My Paper Town: Eleanor & Park:
Why can’t I stop crying?
Why can’t I stop crying?This book. Eleanor & Park. The complex beauty of the story, a mix of harsh reality and fate and luck, blew me away. And now it’s 1 AM and my eyes hurt and I hate crying and I’m nowhere close to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about them. I can’t…
This is how you write a review.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48876989305.
Captain Herbert M. Sears on deck of the Schooner Yacht Constellation – John Singer Sargent
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48876079207.
John Singer Sargent
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892-1893
From an essay by Natasha Wallace at jssgallery.org:
In late 1892 John began work on the portrait of Lady Agnew, commissioned by Andrew Noel Agnew, a barrister who had inherited the baronetcy and estates of Lochnaw in Galloway. The sitter was to be of his young wife, Gertrude Vernon (1865-1932)…
Both Charteris and Richard Ormond with Elaine Kilmurry talk in their books about the nervous energy of the women in Sargent’s portraits. Lady Agnew is no exception here. Although she sits with a total comfortable familiarity with her surroundings and takes ownership of the room — the “languid pose”, her back to the corner of the chair, leg crossed and angled from her left to right, there is an energy (subtle though it is) which is palatable.
Besides the mouth and her cocked eyebrow, I notice also the hand that grips the chair, the ever so slight downward tilt of Lady Agnew’s head (contrasted by the hint of upward tilt to Madame X’s — although it actually dosen’t) — the tension here is undeniable.
The thing that strikes me over and over about his life is that John Sargent loved women — women who were strong in character, intelligent and of course beautiful women. He didn’t feel threatened by strong women (as some men can), and above all he truly enjoyed their presence. Yet John was not, by anyone’s measure, a wilting violet. In fact, he was a true man’s man (this comes from many sources) — over six feet tall and strong in physique and sporting a full beard. His constitution was incredible and he could push himself hard in work and he did. He was extremely bright, well read, and seemed to retain everything he read. He was opinionated, yet self abasing, and his manner was charming and humorous, though often incredably shy around those he didn’t know. He was a skilled pianist and played often for friends and played while painting with sitters, moving back and forth between piano and painting. It was from music that he seemed to draw his energy for painting and it was music that occupied many of his sittings…
Although I can not speak with authority here, to me, the painting of Lady Agnew shows John at one of his best and is among my personal favorites. Like Madame X, Lady Agnew shows herself to be confident in her ability, bright and comfortable in her femininity — almost post-feminist — a very modern woman (hey, it’s my opinion).
Can you imagine John Sargent in his studio sitting across from her? Can you see him playing on a piano, then moving between music and portrait working in bursts between Mozart and an inspiration as he paints her? I can. Lady Agnew is looking right at him. And it is through him that she looks at us.
Are John Singer Sargent’s portraits too flattering? Is this one too evocative? Or is it the subtle interplay between a beautiful woman sitting before a very charming man — faithfully captured — truthfully told?
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48869862723.
Millicent Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, The Duchess of Sutherland (1867 – 1955)
Artist: John Singer Sargent
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48867846589.
john singer sargent. MadameX digitally altered to show how it might have originally been painted. the suggestive nature of the fallen shoulder strap caused a scandal that ruined sargent’s early career and the life of his model. probably to try to protect her, sargent fixed the painting. insecure, judgmental, heartless people ruin lives and art…
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48864503543.
Old growth trees, British Columbia, Canada by Sockeyed
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48861524931.
John Singer Sargent. ‘Madame X’ (Mme. Pierre Gautreau), 1884, oil on canvas, 234.95 x 109.86 cm. Collection of the Met Museum, NYC.
Unlike traditional portraits, this one was not commissioned by the sitter herself. Rather, it was the request of the artist — he apparently was so taken by Gautreau’s pale skin, parisienne beauty and infamous persona that he just had to paint her. It is reported that Sargent courted Madame with letters and requests until she gave in. In other words, he begged her. It could be claimed that he was obsessed with her skin; it was the locus of her beauty and the seed of the scandal that surrounded this portrait.
Completed over numerous sittings, Sargent reduces Mme. Gautreau to her skin. Influenced by her own cultural milieu, Mme. Gautreau’s soft blue veins and purple arteries peak out beneath the shimmering layer of white lead powder, a common method for cosmetically enhancing the appearance of skin at this time. In the portrait, the body of Madame is twisted, forcing her face into extreme profile in order to place attention on the skin’s appearance rather than facial likeness. Madame Gautreau’s appearance and aristocratic positioning were so well-known that the visitors of the Paris Salon of 1884 were shocked that the artist removed her name from the title in order to preserve her anonymity — she could never have been anonymous due to her social status and appearance. Originally Sargent titled the portrait Madame *** , only later changing it to Madame X. While Sargent reduced Madame to her skin through his painting of her epidermis, he was not successful at hiding her identity.
This painting challenges the belief that the face is locus where identity is communicated in traditions of portraiture. In this case, it is the skin that communicates the essence of a person.
For an interesting analysis of the appearance of skin in this portrait, please see: Susan Sidlauskas. “Painting Skin: John Singer Sargent’s ‘Madame X’”American Art 15 (3) (Autumn 2001): 8-33.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48861341875.
You’ve changed your own life.
Oh. My. God. Does this human being ever get any more perfectISN’T HE JUST SO WONDERFUL
OH MY GOD IS HE JESUS
Extroverts are cool. Weird, but cool.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48860904027.
Not as cool as Lies’ reblog of Julianne Moore doing some Sargent, but here’s my buddy and me in the National Gallery enjoying our newfound love for the dude’s paintings.
This is awesome and adorable. Thank you for feeding my Sargent mania!
I love how you both matched the subjects in your respective paintings. Spontaneous high-art cosplay FTW!
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48860148462.
Julianne Moore as “Famous Works of Art” by Peter Linderbergh – for Harper’s Bazaar
Seated Woman With Bent Knee by Egon Schiele, La Grande Odalisque by Ingres, Saint Praxidis by Vermeer, The Cripple by John Currin, Les danseuses by Edgar Degas, Madame X by John Singer, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer, Woman With a Fan by Modigliani, Man Crazy Nurse #3 by Richard Prince, Adele Bloch Bauer I by Gustav Klimt.
ALL OF THEM THOUGH.
Reblogging for Madam X. I’m about to drop a bunch of John Singer Sargent on you.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48858311984.
dogespeed you! black emperor
This is my favorite Dogspeed track.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48852965189.
I love Moon. It’s like Jones said, you know how 2001 came out back in 1968 and most sci-fi movies since then have been crap? Let’s make another GOOD one.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48852728572.
Steam & Sail
In this photograph taken of Portsmouth Harbour in the 1890s we can see several grand old First Rate Men of War. The two first rates (ships of 100 guns or more) are the famous HMS Victory (right), which at the time would have been over 130 years old and HMS Duke of Wellington (left) which in its prime was home to over 130 guns.
While Victory & Wellington look much alike they in fact of very different generations, the Victory was commissioned in 1765 and had an active service life of some 80 years. While the Duke of Wellington was commissioned in 1852 and while she retained the masts and rigging akin to Victory she also had a 780hp steam boiler which powered a screw propeller. However, even though she boasted a mighty battery of guns and a new steam engine she was relegated to harbour duties after less than 10 years service. Such was the speed with which naval technology progressed. For many years Victory & Duke of Wellington shared the harbour of Portsmouth serving as training ships. The Duke of Wellington was sold and broken up in 1904.
Behind the Men of War in the distance can be seen numerous hulks of other older Men of War being used as store, maintenance or training ships and in amongst the forest of masts you can clearly make out numerous steam funnels of newer ships. In the foreground a steam launch and its crew pose for the camera.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48848964223.
I want to spend a moment to talk about a recent post by Jane.
When I found out about Jane Eyre and her Tumblr, I went through and checked out her archive. (My print-screens can be found here.) When she reblogged this post, I was surprised, as it was a bit out-of-the-ordinary.
Most of her posts are beautiful, slightly Gothic, very vintage photos. She will have the occasional song thrown in as well. But this post, reblogged from John Green (she appears to be a fan), give another hint to the darker nature that we will be seeing in The Autobiography of Jane Eyre. When this series is over she will not longer look the same. The events will change her, and she will have had her own battles. Jane is about to be coming-of-age. Right now, I believe we are seeing the before videos. I am interested to see the transition to the during and, finally, the after.
Oooooooh. I thought that post was a bit out of the ordinary for Jane’s Tumblr as well, but I didn’t really put much thought into it. I like this a lot.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48839191672.
hermoninny-loves-roonil-wazlib:
Powerful Quotes on Minimal Design by Ryan McArthur
Of course Edison would say that, since he stole 99% of his shit from other people and only put in about 1% inspiration in there. LAWL.
When I think of Thomas Edison, I think of the movie Armageddon.
Deep Impact (or, in Thomas Edison’s case, Nikola Tesla) came out first and presented a better story, but no one remembers it.
Everyone remembers Armageddon…even if they don’t like it, they remember it.
For what it’s worth, I remember Deep Impact way better than Armageddon. I’ve seen the former twice by choice; the latter only once and under duress. I kind of hate everything about Michael Bay’s movies.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48838557900.
New Jane Eyre video! :D
Secret: The actress who plays Jane did half of the drawings the set designer Jessica did the other half!
Enjoy!
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48831660098.
This bird is called a Sora.
One of the things that’s really compelling for me about bird watching is the challenge of identifying the bird. And not just the challenge, but what the challenge reveals about the way my brain works (or doesn’t).
A Sora is not a particularly difficult bird to identify. It’s difficult to see, because it’s a rail, and rails are fat and tasty and survive mostly by being really good at hiding in reeds near the water and never coming into view unless you, the birdwatcher, are really patient and quiet and a little lucky.
Soras are probably the easiest of the rails to get a glimpse of, at least in my experience, but they still are stuck firmly in that part of my brain reserved for rails: Secretive. Hard to see. Always in the reeds near water.
So it was interesting, and fun, when one winter day in a snowstorm at 9,000 feet in the eastern Sierra Nevada, probably miles from the nearest water that wasn’t covered by ice, my wife and I glanced out the window of our condo and saw a bird climbing around in the branches of a nearby lodgepole pine. It was moving awkwardly from branch to branch, shaking off the snow with its giant feet, and I was just agog. Because I’d been birding for a couple of decades, and I was having what was at that point a very unfamiliar experience: I was looking at a bird, had a good view of it, and had no clue what family it was in, to say nothing of genus or species. My brain just could not put together what I was seeing: It was in a pine tree, in the snow, and it just looked completely wrong. It was not any kind of bird that I could imagine being there.
I think it probably took me a good 20 seconds, looking at the bird, talking about it with Linda, before the logjam in my brain suddenly gave way and the truth flooded over me: It was a Sora. And then everything in the world made sense again.
Those 20 seconds were awesome.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48819541270.
KHALEESIS GET SHIT DONE
During this scene I finally understood something I’d been wondering about for a while: what all those blocks being pulled out of the city are in the title sequence. They’re her troops marching out to war.
That was cool.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48819008765.
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