arranging paintings on a scale from joanna karpowicz to andrew wyeth and edward hopper is right in the middle
Left to right: Anubis with a weird bike (2017) Joanna Karpowicz / Morning Sun (1952) Edward Hopper / Christina’s World (1948) Andrew Wyeth
So many notes ppl confused by corn wielding Colima dog wait until you see the dancing figures…..blow your mind. Teach you true love
humankind…what more can I say. I can only aspire to have such deep and rich a human connection with anyone in this life that will be as radiant as a ceramic figural pair of dancing xolos
They’re also at the center of a roundabout
Mexican here, fun fact! While we call them “Dancing dogs”, they’re a young pup and an old dog, and the older one is revealing wisdoms right on the pup’s ear.
You’ll recognize the older dog bc he’s got wrinkles!! It’s a wonderful scene!!
Hannah Gadsby in Nanette (2018) // At Eternity’s Gate dir. Julian Schnabel (2018) // Loving Vincent dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman (2017) // Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to Theo Van Gogh (1880) // Almond Blossoms by Vincent Van Gogh (1890); painted as a gift for the birth of his brother Theo’s son named after him
“It is not immediately obvious which of Zadkine’s figures is Vincent and which is Theo. Like all who relieve the suffering of others, Theo—in a process that is the exact opposite of a blood transfusion—has taken some of Vincent’s pain into himself. Soon, however, it becomes obvious that while the sky weighs heavily on both figures, one, Vincent, feels gravity as a force so terrible it can drag men beneath the earth. From this moment on you are held by the pathos and beauty of what Zadkine depicts: despair that is inconsolable, comfort that is endless. One figure says, “I can never feel better,” the other, “I will hold you until you are better.”
Geoff Dyer on Ossip Zadkine’s sculpture of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh (from “Blues for Vincent”, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition)
Tbh I need to cry so bad but I cant lmfao. Tomorrow night I’ll be drinking at home and maybe being at home will mean that I can let go but yeah idk
i think everyone should get external drives and usb drives to store files and everyone should learn how to pirate media and software and everyone should stop paying subscriptions to streaming sites and apps and everyone should gay kiss
I don’t want to move because it’s so unstable and the instability makes me nauseous and everyone wants me to move but idk how I’m supposed to do it without finding a job there first which I haven’t been able to do at all and all it makes me want to do is kms
If u are an English major/psych major who got a job after graduation I am begging u to talk to me
I hate my body and I can’t find a job and I am one step away from drowning myself
if I do manage to move I am actually v excited
A gold compass sundial with an amethyst glass cover on the back, by Jacques Etienne Armand, late 18th century
Ducky and her friends, 2008 | Kate and Laurel, 2007 | Princeton and Lena, 2009 | Ronnie and Jo, 2005 | Simon and West, 9AM | Damian and Daughters, 2009 | Cat and Brittany, 2009 | Jentleman of Distinction, 2009 | Mandy, 2005 | David and Isaac, 2007
Tigers, tigers!
your child was a pleasure to have in class and a dark, tortured genius
Six years ago he introduced me to the world of skateboarding by sharing my video wearing a fairy costume. Today, he filmed me at the Olympics. This is all so amazing, I’m living a dream! ❤️🥰 Thank you @tonyhawk to being so kidding and always motivating me.
Rayssa Leal, the youngest athlete to represent Brazil in the history of the Olympic Games at age 13, with Tony Hawk via instagram
caption about boyfriends or something
Hidilyn Diaz bags Philippines’ first-ever gold medal after placing first in the women's 55kg weightlifting competition!!
saying “i dont find conventional attractiveness attractive” just sounds like im trying to be the most Enlightened and Progressive person in the room but its like, its not even trying to be a statement bc conventional attractiveness is so lacking in humanity
like… clear skin, clean shaven, manicured faces, an uncomfortably starved physique, and (if a woman) the expectation of elaborate and time consuming makeup for the sole purpose of removing all human flaws, shaved arms and legs, invisible pores, etc etc.
its so unsexy. its like… the body as a minimalist rich person house or a flawlessly manicured suburban lawn. its a performance and not lived in.
everyone is beautiful and no one is horny goes into this in a way i really liked. some quotes:
Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin, all displayed in form-fitting superhero costumes with the obligatory shirtless scene thrown in to show off shredded abs and rippling pecs. And this isn’t just the lead and the love interest: supporting characters look this way too, and even villains (frequently clad in monstrous makeup) are still played by conventionally attractive performers. Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland. No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful. And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else. No one is hungry for anyone else.
In the films of the Eighties and Nineties, leading actors were good looking, yes, but still human. Kurt Russel’s Snake Plissken was a hunk, but in shirtless scenes his abs have no definition. Bruce Willis was handsome, but he’s more muscular now than he was in the Nineties, when he was routinely branded a bona fide sex symbol. And when Isabella Rosselini strips in Blue Velvet, her skin is pale and her body is soft. She looks vulnerable and real.
[about Poltergeist] The house looks real, too. There are toys and magazines scattered around the floor. There are cardboard boxes waiting to be unpacked since the recent move. Framed pictures rest against the wall; the parents haven’t gotten around to mounting them yet. The kitchen counters are cluttered and mealtimes are rambunctious and sloppy, as one expects in a house with three children. They’re building a pool in the backyard, but not for appearances: it’s a place for the kids to swim, for the parents to throw parties, and for the father to reacquaint himself with his love of diving. At the time, this house represented an aspirational ideal of American affluence. Compare this to homes in films now: massive, sterile cavernous spaces with minimalist furniture. Kitchens are industrial-sized and spotless, and they contain no food. There is no excess. There is no mess.
Kate writes, “The inside of McMansions are designed in order to cram the most ‘features’ inside for the lowest costs.” These features exist to increase the house’s resale value, not to make it a good place to live. No thought is given to the labor needed to clean and maintain these spaces. The master bathroom includes intricate stone surfaces that can only be scrubbed with a toothbrush; the cathedral ceilings in the living room raise the heating and cooling costs to an exorbitant sum; the chandelier in the grand entryway dangles so high that no one can replace the bulbs in it, even with a stepladder.The same fate has befallen our bodies. A body is no longer a holistic system. It is not the vehicle through which we experience joy and pleasure during our brief time in the land of the living. It is not a home to live in and be happy. It, too, is a collection of features: six pack, thigh gap, cum gutters. And these features exist not to make our lives more comfortable, but to increase the value of our assets. Our bodies are investments, which must always be optimized to bring us… what, exactly? Some vague sense of better living? Is a life without bread objectively better than a life with it? When we were children, did we dream of counting every calorie and logging every step?
When a body receives fewer calories, it must prioritize essential life support systems over any function not strictly necessary for the body’s immediate survival. Sexual desire falls into the latter category, as does high-level abstract thought. A body that restricts food and increases exercise believes it is undergoing a famine, which is not an ideal time to reproduce.Is there anything more cruelly Puritanical than enshrining a sexual ideal that leaves a person unable to enjoy sex?
Earlier this year my roommate was showing me photos of male actors she finds attractive. It’s bad enough that I have prosopagnosia, but even if I didn’t, I feel like they would fall together into this weird, abstract Idea of what an Attractive Man is like, and it makes me feel nothing—not attraction, not distaste, nothing, nothing.
But that’s a mild example. I glimpse makeup tutorials on YouTube and peer at the beautiful people who are admired on Instagram and feel this eerie uncanniness. Do people want their faces to look like poreless plastic? I only remember the “before” pictures in images that depict makeovers and plastic surgeries and transformations, because the “after” is generic and unmemorable. I struggle to find pictures on Pinterest that look like my characters—everyone is perfect, rough edges and distinctive features sanded off, beautiful in the same boring-as-shit, overwhelmingly generic way.
How awful it would be to not be ugly, and to be nothing instead, to be beautiful in a way that blandly checks off a box, evokes nothing, provokes nothing, that has only slight and corporate approved deviations from a featureless Ideal.
But this is also so true in that even sexual images of “perfect” bodies are so desexualized in a way. Bodies are animal, lived-in, worn by living. Skin has spots and scars and stretch marks and wrinkles, humans are mammals, we have hair, we have fat and it means we are soft to hold and touch, we are Creatures, and to be a Creature is to live and adapt and have appetite. How can you detach sex from creatureliness, want, pleasure, the love of pleasure, life and having lived, the possibility of future plasticity, the evidence of time and the promise of more time?
The perfect body is supposed to be that of someone who eats with restrictive and mechanical care, never to excess, never guided by hunger or desire, only by abstract knowledge of the necessity of various nutrients. Never wanting and giving in to want, indulging what the tongue and stomach demand.
Is that—
—of course that’s not sexy!!!!!! How could such mortal terror of bodily pleasure be sexy????
This approach to eating makes you sexy? Bull fucking shit, an example of a person who has this approach to *sex* would be a literal actual medieval monk, for fuck’s sake, I’m—
—in other words, the perfect, desirable body is not sexy, because it is scarless and unmarked, trained and restricted and denied and starved and plucked and shaved and trimmed to perfection—it is a beauty that communicates precisely the opposite of “I love pleasure and partake in it, I have lived and tried new things, I am open to experiences that will change me, I am confident, I appreciate and trust my animal self, I love to live and to feel and to indulge.” Of course this kind of beauty can’t be horny.
But also?? It is not sexy because it is not…naked. You know…in the way that actual human people are naked. It would be impossible to actually be naked in a world where we were all beautiful like That. Because everyone already knows what the abstract perfected ideal of a naked body looks like, the one we’ve been made to idealize all our lives. We know what the body Should look like in the way we know prayers we were taught as kids.
We’re supposed to want that, but how could you really WANT that. It is flawless and therefore no more real than a porno. Or an ad. After you got your lover’s clothes off you wouldn’t be changed at all; there would be nothing new to experience, nothing important about this moment, nothing that belongs just to you and just to now. It is Perfect and no more real than your obsession with it in your own head. It certainly will not get better with time. Time is not allowed. If you notice the effects of time, you must buy a cream to hide it.
And if you were beautiful like that, you couldn’t disclose anything by undressing. You look like What You Are Supposed To Look Like, and how could anyone forget the ideal that’s been made an obsession branded into their brains? You couldn’t be vulnerable. You couldn’t even be alone with someone or just with yourself without the eyes of the world on you.
Because the Ideal is that you’re fit for public consumption even in your most private and intimate moments, even in the privacy of your bedroom you’re Being according to the Standard. And there’s nothing left that’s just for those you choose to share it with, or just for YOU, it’s all been decided by something outside you.
I was going to say we are expected to be beautiful like angels, not like animals. But this sounds like a kind of hell, doesn’t it?
