Fat Art Appreciation

A respectful homage to people of size in fine art, history, and popular culture’

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Jalen Brunson scores 45 to lead my New York Knicks to their first NBA title in 53 years! And, of course, he snagged the NBA championship MVP too. Great job guys — we’re all so proud!

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A spectacular 1930’s photograph of Chicago White Sox owner J. Louis Comiskey (1885-1939), who sadly passed of heart disease as the mere age of 53. His dad owned the Sox before him before he assumed ownership in 1931. He’s my image of a great sports executive, looking totally and completely large and in charge! The Comiskey family owned and managed the Sox until 1961 when Louis’s son lost a turf fight to gain majority ownership that had originally been deeded to his sister but then sold by her outside the family (the son made the mistake of giving her a low bid, thinking incorrectly she wouldn’t sell to an outsider). Bad move!

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Resting by Candice Flewharty

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Beautiful art by Ludwik Maciąg (1920-2007)

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Dance Partners (1519) by Hans Weiditz, featuring a truly prodigious fat bellied man!

Here is some expert commentary from a 2021 piece, ‘Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches’: Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation* by historian Holly Fletcher:

Primarily, a fat belly could be understood as a sign of gluttony and drunkenness. As we saw above, such vices were described as fattening the body, often isolated to the stomach. Gregory the Great had stated in his Pastoral Care that ‘when the belly is distended through gluttony, the virtues of the soul are ruined by impurity’, identifying the fatness of gluttony as the fatness of the belly. Similarly, Matthias Erb’s volume describes how with gluttony and drunkenness, the stomach expands to the point where it ‘wants to rip with the weight of food’ and becomes ‘stretched like a drum’. Such descriptions offer an image of the glutton’s belly as unnaturally large, with such disproportionate bellies clearly seen in several caricatures created by Hans Weiditz around the year 1520. Seven of his woodcuts created in this period contain such figures. Perhaps most notably, in Dance Partners, the man’s belly is drastically out of proportion with his limbs. With his chin lifted as though gasping for air, he appears to struggle to move with the weight of his over-extended stomach, even though he pronounces he can dance and skip ‘in a courtly manner’.

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AMAZING!!!! Go Knicks tomorrow night in San Antonio. Let’s win that title in five (and Wemby will no doubt when some of his own for the Spurs in the future, just not this year)!

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No matter how much your massive belly grows at the wishes of your loving and attentive partner! A wonderful 1918 work …

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Maine artist Mirlea Saks, “The American Dream: and lo, they went forth, and built their nation bigly” … let’s go for it, big bellies and all!

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An extraordinary early 19th century British work … simply extraordinary!

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As always, a beautiful piece of art by phenomenal artist Annie Sieg

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I was still a kid when my Knocks beat the Lakers in the 1973 NBA finals but that fond childhood memory doesn’t beat their amazing comeback against the Spurs in Madison Square Garden tonight when they were down by 29 at one point and still down by 20 early in the fourth quarter. It was only the biggest comeback in NBA finals history and I’m just so proud of the Knicks and so looking forward to game 5 as they now incredibly lead the Spurs 3-1!

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Such Gatherings, a spectacular piece of self-portrait art, by the superbly talented Kezia Harrell!

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Fine art by the incomparable Jette Asmussen!

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A divinely beautiful derriere to celebrate 12,000 great followers of @fatartappreciation — thank you so much for your kind support!

This wonderful work started out as cover art for The Gangsta Like Claire, an old Brooklyn hip hop group … gotta like that!

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Absolutely love this account - thank you for making it! Always happy to see one of your posts cross my dash.

I have noticed that most of the subjects of the photos tend to be white. There are so many gorgeous photos of fat models of color - it would be lovely to see them represented equally here! Be warned, tumblr's censorship model tends to disporportionately label fat Black bodies as "mature content," but I'm sure you're no stranger to that label on this blog ;)

Also highly recommend Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings if you haven't read it already! Gets into the connection between societal fatphobia and anti-Blackness - super fascinating read.

Thanks again for the great content!

Thank you so much my friend! I share your frustration over the seeming scarcity of great works of art featuring people of color and often fear I may just not be looking in right places. I appreciate your recommendation of the Strings work and will check it out, and please suggest others that you see!

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Hello!! I don't post my art publicly on social media much, especially not here, but I do have this old self portrait that I would like to share :) I really love drawing fat people and bodies in general, and this blog has been a huge boost for inspiration for me for a while. Thanks so much!

Such a wonderful self-portrait with a nice uplifting message to boot — we ALL need to engage in highlighting the amazing beauty of our bodies so thanks so much for sharing and please share more!

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Figure Study by Eve Mellis