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sibelin · 1 month

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I don't want people to reblog that AI art post so I'll put my addition here:

One thing that will always make me cringe with those AI imitations of middle to late 19th century art is how the intelligence will always try to match ALL the women figures with the current 21th century beauty standards. Now, of course, I wouldn't be complaining if these kind of images weren't plaguing the "classical art" or "oil painting" tags. But since they are, I will show you what 19th century painting of women really looks like. And yeah, I know, some paintings match with current beauty standards but it's still more complicated than that. "Classic" painting is not all about representing pretty ladies. Otherwise historians of art would be bored.

Okay, if it's a "classic" painting, let's go with neoclassicism which is basically a return to the classic inspirations from antiquity and a return to simplicity after years of the wild Baroque and Rococo of the 18th century. Want to see portraits of women in that time?

(Left : Detail of Portrait de madame de Verninac by Jacques-Louis David, 1979. Right : Portrait de Madame Duvaucey, 1809, Jean-Dominique Ingres).

So far, notice how these two women don't look at all like the women in those fake AI paintings. They are portraits of real women, thus real models. But even when they were painting gods, 19th century painters HAD models! Not only that, they were also inspired by antiquity, which wasn't really doing realism either, they had their own ideals like, to cite one exemple, the really straight noses you always see in greek statues. Well, that's also in neoclassical paintings! Look:

(Detail of La Mélancolie by Constance Marie Charpentier, 1801)

On the other side, you've got two strong opponents (and logical responding movements) to this return to classical culture : Romantism and Realism. Once again, look at the diversity :

(Left: Details of Les foins by Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1877. Right: Jeune orpheline au cimetière, Eugène Delacroix, 1824.)

Realism is pretty self-explanatory. The painters were going back to show normal people, farmers and workers. They weren't here to make them beautiful or to conform to beauty standards but to show the world as it is. Result was a lot of controversies, notably with Courbet and Les baigneuses, a representation of a strong woman in an unflatering pose and dirt on her feet that shook the beauty standards so dear to the academic ideals of his times. Check it out if you're interested, there's plenty of articles about it. And romanticism? Once again very diverse. Just look at pre-romantism, with Goya, who loooved representing fucked up little scenes. Or with Delacroix, here with one of his most famous portrait (Jeune orpheline au cimetière) probably because of the expression, the pose, everything that makes that girl look alive, real, unique.

But wait.... You've already seen classical paintings were the ladies looked like all the ladies nowadays, right? Maybe you've seen those very pretty pre raphaelites paintings with those women that look kinda like Florence Welch. Maybe you've seen academic art, the most palatable of 19th century style when it comes to beauty norms. And it's true, it could be similar to these prompted AI classical babes, except once again, it's not. Because once again, they had models, and models were different from paintings to paintings. And this is this systematic same face vibes that makes AI so boring. Because even when real historical art comes close to that, it is always way way way more rich and full of surprises.

(left : The North-West Passage by John Everett Millais, 1878. Middle: Detail of Contemplation by John William Godward, 1922. Right: Detail of La Naissance de Vénus by William Bouguereau, 1879)

Then, you have all these art styles that AI weirdly stays away from : those where the style and process is so strong, so much more important than the subject, that it would be hard to copy without noticing the difference. It could be impressionism, it could be symbolism or better, it could be the avant-garde artists that announces then blends into the wild, colorful and tortured art of the first half of the 20th century.

(Left: Le chemin de fer by Edouard Manet, 1973. Middle: I lock my door upon myself by Fernand Khnopff, 1891, Right: Jane Avril by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, 1892)

Conclusion/ TLDR : If fake historical AI art becomes more realistic every day, it will never be as rich and diverse as the real deal because it will always be used to appease an algorithm for people who just want to see pretty images that catters to them and never challenge their views. When it comes to beauty norm, this could be dangerous and make people believe that these was always how women looked like. That all girls were born with removed buccal fat and symmetrical faces, even in old paintings. I don't know, it may be nothing, but it may be something. Thank you for those who read all that and I hope see many cool paintings in museums :)

Addition: This is of course a very european centric vision of art but it's what the AI will take inspiration from anyway. For the same reasons, these paintings are very white but I was also trying to avoid the icky orientalist representations that were so trendy in the 19th century. Note that there is an even better diversity in paintings when you open your eyes to non-european centric art.

(If I see a terf reblogging this, i'm blocking on sight)

#history of art #art #classical art #paintings #anti AI #ai #long post

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precious-little-scoundrel · 5 months

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Regency Elvis

No I haven’t got a title for the series yet send help

…to seem like cherries in the spring…

Unedited, written today in between work because I have a brain worm with this idea and y’all have been requesting more Honeymoon vibes and while this has no learjets or even smut in this installment, I think I’ll be able to provide that shortly as i build a lead up. So heads up, this story will become quite mature. And dubious. So if that’s not your jam, be aware. For now have 3k of Pg 13 virginal musings on an arranged marriage to a roguish man. 😏

I picture 1973-ish, post divorce Elvis for this era, it’s part of the morose, vampiric kick he was on, he was serving such kitsch and seemed like he was pissed and maybe a tad bitter and I’d really like him to take that out on me so…here we are. Also, I’ll be joyfully ripping off Jane Austen’s writings and Beau Brummell’s life for this, as well as smushing Pre-Raphaelite artists too near to the Napoleonic wars. Also, I won’t apologize for overusing the word “oneself” to describe…oneself. But this is mainly about being ridden hard by grumpy, divorced and needing an heir Elvis so, let’s not fret over historic details. Lord knows the man may end up having unseen depths, kindly ones, one hopes

It didn’t take one as experienced as yourself and your maid longer than five minutes to don one’s evening gown in private and add the last touches to the arrangement of one’s hair.

You had been gone from your bridal party more than twenty.

Yet no one noticed.

Too busy in the adjoining sitting room discussing your business behind the closed door, such as marriage was a woman’s business, or perhaps your mother knew you needed such peace before stepping out and spending the evening making happy over your engagement.

A Husband.

You were bound to be given to one at some point but that didn’t help one resign oneself to it as much as one might hope. Yet it wasn’t a shock, not if you were being honest and it helped perhaps that he was your father’s acquaintance and that anyone so young and penniless and handsome as to have caught your girlish yearnings beforehand had, in a polite fit of heroism, gone off to France and got themselves summarily pulverized by Napoleon's artillery. Finest cannons in the world, it was said, killed half a generation of young Englishmen in the flower of their youth.

So now, adorned with spring blossoms about your virgin head and stood in your childhood room for close the last time, you hoped those bright young men were pleased with themselves for leaving you in such a lurch.

There were worse fates than marriage to a very wealthy, very reticent, very bewhiskered stranger. Cannon balls to the gut, for instance, or a hussar’s saber to the neck. That’s what you told yourself hourly in these days of lonely, neglected engagement. But according to your mother’s friends, commonly chittering over your head as they readied you for the day and even now in the adjoining room, heedless of your prolonged absence, you were facing a martyrdom of sorts.

“-such rank and such commendations, they are the product of wartime and now that peace is in sight, really Hortencia, what will there be of their social standing? Your poor girl. This match is a disgrace waiting to happen.”

“The Prince is bound to tire of Mr. Presley’s fashions and his sports, then where will the new couple be? Where will you stand? How can you bear it, Hortencia?”

“His commonness aside, it’s in poor taste of him to marry the daughter of one’s investor. It speaks of…of leverage.” This later part was hissed as if it were a terrible scandal.

That was very much the point of your marriage, you had surmised -leverage. But with the slowly tanking fortunes of your own noble family, just about anyone who condescended to marry you would be in a position to be a savior, one might as well have a wealthy and impressive savior, if one was going to be saved, than have a squalid and portly savior, no matter how very royal and inbred his noble blood. Not that the ladies saw it that way.

Common, quite common your groom was, and yet far too wealthy to be ignored. Companion to the Prince Regent, Arbiter of Dandified Refinement and a coal mining tycoon from the country. Filthy rich, passably handsome from your brief observations and rich. Did we already mention that? That he was Rich?

You were going to enjoy a wealthy husband, you were determined, and you were going to aid your poor, cheated parents as best you could in your new wifley position. Which was more than what those chattering crone’s outside could boast in terms of their own daughter’s loyalties or affections.

You dismissed your maid and twirled before the mirror, allowing yourself one last moment of peace and preening -eavesdropping, too- before joining them. You looked very fresh. That much was commendable, you hoped you didn’t look too young or if you did, you had hopes he wouldn’t mind. Not that first impressions mattered much, the engagement settled and the contracts drawn up, but you did so wish to not be spurned. You had only met him once, and you’d been a child then, tiny gloved hand shaking his when you should have been curtseying, he was younger then, too, and happy and gay enough to laugh it off.

That was before her.

You hadn’t met him since, though at times he was at the far upper end of your fathers table or across the room at court or else straddling the enclosures at ascot. But he had been younger then, merrier, less…hairy, less maudlin and less tanned than he was now.

But all of this erstwhile gallant merriment had been witnessed by you from a distance, and you had not seen much of him at all during his brief marriage, his wife’s preferment of town and its vanities grew with his one disillusionment of them. They had taken to the country in what one supposes was an attempt at refocusing. Harmonizing, a chin up try at domesticity and fidelity.

What occurred instead had the whole nation reeling in scandalized shock.

“There are far more unsuitable candidates in the upper echelons of society,” your mothers voice floated in, soft yet strained in her effort to

maintain civility with her supposed friends, “she could do far worse. A girl can grow used to the mature habits of an older man, she does not grow used to cruel caprices of vain peacocks.”

”Hortencia, it is natural to console oneself in the face of tragedy, but dear friend, you are handing your child to a wolf.”

You wanted to snicker at the thought that mother’s friends had waited until days before your wedding to showcase their tender, loving concern. You would be glad to move to the country with your new husband, to leave behind such stupid circles, loneliness on the open moors of Northumbria was welcome compared to the shiny cesspools of London and Bath.

“And his wife not yet dead!” Mrs. Turvydrop would be the one to object to that aspect.

In your occasional fits of honesty regarding the entire situation, you had to admit that the living existence of his divorced young wife, somewhere thriving in the continental Riviera, gave you a mild panic. The church was not at all fond of such breaking of covenants, but the woman had been in the wrong, there was a lover, there was a midnight abandonment of her husband‘s house, and there were the acquittals for manslaughter given to your groom.

Indeed, were it not for this public shame hanging over his otherwise irreproachably fabulous career as a national success at everything he set his hand to, you doubted that Mr. Presley would even consider marrying someone with so little to offer as yourself. Life is full of things we wish were different, and you wished your fiancé did not have a living first wife. So did Mrs. Turvydrop, it seemed, although you doubted the deadness of the previous Lady Presley would have done much good to the reputation of a man so ruggedly unconcerned with convention.

“His wife was adulterous. The Bible and the church give room for such annulments.” Your mother was at the ready, though her voice was weary. “This marriage will be Sanctioned before God, it is all quite proper, I assure you.”

“Indeed, but is he? A prince's companion is no recommendation for a husband.”

“Truly!” Another voice rose up to agree, “it leaves open all sorts of speculation as to what kind of man would drive his young wife to such extremes! She was every bit as sweet and delicate as your child. To have been driven to madness from such a genteel beginning suggests much blame on his part.”

“He is common. What did they expect?”

“Common? He is uncouth, why his taste for food and confectionery is so bizarre as to be nearly repulsive, forget that it is served on gold plates.”

“You could even say, without much speculation, that it serves to reason his marital tastes are similarly appalling.”

“Rough appetites those mining men.” Lydia Carmichael’s voice agreed and you laid your hand on the knob, knowing your procrastination was inexcusable but far too invested in the subject being discussed to think of interrupting. “What if he -what if he’s brutish?”

“Yes!” Countess Jessop warmed to the theory and a Cacophony of scandalized voices rose like girls adding to a ghost story in the upstairs attic of a finishing school. “What if he was so…so brutish…that his poor lady wife had to flee from him?”

“Horse flesh and steam engines.” Mrs. Turvydrop sagely expounded, “It’s the only thing I’ve heard tell that interests him.”

“And a good waistcoat.” Countess Jessop tittered.

“Mark my words Hortencia, he has foul designs for your child.” Lydia Carmichael sighed, “He’ll break that girl like a licorice stick.”

“By your own admission he’ll likely be too busy with horses and steam engines to bother with her.” your mother returned wryly and filled yourself with smug comradery for her wit, you opened the door and presented yourself to the doubters.

The picture of you was hardly settling.

Virginal and swathed in blushing pink silks, your copious flowers were perhaps overdone but you looked a May Queen, airy and bright, like one touch of a masculine finger on your porcelain self would wilt you like a peony, breathed upon too hard.

Your eager face questioned your mother, a silent, unspoken query: “do you think he’ll like it? Will he like me?”

Her eyes filled with tears, seeing in you her promising young babe and a bound bride all at once. She saw you briefly as a man might, and she trembled at the sudden vision she had of Elvis Aaron Presley, Esquire and Dandy sinking his teeth into you like a delectable pastry.

“You are a vision of loveliness, dear.” she expressed with a choked voice, eyes watery and hands trembling as she grasped your own. The confusion shown on your face at her grief hurt her deeply, she knew you were not naive but you were a hopeless optimist, and as such you could beam and blush at so grave a prospect as marrying a wounded man. Like stags, spurned husbands tended to be crueler in their second rut. “Come, let us go down and join the men.” she urged with a brave smile and you followed her, gloved hand pressed in hers.

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feytouched · 1 month

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do you know of any perfumes that have a sort of medieval knight vibe? like if said knight wasn’t sweaty and stinky from battle, that is. i did a little searching on my own, but didn’t come up with any good results, so thought you might know!

ok so definitely yes i do, and also i love this question. some options, ranging from the literal to the idealised:

nevertheless, she persisted by bpal: joan of arc themed perfume. it's a bit of a polarizing one; the oudh and jasmine lean indolic and a little dirty, but i like that in this context. it's not stinky-stinky knight, but artistic-perfume-stinky knight. and there's a metallic aspect to it, like plate armour or blades. one of the more interesting scents i own tbh.

fighter by bpal: this one was too metallic and leathery for me. smells a bit like blood, it has that specific salty iron tang. definitely evocative tho.

vial of holy water by bpal: for the paladins out there. a fresh and clean cologne-type scent for the most righteous of knights; i really enjoyed wearing it until my bf stole it from me.

harvest mouse by zoologist: this is a jolly knight at a ren-faire tavern, enjoying a feast of sweet bread and ale. sun-warmed and rustic feel. soldier poet king by the oh hellos is playing in the background. perhaps a bit unsubtle, but fun nonetheless.

l'ombre dans l'eau by dyptique: hear me out. i know this is a rose fragrance. what do roses have to do with knights, you ask? idk but the dense green thorny foliage and shadowy ambiance of this scent make me think of courtly love, fairytales and arthuriana. this is a knight in a pre-raphaelite painting.

hermann à mes côtés me paraissait une ombre by eldo: a strange, sullen knight riding like a shadow through bare winter woods, headed to a church to pray for absolution from some unspeakable sin. coffin dirt, church incense, cold air. i love this fragrance so much.

all of these are extremely different from one another so i can't promise you'll like any of them, but hopefully my vibe descriptions help you!

#answered #scents

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erintaj1 · 1 year

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Paloma Wool. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Bower Meadow, 1872 Pre-Raphaelite vibes.

#paloma wool #dante rossetti #pre raphaelite #capricorn woman

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alicole-sideblog · 1 month

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Ranking Pre-Raphaelite Lady and Knight Paintings according to Alicole-ness

Top Tier

These paintings include plot-points and details specifically tailored to Alicent and Criston. All it would take to make it Alicole fanart is slightly reworking the facial features to better resemble the actors.

The Dedication (1908) by Edmund Blair Leighton They're in the chapel praying together. She's wearing a green dress. What more could you ask for?

St George and Princess Sabra (1862) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti This is literally exactly Alicent: green dress; chestnut curls; crown; looking just so exhausted, so done. Very sweet how she's leaning on him in her weariness, and how he looks like he's about to try to handle things for her.

Paolo and Francesca (1894) by Frank Dicksee Another green dress. The position — kissing the final phalanges of her hand — looks like he's saying, "oh your poor cuticles."

Lancelot and Guinevere (c. 1895) by Herbert James Draper He just won a tourney and he's crowning her.

High Tier

These are less specific to our couple — they're a lady and a knight, but they're not outright our two. The details are a bit off, but it has excellent vibes; it feels like them.

The Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) by Frederic William Burton The elbow kissing is chaste and ravenous, and it makes me insane.

The Accolade (1901) by Edmund Blair Leighton A straightforward, formal depiction of their power dynamic: a knight kneeling at his lady's feet, and her the clement queen bestowing status upon him.

La Belle Dame sans Merci (c. 1901) by Frank Dicksee A more kinky depiction of their dynamic. This feels like The Knight of the Cart, Guinevere jerking Lancelot around. (One time she asks him to loose a tourney just as a test, just because she enjoys watching him submit to her.)

Mid Tier

Nothing wrong with them, but they don't stand out. They contain neither specific details, nor vibes that particularly speak to me.

God Speed (1900) by Edmund Blair Leighton A lady giving a knight her favor is always good, but it doesn't stand out to me.

My Fair Lady (1914) by Edmund Blair Leighton The "loyal waiting attendant" thing is good, but it doesn't stand out to me.

Nah Tier

These are too overtly sexual. It's not the right vibe.

These two are both iterations on "knight rescues lady who was sexually victimized by someone else." That notion is not wrong for our couple per se, but this feels off. The painter viewed it with horny eyes, and that's all I'm getting. It doesn't communicate how our characters would approach that same situation.

Chivalry (1885) by Frank Dicksee

The Knight Errant (1870) by John Everett Millais

These three are iterations on "lady tries to seduce knight in a forward, overt way." That's not our pair.

Lamia (1905) by John William Waterhouse This is the closest one from this tier. The "I'm begging you" pose has vibes I could almost see with Alicent assigning Criston a task. She's half actually desperate, half just trying to make him feel like she is so that he'll be all protective and loyal. But the horny shoulder is Not Them™.

La Belle Dame sans Merci (1893) by John William Waterhouse

Knight and Maiden (c. 1860s) by George Frederic Watts

#alicole #art

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elfinaesthetic · 2 months

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fox and girl portrait by Alexandra Bochkareva

#elfin vibes #elfin #elfin aesthetic #whimsigothic #red hair #pre raphaelite photography #fae

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bidonica · 2 years

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Art in HotD - Episodes 1x06 & 1x07

(more art in Westeros) (more art in HotD)

I’m merging the past two episodes not only because I’ve fallen behind on my own account, but because the show has slowed down with the new locations and artifacts - for the moment, at least.

The most notable new location in episode six is the castle Prince Reggio of Pentos gifts Daemon and Laena. It is in fact a real location, the Castillo de la Calahorra in Andalusia, Spain. It’s a fortress/palace built in the early 16th century with the outer walls in the Moorish style and the inner space in the style of the Italian Renaissance; even the materials and the stonemasons were imported from Italy.

(pictures from lossietereinos.com)

The Italian Renaissance style matches what is suggested to be the vibe of the Free Cities, with their Valyrian-based language (so essentially the equivalent of a Romance language) and artistically forward culture, juxtaposed with the more medieval Westeros. According to the behind the scenes featurette, the areas of the castle they were allowed to film in were limited for safety reasons. As a matter of fact, scenes are only filmed in the exteriors, in the room with the fireplace, and in the “library”.

The latter makes for an interesting visual, because it’s very unlikely for a library to be placed semi-outdoors, so I suspect this is also a choice dictated by having to make the most of the few locations they were allowed to use. But we are watching a fantasy story, and creating this slightly uncanny space for what we usually expect to be a closed environment almost feels like a callback to the art trope of the capriccio, where familiar architectural and landscape elements were combined in creative and fantastical ways, often mixed with ancient ruins.

The fresco in Baela’s room, depicting the castle overlooking the coast of Pentos, is quite obviously an addition by the show’s art department as the walls in that room were actually blank. The style mimics the airier, naturalistic Renaissance landscapes rather than the ornate international gothic we’ve seen in Westeros. And now, back to the western continent:

It’s the ten years time jump episode and the Red Keep is the same as we left it - except for Alicent’s chambers. Most notably, she covered the Valyrian frescoes depicting dragon orgies with nondescript ornate panels. This signifies that she stopped trying to fit in an environment where she will always be treated like the odd one out and pushed aside, and started carving a space of her own, beginning from her living quarters. It’s also a pivot towards a distinctly puritanical direction to mark her difference from “scandalous”, brazen Rhaenyra; the room is also full of candles and seven branched candelabra, which are instruments of worship in the Faith of the Seven.

Helaena’s bug box... also a mini wunderkammer.

Speaking of Alicent, this is a parallel many have drawn, but a lot of her styling, especially post time jump, is reminiscent of pre-raphaelite aesthetics and generally 19th century takes on the archetype of the medieval lady:

The 19th century medieval revival still has a lasting impact on the common perception of how a vague notion of “Middle Ages” is supposed to look like, and it’s an aesthetic that trickled over to fantasy. Women’s looks especially tend to be a lot softer in pop culture than they actually were; if we look at art from the 13th century onward it’s rare to see a woman with her hair completely let down (unless it’s an allegorical paiting of some kind), they usually had pretty structured hairdos and/or head coverings. A high forehead was considered beautiful so they often shaved their hairlines, something that looks jarring to the modern (post-industrial?) eye. Clothes were also very structured (though, I’d argue, not as structured as in later eras starting from the late Renaissance) as opposed to the comfy, flowing robes the pre raphaelites often liked to paint.

What does this have to do with Alicent? I think it’s important for her to look like THE medieval lady, because from her point of view she is living a paradox: she is conforming, she is doing everything that has been asked of her to fulfill her role, but she has been planted in a foreign garden (though ironically it’s more like she is the native flower in the enclosed garden of exotic plants that is the Targaryen court). We, as the viewers, have to identify her as someone living within a certain conventional tradition that is at odds with what the Targaryens have going on, their costume design itself borrowing from Western as well as Eastern influences (byzantine, Russian, but also East Asian as we’ve seen in the Valyrian wedding of episode 7). The 19th century medievalist art was also deeply linked to theater; I’m just giong to leave this here.

Just a couple of notes on episode 7. The actions takes place in sets we’ve mostly already seen, but there are still a couple of new artifacts worth looking at at High Tide. One is obviously’s Laena’s stone sarcophagus. It’s reminiscent both of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and of western tombs of nobles and royalty, where the gravestone often had a sculpted relief, or all around statue, of the dead subject depicted lying down in eternal sleep. In the BTS it’s explained that the whole island is supposed to be built upon the sarcophagi of the ancestors piling up (!).

This scene and the lore that accompanies it, especially when bookended by the wedding at the end of the episode, does a good job of subtly communicating the diversity of Valyrian culture, implying that - just like in the usual Roman Empire analog - it was religiously as well as ethnically diverse. The Velaryons have a whole set of traditions related to the Merling King and the cult of their own ancestors that don’t seem to belong to Targaryens, who in turn have their own mythos surrounding dragons and blood magic. Yet both families claim to be 100% Valyrian and they acknowledge each other as such. How someone can prefer a version of the lore where “Valyrian” is an ethnic and cultural monolith escapes me, but I’m digressing.

Speaking of ancient civilizations: in the funeral scene, Corlys gifts a horse miniature to Luke. In Greek mythology horses were a symbol of Poseidon, and the seahorse is the sigil of House Velaryon, so it tracks with their identity as seafarers; however, the toy here seems to be a copy of a mid-20th century Etruscan inspired sculpture that you can easily buy online if you google “Etruscan horse figurine”. It’s a bit like the pre raphaelite Alicent look: we are informed of the Velaryons’ connection to an archaic world not necessarily through authentic archaic art, but through the version of it that’s already been filtered through the modern gaze.

That about wraps it up for now! I don’t know how many new artistic references we will encounter in the final three episodes so I might do another merged post. Or not! So much keeps going on! Thanks for reading!

#art in hotd #hotd meta #alicent hightower #house velaryon #pentos #art history

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