Fuck Yeah, Art History!

An art history blog indefinitely placed on hold.

[uglyrenaissancebabies]

[sherryfrajer]

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. 

[saltdragon]

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

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.

[effyeaharthistory]

Coming out of semi-permanent seclusion to reblog this. That this work has over 60,000 notes, the vast majority of which reflect ignorance, is shameful.

[medieval]

BROEDERLAM, Melchior The Annunciation (detail), 1393-99 Tempera on wood, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon

[effyeaharthistory]

The Annunciation, or, When God Partied Too Hard And Vomited On His Posse of Tiny Red Angels, Which Was Curiously Left Out Of The Bible

[p1ss]

[itsvondell-deactivated20180104]

whoa

i love it

[gravediggersbiscuits-blog]

um

anyone else understand what the fuck this is supposed to mean

i just don’t get art sometimes

i really don’t

this is bullshit

[itsvondell-deactivated20180104]

it’s an installation piece that tells a familiar, immediately-identifiable story (that of the roughly, carelessly handled package) while simultaneously housing a handful of incredibly interesting ideas. the package was shipped with the full intent of it being handled carelessly, returned and presented as art — completely unbeknownst to the employees, who proceeded to treat it exactly as they would treat a package that did not contain “art”.

that indifference says a lot of things about how absolutely arbitrary the “value” we give to art is, and also poses some interesting questions about when exactly something begins to be classified as art — is it when the piece is planned? is it when the piece is shipped? is it when the piece arrives at the gallery? is it when the show opens?

if you happened across this piece sitting in a warehouse full of glass showcases, it wouldn’t be a piece at all, it would just be an unfortunate error waiting to be thrown away. if you happened across it in a FedEx warehouse, you’d reprimand the employee responsible and toss it. if you happened across it when it was outside the gallery waiting to be brought in, you’d assume the gallery owner would be very annoyed that one of the glass showcases they ordered broke and they’d have to order another one.

in fact, it is the very action of presenting it as a piece of art and opening it up for critical interpretation that defines it as art. that is the action that gives value to these two objects. it allows their story to be told by allowing you to experience it and consider it in an elevated, critical manner that you otherwise would never have done.

it’s a very high-concept piece and so it takes a lot more mental investment in order to understand and appreciate than, say, a pretty painting of a landscape would. but once you do, it’s a very nice treat. I enjoyed it.

(it also happens to be really really pleasing aesthetically, which I’m sure played a large part in the conceptual refinement and physical planning stage after the inception of the original concept. the decision to have the case be cube-shaped and not rectangular was a particularly well-considered decision that adds a lot to the final product.)

[aanubis]

BITCHES GOT REPRIMANDED 

[effyeaharthistory]

BITCHES AIN’T GOT THE SPECIALIZED TYPE OF KNOWLEDGE NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND A TYPE OF ART WHICH DOESN’T READILY OFFER ITSELF UP TO INTERPRETATION OR AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT AND IS, BY AND LARGE, PRODUCED FOR A WEALTHY ELITE WITH LITTLE OR NO INTEREST IN SHARING HUMANITY’S CULTURAL OUTPUT WITH HUMANITY AT LARGE

[fuckyeahdinoart]

by Charles R. Knight

[effyeaharthistory]

Happy 2012! Is this the year Fuck Yeah, Art History will rise from the grave like these delightful dinosaurs?!?!?! (maaaaaaybe [hahahahaha])

[effyeaharthistory]

Sam: In a world where I owned a burger restaurant, it would be called "The Burgers of Calais".

[effyeaharthistory]

For my AP Euro class, we have to assemble an art folio for different artistic periods, and the first period is the Renaissance. Do you (or your followers) have any good ideas for at least one painting, sculpture and example of architecture that portrays the themes in that time period? I'm trying to steer clear of things like the Mona Lisa, lest every other student and their mother uses that. C: Thank you!

Sorry but we're not here to do your homework. If you're smart enough to be in an AP class, you should be smart enough to realize that the library should have books on art history (even specifically Renaissance art history!) with lots and lots of pictures of artworks that would fit the parameters of your assignment. Damn, even Wikipedia has that kind of information. C'mon.

(with apologies to Paolo Uccello)

[effyeaharthistory]

Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing #304 (via PORT - Portland art news reviews)

Sol LeWitt: the original hipster????????

[stfuconservatives]

[effyeaharthistory]

stfuconservatives:

My favorite art history professor from college just posted this and said, “My profile pic this week was chosen to represent Dems vs Republicans in this debt “debate.”” Yay liberal college professors!

Art History: always relevant!

[effyeaharthistory]

Le Comte Robert de Montesquiou, Giovanni Boldini (Italian), 1897, oil on canvas, 116 x 82.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay

You're just mad 'cause I'm styling on you.

[effyeaharthistory]

Wow.Dear anonthropologist, I wrote the article to which you're objecting. See my icon up in the corner there above the post? Next time you have criticism of anything I've written I'd prefer you to contact me through my own blog. You could still stay anonymous if you wished to, but maybe we could have a more civil discussion that way.Research certainly goes into my posts. When I wrote that post on the Catalhoyuk figurines, I'd just been reading an article discussing surveys of the site's figurines and linking them with burial findings. You can get a hold of it with these details, if you've access to online scholarly databases: Nakamura, C. and Meskell, L. 2009. “Articulate Bodies: Forms and Figures at Çatalhöyük.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 16:205–230. I believe I found it through JSTOR. Other articles by the same authors as well as Ian Hodder are good to look through for more context.Gender was on my mind when I wrote that post, NOT race. I did not intend to cast any aspersions on modern-day hunter-gatherer societies in Africa or Australia or the Pacific... or those *anywhere* around the world still carrying out h-g lifestyles. I wrote my post on the Catalhoyuk figurines as a reaction against people who enjoy utopianising the prehistoric *past* without much archaeological justification. Nowhere in that post did I suggest that people living in h-g societies today are inferior to those living in modern permanent settlements. I was talking purely prehistory. By the way, be careful about your phrasing. Your post below seems to associate hunter-gatherers with a particular race. That's as inaccurate as calling someone racist for disapproving of meat-eating, or founding communist governments.

Thank you for writing in. Anonthropologist's reaction was completely uncalled for.

[effyeaharthistory]

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec déféque sur la plage du Crotoy en Picardie, Maurice Joyant (French), 1898, carte-de-visite photographs

So one day back in '98, gallery owner Maurice Joyant and Henri Toulouse -Lautrec went to the beach. If you ever labored under the misconception that Lautrec was a refined sorta fellow, you'll realize he just shat all over that belief, and made post cards out of it. Why? Who knows, prolly something to do with fin de siècle malaise. At present, though, I can certainly identify with the assy sentiment expressed.

[effyeaharthistory]

Goldfish (To My Critics), Gustav Klimt (Austrian), 1901-2, oil and gold on canvas, 181 x 66.5 cm, Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich

In 1894, Gustav Klimt was commissioned by the government to paint the ceiling of the great hall in the University of Vienna. The first of three paintings (all of which were destroyed by retreating Nazi troops in 1945), Philosophy, was presented to officials in 1900. It was immediately deemed pornographic, as were the subsequent two paintings (Medicine and Jurisprudence). None of the paintings were accepted by the university, and Klimt refused to ever take a government commission again. To demonstrate all the fucks he gave, after critics' reactions to Philosophy, Klimt produced the above painting and carried on with the Vienna Secession.

[effyeaharthistory]

I wish you would put the same research and effort into your articles as you put into your rebuttals (even half as much would be nice). If that were the case your articles would be a lot more interesting and you would probably have fewer rebuttals to write.

Oy vei. Is this the angry anonthropologist again? Someone call the waaaaaaahmbulance. You were right to call us assholes, because we are egotistical assholes. Let me demonstrate: nearly 4,000 people find what we write interesting enough to follow us, and we frequently receive love notes from followers (we love you too, cats and kittens!). From what I can tell, no other Art History tumblr has anywhere near our readership. I really can't apologize for failing to meet your pedantic standards, this is not an academic journal, we are not experts on all things Art Historical. We're not the single serving Pritty Pitcher + Title + Artist blog most Art History tumblrs are, we think art is best served with a bit of context. If it's not enough for you, that's your problem. A whole fuck-ton of other readers find us plenty interesting, you're the odd one out.

Perhaps your time would be better spent trawling JSTOR than trolling us. Although if your knee jerks as uncontrollably as it did earlier because you lack the reading comprehension to navigate an ambiguous sentence and can't distinguish between statements regarding the specific and the general, then JSTOR might be a bit much for you too.

A parting thought: we aren't here to generate content for you, if you want something different, make it yourself. It won't break the internet if you start another blog.

NOTE: To oliveart and any other anthropologists reading - we are well aware the anonthropologist does not represent you, and I hope other readers recognize this as well. As an art historian, I am ever fond of anthropologists. Our fields have much in common (well maybe not so much the science-y bits) and I believe we share many of the same goals. Hugs and kisses and teardrop hand axes to the anthropologists!

(via http://fuckyeahanthropologymajorfox.tumblr.com/)

[effyeaharthistory]

I have to say... as an ACTUAL anthropology student... its clear that the original submission had nothing to do with race at all, or current hunter-gatherer societies, and the fact is hunter-gathers of past eras DID have pretty shitty lives in terms of longevity and ease in comparison to us now. Some people just love being hateful on the internet machine too much.

For some people, using the intertubes is a frontal lobotomy.

[effyeaharthistory]

Oh, I was SO CLOSE to loving your blog...but as an anthropologist, you really made me cringe with this post:"The Neolithic Europeans made some brilliant sculptures of fat ladies, but this fact doesn’t automatically mean that they were living in feminist utopian bliss. Personally I suspect the “Old European” hunter gatherers may have had it together a little more in gender equality terms than the proto-Indo-Europeans - but all I mean is that both genders lived lives that were nasty, brutish and short."Hi, thanks, way to be giant racist assholes..you do know that there are still hunter-gatherers? And that their lives are generally far from 'nasty, brutish and short?' There has been a lot of new research since that quote was made in 1651, you might want to look into it. Even the briefest glance at wikipedia will tell you so."Hunter-gatherer societies also tend to have relatively non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures. This might have been more pronounced in the more mobile societies, which generally are not able to store surplus food. They never stayed in a place for more than a week" " According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they are satisfied with very little in the material sense. This, he said, constituted a Zen economy." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#Common_characteristics).So thanks for perpetuating racist and patently incorrect Bullshit.

Woah there, angry anonymous! 

First, the entry you are oh so pissed about was a submission. The two runners of this blog didn't write it, though we approved it to be posted because we thought it was a nicely written piece with an interesting take on a Neolithic sculpture. Maybe you should talk to the actual author if you have a problem with her writing.

Now, umm, the whole racism thing, well, are you concluding that because one of our submissions thought that the lives of Neolithic European Hunter-Gatherers is racist because...umm, there are current Hunter-Gatherer societies? And we're racist against them how? Are you presuming that this an example of a Westernized individual looking down on people living lifestyles unlike ours in places like Africa and laughing about how silly and backwards they are?

Because really, it isn't.

Because the statement is about the lives of Neolithic European Hunter-Gatherers, not any contemporary society. The text you quoted makes that pretty clear.

As a self-proclaimed anthropologist, you should hopefully recognize that while Hunter-Gatherer societies have similarities (as farming or industrialized societies do), they are not all the same and you cannot interpret a statement about one specific group to include every other group. 

And certainly, the lives of Hunter Gatherers living today are not the same as the lives of Hunter Gatherers living 8,000 years ago. 

Also the artwork, and culture in question that was implied as being unpleasant to live in (as archeological data from the era implies, such as people dying young), was from Çatalhöyük, a settled Neolithic agricultural community! Not Hunter-Gatherers! Yes, the submitter confused her phrasing a bit, but really now. Life in Çatalhöyük 8,000 years ago, and for the earlier Hunter-Gatherer societies that would eventually settle there, is not the same as life in a Hunter-Gatherer society today. Some researchers use what we know about contemporary Hunter-Gatherers to make guesses about Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers, but the idea that Neolithic peoples lived short, nasty lives comes from archeological evidence, like burials.

We appreciate the thought, but please before getting really offended and writing angry anonymous internet messages to people that are trying to help make the discourse of art history less racist, think a little more about what you are saying! The statement that Neolithic European Hunter-Gatherers lived unpleasant lives compared to lives in the modern day isn't racist against modern day Hunter-Gatherer societies in other parts of the world. It has absolutely nothing to do with them. It's as silly as taking a statement about life in London during the Black Death and expecting it to reflect accurately upon sanitation and healthcare in London today.

So we're not racist, just assholes, and not sure you're a very good anthropologist. 

[motherjones]

[effyeaharthistory]

Hey cats and kittens, have a delightful example of outsider art and kinetic sculpture. Here's an article that describes who Scott is and how he came to make an enormous toothpick San Fran with moving elements.

motherjones:

Rolling Through the Bay, a 100,000-toothpick homage to San Francisco and the Bay Area with multiple ball runs. Scott Weaver spent 35 years making this mesmerizing contraption, on display at SF’s Exploratorium. Un. Real.

[effyeaharthistory]

Hey I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Joshua Reynolds and the way in which he showed the upper classes as Greek goddesses...i'm trying to write an essay and struggling to find legit sources.... any input would be grand and is really appreciate it. Thank you, keep up the good work x

Here, have a few dozen legit sources. I'm sorry to be brusque, but you're a uni student - between your library, JSTOR, Google Books and Oxford Art Online you should be able piece together enough to say something meaningful on your chosen topic, even if the reading isn't directly applicable.