Rum, Omlettes, and an Open Desert

Scylla. she/they. XXVII Champagne Goth. Art Historian. Come for the fic leave with a weirdly in-depth knowledge of art world drama. motorsports sideblog @motochondria

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

I work so much overtime so I get so many comp days which is nice but the problem is I can never use them because of the things that necessitate the aforementioned overtime in the first place and then my boss gets mad at me because I now have 16 days of comp time that I need to use and I just keep racking up more

[parasoli]

paz de la huerta by alexandra carr.

[tall]

[capacity2]

I’m literally always saying this. U have to kill yourself to just look like some guy in a shirt

[jamesusilljournal]

David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini, Annie Leibovitz, 1986

[throughart8]

Bucharest, Romania 2021//outside a gallery of art

[maidthings]

ive never seen a common loon in person but i still quite like her because shes a very popular voice actress in movies

[maidthings]

shes a movie star, you know...

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

The Archbishop of Canterbury is secretly messaging people on tumblr. Seems totally legit 🤔🤣

[offshoreoilrig]

If tumblr dies DM me for my full home address and we can have a barbecue

[girlnumbers]

float like a butterfly (nervously forgets end of quote) green like a pea

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

Tagged by @grimemoth yay!

Last Song:

Currently Watching:

Re (re re re) watching Motherland: Fort Salem and just straight up watching the new season of House of the Dragon

Currently Reading:

Cahokia Jazz for my fiction , How it Feels to be Alive for my nonfiction.

(Psst I am on storygraph)

Current Obsessions:

Upstate real estate listings, gel manicures, the Vietnam war, Cuban sandwiches, many necklaces layered so they chime, eggplant, silk scarves in the hair.

Currently Working On:

Fic, as usual, for both Masters of the Air and SAS Rogue Heroes. An article proposal for a magazine. Writing samples for the certificate program I'm applying to.

Currently Wearing:

Black and white linen sailor-collar dress, black patent leather tabi flats

Last Google Search:

Norman conquest 1066

Favorite Flower:

Salvia discolor! They're black! And smell like currants. I have a plant of it but it hasn't flowered in years and I miss the blooms.

Also foxgloves.

Tagging: @beachboyspetsounds @johntonkin @kafkaesquegf @alllthequeenshorses and anyone else

[justasnappin]

CALLUM TURNER as JOHN "BUCKY" EGAN Masters of the Air | Part Three

[bioluminescent-fungus]

Do you look more like your…

Mom

Dad

Other family member

Even mix of traits

Not enough bio family to say

vanilla extract

Voting ended on4h

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

Ngl I am so incensed I am considering going back to academia just so I can teach people How To Fucking Look At Things

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

Not to be annoying but this post:

kind of gets my goat.

So much of the way people are trained to look at art is as facts and soundbytes and names in a list that can be related to other names. So many people I speak to, when seeing a group show, talk only about the names of the artists included and have like nothing substantive to say about the work itself. It's easy, a cop out, a name-dropping, brand-identifying, late-capitalist way of consuming something and claiming that consumption as experience.

You read your way through the museum, looking at labels for meaning rather than the objects they interperet, and cache all these little inanities away and call it education. All this so that the next time you look at a piece by idk Georgia O'Keeffe and you think to yourself "she lived in New Mexico and was bisexual, if not a lesbian" you can feel pleased with yourself for Knowing something, meanwhile you've completely ignored the work as a holistic thing in its own right.

You don't need to "get it"! You don't have to read the tombstone info and intellectualize the experience and place what you're seeing inside a canon of "known" vs "unknown" or distance yourself from it with soundbites and little facts. You don't even need to read the artists statement, really (in fact I argue you shouldn't until you've seen the work irl).

Be quiet and let yourself have a pure aesthetic experience with something. Let yourself be uncomfortable with the process of deep looking. That's the point. That's "getting it".

(And from there comes the historical framework, the cultural context, the theory, and the philosophy, but the other way around is putting the cart before the horse)

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

Not to belabor the point but I'm drunk and talked this over with bestie and have more thoughts:

The way that art history as a discipline is taught these days is entirely backwards. 101 level survey courses are taught with rote memory at the forefront. Exams are slides of images and you're expected to write the tombstone: artist, date, medium, dimensions (if your professor is a hardass), location made, and maybe a few lines about historical relevance within the commonly accepted canon. This is regular history. Art history is not regular history.

To engage meaningfully with art history you have to start with the object and work your way up to the history rather than starting with the history and working your way toward the object. I.e "this is done this way and thereby can tell us these things about this period in history" rather than "this period in history was like this and that's why this thing was done like this". Descriptive vs. Prescriptive.

It's myopic by design. Or should be if you're doing it right. And it starts with close looking and sitting with the discomfort of not knowing anything and letting the work speak for itself which I think is difficult for people. It is a totally different way of seeing from what you're used to and it's a skill that must be taught and a muscle that must be exercised.

[keirametzbrassknuckles]

Not to be annoying but this post:

kind of gets my goat.

So much of the way people are trained to look at art is as facts and soundbytes and names in a list that can be related to other names. So many people I speak to, when seeing a group show, talk only about the names of the artists included and have like nothing substantive to say about the work itself. It's easy, a cop out, a name-dropping, brand-identifying, late-capitalist way of consuming something and claiming that consumption as experience.

You read your way through the museum, looking at labels for meaning rather than the objects they interperet, and cache all these little inanities away and call it education. All this so that the next time you look at a piece by idk Georgia O'Keeffe and you think to yourself "she lived in New Mexico and was bisexual, if not a lesbian" you can feel pleased with yourself for Knowing something, meanwhile you've completely ignored the work as a holistic thing in its own right.

You don't need to "get it"! You don't have to read the tombstone info and intellectualize the experience and place what you're seeing inside a canon of "known" vs "unknown" or distance yourself from it with soundbites and little facts. You don't even need to read the artists statement, really (in fact I argue you shouldn't until you've seen the work irl).

Be quiet and let yourself have a pure aesthetic experience with something. Let yourself be uncomfortable with the process of deep looking. That's the point. That's "getting it".

(And from there comes the historical framework, the cultural context, the theory, and the philosophy, but the other way around is putting the cart before the horse)

[ragsy]

Contemporary art haters will be like "i don't get it" and then not read the title or artist statement or the medium or the year or

[marzipankartoffeln]

‘The Orange Show’, a sort of folk art garden/installation/shrine made by Jeff McKissack (1902-1980) in honour of his favourite fruit.