#the neverending discourse about hair

[thatswhatsushesaid]

kicking around some thoughts this morning, this is extremely disorganized but here are the key ingredients in this meta smoothie:

jin guangyao +

the bad things that he does (both of his own free will and under duress for wrh and/or jgs) +

textual evidence presented to the reader indicating that jgy is aware of the awfulness of these things +

reader interpretation of what jgy's understanding of that awfulness means about his personal feelings about his own actions (i.e., he is perfectly okay with them, or he is absolutely fucked up by them, or something in between)

= two* contradictory versions of jgy in fic and/or the neverending game of mdzs fandom discourse

(*yes i know there are more than two contradictory interpretations of his character, but by and large the majority these interpretations can be filed into two categories: he's Evil or he's Not Evil.)

the more i mull it over, the more i think it's at this specific intersection (of jin guangyao as a character, the actions he takes in the story, his understanding of these actions as being terrible, and reader response to his understanding) where the disconnect happens between fans who consider themselves jgy stans, and fans who either don't like jgy or don't have much of an opinion on him either way.

i think it's clear where i stand on the issue (jgy is NOT unaffected by the terrible things he has done, even in those instances where he believed his actions to be unavoidable or necessary), but i also want to provide clear textual evidence for why i stand by this interpretation. since i don't have the time today to go through the whole book and draw out the specific passages i have in mind, i'll just pull this one quote from the guanyin temple sequence for now and come back to this post with additional quotes as reblogs later:

Only after the word came out did [Lan Xichen] remember that he’d already one-sidedly broke off with Jin GuangYao, and thus he shouldn’t call him [A-Yao]. However, Jin GuangYao seemed as if he didn’t notice it, his expression collected, “Brother, don’t be surprised that I can call him such dirty things. To this father of mine, I once had hopes as well. In the past, as long as it was his command, whether it be to betray Sect Leader Wen or protect Xue Yang or remove anyone who disagreed, no matter how foolish it was, how hated I’d be, I’d obey regardlessly. But do you know what it was that made me lose hope completely? I’ll answer your first question now. It wasn’t that I’d never be worth a single hair on Jin ZiXuan or one of the holes in Jin ZiXun, it wasn’t that he took back Mo XuanYu, it wasn’t that he tried every possible way to make me a mere figurehead either. It was the truth he once told the maid beside me when he was out indulging himself again [...]" -EXR translation, pg 984

bolded emphasis is mine because i think these textual context clues provide insight into jgy's state of mind, both in this moment where he is struggling to maintain his composure (and will later fail to maintain it), as well as in the past when he was carrying out these actions for jgs. i think we have every reason to believe that jgy is being honest when he says that he once had hope of receiving his father's affection, recognition, and respect, given what we have seen of his past actions prior to his legitimization. i also think he's being honest when he describes the actions he takes for jgs as being foolish, or certain to make people hate him, because... well, that's precisely what happens in the text, isn't it? his word choice is deliberate when he describes his own actions: they were foolish, and he knew that he would be hated for doing them, but even while doing them, he held out hope that perhaps one day, he would have done enough to earn the thing that jgs gave freely and unconditionally to his other children. one day, he would not have to do these terrible things that jgs never, ever asked of jzx, or jzn, or mxy, ever again.

and then. and then.

anywho. /sticks a bookmark on this post, i will come back to this, probably.

[matchbet-allofthetime]

REMINDER GO EVERYONE LGBT OR WHO SUPPORTS US!! (I've gone through every letter in lgbt at least once on my neverending journey, I'm allowed to say this)-

words like:

Butch

Dyke

Bulldyke

Faggot/fag

Muffmuncher

Cocksucker

Fruity

Gay

Queer

Homosexual

Transvestite/Transsexual/transgender (all ways to refer to those with different genders at birth to what they are and they are NOT outdated because they are STILL used, primarily by older queer folks and they deserve to be mentioned! Sick of the fucking discourse.)

Stone butch

Bulldagger

Faghag

Munch

Down-low

Tranny

Betty/a Betty Boop (very similar to femme and other related terms. Also seems to be colloquial to my general area?? Not sure if it or similar is used elsewhere, colloquial and local differences change a lot that you don't realize until you come across what it meansssss elsewhere. Used to refer to lesbians that are very traditionally femme and have big eyes and short hair. Also refers to specifically red lipstick wearers.

Bisexual (those who like men and women/the definition of bisexual most know widely and ALSO someone who is BOTH A MAN AND A WOMAN/ANOTHER COMBINATION. it has been and STILL IS used both ways. Respect that. The older generations coined many of your terms. Things change, but you don't get to tell someone how they identify.)

Bent

Bussy

En femme/en homme

Molly/Tommy

Tomboy/tomgirl

Flower/floral

Friend of Dorothy

Twink

Twunk

Batty/batty boy

Bender

Fairy

Fruit loop

Pansy

Sod

Bambi

Boi (UK origin, akin to dyke, butch, and tomboy)

Rug muncher

Kitty/pussy puncher/muncher

Muff diver

Stud

Pack o' cigs/Pack o' fags (self explanatory, this seems to be a colloquial term in my hometown and surrounding counties. Pack o' cigs is a pack of, traditionally, butches/dykes. Pack o' fags is the gay male equivalent. I grew up hearing this one directed toward me a LOT lmao)

AC/DC (pan/bi, swings whatever way. US term.)

Lady boy/boy girl/girl boy (can be used in many ways, but typically refers to a boy who is also a girl, a femme boy, femboy, or similar concepts)

Femboy

Traggot (a combining of tranny and faggot)

T girl/t guy/t boy

Trap (widely used even now as a slur or derogatory word, but I have met many who this is their identity to some degree. Respect that. They're queer too.)

Cuntboy/pussyboy/dick girl/girl dick

Fag stag

Bear

Pup

Cub

Bull

Silver fox

...And about a million other words through thousands of other anguages across the entire world-

Are NOT dirty, filthy, disgusting, nasty, used incorrectly, or "aren't to be used by anything other than XYZ individual in the LGBT community and nobody else."

They aren't dirty words. They aren't disgraceful or filthy unless the user of the term says "yeah, I'm fucking filthy! I'm disgraceful! Fuck yeah!"

If someone says they're a dyke? They're a fucking dyke. If someone says they're anything on this list or use any queer term? Fucking let them.

Here's why:

Use LGBT people have used any words thrown at us, handed to us, words we've been beaten with, words we've held onto with our lives and anger and love, words that have been used for us, against us, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, BY US for decades and in some cases even so long as a a century or more.

A masc straight woman is still called a dyke. A faggot. Thus, if she chooses, she's still a fucking dyke.

What we're always called or what we find fits us will always become our identity in some way or another somehow sometime.

That happens.

I've had every fucking word you've got and I guarantee ones you've never heard of thrown at me since I was a toddler, running around in mud-stained blue and red converse and a Barbie dress with a mohawk in my hair. I've heard them since I was in an AC/DC band tee, sparkly shorts, galaxy leggings, and glittery roller skates.

I and MILLIONS OF OTHERS LIKE ME, lgbt or otherwise, those who "I just dealt with what they called me. I was gonna be called that anyways so I don't care anymore. I have no gender/sexuality/preference/label/etc but I answer to it all/it's a part of me now but I'm not lgbt in my own mind" are FUCKING VALID FOR THIS.

Stop fighting your own fucking community. Stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. I have been called everything on this list except for a few (because I am obviously not a bear when you look at me not a silver fox or whatever) my entire fucking life.

I am agender. I am aro/ace. I am also a faggot. A dyke. A butch. Nonbinary. Transsexual. Tranny. Pup. Boyslut. Fagdyke.

And so many others are like me like this. So many others consider these words a part of themselves.

These are OUR slurs to reclaim. These are words we made a d for the ones we didn't? We took them and wore them like fucking crowns. We wore them like they were our favourite collars, our favourite leather, our favourite words. We fucking own these words like we own ourselves and it is nobody's choice but your FUCKING OWN whether or not they're used.

Yes, there's nuance with some. I understand that. "Stud" for example is for lesbian OR "LESBIAN-APPEARING" BLACK AFABS! But I've been called stud and I am the whitest, pastiest bitch you'll meet. I continue to have black drag queens and kings and royalties and other black folk who are queer come up to me and tell me "oh baby you're such a handsome stud!" While at pride events.

I am and also am not a woman. Not a man but also I am. But I gleefully use the word dyke and fag and femboy and roseboy and pup and cub (my moddy's nickname for years was cub/cubby. Friends of theirs HAVE CALLED THEM THAT IN FRONT OF ME SINCE I WAS A BABY. thus I am called cub or cub's cub or similar.) And I use these words with nothing but pride and spite and joy and hate and love and fucking glee. Because they're mine. They're ours.

People of all kinds, all genders, all sexualities, all paths and walks of life, have been subjected at least a hundred times to at least one of these words if they're even slightly "not right" or different or weird or wrong in the eyes of whatever stupid ass societal expectations there are.

And they all deserve to use these words if they make them comfortable. These people KNOW they're lgbt terms. Fucking trust me. They learn from experience or get taught it by someone and either drop the terms or don't. That's their choice. And that choice is okay.

Stop attacking your own community. Stop attacking the "outsiders" because oftentimes the "outsiders" are part of us but don't feel like they can claim to be lgbt. Especially older generations. Older generations (which includes millennials and even a lot of older gen z and literally everyone alive) don't think they can consider or call themselves a part of us for numerous reasons.

These reasons can be it isn't safe for any variety of reasons, these people grew up being called these things and always claimed cis and/or get because the terminology at the time wasn't like it is now in the same way, certain genders were more accepted than others (IE bisexuals and lesbians and gays and straights was most of what you had, alongside men, women, and transgender man/woman, which were and still are seen as often groups, for better or worse.) And there wasn't fuck all else. Fucking nada. Zilch. Not in most cultures, certainly not in fucking America. These people are often part of us even if they don't consider themselves as being part of us.

Definitions have changed. Contexts have changed. You'll find that we (and this is ESPECIALLY going out to any gen z out here)- we have called ourselves whatever the fuck we have wanted to forever. And we always will. And we always should. We will reclaim terms/slurs and make new terms and shit, I love being called a slur, by my own people or people who intend it to hurt me. It's fucking funny.

It has all changed and will continue to. That's the way it is. Don't discount other people's experiences or histories or whatever else just because you don't know the full story or "I just don't like it". News flash- isn't your fucking life babes.

Anyways, long-ass rant over. Needs to be said. I'm sayin it.

Any beautiful, handsome, fantastic motherfuckers out there who wanna comment your identity, favourite terms for yourself, etc? Wanna call me a slur, regardless of which way, good or bad, you intend it?

Light me the fuck up, yo. Hand me the lighter and pass the weed, I've always liked playing with fire.

[ilikedetectives]

Even if the hairstyle is the same, its still inaccurate to say that Randvi is a copy of Kassandra imo. Which is what most people are saying. She isn't, their facial structure is completely different. But, yeah, it's real annoying that Ubi took the hair of the *lead* character from their previous game and put that one in. Just like how you don't see Eivor's hairstyles on anyone else in game, Kass' should be unique to Kass. Just kinda adds to the feel that Kass got shit on as a character.

I grow up with “teeth and hair make up the foundation of a human” so it’s normal to me when people make the association due to the hairstyle. You can always grab Kassandra and Randvi’ face textures (extraction tool called Blacksmith is free), overlay both in photoshop, and settle your case with just that. Considering there are 2 ponytails available in-game and many more female hairstyles from both Odyssey and Valhalla that could’ve been given to Randvi, so why Kassandra’s? Makes you think isn’t it? Since I talked about Noctis (FFXV), imagine a few important male NPCs in FFXVI who has the exact same hair, identical mesh, as Noctis. Actually, not just those quest-relevant male NPCs, but Noctis’s hair will now be in a male hairstyle pool, so whenever players boot up the open-world game, the engine will generate filler male NPCs with hairstyles chosen at random out of said pool. This is exactly what happens to Kassandra’s hair. I’ll leave it at this: Kassandra opens the door to being able to play as a female protag for the first time ever in this franchise (despite not being the sole choice but we gotta start crawling from somewhere first before running), don’t let this fool you into thinking everyone loves her; and my two cents about Randvi: she got shit on as well.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: Ask on BTS Paving the Way

Anonymous: Hey bpp. You talked a little bit about the 'BTS paved the way' discourse on your pinned post but I'm curious to see - read? lol - more on your thoughts about it. If youve talked about it before, can you pls link? Since you might not want to discuss/rehash this at all lol. I got curious because this discourse seems neverending and i just watched a yt video essay abt it. Imo, both sides of the spectrum - army and kpop stans -seems to be missing each other's points. Like, i think a lot of kpop stans havent paid attention to what bts have contributed to kpop and theyve dismissed armys arguments entirely and i think a lot of armys havent been into kpop and kpop history to definitively say the stuff I've seen them saying. A lot of the arguments and statements are very inflammatory too and while I agree with what armys are saying, the language they use isnt going to make kpop stans listen - i mean, the ones who arent blinded by their hate for bts/army anyway lol like a lot of kpop stans think when army say bts paved the way/bts popularized kpop, they always think army mean popularized it in the west. When we have receipts of them doing spectacularly globally, especially in places like india where they seem to have exploded since dynamite. Theyve also broken a lot of records in japan, where kpop is already popular but still seem to have a lot of trouble penetrating mainstream bec theyre very insular. They also think that we mean 'first to xxx', which isnt really what we mean at all. And a lot of army seem to dismiss what older kpop groups have achieved too and just like to prop up bts while putting down other groups and dismissing what theyve achieved for the genre. I just think since a lot of armys are in kpop only for bts -same tbh - we tend to be ignorant of the genre as a whole, which isnt good bec we're always arguing x member is the best in the industry or even bts is carrying the industry on their backs, which dismisses a lot of great artists that are doing great work like solo artists like taemin. Like, I'm an army and I'm not a "stan" of any other kpop artists but the whole argument just makes me v v uncomfortable. I guess i still haven't adjusted to stan culture since i've never been a fan of any artists like i am of bts - to the point of joining the fandom and really immersing myself in it - so the intensity of it is still jarring to me. I know it happens with big western fandoms like taylor swifts too but i think i'm still old school when it comes to being a fan of a musician, you listen to the music, rave about it to friends and buy/stream the music and go about your day.

**

Hi Anon,

Anon, I sympathize completely and not to harp on you here, but my first instinct reading this was “who cares?” - this is generally how I feel about this topic whenever I see it, so not knocking you specifically here. And I’d just like to remind everyone there’s an active, senseless, and deadly war raging right now in Ukraine. Please donate and/or pray for Ukraine if you’re able to.

(And then there’s the leader of Stray Kids who is probably a bigger ARMY than me at this point)

This is not me dismissing the gripes of stans of 1st and 2nd generation groups (the usual suspects), this is me saying that what I’ve seen of this discourse is huge swarths of people engaging in an elaborate exercise in collectively missing the point. And yes I’m also referring to those splitting hairs over the semantics of what it means to pave a road. (Heaven help us). And you already allude to this in your ask, anon.

The phrase: 방법을 만들다 which is what a lot of Koreans have used to describe 'paving the way’, is colloquially used to mean 'chart a course’ or someone showing how something can be done.

If this were a normal conversation with normal people and not k-pop stans, it would be enough to point out that yes, BTS was not the first k-pop group to step foot outside Korea or in the US, but BTS is the one group that has gone farther than any k-pop group has before i.e. created the new path. It’s really that simple. BTS has become a household name globally without doing a single show at Coachella nor having any of the mediaplay seen for other groups that attempted to fully break into the US market. The fact that Korea’s military enlistment laws (which before BTS were enshrined as basically unchangeable) have been modified at least partly on their behalf (and for the benefit of any idol who meets the criteria) and that BTS is the first k-pop group to receive a Grammy nomination, has created a new tier, the highest one yet, of what is possible for k-pop artists.

BTS is the biggest group in the world. They rival Coldplay according to Coldplay. Before BTS, the reality is that this ambition was not even within the realm of possibility for much of k-pop. Even with BTS breaking the records and gaining the influence they have, k-pop is still considered to be niche in some circles, though there is undeniably more visibility and investment brought to the genre since BTS started snagging headlines. Some people still hope BTS will go the way of Psy and BoA who were a fad on the Western landscape for a minute then essentially faded into obscurity. But so far, that’s not what has happened, and everyone is paying attention to see what BTS is doing right, that perhaps other groups can emulate.

BTS won’t be the biggest group in the world forever, but the chances that the next biggest group is a k-pop group, is significantly higher now because of BTS.

La fin.

It’s true some ARMYs can be downright disgusting with how they throw around BTS’s accomplishments and sometimes ignore, dismiss, downplay, or just straight up shit on older groups who made the first moves into Western spheres, whenever this topic comes up.

But a part of me understands them. When BTS won the TSA award in 2017, it felt like hell to be on Twitter and I wasn’t even an ARMY at that point. I did a search through my old screenshots and found more than 15 k-pop fandoms spent weeks shitting non-stop on BTS and ARMYs about how useless it was to win at the BBMAs. It was a non-stop barrage of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, all the -isms you can think of related to POC musicians. Though of course BTS was not the first group to go to the US, all of a sudden, k-pop stans were convinced BTS had 'sold out’, abandoned their heritage and were pandering to 'white colonizers’ (sound familiar?). I started calling myself an ARMY the next year (2018) and as I’ve said already, I was reporting things almost constantly. It was hell.

*

You’re right this discourse seems never-ending because it is never-ending. Remember you’re dealing with k-pop stans who will argue with you that water isn’t wet if it means something positive for their group and some ARMYs are just as bad. Whenever I see people arguing about what paved the way I just mute that whole conversation. I sympathize with you feeling uncomfortable about this topic. I’d like to suggest doing what I currently do which is to not waste a single moment of a single day worrying about something that’s already obvious and settled. This particular discourse is the perfect example of a time sink imo, because really, who cares?

Originally posted: March 18th, 2022 1:35pm

[pwnyta]

Ok so in Jojo, Giorno (Donut hair) is 15 while Mista (Ham hat) is 18. Now just to be clear it's not a full 3 year difference and Mista just turned 18 like 4 months before and Giorno will turn 16 less then a month after the time they meet. Not that it matters that much but... Anyway, a lot of antis get up in arms about them being shipped cause 'Omg Giorno is a child'. Despite the fact he's also a mob boss who has actively killed at least 4 people and but one in a neverending death lop (TBA)

LMFAO

Thats terrific. My OTP from an anime I know nothing about is problematic. Love that for me.

My favorite discourse involved some ant drawing Donut hair in his canonical outfit but with a shirt under it to cover up his boob window with him being like ‘>:C Im a literal minor do not sexualize me‘ or something...

and its like... CANONICALLY HES GOT A TITTY WINDOW IF YOU THINK ITS WRONG STOP WATCHING/READING/SUPPORTING THE SERIES WTF?

The fact hes a murderous mob boss just ADDS to the hilarity.

Ive heard theres quite a bit of problematic shit in Jojo too... Stick to western media Brenda if you dont like these incredibly common anime tropes/character archetypes.

[caveartfair]

The Market for Female Surrealists Has Finally Reached a Tipping Point

In 2009, Leonora Carrington first cleared $1 million at auction with her painting The Giantess (1947). An image of a cloaked queen hovering, leviathan-like, over a mystical, abundant landscape, it was, according to Christie’s specialist Virgilio Garza, “one of the most beautiful things” he’d ever handled.

Carrington, who was fiercely independent and, according to her longtime gallerist Wendi Norris, cared primarily about critical and curatorial recognition, passed away in 2011 at the age of 94. Were she still alive today, it might bring her greater pleasure to know that over the past five years, institutional interest in her work has risen considerably, helping to double and triple that $1 million milestone. She is not alone; rather, she is one of a number of female artists affiliated with the Surrealist movement—including Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, Kay Sage, and Leonor Fini—who have seen a recent acceleration of interest from curators, academics, and collectors.

Leonora Carrington, The Dark Night of Aranoë, 1976. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Leonara Carrington, The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1942. Courtesy of Christie’s.

At a moment of reckoning with male power, the prescient work of these artists is resonating with wider audiences, in what Whitney Chadwick, author of the 1985 Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, attributes in part to “an opening up of cultural feeling” about female sexuality.

“These female painters challenged sexual and gender boundaries from a very early time,” said Chadwick, who, last year, published Farewell to the Muse: Love, War and the Women of Surrealism, a book that traces some of the influential friendships that flourished between the women. “Now the Surrealist women are being cultivated as serious and significant artists.”

It’s a development that goes hand in hand with the continuing appetite for historical, underrecognized female artists, and is accompanied by a broader renewed interest in Surrealism, said New York–based dealer Michael Rosenfeld, who has sold work by Tanning and Sage since the 1990s. As museums and private collections scramble to rebalance their male-heavy rosters, work that expresses female sexual agency and champions gender fluidity is finding a broader collector base. And thanks to careful stewardship by the artists’ longtime galleries and foundations, their markets, already climbing, have further room to run.

Not the “idealized, sexualized woman”

Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943. © DACS, 2018. Courtesy of Tate.

In their pursuit of subconscious expression, the male Surrealists, such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy, and René Magritte, created imagery that, in its sexual abandon, often objectified women; they chopped off female arms and legs, replaced their faces with genitalia, or, as in the case of Ernst, rendered them headless. Unsurprisingly, André Breton, author of the Surrealist manifesto, had little interest in promoting his female counterparts as equals.  

The strongest and most successful Surrealist works by women, according to Sotheby’s specialist Julian Dawes, offered a counterpoint. They are “reflective, contemplative, dealing with womanhood from a searching perspective,” said Dawes, citing the most famous of these women, Frida Kahlo, as an example.

In Kahlo’s works, she was “not this idealized, sexualized woman, but this very natural and stark, graphic and painful” representation of the self. Similarly, American painter Kay Sage’s self-portrait Le passage (1956) shows the artist looking out over a barren, geometric landscape while ominous clouds gather overhead. She is inward-looking; viewers see her only from the back, the impenetrable terrain before her suggesting a neverending cerebral space. (The painting made headlines in 2014 when it sold for $7 million, more than 23 times the previous year’s record for her work, $302,000.)

Like their male counterparts, the women of Surrealism, in many cases, worked to liberate their desires through explorations of dreams and mysticism, but to less violent effect. In her painting The Black Room (1939), Leonor Fini—whose work will go on view at New York’s Museum of Sex later this month—painted her close friend Leonora Carrington as a striking, armored figure, seen at the threshold of a dark bed chamber where figures are engaged in ambiguous shadowy activities around a bed. It “suggests ritualized and erotic dream-worlds in which women wield power over ancient ceremonies and mysterious cults of the feminine,” writes Chadwick in Farewell to the Muse.

Kay Sage, Le Passage, 1956. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Leonor Fini, Woman in Armor I (Femme en armure I), c. 1938. Courtesy of Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, and the Museum of Sex, New York.

They also employed the tools of Surrealism to test the limits of a woman’s place in the world during a period of war and turbulence. Dorothea Tanning, for example, painted fantastical images of women in interior spaces���with wild, gravity-defying hair and wind-swept garments that seem ablaze. She “wreaked havoc on traditional domestic space and objects,” said Alyce Mahon, curator of the Reina Sofia Museum’s upcoming Tanning retrospective (which will travel to the Tate Modern next year) and curatorial advisor for Fini’s upcoming New York exhibition. “She staged a new, modern sense of the feminine as a creative force, which could not be reduced to the traditional roles of muse or mother.”

Fini and Carrington, in particular, interrogated received notions of female identity, a salient theme today amid evolving discourse around gender binaries. Carrington, Chadwick writes, practiced in both her writing and art a “lifelong investigation into hybridity and androgyny as models that challenge sexual difference.” Carrington’s animal avatar was a muscular horse, while Fini’s was a sphinx, which “embodied the way she felt about herself as this inscrutable being that was complicated, a sort of living riddle,” said Dawes.

Around 10 or 15 years ago, even female audiences, Chadwick said, “were sometimes horrified” by the more transgressive examples of their work. Now, women recognize artists like Carrington and Tanning as pioneers who “managed to make something out of Surrealism and themselves that didn’t exist before….They were doing much more than trying to tuck themselves into some art practice.” And it is often women who have championed them, such as Chadwick, Norris, London dealer Alison Jacques (who represents Tanning), and the academics and institutional curators that have given them exhibitions (or are in the process of doing so), among them Ilene Susan Fort, Tere Arcq, Ann Temkin, Alyce Mahon, and Ann Coxon.

Growing international demand

Dorothea Tanning, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1945-46. Courtesy of Christie’s.

Dorothea Tanning, The Magic Flower Game, 1941. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

In 2015, Dawes organized a Sotheby’s exhibition of work by female Surrealists, entitled “Cherchez la femme.” Among the collectors discovering the work for the first time, he observed a strong response from female clients. There has also been a slight shift, said Norris, towards a younger base that extends beyond the Surrealism connoisseurs who make up the more traditional buyer pool for these works.

The reputations of the Surrealist women are also growing in other parts of the world. Even Asian collectors, who typically favor more iconic Western artists as they begin to collect, are showing early signs of familiarity with these artists. (Specialists from Sotheby’s and Christie’s report having seen burgeoning interest in the women of Surrealism from Indonesian and Taiwanese buyers.) The dissolving boundary between Western and Latin American art histories has also contributed to their prominence, as artists associated with Mexico—such as Carrington and Varo—gain recognition in other parts of the world, and American artists associated with Surrealism likewise gain traction in Latin America. (This year, Sotheby’s relaxed the boundary between Latin American and Western art histories, bringing the Mexican contingent within the category of Surrealism for the first time, rather than Latin American art.)

Christie’s specialist Virgilio Garza predicts an uptick in institutional acquisitions of works by Carrington across the West. Indeed, Norris is in the midst of negotiations over the sale of works by Carrington and Varo—who was Spanish, but also emigrated to Mexico—with two institutions in the U.S., which she expects to announce by the end of the year.  

Earlier this year, the National Gallery of Scotland purchased Carrington’s extraordinary portrait of her former lover Max Ernst, whom she depicts as an androgynous figure in a feathery red costume that extends into a forked tail—suggesting a fusion of Carrington’s “Maremaid” creature and Ernst’s avian alter ego, “Loplop.” The acquisition can be seen as symptomatic of what Garza describes as an institutional effort within the U.K. to “reclaim Leonora Carrington as a European artist, as one of their own.”

Le lecon de botanique, 1974. Leonor Fini Weinstein Gallery

Of course, museums have long recognized Kahlo, who has been a global phenomenon for decades, and Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup was the among the first artworks by a woman to enter MoMA’s collection. But in recent years, they have paid closer attention to the wider spectrum of women associated with Surrealism, in particular to Carrington and Tanning, in part due to their prolificacy and the twists and turns of their artistic practices. Carrington, a British artist who broke with her traditional, privileged upbringing and spent the majority of her life in Mexico, is believed to have made more than 2,000 works. In 2015, the U.K.’s Tate Liverpool organized a retrospective of her work; another followed this year at Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art, featuring over 200 works.

Tanning, who also had a long, productive life making a diverse range of work that was strikingly ahead of its time—including semi-figurative soft sculptures made two decades ahead of Louise Bourgeois—is better represented in museum collections, a fact that Norris attributes to the work of The Dorothea Tanning Foundation. But she is only receiving her first major retrospective this fall, at Madrid’s Reina Sofía, followed by London’s Tate Modern. (She has yet to receive a retrospective in the United States, though her dream, Norris said, was to show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.)

Tanning has also seen an escalation of interest from private collectors. Her world-record price routinely doubled or tripled in the period between 2009 and 2015, according to auction records and Dawes’s observations. Though that gradient appears to have tapered off—in 2015, Tanning’s The Magic Flower Game (1941) narrowly surpassed $1 million at auction; three years later, in May 2018, the artist’s Temptation of St. Anthony (1945–46) hammered for just shy of $1.2 million, her latest record price—the works sell privately for more. Norris said great works by Tanning and Carrington go for between $1 million and $3 million behind closed doors.

Currently Norris has a waitlist for both Tanning and Varo, but perhaps none go as fast as the works of Sage, which are particularly rare. The American artist, known for her portentous, psychologically loaded landscapes, had a short career and made just a few hundred works. When a painting by her comes into Norris’s hands, she said, it goes within 48 hours.

The scarcity in Sage’s market—much of her work has been in institutional collections for many years—suggests that her sale price will continue to rise as paintings become available. Though Rosenfeld agrees the growing interest in the women of Surrealism has generally been consistent and steady—“not meteoric”—for certain periods of production, it has accelerated more sharply. “There’s a very limited supply of high-quality early paintings by Kay Sage and Dorothea Tanning,” he said, “and there’s a dramatically increasing demand.”

“Room to grow”

Visite jaune (Visite éclair), 1960. Dorothea Tanning Gallery Wendi Norris

Like Sage and Kahlo—the latter of whom has some 300 works or so in existence, most of them in Mexico under national patrimony—Spanish artist Remedios Varo made just a few hundred paintings. Consequently, Norris said, her market is much like Kahlo’s. Though fewer of her works have passed $1 million, “a good work of Varo’s sells for north of $5 million.”

For artists who were more prolific, prices are lower, but dealers and specialists see their relative accessibility as a boon to developing interest in a market that until 10 or 15 years ago was niche. When Dawes put together “Cherchez la femme” in 2015, there were “really undeniable A-plus pictures available in some way, shape, or form for all of the female Surrealists,” which is important, he said, in terms of “making people feel energized and excited to participate in that market.”

Today, organizing such an exhibition might be harder to pull off. But while the great works of the male Surrealists are largely locked away in museum collections, the strongest work of the female Surrealists is relatively accessible both in price point and availability. “We have access to these absolutely extraordinary examples of some of the best work by the female members of the Surrealist movement in a way that we don’t at all have for the male counterparts,” said Dawes.

He pointed to Magritte, who did thousands of repetitive gouaches. “A gouache from the ’60s that’s fine might sell for $2 million,” he said, “whereas the greatest Tanning ever—which, frankly, two of them were just sold in the last two years—barely broke $1 million. That still has room to grow.”

Leonor Fini, The Blind Ones (Les Aveugles), 1968. Courtesy of Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco and the Museum of Sex, New York.

Since collectors favor earlier works from the 1930s and ’40s—the recognizably Surrealist works that were made during the movement’s zenith—there is also considerably more room for growth when it comes to later works made by these artists. In the case of Tanning, for instance, collectors hanker after the more figural work of the 1940s, while her more abstract pieces made after the late ’50s—complex, swirling atmospheres of undulating form and color, described by scholar Catriona McAra as “kaleidoscopic”—go relatively overlooked.

Yet some believe these late pieces are her most virtuosic. Tate curator Ann Coxon, who is organizing the institution’s iteration of the Tanning retrospective, sees these paintings as the artist stepping away from Surrealism as we know it and finding her own voice. “There is a confidence about those paintings, which [underscores] the fact that she doesn’t really care how she’s categorized anymore,” Coxon said. She is “making her own imagery.” For Norris, who will take a selection of Tanning’s kaleidoscopic paintings (priced at $30,000 to $750,000) to Expo Chicago later in September, they are her most visionary pieces. “Those to me are just the most painterly, magnificent works,” she said.

While buyers will drop millions on a Dalí oil from the 1970s, the late works of the women of Surrealism are valued at a fraction of the price. “There’s a massive robust global market for the late works of [the male Surrealists] because their names are so iconic,” said Dawes. “That has not come to bear yet for the female artists.”

He is confident that the time will come when the lesser-known women of Surrealism, who extend to many others not here mentioned—like Lee Miller, Valentine Penrose, Toyen, Bridget Tichenor, and Gertrude Abercrombie (whose current exhibition at New York’s Karma, her first New York show in decades, received an enthusiastic review in the New York Times)—reach “a place of parity with the male Surrealists.”

Tanning, according to Norris, knew her time was coming. Carrington too, perhaps. To her former lover Max Ernst, she was, as Chadwick writes, “a surrealist woman-child, destined to inspire [man] through her youth, her beauty and her innocence.” To her friend Leonor Fini—who refused to formally join the chauvinist Breton’s movement—Carrington was “never a surrealist, but a true revolutionary.”

from Artsy News

[ilikedetectives]

Randvi does not look like Kassandra. For f*ck sake! They share a hairstyle. Anyone who says that Randvi is a recycled Kass or such nonsense (I've seen a lot of that) needs to put Kass and Randvi side-by-side and f*cking open their damn eyes! They look nothing alike beyond having the same damn hair. Basim looks more like Revelations Ezio than Randvi looks like Kass. (sorry for ranting, this just bugs me and that concept art reminded me of it)

To me hairstyle is a crucial element to character design. In Vietnamese we have a saying cái răng cái tóc là gốc con người, “teeth and hair make up the foundation of a human”, which is true not only in forensics, but also physical appearances. For some characters, hair may not be part of their signature look, but for others like Kassandra, hairstyle is crucial. A good rule of thumb for me is that if you need it for cosplay, then it’s crucial to the character design; of all the Kassandra cosplay that I’ve seen, they all have the side braid. Imagine Kratos with his hair flowing in the wind, how weird would that look? And I’d like to share my most favorite exchange between a gamer and Square Enix on Twitter: this person swapped Noctis’s hair with his dad's and Square went, “Please put it back” lol. Now for Ezio, I don’t think his hairstyle is as important to his character design as his signature white and red outfit with the hood up, which also covers his hair and eyes. Look at the marketing materials for Ezio like cinematic trailers, his hair isn’t the focus, but his assassin outfit is. When I say Ezio, does his hairstyle come up in your mind first? Or is it his signature outfit and/or the hidden blade? Tbh I don’t even remember what hairstyles Ezio has in the trilogy I played with the hood up all the time. TLDR: hairstyle can make or break a character’s design.

Again, I just hope this helps clarify for you how hair for Kassandra isn’t just hair. As for the recycled comments, people can take Kassandra and Randvi’ face textures and just overlay both in Photoshop to see for themselves. Tbh my issue here is that there are so many hairstyles that Ubi could’ve reused for Randvi, including a ponytail which would be closer to her concept art look OR mod the braid a bit to make it longer/shorter so it isn’t identical OR even add the face tattoo from the concept art which would help tremendously, but here we are having a mess that could easily be avoided.