Tag Archives: Philadelphia

I just … I don’t … this can’t … Ugh. I have no words for what this is … or rather, what this isn’t. Hard to believe it made it into the museum, harder still to believe this series got its own multi-room gallery within said museum. Quick, someone please restore my faith in humanity.Continue reading “The Opposite of Art”

If you’re ever looking to pass the time with a super nerdy debate — and the old standards of politics, sex, and religion just aren’t doing it for you — I highly recommend bringing up The Little Mermaid. This coming from a girl who absolutely loved the movie when it came out. I used toContinue reading “Till Human Voices Wake Us”

A running theme in the many, many galleries within the halls of the two Philadelphia art museums we visited, was the way the public — in particular the art critics — of the time responded to art that broke the then-current convention. Spoiler: the responses were frequently, if not mostly, negative. In this case, CourbetContinue reading “Hermosa Mujer”

Every once in awhile a painting takes me back in time, to another place and age where I was surrounded by different things and engaged with different people. I get goosebumps as I see, just outside the corner of my eye, someone that I recognize. Someone that I swear, must have posed for this pieceContinue reading “The Belly of Montmartre”

“Why shouldn’t I be proud to be a woman? My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, told me again and again that it was woman’s mission to improve the human race…To his doctrines I owe my great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong, whose independence I’ll defend till my dyingContinue reading “Anything You Can Do …”

I often balk when museum signs point out a spot and urge me to “take a photo here”, and all around me are tourists, each with their phone — or an actual camera, heaven forfend! — obeying said directions. Maybe I don’t want to take this shot, I think to myself. Maybe I can findContinue reading “Bull-horn’d and wand’ring thro’ the gloom of Night”

They told Georges Seurat that his pointilist style would never work for painting nudes. He respectfully disagreed. Shot on Pixel 6 Pro.

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas I had to check the artist plaques twice to make sure I read them correctly. Yes, this is Degas, the same guy who had an obsession for painting ballerinas in various poses that pains me to think about the models whoContinue reading “Degas B-Sides”