#the primitive painter

[momentsinlove]

Moments In Love #26

Romance / Once Upon A Time

Roxy Music / Tara

The Zenmenn & John Moods / Fantasy Again

Pal / Buddy Holly

Peter Wood & Jess Roden / Future Soon

This Mortal Coil / Another Day

Boards Of Canada / In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country

Brian Eno / Just Another Day

Panda Bear / I’m Not

Saint Etienne / Fontayne

The Primitive Painter / Levitation

Sarah Cracknell / Ready Or Not

David Sylvian / Orpheus

Photo: Southport, Winter 1940s, uncredited

[the-cricket-chirps]

Henri Rousseau, The Waterfall, 1910

Henri Rousseau, Tropical Forest with Apes and Snake, 1910

[bublinko]

New painted stones :)

[iwasnolongerready]

Felt - Primitive Painters [Official Video] 

[spilladabalia]

Felt ft. Elizabeth Fraser - Primitive Painters

[thehaitianartlover]

Felix Jean, the late and known Haitian primitive artist, painted this original 20"x16" painting circa 1970. It represents a vibrant and colorful street Rara scene in Haiti. The art is in good condition, belongs to a private collector in North Carolina, USA, and shipped from there.  Felix Jean was born in Anse-a-Vau, Ha

[artehago]

[jamieroxxartist]

Good Morning Social Media! Today’s featured #Spotify #Playlist is: #HenriRousseau #TigerInATropicalStorm; Mei Ling and I feature a new playlist daily. It’s what I have on here in the studio while I Paint and work. You can Listen as well, for FREE, both here at the Link and on the Pop Culture BLOG at my website: www.JamieRoxx.us enjoy :)

🎧 #SpotifyPlaylist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jPUNglKmtK1RAjsfD4Pc8

🎨 RIP today, Sept 2, 1910 – Henri Rousseau, French painter (b. 1844) walked on.

#postimpressionism #Naïve #Primitive

🎨 Featured Painting: A Custom #Commissioned #Painting I painted a couple of years ago:

‘Josephine and the #Tiger’ 2020, acrylic and oil blend on canvas, 20"x16" by @ArtistJamieRoxx #JamieRoxx (www.JamieRoxx.us) This Sold Painting is Not Available.

#Blog #Art #LifeattheBeach #ArtistsLife #BestFriends #SharPei #Painter #NeoNoir

[mermaidenmystic]

"The language of myth is still, as ever, the secret speech of the inarticulate human soul; and if one has learned to listen to this speech with the heart, then it is not surprising that Aeschylos and Plato and Heraclitus are eternal voices and not merely relics of a bygone and primitive era. Perhaps it is now more than ever important to hear these poetic visions of the orderly nature of the universe, because we have grown so dangerously far from them. The mythic perception of the universe governed by immutable moral as well as physical law is alive and well in the unconscious…" ~Liz Greene, "The Astrology of Fate"

Dancing Nymphs ~ 1920's ~ Blendon Reed Campbell (American painter, 1872-1969)

[love-for-carnation]

Yellow Pot Off Centre Blue Jug Pink Velvet Carnations Yellow Jug

Angela A'Court (b. 1961, British)

Other painter's works: https://www.artsy.net/artist/angela-acourt

[the-cricket-chirps]

Henri Rousseau

Exotic Landscape

1908

[thirdity]

It would hardly be a waste of time if sometimes even the most advanced students in the cognitive sciences were to pay a visit to their ancestors. It is frequently claimed in American philosophy departments that, in order to be a philosopher, it is not necessary to revisit the history of philosophy. It is like the claim that one can become a painter without having ever seen a single work by Raphael, or a writer without having ever read the classics. Such things are theoretically possible; but the “primitive” artist, condemned to an ignorance of the past, is always recognizable as such and rightly labeled as naïf. It is only when we consider past projects revealed as utopian or as failures that we are apprised of the dangers and possibilities for failure for our allegedly new projects. The study of the deeds of our ancestors is thus more than an antiquarian pastime, it is an immunological precaution.

Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language

[bowtiepastabitch]

Let's talk costuming: Angelic Robes and The Unreliable Narrator

It's two am, I have to be up at six, but this has been fermenting in the back of my head for the past five hours I've spent doing homework and if I don't get it out I shan't sleep.

The costumes we see representing angelic character in Season Two are VASTLY different from those we see in Season One. (See my post on Aziraphale's Job Robe for an in-depth art history analysis of this individual costume piece.) In season one, the angelic flashback clothing we see is rather humble and uncomplicated. As all things in this show, this serves a very important narrative purpose.

Let's first compare these gorgeous gorgeous girls to their S1 counterparts, shall we?

Just look at the collar on that robe! In S1, we're introduced to Aziraphale in a very plain tunic-style robe with an unfinished neckline. Aside from a slight gold decoration and draping on the shoulders, this could easily be mistaken for rather primitive human garb. S2, by comparison, introduces angelic costume as non-ostentatious but still refined with a gold-trimmed gathered neckline and wide sleeves. The fabric itself, on a textile level, is much finer and softer. Overall, the robes give an air of innocence and angelic purity that is lacking from Aziraphale's S1 'fit. Let's look at another example:

Their Rome costumes are strewn with so many incredible details (check out this incredible post from 2019) but they still retain a bit of that historical ruggedness. Same for these:

The argument could be made for pure historical compliance, sure, but to claim a lack of anachronisms in this show would be a flat-out lie. No, S1 Crowley and Aziraphale are very distinctively human in their dress. The cloth has a wider weave, the ornamentation is minimal, all around it serves to highlight their fitting-in with humans and the humanization of their characters. They're 'going native,' as it were, no doubt about it.

So why, in S2, is Aziraphale suddenly showing up looking like he just popped out of a renaissance painter's wet dream?

Simple. Suddenly, Aziraphale isn't an angel among humans acting human, he's an angel being an angel doing angel things. We get to see the rest of the heaven gang in full angelic decadence as well, a bold departure from the starkness of 'modern' heaven. If this is, as many of you lovely folk have speculated, a series of flashbacks from Aziraphale's memory, the design choices designate very clearly Aziraphale's perception of himself as an angel. A perception which, mind you, would likely be influenced by later human ideas of angelic and heavenly aesthetics. As an unreliable narrator, Aziraphale is showing us not his actual wardrobe as an angelic being but his perception of his past self.

Crowley, too, is affected by this shift in dress. Bildad the Shuhite is everything S1 flashback Crowley is not: fashion-forward, smooth-talking, and impeccably well-dressed. We've got three different fabric textures (that's three times as many as any of his biblical S1 robing) and a definable silhouette. He's practically a fashionista.

If this were all taken as an objective narrative, the shift back to billowing-void peasant Crowley at Golgotha, where we next see her chronologically, would be strange to say the least.

So why is the costuming of the S2 pre-modern flashbacks so much more elaborate? There's three possibilities I can imagine for a change in costume design for any show:

Budget: this is highly unlikely an instant rule-out for me. I've seen what costumers can do on a shoestring budget, and besides the later period costumes make this demonstrably false.

Change in production design team: Technically possible, yes, but if there's one thing Good Omens does well between seasons it's continuity. I mean, they burned the fucking bookshop and then hand-painted tiles to recreate it exactly for the second season. This is not Harry Potter. This isn't it.

An intentional design: Everything, and I mean everything, in this show is intentional. While not everything the wardrobe team does is easily decodable (see Crowley's shapeshifting sunglasses) we've got a pretty comfortable bit of time to figure such things out. This is the only option that makes a lick of sense.

Wonderful, so we've established that this is a narrative choice.

So if it's a narrative choice, and it's distinct from the stylistic choices of Season One, then someone is lying to us. Or rather, we have an unreliable narrator somewhere along the way.

Most of the buzz on ye olde tumblr focuses on the idea of Aziraphale as narrator and memory-holder for S2, and that would certainly make sense from both a story and design. Of course he would see Angel Crowley as adorable and innocent and angelic (the hair is not helping his case either omg I love her), and of course he would see himself as grandly, exaggeratedly, almost dissonantly angelic at the major turning point in his faith.

If Crowley is narrating, then it calls into question why he would choose to remember himself this way. It holds a sort of nostalgic sadness, a memory of a joyful innocence permanently lost to God's cruelty. When we see Aziraphale in angelic splendor later, we're reminded again of what Crowley has lost. It echoes the aesthetic of his former angel self, the gathering and gold trim and bright white fabric, but also introduces a much more elaborate silhouette that reflects the shift toward heaven's new high-and-mighty attitude.

Finally, I'd like to point out that by contrast Season One focuses heavily on themes of humanity rather than ethereality. Narrated by God, no less, who probably has thoughts on their assimilation. While I think we can assume God to be a more reliable narrator than Crowley or Aziraphale, it's not out of the question that She would have her own story to spin about our Ineffable Idiots' shared history.

Ultimately, I think it's safe to say that whatever's going on in costume design is a Clue to the story we're being told in S2 and the one we will be told in S3.

[hannahssimblr]

Fridays end, as they always do, as the life drawing class filters out of the room, and I scrub charcoal from my hands with the icy water in the classroom sink. I don’t know how I do it, get smudges on my fingers, my hands, the sleeves of my sweatshirt, but invariably I do. I use an old paintbrush left lying on the ledge to scrub my fingernails, too. They’re always filthy. I think I am inherently messier than everyone else, somehow, despite my best intentions to be something else. 

“Und dein Gesicht.” The tutor, Gunther, says casually as he saunters from the room, shattering the illusion I had of having cleaned myself off. My face, too? How did it get on my face? The silver tap reflects a smudge above my eyebrow. I bring a handful of water to wash it away, and the coldness stings my skin. I shiver as it trails down my neck and under my collar. Cold. I’m always cold these days, even as January has limped into February and, along with the new year snow, my delusions that spring is just waiting to burst through the frozen soil, have melted.

My face, still damp, feels like it might freeze solid as I trudge across campus to the lecture halls. This is part of my Friday routine, too: Visiting the lecture hall. Not because I have an actual lecture. My art history class is on Wednesday. Astrid has it on Friday afternoon, finishing at half four, and I like to be there to meet her. My phone reads 16:40, the screen is bright in the fading light and the mist, grey, cloud hanging low over the brick pavers.

I make myself known with a knock on the door. It’s ajar, the room vacant of all students but Astrid, and she stands by a desk, her white blonde hair covering her face as she murmurs in German still too sophisticated for me to understand. 

It’s Steffen who she is speaking to. Her art history lecturer. A rumpled, mousy-haired man with a leather satchel always slung across his body. He has an incessant need to discuss the minutiae of Astrid’s academic essays with her after class far more often than he does any of his other students. He wants her alone, and it sends a shiver up my spine. His lack of concern about being creepy is alarming. I could go around to everyone on campus and describe him as some lecherous old weirdo hunting women half his age. He would be ostracised, ridiculed for it, but it’s like the thought hasn’t crossed his mind, like he’s lacking some basic element of male shame.

I don’t like it. It freaks me out. I hate the way he holds her hostage after hours like this, and his habit of looking at her like she’s not flesh and blood, but some sort of otherworldly, celestial thing for him to rake his eyes over as he pleases. He enjoys her too much.  

“Hello,” I say with all the obnoxiousness I can muster, and they both look up. Perhaps I am projecting onto Steffen, this notion I’ve bamboozled him, pissed him off by interrupting his time with my girlfriend, while he innocently helps her with her essay on female painters of the 16th century, but I swear he gives me a look, and I give one in return. He’s so weedy. I wonder if he knows that if the rules of university were the same as the primitive, hierarchical rules of secondary school, I would have snapped him in half already. Look at him, and his stupid glasses and his stupid leather bag. 

“Danke, Steffen,” Astrid says, and scoops her books from his desk. I keep my eyes on him as she walks away, to make sure he’s not watching her do it, and I keep them on him until she has slipped out of the room ahead of me. I’ve never felt more like a territorial dog. 

“Good chat?” I say, my intentions of sounds casual coming out weird instead, while Astrid strolls along next to me, examining the paintings hung along the walls of the hallway. 

“Oh, yes, it was fine. We talked about Marietta Robusti, mostly. Steffan was showing me paintings of bowls of peaches and things.”

“Peaches?”

“Yeah, she painted peaches proficiently.”

“Right. You were just talking about peaches. He didn’t, like, say anything else to you, did he?”

“Not really. Why?”

She pulls on her coat as we exit to the courtyard and brace against the gust of icy wind. “Because of what I was saying before, about being careful around that guy. I think he wants more from you than discussion about bowls of peaches, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, I thought about that. You’re could be right.”

“I’m right?”

“Yes, I think he has a certain way of looking at me when we’re talking.”

“Oh,” I pause, having expected pushback. “Well, yeah, I think so too, and I think you should be careful about being alone with him.”

“Jude!” she cries, “He’s my tutor. I can’t stay away from him, exactly.”

“Yeah, but if he wants to drag you up every class to talk to you alone, then maybe you should pretend to be too busy. At least then you won’t be uncomfortable-”

“I’m not uncomfortable. He was saying interesting things about Marietta Robusti.”

“Marietta Robusti,” I echo, forlorn, and I hold the door to the café where we have our Friday afternoon coffee. “Maybe he should email you about Marietta Robusti and her famous peaches, huh? Has he heard of Gmail?”

“Or maybe you shouldn’t worry so much. It’s okay. He’s my tutor, and if he wants to speak to me about my assignments, then it is fine. If he wants to fuck me, I’ll say no. It’s like you think he will coerce me. Like he will lock the door of the classroom and trap me inside.”

“Yes, that’s what I was picturing. That he’d throw a big sack over you like a cartoon villain and run away with you slung over his shoulder.”

“Why do you say things like that? As if he has a sack waiting under his desk with which to steal women.”

I laugh at her unintentional comedy, and we reach the top of the queue. “Könnte ich bitte einen Latte, einen Americano und ein Stück von diesem Kuchen haben?”

The barista nods. 

“I don’t want any cake today. I’m not hungry,” Astrid says. As we shrug out of our coats and hang them across the back of our chairs, I nod, “I’ll have it all to myself, then.”

I reach across the table for her hand, and stroke my thumb across the sharp peaks and valleys of her knuckles. 

“Later, I think we should go to a play I’ve been interested in seeing,” she says. I pull a face, and she frowns. “What?”

“I hate plays.”

“That’s ridiculous. You cannot hate an entire art form.”

“I do. I just don’t like the way they talk and move their faces. It makes me cringe, and I find them unwatchable.”

“They need to talk and move their faces to say the lines.”

“We can’t go to a play, anyway. My friend Jen is coming.”

“Oh, is that today?” our order arrives, and she dunks her spoon through the foam of her latte to destroy the steamed milk heart on top. “I forgot it was happening.”

“Yeah, I’m leaving to collect her from the station in, like, half an hour.”

“That’s fine.”

“Are you still up for dinner at mine?”

“Oh, yes, we planned that too, didn’t we?” She exhales slowly. “Yes, I suppose. Though you live so much further from here than I do. Wouldn’t it be easier if we ate at my apartment?”

“What, like you’ll cook?”

“No, you can still cook, but at mine. Wouldn’t it be more comfortable?”

I take a contemplative bite of chocolate cake. Astrid’s apartment is smaller, but it has the unique benefit of not smelling like tobacco, and a heating system that works with some semblance of reliability. Still, we had a specific plan. Now I’ll have to tell Jonas.

“If that’s what you want,” I say with reluctance. “I suppose your place is a good bit nicer than mine.”

“I think Jen would like it.”

Jen wouldn’t care, but I nod in agreement. “Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be nice for her to go straight to a nice warm apartment, rather than, like… mine.”

“So true.” She steals a crumb of cake that crumbles onto my plate. “And I want to be in a good mood when I meet her. I feel I will be a little tired after travelling to yours.”

“Mm, good thinking.”

Astrid reaches for my fork, and I relinquish it. I watch as she digs wholeheartedly into the remains of my chocolate cake, then finally, in defeat, I slide the plate to her and let her finish the whole thing.

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