Notices by Tarnport (tarnport@mastodon.green)

Mark Rothko. The Omen of the Eagle, 1942.

Most famous artists are fun to dig into before they were famous, but there's no one like Rothko. He had a fascinating journey, and one that when seen in retrospect was so obviously going where it was going all along.

More generally, I hope some few folks appreciate my attempts at wit in the art posts here. My choices are rarely random and I usually have a political point under the superficial points, like today. Lets look closer!

#Painting

Artus Quellinus the Elder. Aeneas carrying his father away from the burning Troy, 1640-58.

I like that this 'uglier' version avoids the worst idealizations. Most artists take the symbolic route, making Anchises somehow supernaturally light and wieldy, and Aeneas erect and unstrained. If you've ever picked up your own father, or had your own son try to carry you, or indeed anyone, very far, the pathos and pain of the impossible situation become obvious. Quellinus shows that other side to heroism

Max Ernst. The Chinese Nightingale, 1920.

100 years before Italian Brain Rot and gravy tinctures to counter LLMs, there was Dada, trying so hard to create randomness out of the human psyche, which after all is anything but. After the disorienting carnage of WW1 (during which Ernst himself was shot), it's not hard to trace the tendrils of thought from this bird-like bomb creature with severed human limbs.

#Painting photomontage (not a painting per se but a 2D visual work of wall art)

Salvador Dalí. Dematerialization near the Nose of Nero, 1947.

Throughout his career Dalí made evident but sometimes inscrutable references to mysticism and what he considered to be sacred knowledge. Also to Nero, who for him was related to both these ideas. I compare the treatment here of the atomic bomb to his brilliant Christopher Columbus painting more than a decade later, which seemed to overtly prefigure the Moon landing by several years.

#Painting

Even with irrigation, this is a hot, dry time.

@aral yes this. But... I'm not sure the people inside the country see it that way. From what my American friends are telling me, they're still getting up and going to work every morning like nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen. They're literally saying stuff like, well, what can you do? And I'm like... Run!

Tonight in the garden.

That "mushroom coffee" commercial is trippy to the point of panic?

No. On so many levels, no. Starting with mushroom coffee and creepy fungal stalker.

In the garden and vase.

Please remember to Alt-Text your own images. Thanks.

It aids with search, understanding, archiving, and obviously access. You'll also get more boosts.

#AltText

I have 2 friends whom I've warned repeatedly since last Nov about targeted assassination, urging them to take even minimal precautions, and both of them have laughed it off and even called me paranoid. The threat is now manifest and in one case painfully close to home. Sometimes having an unusually open mind to all possible horrors does not feel so good.

Everything starts to look the same. And it's still wonderful.

@aral thank you very much!

Wading into small-town politics and it is INSANE. Like, all the corruption, lies, graft, partisan fanaticism, embezzlement, wife-stealing, cronyism, election-rigging, blacklisting, strong-arming, demagoguery, ballot-box-stuffing, and nepotism that happens in big cities, only concentrated in 6 people and a Persian cat that lives at city hall.

Lawren Harris. Ice House, Coldwell, Lake Superior, 1923.

I repeat images sometimes, like this one, my favorite Harris. It's because I revisit them myself so often and wonder if others might not need reminding of this beauty, too. The longer you stare, the deeper it goes: Canada, ice cached inside, a big sky above. The landscape warps in seasons, bending around us, a path, a bridge, but more, a whole new modern way of seeing the world, in big round whole shapes and concentric lines.

#Painting

@Fragglemuppet of course I can't sign on without seeing her posts until today, when I'm searching! I'll keep looking just a sec

@Fragglemuppet no luck. Sorry. I'll keep this in mind. At least YOU are easy to find!

@Fragglemuppet there's a user here who posts extensively on such links. I'll look for her and fwd. Heavy poster, should be easy to find.

Old French farm wife at lunch:
"If anyone tried half of what's going on in the USA here, every farmer in the country would drive a frontloader tractor out to his barn and deposit whatever filth he could find right in the middle of every intersection, to shut the whole thing down, long as it took."

I know she's right. They've done it before, with far less motivation.

The very cute boy who cuts my hair (maybe he's 14 or maybe he's 28, it's all the same to me these days, but importantly to this story he does have a kid) told me this week that he's just happier when he avoids all news media. He doesn't read any news, and voilà, problem solved. "Otherwise life is too stressful," he said.

Ever since he said this I've been seething with resentment, trembling with fear... and green with envy.