Confessions of a Natural Redhead

not to be a nerd but it’s so crazy how he (Bernini) really did that from cold hard stone……. truly a spectacle, truly breathtaking, an honor to behold

I think you should know he was 23 when he finished this and the ass gets a lot of attention but the hand on Persepina’s side/tummy is also exquisite

before i saw the caption I knew that HAD to be bernini.

I try not to make sweeping statements but I think there’s a case to be made for bernini as the greater sculptor there’s ever been.

here’s his bust of costanza bonarelli

here’s apollo and daphne from the front, where she’s mostly human

from the back, where she’s mostly tree

and details

this is the one art form I genuinely just cannot get my brain to accept as real. I’ve watched sped-up videos of it being done, read about it, seen in-progress marble statues and I still just can’t get it to sink in or stick. My mind doesn’t want to believe that any person has ever been able to start with a big block and break little bits off of it until it looks like a finely detailed person. At some point it has no recognizable shape and they still know where and how deep they should take a chip out of it that’ll still be the right decision 50,000 fucking chips later?!?

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa has a hidden skylight for gold rays of actual light to shine down on their expressions and clothes and clouds.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

love characters who are like "this is how the world works. this is how it has to be (because if i'm wrong i have to face what i've done // if i'm wrong i have to face whats been done to me) "

This trait is much more endearing in fiction than in my mother.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Planers, 1875

All hail Gustave Caillebotte, the only Impressionist who bothered to say “You know what this art movement doesn’t have enough of? Shirtless rough trade, that’s what!” And then he became the change he wanted to see in the world, and I think that’s beautiful.

i saw this in a museum once and i gotta go off on this for a second– not only is it a gorgeous display of technical mastery over light, darkness, composition, form. it’s also a slap in the face to artistic conventions at the time. at the time, you could have nudes but they had to be heroic. they had to be virtuous. 1875, paris– art was supposed to be elevating. it was for the wealthy, it was to be uplifting, it was so everyone who commissioned the pictures could flex their classics education. okay?

so here’s the floor planers. they’re workmen. they’re workmen. they’re not some rent boy you dolled up with a helmet to be achilles or adonis. artists have been hornily painting working-class models (and sex-worker boyfriends) into their portraits forever, but you’re supposed to frame your appreciation for the male form as an intellectually irreproachable appreciation for the heroic body from literature, or, conversely you could depict the humble beauty of peasants, if you must, but it had to be a sort of ode to nature and the simple life. peasants could be art, as long as they were… out there, you know. in a field. being a metaphor. so there’s your options for looking at a shirtless guy: he’s got to be mythic.

but no. look, here, at the workmen. the floor planers. the workmen’s bodies not dressed up in sandals and helmet, in flowers, on a pedestal. the workmen not employed as some distant paean to an arcadian countryside, not stacking sheaves or holding a lamb or elevating the beauty of nature. they’re here, they’re urban, they’re in a room just like you might have. the workers of your world, in your home, in this reality. the male body as a very real, very nonfigurative tool, humble and employed, but still gorgeous. the beauty of the men that the patrician class pays not to see. the men who come into your mansion through the back door and work unseen and leave unseen. those men. there, right there, this painting, glowing and beautiful.

not adonis. but beautiful.

anyway at the time everyone fucking hated this picture because it’s a direct slap across the classist chops. they were BIG MAD, this was filthy, it was an affront. they hated it. the paris salon rejected it. established intellectuals didn’t want anything to do with this kind of confrontation. it wasn’t art.

i just love that.

like, look at those hot guys go. look at the shine on the floor and the way their arms are. no virtuous framing, no classic allusions. just some regular guys making the floors nice for a rich fucker who never laid eyes on them at all. but here they are: look at them.

they’re still beautiful.

rb this and tell me what ur accent is. this has no purpose except the fact i just realized i could have like... mutuals with cockney accents or newfoundland accents or something and thats just wild

highlights of the responses:

Bob’s Burgers, Bob Fires the Kids (S03E03)

Reblog for a bigger sample size.

Say in the tags what you voted for and if you live in or outside of the US

they need to make noise canceling headphones that are comfortable when you lay on your side in fetal position

I get them after or sometimes while I eat, reliably, and always have. There's something weird about my esophagus or swallow reflex I think that triggers it. While it's going on, there's random mild squeezing up or down my throat. I can have these for ten or fifteen minutes, easily. It's infuriating.

The ONLY thing that works is to sit still, take a deep breath so I'm working with SOME oxygen, breathe out, swallow some spit or water or anything, and then not move or breathe in again until I feel the swallow movement go all the way down and reach my stomach. Works 95% of the time, but unless you have the same weird thing going on that I do it might not work.

Inspired by everyone I know seeming to have an opinion about my career choice

uterus, i dont need you. go forth and find a beautiful trans woman who wants you.

person with the oldest draft in the tags wins

10 year old college humor sketch that i watched at 1am last night and have since watched five more times

I came into my room and there was a web directly across the inside of my doorway even though it had only been a couple of hours since I last walked in here. Of course I immediately thought of this old Far Side which is never too far from my mind

Have loved this particular Far Side moment for ages.