Meiga @meiga-art - Tumblr Blog

some of my favourite vídeo essays about art history:

whose migrant mother was this? the story of the native american woman who became the face of the 1930s depression (and got almost nothing for it)

bauhaus design is everywhere, but its roots are political how even a simple choice between what font to use can be a political act

edvard munch: what a cigarette means munch + tobacco = art? (yes we’re still on the topic of art as a political weapon)

art that was never finished how great masters sometimes even didn’t finish stuff. also! the history behind the colour aquamarine

fka twigs on mary magdalene (if you like asmr you’re gonna love this)

having a coke with frank ohara (technically not art history but this video is too good for me not to mention)

video postcard: woman at her toilette a quick dive into my favourite painting of woman impressionist berthe morisot

this documentary about georgia o´keeffe (that ive seen about 10 times)

david hockney on vincent van gogh on love of nature, beauty, attention, and the art of looking (essentially a mary oliver poem in interview format!!!!)

mcmansionhell

The McMansion Hell Yearbook: 1980

(back of a quirky literary novel voice): Sometimes, things are not what they seem. An architecture critic disappears for three months to follow bike racing around Europe, rife with questions of becoming and desire. A real estate agent uploads a listing to an aggregator, knowing that it will be a difficult sell but thinking not much of it, for, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, all houses are difficult to sell in their own way. A house is built in 1980 in Staten Island and would have thrived as an anonymous bastion of tastelessness had the internet not been invented. But the internet had been invented. All of these things are brought together here, through truly unlikely circumstances.

Let's not bother with the formalities this time.

None of you will buy this house.

Sitting Room

Does anything here make sense? The periwinkle sofa, the twinkling of bronze glass, a truly transitional material, a mall exiting stagflation and entering the sultry trap of Reaganite libertarianism that would leave it empty twenty-five years later. The sense that one is always changing levels, trapped in a landing of some sort, never quite arrived on stable footing. But that's just the style, one assumes. One foot in the seventies, with all their strife, one foot in the beginning of what felt like the end of history. One's ass on the iridescent pleather sofa, waiting for the centuries to change.

Sitting Room II

My suspicion is that there are no pictures of the mirrored mystery foyer because the photographer's identity would be henceforth revealed, and the point of all real estate photography is for the viewer to imagine themselves as the only person in a given space.

Dining Room

The shinier things are, the richer one is, obviously.

Kitchen

This serious sociological research also happens to coincide with the Giro d'Italia, one hopes.

Landing

(crediting @cocainedecor on twitter for their term. but also, where can i get some chevron mirrors, asking for a friend.)

Master Bedroom

just asking questions

Bedroom 2

Ostensibly bad opinion that I will nevertheless defend: the corner bed slaps, let's bring it back.

Basement

(Staten Island accent): Hey, I'm workshoppin' some metaphors here!

Alright, we've entertained this monstrosity enough - time to wrap things up.

Rear Exterior

You know, McMansion Hell has been around for five years now, and has coined many terms - an art, ahoy matey, lawyer foyer, brass n' glass, pringles can of shame - but I have to say, I hope fireplace nipples also sticks.

Anyway, that's all for 1980 - join us next month for 1981.

If you like McMansion Hell, support it on Patreon!

hometoursandotherstuff

This is absolutely insane- here’s an ordinary old rowhouse in the UK, until you see what the owner did inside.

It was the home of the late Kenyan artist Khadambi Asalache, and that is now a museum belonging to England’s National Trust.

Is this not crazy-amazing?

His carvings are so delicate and intricate.

He also made furniture.

In the lounge is an art cloth- he did the paintings on the walls, as well.

The kitchen- even the stove is gorgeous.

Everything is carved- the bed, the walls, the furniture, and even the ceilings.

He also painted patterns on the floors.

Notice the artwork between the carvings on the walls.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/londonhistory/permalink/3992952990751740/

evermore-fashion

Poem Bangkok ‘The Rose of Heliogabalus’ Chapter 1 Timeless Collection

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modern au

inprnt

“Blue cat floral” by alejandra caballero on INPRNT

kaylabeemarie

Laundry day 👕🧺

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Heaven Gaia spring 2021 couture

helloohart

Caravaggio living paintings by Ludovica Rambelli Theater

johnthestitcher

This never ceases to amaze me, no matter how many times I’ve seen it.

sartorialadventure

Fashion by Olga Malyarova

mydollyaviana

Disney vs. 7 early fairytales

calanthesfeuillemort

The 1812 version of Snow White is even worse when you consider that the girl was only seven years old in the tale (plus her unconscious body ended up being carted around by the prince until one of his servants accidentally woke her up). Also, in The Little Mermaid, the mermaid’s unable to speak because she had her tongue cut out >__<

But I’d love to see faithful adaptations of the original tales. Especially Bluebeard. We need a Bluebeard adaptation.

maliceandvice-deactivated201512

Actually, the original-original pre-Grimm Brothers’ stories that were passed around Europe via oral tradition are nowhere near as violent as the Grimm’s made them. Cinderella’s stepsisters were never ugly and kept their eyes, Snow White’s mother was not even a villain (instead a group of bandits were), and instead of spending the whole story napping Sleeping Beauty outwitted a dangerous bandit leader, wouldn’t let him sleep with her, and saved herself.

The original oral stories were radically changed by the Brothers Grimm to fit their personal and political beliefs. Most notably, they often added in female characters solely for the purpose of making them evil villains and took away most of the heroines’ agency and intelligence. Both brothers belonged to a small fanatical sect of Catholicism that vilified women because of the idea of Original Sin and Wilhelm in particular had a particularly deep hatred of women. The Grimms were actually pretty horrible people. Those cannibalistic queens and ugly stepsisters and the mass amount of violence against women didn’t exist until the Grimms wanted them to. Their ideas stuck so soundly though that we now assume they were in the original tales and that these terrible characters and ideas come out of some perceived barbaric Old World culture. But in truth they’re really the Grimms’ weird obsession with hating women showing through. The original oral folklore focused on the heroes’ and heroines’ good deeds and used them as ways to teach cultural norms and a society’s rules and encouraged girls to be quick-witted and street-savvy instead of passive princesses, and the Grimms promptly stripped that all away.

thestoutorialist

“Grimms Bad Girls and Bold Boys” by Ruth Bottingheimer is an excellent book on this

sharp-sparks

Something to add to my reading list.

seriesofnonsequiturs

So this guy Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth collected all these fairytales and in the 2000′s they were discovered in an attic and published. Unlike the Grimm brothers, he did not edit anything. The Grimms deliberately edited the stories to fit middle class tastes - they also were trying to create a national identity with these tales as a touchstone. Meanwhile Von Schonwerth’s goal was documenting the Bavarian oral traditions - which is why he didn’t edit the stories in his notes.

And the stories are weird and intense. Some have the classic “beginning middle end + moral” - some are just “here’s stuff that happened….”

And some of the endings…you know that story about a weary soldier who performs three tasks and gets to marry the princess? In this book, the soldier is continually rejected by both the king and the princess, so he brings an army to burn down the entire castle with everyone inside. The end, lol.

The other interesting thing is that while the Grimms tales had mostly female protagonists, Von Schonwerth’s have as many boys trying to escape nasty situations as girls. There are boys who cuddle up with frogs to discover that the frogs are princesses, there are boys called “King Goldenhair,” there are brothers fighting, and fathers sending sons out to stop being a burden on the family. In the introduction, Maria Tatar posits that the Grimms, having suffered from being orphans, may have avoided these types of stories.

Anyway, if you like fairytales, The Turnip Princess book is worth the read.