the past is a foreign country

Opheer's morgue

[design-art-architecture]

Manuel Cervantes architect.

[sfenhry-deactivated20220120]

D.W. Winnicott

“a person may be in solitary confinement and yet not be able to be alone.”

“the capacity to be alone depends on the existence of a good internal object in the psychic reality of the individual. […] the relationship of the individual to his or her internal objects, along with confidence in regard to internal relationships, provides of itself a sufficiency of living, so that temporarily he or she is able to rest contented even in the absence of external objects and stimuli.”

“the integration of the individual into a unit is assumed, otherwise there would be no sense in making reference to the inside and the outside"

“it is only when alone (that is to say, in the presence of someone) that the infant can discover his [or her] own personal life. the pathological alternative is a false life built on reactions to external circumstances. when alone […] the infant is able to do the equivalent of what in an adult would be called relaxing. the infant is able to become unintegrated, to flounder, to be in a state in which there is no orientation, to be able to exist for a time without being either a reactor to an external impingement or an active person with a direction of interest or movement. the stage is set for an id experience. in the course of time there arrives a sensation or an impulse. in this setting the sensation or impulse will feel real and be truly a personal experience.

it will now be seen why it is important that there is available, someone present, although present without making demands; the impulse having arrived, the id experience can be fruitful […] it is only under these conditions that the infant can have an experience which feels real. a large number of such experiences form the basis for a life that has reality in it instead of futility. the individual who has developed the capacity to be alone is constantly able to rediscover the personal impulse, and the personal impulse is not wasted because the state of being alone is something which (though paradoxically) always implies that someone else is there.”

[gothicdevice]

I despise family reunions.

Leaving tomorrow so two full days before Christmas, plus the day itself and probably two-three days before heading home. I only have two weeks before I have to go back to work. Hmm when I grow up I’m not gonna attend any reunions 😂😭

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Albert Camus, from a notebook entry featured in Notebooks (1951-1959)

[blaaargh]

Phurba (dagger), late 15th century

The ritual dagger (Sanskrit: kila; Tibetan: phurba) is essential to the dispelling of evil and understood as being especially helpful in neutralizing the forces that impede Tantric Buddhist practice. Its origins are ancient, appearing in the Indian Rg Veda as the central blade of the vajra that Indra used to slay the primordial cosmic snake Vritra. Its Sanskrit term, kila, which means peg or stake, was probably linked to Vedic sacrifices. The three-headed Vajrakila Buddha is invoked through meditation on the Vajrakila Tantra, an early Indian text first propagated in Tibet in the eighth century by Padmasambhava, one of the founding masters of Tibetan Buddhism. In this phurba, a half-vajra projects from Vajrakila’s chignon, and a fully elaborated vajra serves as the hilt, below which project boars’ heads. Rock crystal, valued for its purity and ability to transmit light, is a prized material in this context and thus seen as analogous to the Buddha’s dharma and its immutable higher reality. Along with examples in meteoritic iron, rock-crystal phurba are regarded as the most efficacious in the destruction of obstacles to enlightenment.

[sabonhomeblog]

[awesome-picz]

Photographs That Explore The Relationship Between Animals And Humans By Steve McCurry .

[shisasan]

Upper Hell as perceived by Dante’s Inferno

[walzerjahrhundert]

Jan Zeegers

Interior of Brouwersgracht 39, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Autochrome

1908

[armthearmour]

The Color of Armor

The ever present image of the knight in popular imagination is the mounted warrior in shining armor. If you've followed this blog  for any length of time, you may know that I'm fond of taking popular misconceptions of the middle ages and dashing them to the ground, however you can rest assured that this particular trope isn't inaccurate. Not entirely.

But what color was armor? We certainly have innumerable artifacts

(Milan, ca. 1400, KHM)

and period depictions of fighting men wearing brilliant polished steel,

(France, 1350-1355, Works of Guillaume de Machaut)

more than enough to say for certain that people in the middle ages did wear polished steel on the field of battle, however this wasn't the only color represented.

Delving into the manuscripts and looking at extant pieces, we see a wealth of colors available, from bluing

(Augsburg, before 1560, KHM)

to russeting

(Milan, 1495, KHM)

to blackening.

(Dutch, 1490-1495, KHM)

In manuscripts, russeting

(France, 1350, Roman de la Rose)

and blackening

(Vienna, 1448, Bibelparaphrase)

seem to be particularly prevalent.

However, one must be cautious when dealing with manuscripts. In particular, there was a convention in illuminated manuscripts of using silver leaf to make metallic weapons pop and shine brightly. Given time however, this silver will tarnish, and turn black, giving the appearance of black armor to what was originally meant to be bright and shiny, as illustrated below.

(France, 1350-1360, Roman de la Rose)

It is often easy to distinguish if this is the case if the weapons in the scene also appear black, or if the black armor appears smudged and blurry, both as in the above image.

Gilding is another particularly popular style of armor decoration, most often used as a form of accent to white or black armor in the middle ages.

(Hagenau, 1443-1446, Parzival)

Part 1/2

[armthearmour]

Dr. Tobias Capwell gives us an excellent example of this in the form of a reproduction with his black harness,

and we see gilding to the extreme in the Renaissance.

(Arbois, 1508, KHM)

The final common option was painting. Less expensive than the others above, this was likely an option for poorer soldiers who wanted to look fancy, and give their armor a measure of protection from the weather. There are numerous extant pieces of painted armor in various musea, such as these Sallets,

(German or Austrian, 1505-1510, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

(Germany, 1490-1510, Royal Armouries)

this breastplate,

(German or Austrian, 1470-1490, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

and this breastplate and helmet for the Gioco del Ponte.

(Italy, 17th century, The Met)

The final point to consider is how much extant armor there is that may have been blued or gilt when it was made, but is no longer. Bluing and gilding will fade with time,

(Germany, early 16th century, Swedish Royal Armouries)

and many pieces were polished clean in the name of "conservation" by their housing institutions.

I hope this has been entertaining and informative. Cheers!

[thecybersmith]

This is an excellent post, and I love Tobias Capwell’s Reproduction (his book was expensive, but I don’t regret having bought it years ago), but I think you might be wrong about something.

the image from the manuscript: (France, 1350, Roman de la Rose)

This looks less like russeting, and more like a red cloth surcoat (or tabard, I sometimes get those mixed up) worn over maille, both to protect it from the elements, and to signal the allegiance of the wearer.

[armthearmour]

Oh yes, that's absolutely a surcote! However, I was referring to the helmets worn by both figures, the brown color of which may be interpreted as russeting if it isn't a similar fluke to the tarnished silver I mentioned previously.

[jamaisvulgaire]

Deux motifs et une texture sur cette tenue mais un résultat pas trop chargé grâce à la variété ! Pied de poule sur le veston et Prince de Galles sur la veste. Une tenue équilibrée en termes de couleurs avec du bleu, beige et blanc. Par @artworth_brothers http://bit.ly/2HDzckZ

[maahasss]

[newsprezzatura]

New Sprezzatura

[belacqui-pro-quo]

No other idea from the humanities had so massive, if murky, an influence.

What was Postmodernism? In the 35 years since Fredric Jameson’s New Left Review essay “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” — and the 40 years since the publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition — it’s fair to say that no other idea from the academic humanities has had so vast, if murky, an influence on the broader culture. (Often assumed to be a proponent of postmodernism, Jameson is rather its diagnostician.) Seinfeld was said to be “postmodern,” and so was the architecture of Frank Gehry. So, too, was the “fashionable nonsense” targeted by Alan Sokal in his infamous 1996 Social Text hoax. As the recent “Sokal Squared” hoaxes showed, the specter of postmodernism continues to be a useful cudgel wielded against the university.

Debates about postmodernism have returned, in both vulgar and sophisticated forms — from Jordan Peterson’s crusade against “postmodern neo-Marxism” to Bruno Latour’s defense of climate science to Rita Felski’s probing of “the limits of critique.” And the accelerating media bombardment enabled by our proliferating devices has only intensified what Jameson, all those years ago, called the “transformation of the ‘real’ into so many pseudo-events.”

In that spirit, we asked 10 contributors to reflect on the continuing relevance — or irrelevance — of postmodernism to the academy and the larger culture.

[gothicdevice]

Ok it’s not cool to constantly mine your followers for positive mental reinforcement or shotgun therapy “I don’t feel happy”, “I’m so down”. For fuck’s sake get a therapist, do yoga, go for a walk. Talk to someone in person.

People are allowed to feel what they feel, but it’s inappropriate to expect strangers to provide constant reassurance or salve your feelings. The negativity isn’t fun either.

That being said I’ll keep following bc I like the shitshow lmao.

[ragadosraios-deactivated2020031]

[s-h-o-w-a]

Japanese tattoo artist, Tokumitsu Uchida proudly displaying tattoo markings made by his father, Goro Uchida, Japan, 1955

[gothicdevice]

Few things make me feel more like an asshole than when I type a long reply to an elaborate question, and the person on the other end leaves me on seen.

Like, okay cool. I guess I’m boring or some shit, it’s not like I didn’t reply to something you asked me.