Notices by Tarnport (tarnport@mastodon.green)

Archibald Motley. Barbecue II, 1960.

Out of season, but dream with me a little, with the documentarist of the Harlem Renaissance and master of the diversity in human skin tones. To some people, this is a vision of a colorful kind of heaven.

His first barbecue #painting was made in 1934, and makes for interesting comparison. Here he was 69 years old, and though he lived to be 90, by this time he'd seen a great deal of change in NYC, and also what it meant to be non-white in America.

The American diet has apparently become so processed that even reputable sites like the Cleveland Clinic are blanket-abbreviating categories to say, for example, to avoid trans fats, don't eat cookies. Well, cookies don't necessarily have any trans fats, unless you're talking about something you bought premade... in a plastic bag! What are you people eating over there??

I think this comes down to wage slavery. People don't have time to cook or grow anything or even shop well, and so they're buying processed foods and then you get a poor diet, less fresh, low exercise, diabetes and so forth. As usual, it's the capitalism. Resist! Bake your own cookies at home.

Cristofani Allori. Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1613.

This #painting certainly ranks high among history's craziest self-portraits. The artist is thought to have been the model for Holofernes' head, Judith was his mistress, and the maid was her real mother. But that beautiful persimmon orange robe steals the show. It really is the best costume for a vengeful assassination.

#introduction
I've been here a few years. I like to talk about art and politics, with gardening and chickens thrown in. I also write. I frequently post historic paintings with very brief commentary. I prefer actual comments to silent likes. I'm a queer extrovert living in the European countryside, originally American. Sometimes I post a whole lot, and that's usually because I'm laid up in bed with a mystery disease that deactivates my arms and legs. When I can't work on the farm I'm here more!

At the turn of the millennium back in Atlanta there were a lot of Southern gay boys who had left the rural countryside, and a big slice of their hearts and community with it, to be in the city and find liberation. On Sunday nights a gay bar started The Gospel Girls, a drag show led by Morticia DeVille. It was a very strange scene, a hybrid of ridicule, the ridiculous, and actual church. There were always copious tears, and at the same time guys were winking off the balcony and buying you beers.

Long ago a wildlife activist taught me to give children gifts of scary creatures made unscary. Through the years examples have included bats, snakes, rats, spiders, sharks - you get the idea. It's it's been a fantastic guide for gift-giving to the under 10 set.

Maybe I'm just paranoid lately but a lot of the new accounts seem suspicious. It's hard to sort bc newcomers can't necessarily know how to present convincingly (whimsical details, grit, alt-text, diversified dysjunct interests, etc), and with what's happening at IG there could plausibly be, for example, a massive influx of nearly identical shy Tasmanian landscape photographers with unsigned clickbait glossy portfolios! But just be on your guards. Block and mute early and often.

I don't know who made this but I laughed so hard. I received it tonight from an erstwhile dining companion as a very just indictment. I can eat cilantro straight, as salad by the mouthful, and my poor friends...

Kandinsky. Dominant Curve, 1936.

I am struck by how much this #painting resembles a computer UI with widgets and wallpaper.

Around 2000 I was asked to design a "futuristic Blackberry-like handheld phone-pc combo" for a security presentation on what was coming down the tech pipeline. And you know what? I didn't do a bad job, 7 years before the iphone, considering I couldn't imagine a touchscreen at the time. I wonder if Kandinsky wasn't somehow channeling a future experience.

The Exemplary Citizen Narrator is back in full swing in France. This is a disembodied voice which nevertheless speaks in the first person, though universalized and idealized, an impossible benchmark to which to compare your sorry self.

So over the autoroute a sign might read, "I use my turn-signal to change lanes." In the stores, I plant fruit trees in late winter! Etc.

But never is it louder than at the beginning of school semesters. Or, not having children, I may just notice it more then.

As a reminder.

An old friend, who is also very old, just rang to tell me that another very old friend has died. "We're going like dominos, faster and faster here at the end," she said. I hadn't thought of it like that, from her perspective at 90, when no matter what, the end is so near. I may not think of anything else all day. It's like a parachute jump, or musical chairs. In a way we're like a bunch of turtles sunning on a log for a time together, and eventually we all just need to slip off into the water.

@kaia if it helps that's pineapple. Or maybe something far more interesting, you let us know!

George Tooker. Teller, 1967.

He was a late-joining member of the PaJaMa Collective and though famously gay he was awarded the US National Medal of Arts by Pres. George W. Bush. It took me a moment to realize why this particular painting arrested me this evening, since I have so many others of his which I like more. I think it resembles Joe Biden.

#painting

@eribosot I love this detail. Absolutely.

@eribosot one imagines there might have been other titles, too.

Zuloaga. El Cardinal, 1912.

I passed over this last week but keep going back to it. There's El Greco, Velásquez, maybe even his contemporary Korovin in there, but also something else (like in El Greco), imo a kind of lust. I'll be trying to figure him out for a while. He was educated to all modern forms, but chose to go back and paint his conservative Spanish parochial heritage. He's known for the somber palette from which his loud figures really pop, sometimes even more than here.

#painting

Pieter de Hooch.
A Dutch Courtyard, 1658-60.
Woman Drinking with Soldiers, 1658.

I knew he was formulaic but I had not realized until today how closely his compositions rhymed sometimes. Look at that! The last two are almost identical, but for the missing soldier in what is thought to be the more recent and inferior copy.

#painting

Ok. Everybody in America who's paying attention saw that hearing our screens just now. That is what is certainly and demonstrably coming. There is no preparation for our safety too extravagant, alarmist, or silly!