Secret Lovers by Mahdieh Farhadkiaei

Don’t assume malice. Assume ignorance. Life is easier, the world is kinder, and you can educate. Actual malice is pretty rare, I find. 

Always remember Hanlon’s Razor–”Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation.”

That’s said, never forget Fred Clark’s Law, either: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” There’s a certain point at which ignorance becomes malice–at which there is simply no way to become that ignorant except deliberately and maliciously.

untitled

i went to the met today

i went back

Does op have a brain? Also, do they understand anything about Jackson Pollock?

Nope

abstraction for the sake of abstraction misses the entire fundamental purpose of art which is that it Says Something even if you don’t mean it to Say Something and all pollocks art says is “i have managed to remove all aspects of personality and substance from the process of painting” and 8000 male critics were like OAHAGAGHSB nuts everywhere. anyway purely technique-focused art is fucking boring and anyone in the world could shit out the same thing if they tried for a few hours as opposed to actual good art; when it comes to good abstract art then sure maybe you could replicate the technique easily but the feeling and the message behind it are impossible to duplicate and that’s what makes it interesting and worthwhile.

anyway stan louise nevelson

Adding on to this the only reason pollocks paintings were ever accepted in the art world was because America was trying to propagandize American individualism by pushing the ‘We cherish our avant-garde tortured arteests unlike the FILTHY COMMIES”  as if the man’s shit doesn’t look like every painter’s drop cloth. This is also the time where they pushed a lot of graphic type stuff like warhol and basically the entire 60s was the american art worlds “look at me im not like those other white guys” phase

Also pollocks art is so technically trash that it’s literally degrading at a rate that cannot be preserved so it effectively is falling off the canvas lol. 

I’ve studied a lot of art history throughout my life, and while I personally do like Pollock’s stuff, it’s worth noting that he would probably not have risen to the same heights if he were female. Gender inequality in art spaces is as blatant as can be, and for every male ‘superhero’ of art, there’s a woman who did the same years earlier, or who was (in some cases) copied by the male artist. 

Take, for example, Yayoi Kusama. Kusama created daring and innovative artworks, making them very personal and speaking freely about her mental illnesses and the domestic abuse she endured as a child, painting from the most honest depths of her heart. She was copied by many male artists, who are now revered as being geniuses. Even, at one stage, the wife of a male artist approached her and said, ‘I’m sorry, Yayoi’, because she knew her husband had unashamedly ripped off Kusama’s vision and hard work.

Andy Warhol copied Yayoi Kusama, and didn’t even make an effort to hide it. His Cow Wallpaper piece is a blatant ripoff of Kusama’s Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show. Kusama put her heart and soul into her art, working with repeating images and polka dots as a method of calming the hallucinations she suffered on a daily basis.

With reference to the art theft of Claes Oldenberg, this article describes the following:

[Oldenberg’s] actions caused Kusama to become deeply depressed. So discouraged by the lack of recognition she received for innovating a new kind of sculpture, Kusama would often lock herself in her studio without coming out for days.

Question what you’re taught. Question the legacies of white male artists, who– in some cases– have profited off the talent of women of colour, like Kusama. Racism and sexism allowed Kusama to be pushed off to the side while men took credit for her creativity, and that same bigotry is going strong today. The objectification of women as pieces of art goes hand-in-hand with the erasure of the female gaze in art.

THANK YOU!!! this is such a good addition

hey girl 😉 did you know 🤔 that ummmmm 😒 if it’s inaccessible to the poor it is neither radical nor revolutionary 😤

forgive me father for I have sinned in all the coolest and most glamorous ways possible

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

René-Antoine Houasse,Daphne (detail), 1677

k but “spark joy” is legitimately delightful as a phrase, and it’s helpful and refreshing as a concept, and you KNOW if a white woman had come up with it, every other white girl would already have a rose gold travel mug that says “spark joy” in loopy cursive on it

can we give it up for Suzanne Collins for fucking off into oblivion with her money after hunger games fucking destroyed the YA market for like 6 years. everything YA was dystopian “EVERYONES IN A DIFFERENT QUADRANT” shit from 2010 to 2016 and we didnt hear a peep from her. true fucking power.

And she hasn’t said a word since. Rowling could take some pointers

Yeah but in Collins defense, her book was really good. She perfectly showed PTSD, Katnis trauma from when her mom mentally “abandoned” her when her dad died and the parallel with Katnis depression at the end of the series, perfectly depicted the society and its inherent problems, Finick’s back story, socio-economic disparities based on skin colour, Rue and the 11th district, President Coin and how she was as bad as Snow but in an other angle, distrinct 13 and the capitol trying to use her image for the war even though she did want to, and way more stuff I can’t think of right now.

I mean the following Y/A distopian books were mostly bad knock off who thought that the reason the HG had such success was because of the love triangle, but in reality Collins created such a complexe yet very realistic world that makes a parallel to our society of entretainment and war

The Hunger Games was baby’s first intro to social justice for a lot of kids back in the early 2010s. They were brilliant books that introduced a lot of complicated concepts in a way teens could understand and enjoy - plus, addictive, well-plotted adventure stories with A+ characterization and worldbuilding. But all the general public seems to remember about them is the love triangle, and I will always be salty about that.

The irony of the Hunger Games is that the media in the book and the media in the real world both chose to focus on the love story instead of the rebellion.

One of my favorite aspects of the book series was the way it dissected the art/science of propaganda/media and the often stark differences in popular figures’ public and private personas. The movies also got that frighteningly correct. Propaganda to oppress and propaganda to uplift were laid side-by-side and used as foils to show how the techniques work to achieve the desired purpose. The direct invocation of “panem et circenses” (”bread and circuses,” keeping a population docile by controlling/bestowing distractions regarding food and entertainment) made the point all the clearer. “Look. This is what is being done to distract you.”

Having Katniss– the symbol of The Common Person at the bottom of the societal hierarchy who most heavily bears the brunt of oppression– be stiff and awful at scripted propos but a fucking goddess at unscripted, passionately angry speeches and stoking reflection and resistance and rebellion was very deliberate. It is a call to be genuine, to question media narratives and seek facts, to take a long, hard, honest look beyond the sparkling lights and glamor projected by the media to really see and take the downtrodden seriously before their collective patience wears thin enough to snap and they bring out the bombs. Or guillotines, if you want to look at IRL history.

One of my favorite scenes in the series is in Catching Fire: the interviews with the Victors being forced to take part in the Quarter Quell. Especially with the visuals of the movie. The entire thing builds up to when Peeta “drops the baby bomb” and the audience breaks into dismayed/horrified pandemonium and there are calls by the privileged to stop the injustice; it is an escalating series of oppressed, re-victimized individuals turning their glamorized re-victimization into a platform to scream their humanity at the citizens of the Capitol until it seems to finally start seeping in. Stanley Tucci play’s Caesar Flickerman’s growing discomfort perfectly; IIRC, his calling for the lights and cameras to be cut when the Victors show unity is to use the gesture of slitting a throat. It’s a common gesture, but in this case it has a greater weight: “Cut this, kill it, don’t let people see it, these people we’ve set up to hate each other joining hands in united defiance is dangerous.”

That also veers off into an extended lesson in “the powers that be seek to divide you and turn you against each other to keep you weak.” In modern terms, you can see it in such things as “wow why should burger-flippers get raises to earn more than the legit heroes who fight crime and save lives and defend our country?” to turn those groups against each other on the basis of accepted social hierarchy instead of talking together and coming to a consensus of, “You know, we’re ALL getting screwed and should ALL make more money; let’s work together to achieve that.”

It is highly relevant to this period of civilization. It resonates with the masses. That resonance is amorphous; allowing it to gel into something more solid could erode media/propagandist influence. Thus, whether conscious or just the nature of the beast,

“LOOK AT THE LOVE TRIANGLE! ROMANCE! FOCUS ON THE ROMANCE! ISN’T IT ROMANTIC?! THINKING ABOUT THE DEEPER STUFF IS UNCOMFORTABLE, SO LOOK AT THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN AND HANDSOME MEN AND CHOOSE A SIDE AND FIGHT FOR IT! R-O-M-A-N-C-E-!”

In other words, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”

In other words, “Let’s play up the circus part of panem et circenses.”

It’s like a social ourobouros. I observe it with a sort of morbid fascination.

Just FYI, Suzanne Collins was pressured by her editor to make a love triangle, and decided to make President Snow be the one pushing the Peeta romance to show that it was forced.

The way John Mulaney speaks is the vocalized version of When You Capitalise Every Word Like This