#Stoll

[thatoneangryduck1]

Annabeth: Let me show you a picture from last night that really upset me

Percy: Okay, but in my defence, Connor Stoll bet me 10 drachmas I couldn’t drink all that shampoo.

Annabeth: That’s not what I wanted to- you drank SHAMPOO?!

[postcard-from-the-past]

"The Lusted after Flesh", sculpture by F. Stoll

French vintage postcard

[almostarts]

Charles and Ray Eames, “Time Life” stools, 

Herman Miller, USA, 1960,

Walnut, 15 h × 13 dia in (38 × 33 cm)

Courtesy: Wright20

[roquefang]

Bored Dislyte Rambling

So we have the obvious furry wolf beast with Freddy, representing Fenrir. Then we have the catgirl style wolf Camille, representing Hati. So are we going to get the transforming during battle (maybe like Gaius) wolf representing Stoll?

Asking for a friend. I mean... that one chased the sun. That one is aiming high!

[frost-sama-senpai-san]

Ladies amd gentlemen, the Stoll Brothers:

(Artist doesn't have social media but told me I could post it, lmao)

[silentlondon]

Silent Sherlock at the London Film Festival: the game is afoot

Stand outside Alexandra Palace on a clear evening with a full moon, as I did last night, and you can take in the whole city. London may be as silent as it gets from this perspective, but the landscape is loud in its own way. The glittering towers that dominate the skyline were all built in the last 50, probably 20 years. The red lights dotted in among them are all cranes, standing by to change…

[frankinferno]

[detournementsmineurs]

"Insubmersible (Nyad)" biopic d'Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi et Jimmy Chin (2023) - d'après l'ouvrage autobiographique "Find a Way" de la nageuse Diana Nyad (2015) - avec Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans et Karly Rothenberg, février 2024.

[esther-on-fire]

Of course! Rothko is one of my favorite painters and I absolutely adore Abstract Expressionism, so I'll always jump on a chance to gush about it (or as it turns out, write an entire essay about it lol, rlly sorry about that, i got a bit carried away).

Warning! This post is very long, the rest is hidden beneath the cut.

i. Visceral Reactions

To me, the enjoyment of Rothko's work is found in losing myself within the colors and shades and separations thereof. Just letting the images wash over me and bury themselves into my brain. There is a certain hypnotic quality to his work, I've found. His paintings are intensely effective at provoking profound emotional reactions from me, when I open myself up to them.

In terms of emotional resonance, I think the above painting is a bit of an outlier from his larger body of work, and perhaps is not the best introduction to it because of that. I noted in my original reblog tags that it's rare to see a "happy" Rothko. To me at least, the emotions most commonly present in your average Rothko are despair, dread, and a hollowing sense of unease. For some fun examples, here are a couple of my favorites!

Dark Grey Tone on Maroon, 1963

Untitled (Black on Grey), 1970

Untitled, 1967

Black in Deep Red, 1957

Untitled, 1969

Now I will admit that my personal tastes veer towards his more depressing and distressing works. But it's for good reason. The longer I stare at these paintings, the harder I find it is to tear myself away. I feel myself being sucked into them, like their gravitational pull has captured me and I'm falling into their event horizon.

They feel like blank voids my mind is trying to fill. My brain projects onto them vague recollections of ocean midnight horizons, rusted out walls flanking ajar blackened windows, desolate lunar surfaces, suffocating sanguine pools. There is a certain liminal quality to them in a sense, they feel wrong. Like they shouldn't exist, or we shouldn't be looking at them, or both.

Eventually though, I have to tear my gaze away, else I risk becoming overwhelmed. Like if I let them imprint in my eyes for long enough they'll never leave, their haunting overlays always verging in on the edges of my vision.

If I had to describe my impressions of Untitled (Orange, White, Orange), I would say that it feels like the morning sun casting warm beams onto your face as you lie in bed, like being gifted a bouquet of sunflowers by a close friend, like the sunset reflecting off a lake on a hot and humid summer night. It's bright and comforting and fulfilling and genial and homely. Which are all things I would be hard-pressed to say about any other Rothko, and so I find myself liking it quite a bit.

ii. Presence

I really hate those people who insist that to truly "understand" a piece of art, you have to see it in person. And so I'm going to try really hard to avoid sounding like one of them for this next section.

While I certainly don't think that viewing a Rothko online is in any way somehow worse or more detrimental than viewing it in person, I do admit that seeing these works in person does add something to the experience. Not in a way that's better or worse, just merely ... different. It makes you appreciate things in a new light, view them at a new angle (literally).

I have never seen any of my favorite Rothko's, including the ones included above, in person. However the Rothko's I have had the pleasure of seeing instantly went from lukewarm in my online reception to resoundingly positive in reality. The work I want to highlight here is No. 16, 1960, on display at the Met:

I had no idea just how expansive this painting was until I saw it for real. It is truly a breathtaking feat just how much depth Rothko manages to fit into such a simple image. He was a master at utilizing texture and impasto and refraction and veneer and technique. The way the light catches on the paint, the transitions from matte to vaguely glossy, it's just all incredibly impressive, and I imagine incredibly difficult. And that like "getting lost in" feeling? It's a completely different experience when face to face with an actual canvas. Whether it's amplified or modified I'm not sure, but seeing No. 16 in person was what solidified Rothko as one of my all time favorite painters, so I would be remiss not to mention it.

iii. Barnett Newman and other artists

Of course, I would be remiss to extol Rothko as much as I am without mentioning his contemporaries. The most prominent of which is Barnett Newman. Like Rothko, Newman specialized in Color Field paintings, large abstract canvases filled with vast oceans of hue. And by large, I mean large. Here is one of his most famous works:

Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, 1967

If Rothko's paintings are easy to get lost in, Newman's you could drown in. If you were to stand in front of it, it would fill your entire field of view. I've never had the privilege to see one of his works in person, but if I did I would imagine it to be profoundly impactful.

While Newman is perhaps the only other Color Field painter who could rival Rothko in terms of abstraction, there are a few others that expand the concept in equally interesting and creative ways.

Clyfford Stoll, for example:

Untitled, 1960

His paintings feel almost like they're tearing themselves apart, like they are frozen mid-disintegration, paused forever in their self-annihilation.

And then there's Helen Frankenthaler:

Off White Square (1973)

Whose canvases rival Newman's in terms of grandeur. If Rothko's paintings embody ugliness and brutality, Frankenthaler's work revels in joyous soft beauty and quiet chaotic contemplation.

iv. Historical Context

Up to this point I've only really covered my personal perceptions and reactions to these works independent of any other factors. However it's important to note that there is a significant amount of political context surrounding both Rothko and Newman. As two Jewish artists whose careers began gaining momentum throughout the duration of WWII, their work has become (though was not always necessarily intended to be) a direct rejection of fascist artistic ideals. To the Nazis (and fascists in general, cough cough republicans), art only holds worth if it is in direct service and promotion of fascist political values.

For examples of this, you only have to look at the type of art that the Nazis admired: songs of praise for the motherland, paintings of Germanic military victories, The Great Torchbearer and Der ewige Jude. To a fascist, art is a weapon. There is no room in a fascistic worldview for art that does not conform to the exaltation of the in-group and demonization of the out-group. There is no room for Dada, or Cubism, or Expressionism, or any other form of honest emotional expression. To a fascist, the only meaning of art is in what it tells you to believe.

Abstract Expressionism is a direct rebuke of this philosophy. If, according to such a philosophy, the meaning of art is intrinsically linked to it's societal agenda, then what do you do with art which has no agenda? Art which has no overt political message, no impartation of societal standards, no obvious meaning? In Rothko and Newman's work, there are no celebrations of the master race, no dramatic depictions of war or sweeping German landscape vistas. There are only colored squares of paint, plainly placed on a canvas.

That is not to say that there is no meaning in Rothko's work, quite the opposite, his paintings are teeming with meaning. The difference is that the only meaning is the meaning we project onto them. Unlike a Nazi Propaganda Film, No. 16 isn't telling us what to take from it. It is up to us to open ourselves up to it, to risk being emotionally vulnerable, to lose ourselves in shades and shapes, so that when we emerge afterwards we are in some way different than we were before. It can't be politically weaponized, or twisted to suit someone's agenda, it just is. The unique skill of Rothko was his ability to utilize the inherent meaning found within the rejection of meaning itself.

So yeah. That's pretty much it lol. I just really like Rothko. If you couldn't tell. lol.

[deathofapig]

Bathroom Kids

Photos of a double sink, wallpaper, shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity can be found in a mid-sized transitional kids' bathroom.

[pyeparr]

Bathroom Kids

Photos of a double sink, wallpaper, shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity can be found in a mid-sized transitional kids' bathroom.

[cattownshend]

Bathroom Kids

Photos of a double sink, wallpaper, shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity can be found in a mid-sized transitional kids' bathroom.

[westillwriteincursive]

Bathroom Kids

Photos of a double sink, wallpaper, shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity can be found in a mid-sized transitional kids' bathroom.

[jamiegardner]

Bathroom Kids

Photos of a double sink, wallpaper, shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity can be found in a mid-sized transitional kids' bathroom.

[kanehopkins]

Kids Bathroom in Columbus A mid-sized transitional kids' beige tile and porcelain tile design idea Shaker cabinets, brown cabinets, a two-piece toilet, green walls, an undermount sink, recycled glass countertops, a hinged shower door, multicolored countertops, a niche, and a freestanding vanity are all included in the bathroom remodel with porcelain tile, a beige floor, a double-sink, and wallpaper.

[dmabs]

Enclosed Kitchen Inspiration for a mid-sized transitional u-shaped laminate floor and gray floor enclosed kitchen remodel with a farmhouse sink, shaker cabinets, white cabinets, quartz countertops, gray backsplash, porcelain backsplash, stainless steel appliances and multicolored countertops