my best and ill put it out while i can! #and i tried to make the scene match barnard's colors lol #finn's ocs #finn's art #i know i said id do more sillay stuff with the simpler screentone only style but i had a couple more of these in me #and this is the first piece im making thats like an actual part of the story too rather than just setting stuff for fun #i wanna write something to go with it too but for now ill just sort of briefly explain the context in the tags here: #barnard has a pretty bad case of OCD and his compulsions have made it difficult to make friends in the past #he was never outright bullied or anything but people just didnt really have the patience to deal with it #he has compulsions that include stuff like walking through doors until it feels right and needing things to be perfectly aligned #which in group settings has lead to people having to wait for him to finish his rituals and join them #they might find it tolerable at first but eventually they grow impatient and hes just... not invited to stuff anymore #but juno is a newer member of the guild who ends up frequenting the same library. hes also kinda a little weird #and they dont become fast friends or anything but just sort of naturally spend time in the same place #though they never plan meetups they eventually fall into a routine. around the same time theyd just both be at the library #and read next to each other. and maybe talk a bit. and eventually they end up walking back to the guildhall together #since theyre going to the same place after all. and juno always waits for barnard outside the door #eventually barnard asks if this bothers him. juno kinda just tells him 'of course it does' without any malice or anything. just a statement #barnard is surprised and apologizes and juno says not to. but the next day juno doesnt show up at the usual time. #barnard assumes hes committed somekinda more by bringing it up. he ends up staying there late reading to get his mind off it & not ruminate #but when he leaves juno is in fact still waiting for him down the hall (see pic) having collected a bunch of books literally abt ocd #he fell asleep bc barnard stayed later than expected. and hes an eepy guy generally. and also one very bad at expressing himself #but now barnard gets that juno's 'of course it [bothers me]' had the implication of 'but its worth it' which no friend has previously done. #and from the interaction juno was also able to understand that this isn't something barnard just does for the hell of it so. he studies. #and checks a bunch of stuff out because he thinks it could help his friend too (theres ocd workbooks and such- i remember working w them) #and thats the point where they became more ''friends'' than ''pleasant library acquaintances'' #from there on they also do get into juno's problems. whole other bag of worms. but this specific scene is more about bernard from his pov #sorry about when i said briefly explain. i lied </3 #but compared to the whole sequence im picturing its brief so shhh

[sskk-manifesto]

:)

#A nice episode :) I have a lot of headache tho and forgot everything I wanted to say #The ss/kk is nice :) It's nice every time Akutagawa spontaneously saves Atsushi seemingly with no reason to #The animation was very nice! It's evident a lot of money and effort went into this season and these last episodes in particular #And I like the art style a lot better than the one in the other seasons. Even season 4 where the animation is comparatively as good #What more. The Kyouka screentime is nice. The whole Guild aftermath celebrations section is very nice and heartwarming to watch #I still take a lot of issues with the entire way Kyouka's entrance exam was conceived but I think they're fairly self-explanatory. #Also fundamentally coherent with b/sd's general worldviews so #But even then there's a line that bothers me to an unexplainable amount from the first time I watched it to now. #The “it hurts” when she's hugging Atsushi. And I've reflected over that line so long from the moment I first heard it... #I think. Its meaning is to symbolize how being in the light sometimes will still result to be too overwhelming for Kyouka– #to the point at times it will still end up hurting her. But that doesn't make it any less worth it #So to say‚ there's no such thing as perfect happy endings. But she is going to be okay nonetheless #BUT IT STILL BUGS ME. I feel like it's part of a school of thought for whom we should just accept the fact that there's evil in the world– #that we can't eradicate. And nothing can be done about it. Which I don't think is a functional or useful way of thinking? #ALSO I know it's. Most definitely‚ 99% not how the scene is supposed to be interpreted #BUT ATSUSHI IS THE ONE HUGGING AND THUS HURTING HER and you know how there is this very slight narrative that seemingly– #frames Kyouka and Atsushi as romantic partners and like... Idk. #In that context the line almost feels expression of a narrative of wives having to bear pain that is natural and unavoidable. #I know this definitely wasn't the intended meaning it's just a bad impression for some reason I can't be able to shrug off even after years #But don't listen to me #I don't think there's anything else to add. Overall a very good episode. #Take a shot every time someone says “all according to Dazai's plan” #random rambles

[numericalbridge]

🔥 every time darius is shown to use his abomination form he is using it in a very deliberate and calculating way, and not because he is supposedly so angry/furious

meanwhile every time he shows real strong emotions, whether positive or negative, he is not in the transformed form (though his abomination powers are clearly important to him with how he uses them for affectionate gestures, etc).

and, imo, both times he is seemingly very outwardly furious - with Raine in ER and the kids in the ASiAS - he is playing the role, possibly playing up the real annoyances (because he is more often shown to be annoyed than angry in actual canon). and compare to how he reacts to other coven heads who are his real enemies: focused fighting with Vitimir, concern over Eber AND over failing to stop the spell in KT, and disdainful and stern expression in the finale. It's concern, hurt, or pettiness, annoyance rather than explosive anger.

[added more ramblings in the tags]

#darius deamonne #toh darius #the owl house #obviously there might be situations when he would transform out of anger - like fighting belos in an au #but it would take much more than what fanon prescribes imo #and i think being very deliberately in control of the abomination form (doesn't mean always but most times) #makes a more interesting take on the abomination magic being like his second nature while also being a science or art form he perfected #and i don't think it takes anything out of the supposed parallels with belos either since it doesn't need to be one-to-one comparison #and its not like he doesnt have little outbursts sometimes - just like most characters would get angry when someone flings dirt at them #or his impatience when eda doesnt understand that he is talking about her curse - but i see it as frustration and impatience and not anger #and i agree that when he was a teenager he would have more teenager-y reactions #and the way he had to hide or redirect his emotions during the coven head time is something worth of exploring too #but i dont agree with the way certain parts of fandom flanderize his emotions into this constant outbursting fury #when it is clearly not even to explore his character but to flanderize him solely for the sake of other characters

[thiefofblood]

every time i draw them i have to go to previously drawn AND RENDERED art i've done to get their colors and it was driving me crazy to open up my csp files, hide all the rendering layers, just to get to the base skintone i use. then i decided to just add little notes about my headcanons that's it have fun

commissions | ko-fi

#hypmic #hypnosis mic #amemura ramuda #yumeno gentaro #arisugawa dice #fling posse #adding some notes i added on twitter too #but afab ramuda and gentaro also go into the theory i currently have that gentaro and his brother are related somehow to the cloning shit #and y'all are gonna get more than i typed on twitter but like the idea is that gentaro and his brother were part of early cloning tests #prior to ramuda's conception. whether that be they ARE clones or they were testing on natural twins #(and then of course the twin theory ALSO isn't confirmed yet so.) #i have 0 trust in this theory but if otome being dice's mom can be real when the original tie was hair color alone then SO CAN MY THEORY #dice i kinda picked up from other interpretations of him that i really liked #also i gave him socks bc i can't in good faith draw someone wear shoes with no socks. that's animal behavior #ALSO HE PUTS HIS MONEY IN HIS SOCKS SO LIKE. SORRY NO FUCKIN FOOT MONEY #also dice has like. 40 official arts with his midriff showing #i know what i'm talking about #oh also i think i took the heart ahoges on ramuda from another artist but idr who ?? i just remember seeing it and going that's cute!!! #ok that's enough rambling

[distant-velleity]

if the shoe fits

read more trivia in the tags :)

#my art #twisted wonderland #twst #twst oc #yuusona #so... i read a fic once where they had a really interesting way for mc to overblot #mc absorbed a lot of blot as a result of the 7 overblots but since their body is structured differently #they have no way to naturally get rid of it #so it just. accumulates #and in this case i think yu's body would be driven to release it in the form of an overblot #the blot acting as magic to be purged from his body #so. for even a little while. he can pretend to be the protagonist of his dreams with powers #he's the star of the show. he's the princess/prince. he's the queen/king. not just the godmother or the side character #but at what cost? #haha... anyway. onto other stuff #his outfit is based on that of the titular girl from the legend ye xian #which was also the inspiration for his dorm uniform #i thought it was fitting that rather than be twisted from a villain #the worst part of him is reflected as the protagonist. or the queen #and the irony of being portrayed like that in a world where the villains are glorified #also the overblot face ink is meant to invoke ancient chinese makeup #most masculine thing a guy can do is dress femininely tbh

[cleargreyskies]

Nothing like the end of a year to really drive home your feelings of loneliness.

(some venting in the tags, it's that time of the year again. also to the two people from offline life potentially reading this: this is obviously not about you and I care about you deeply)

#delete later #i might leave this city next year and i do not have any friends elsewhere and even the ones here are not enough. it scares me. #justo nce i would like to spend new year's eve with a group of friends who care about each other and me #i love my girlfriend and i am so happy to spend time with her and looking forward to shared celebrations and all. i just need some other #additional connections somewhere and at this time of the year the loneliness that is pretty much part of my personality now always gets the #better of me. #i felt fine and mostly content with my social life in summer. #but the uncertain future and the already existing lack of deeper connections in a quantity and also qulaity that would be good for me is #draining. #i am also behind on work and stressed and my mother has a broken leg and can't move much so christmas will be bleaker than usual already. #actually everything combined might just be something to talk to the university's mental health counseling again. you don't always have to b #at breaking point to ask for some guidance. #/end of oversharing #ergh rereading this makes me want to delete it right away but this is still my diary so #i also have to add that i am making some efforts. i go to a martial arts class. i play d&d with some people (admittedly my flatmate and my #gf + 3 others). i go swimming with my gf + 2 people. i am active in a nature conservation group at my university. just - everyone there #always seems to have enough close connections already AND i am scared to get too close to people i might have to leave behind. #typing this out has actually helped me get some ideas on what to do. so i am cringing less about having put this out there. #still feeling bad but willing to make an effort #personal log

[iamyounicorn]

Stories where nothing happens. Stories where nothing has to happen.

Stories where all that had to happen already happened, and all that's left is to enjoy what's left.

Stories about seeking the inexistent. Stories about seeking what to seek.

Stories about finding the nothing.

Stories about wandering with no destination.

Stories about observing the world changing around you. Stories about worlds that refuse to change.

Stories about haunted planets, distorted by ghosts of simpler times. Ghosts of moments, ghosts of a forgotten past. A forgotten building in the middle of the city, ghost of what it once was — echoes of steps and murmurs, a library or a theater? There are no windows to spy through, there are no doors to enter through. There is no building to remember. The city continues. The ghosts continue. How long until the present joins the past? How long until a new ghost is born?

Stories about planets that died

Stories about planets that were killed.

Stories about planets that were never alive.

Stories about recolonization and succession.

Stories about the calm silence after everything ends. Before everything starts again.

Stories where nothing happens. Stories where nothing has to happen.

#youni originals #original art #original writing #fantasy story #<- not entirely but it Is related #id in alt #ask to tag #<- mostly for the creepystrange wind turbines #what do i tag this. i have no idea how to tag things other than oc name and story. #max if you don't reblog this i will explode your blog. everyone else should cheer and clap as well but you're not under threat #anyways here it is. this is i dream of dreaming stories. i wrote (and drew) this for a class and it still fucks i think #the haunted planet and the sailing in space are part of fantasy story #the seeking and the finding nothing are also it. that's pretty much what fantasy story is all about really #the wind turbine abandoned world being overtaken by nature is just an image and vibe that lives in my brain and heart forever #long post #forgot to tag this as long....

[monsterslament]

backrooms oc is in the making euueueueuu

#he's basically just another self sona but is so much cooler than me #he's been exploring the backrooms on his own since he clipped through in 2007 #he occasionally helps people new to the rooms on levels 0-2 and help them no-clip and get them situated #he lived in base alpha for a while but then he chose to make a permanent residents in rosewood in the crimson forest #he uses some of the loot like crayons and loose string and things from level. 2 I think. to mark his way when he explores #he has this backpack with part of a hound pelt sewn onto it #his bowie knife has a hole in the handle that he hung charms and hound teeth on #he also has a few necklaces that hold his two level keys and a few more hound teeth #he has a taxidermied deathmoth on the wall of his little house #his backpack normally holds like. 3 full bottles of almond water and some canned food n snacks. he has extra batteries. a flashlight and- #lighter. matches just in case. and some other objects of importance and also clothes. like a single change of clothes #oh also!! he's an artist because when are my sonas not artists. #he has a small art area in his house where he sketches out how some of the levels look #he also loots a lot of the crates on lvl 2 so he has some computer parts and a phone and some stuff of that nature #and some frontrooms currency that's like. a rarity he trades for food n shit on lvl 1 #he does go to lvl 178 sometimes to refill his food n water supply but he doesn't go like. often #bc idk maybe the permanent residents there will get pissed off that he's constantly taking things #idk. the silly :) #oc tag

[andreycoded]

lots of posts about what streaming services are doing to artistry and what streaming services have done to fandom and etc etc capitalism, the usual. feeling a little bit nostalgic about post-november fifth spn fandom again. everything changes so fast but that was literally just a huge group of people coming together and forming a community. not that it was a utopia or anything but sigh I kinda feel like it’s harder to find that than before in the internet. and Tumblr is a social media safe haven but we live in these internet spaces so much and they’re constantly changing even though I (or we) don’t want them to change. like every space I'm inhabiting is changing and I can’t do anything about it and it’s always capitalism and sigh.

#literally incoherent but I just feel sad that fandoms are so fast spaced and fast lived and art is c o n t e n t and that content isn't #even reblogged and shared anymore because other social medias have ingrained in everyone's mind a system of likes over everything #and that everything is about identity and must be curated and pure and thus the threshold for reblogging and having something #on your own page is much higher because it's seen as part of the presentation of you. but like. what about just supporting #and showing shared interest over an artwork. why is the self so much more important than communityyyyy #saying this completely aware of the fact that it's not a conscious choice but just how we've all been ingrained to think #it used to be different! #!!!!! the internet used to be different before companies really knew how to harness all this space for their interests #and now I'm constantly in fear that these apps through which I'm in contact with people and through which I like to share art #will change for the worse or change in a way that makes everything different just for the apps to be more profitable #and all I can do is watch same as I watch nature change because of climate change. what place do I own where I live when #I'm in control of none of it

[thethingything]

once again suddenly getting the urge to sort out a bunch of shit a couple of hours before bed because it's sunny

#personal #thoughts #🍬 post #I'm looking forward to the sun rising at like 5am and setting at 9pm. daylight my beloved #I feel like we were a lot more aware of our seasonal depression during the winter and kept being like ''I'm desperate for sunlight'' #and as a result we're a lot more excited for the longer days than we have been on previous years #I feel like we have more events to look forward to in the spring and summer now because we keep finding stuff to take part in #like last year was the first time we did Art Fight and we'll hopefully be doing that again #and this year will be the first time we take part in the City Nature Challenge and I feel like we'll find other stuff to join in with too #plus we have some social stuff we join in with each week and we've been trying to vary up some of the stuff we do #I want to try and make the year feel as long as possible by varying up what we do and trying new things #and trying to pay attention to the way the seasons change and when we start seeing different species in the garden #I feel like every time I talk about spring and summer I go on a really long ramble but anyway

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

#harry potter #jk rowling #Youtube

[gender-trash]

I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant

by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat

so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.

meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)

with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this

(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)

i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).

even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.

oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!

or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.

also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.

tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?

also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!

#so anyway i love going to art museums-- #the trashcan speaks #long post

[sorrcha]

benthic angel

was writing about lake sturgeon for a class assignment and showed one of my friends what i'd written.. he then sent part of it back to me with line breaks to turn it into a poem! i just had to draw something for it :]

poem text under the readmore:

lake sturgeon don't know that they're endangered. They don't know anything - other than the muck at the bottom of the water column and the occasional passing touch of another.

really touched by how my friend turned my technical writing into poetry. i haven't tried to write creatively in months, so it's nice to see i've still got it- and nicer still that i could get so inspired by my friend, since i haven't made nature art in a little while, either :>!!

#art #digital art #ms paint #clip studio paint #(<- drew it in ms paint and then slapped on some effects + the text using csp) #animal #fish #sturgeon #lake sturgeon #fishblr #poem #poetry #i want to do this for another poem as well.. my crush wrote a poem about fireflies and i want to make art based on it so badly <3 #hall of fame #1k #5k