#20th century culture

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mr. Pritchard was a businessman, president of a medium-sized corporation. He was never alone. His business was conducted by groups of men like himself who joined together in clubs so that no foreign element or idea could enter. His religious life was again his lodge and his church, both of which were screened and protected. One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players. Wherever he went he was not one man but a unit in a corporation, a unit in a club, in a lodge, in a church, in a political party. His thoughts and ideas were never subjected to criticism since he willingly associated only with people like himself. He read a newspaper written by and for his group. The books that came into his house were chosen by a committee which deleted material that might irritate him. He hated foreign countries and foreigners because it was difficult to find his counterpart in them. He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it. At occasional stags where naked girls danced on the tables and sat in great glasses of wine, Mr. Pritchard howled with laughter and drank the wine, but five hundred Mr. Pritchards were there with him. —John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus, ch iii (1947)

[Scott Horton]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[vintage-russia]

"Радоуисѧ,Невѣсто Неневѣстнаꙗ"

Icon of the Virgin Mary “Tenderness” (19th-20th century)

[spyboy2000]

ᴊᴇᴀɴ-ᴍɪᴄʜᴇʟ ʙᴀsǫᴜɪᴀᴛ Four untitled paintings from 1983.

[solcattus]

The three Graces, c. 1911

By Cesare Agostino Detti

[galleryofart]

Salome Dancer

Artist: Robert Henri (American, 1865-1929)

Date: 1909

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Amherst, MA, United States

Description

Broad, slashing strokes give powerful shape to this defiant female figure standing with parted legs, a pose more athletic - even pugilistic - than seductive. Her oppositional posturing matched the painter’s contrary aesthetic sensibilities. The Realist painter Henri sought a provocative and timely subject in Salome, the biblical figure who served as her mother’s dutiful pawn in facilitating King Herod’s assassination of John the Baptist. By the late nineteenth century Salome had evolved into a far more aggressive and decadent creature, as witnessed in Oscar Wilde’s notorious play of 1891. That Henri adopted the theme in 1909 suggests his desire to capitalize on Salome’s high currency for controversy, which had been confirmed by the New York Metropolitan Opera’s scandal-provoking performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome (based on Wilde’s play) in 1907. The gleam of amusement that enhances Salome’s haughty expression slyly evokes her complicity in constructing Henri’s own reputation as a radical painter.

[thetrinitytest]

happy pride month from peepaw harkness and the torchwood team 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[caedmonofwhitby]

Sleeping Angel, 1976

Sonia Lawson (1934-2023)

Drawing; mixed media on toned paper

In the Collection of Royal Academy of Arts

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Girls in traditional dress outside the Opera House in Kyiv.

Ukraine, mid-twentieth century. X

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Two young girls among flowers"

[frances-kafka]

For much of my life, so much media was made by men. Men with working class and military backgrounds. Chain smoking war veterans and high school diploma engineers and sleaze writers. Journalists who were 20th century journalists and not 21st century journalists. Men who were actually pretty familiar and relatable because they're like guys in my family.

This made me think, you know what would be great, if women made some of this stuff too. One day, feminism will win. We will get to be in the public sphere just like these same men. And now women do all of these things! Women with MFAs.

[vintage-russia]

"The angel sitting on the coffin" (1908/1911)

Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942)

[spyboy2000]

ᴊᴇᴀɴ-ᴍɪᴄʜᴇʟ ʙᴀsǫᴜɪᴀᴛ Versus Medici. 1982. Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas: 214 × 137 cm (84 × 54 in).

[regina-del-mare]

Любовь Менделеева в роли Офелии

[galleryofart]

The Girl in the Jar

Artist: Julio Romero Torres (Spanish, 1874-1930)

Date: 1928

Medium: Oil and Tempera on Canvas