#My History Post

[rustandruin]

the ghost of one specific homosexual cowboy regularly possesses Tumblr gays

#bringing back these iconic posts because I can never seem to find them or be able to reblog them #cowboy #cowboys #lgbtqia #tumblr history #rust and ruin blogs #gay cowboys #cowboy au #Wild West #westerns #these are some of my favourite things

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

#shut up e #long post #Saturday thoughts #this has been in my drafts for a week haha #also this is the heart of why AI art feels so wrong #forget the discussion of copyright and theft etc - even if models were only trained on public domain they would still feel very wrong #because they’re not art. art is the labor of creation #even commercial art and art commissioned by the popes and kings of history: there is humanity in the labor of it #unrelated: I did not know living in the Bronx was now something to brag about. How the fuck do y’all New Yorkers afford this city???

[curiositypolling]

pls reblog for sample size etc

follow for more occasional useless polls :)

#medical cw #people looking at my post history my be able to intuit i have adhd #last post got a few responses and i immediately wanted to know this

[gael-garcia]

The Palestinian (1977)

#the palestinian 1977 #vanessa redgrave #gaza #ramallah #tulkarm #ayn ghazal #jerusalem #bethlehem #haifa #jaffa #documentary #screencaps #post #history #tatreez #artistry #jerusalem and tulkarem my favess #textiles #art

[azuremist]

“Unfinished Painting” — Keith Haring

This painting was left intentionally incomplete. Haring began it when he was dying due to complications from AIDS, and knew he didn’t have much time left. The piece represents the incomplete lives of him and many others, lost to AIDS during the crisis.

“AIDS Memorial Quilt” — Multiple

This quilt is over 50 tons heavy, and one of, if not the, largest pieces of community folk art. Many people who died of AIDS did not receive funerals, due to social stigma and many funeral homes refusing to handle the deceased’s remains, so this was one of the only ways their lives could be celebrated. Each panel was created in recognition of someone who died due to AIDS, typically by that person’s loved ones.

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

This pile of candy weighs the same amount as Gonzalez-Torres’ partner, Ross Laycock, did. Ross Laycock had died due to AIDS-related complications earlier that same year. Visitors who see this piece are encouraged to take some of the candy. As they do so, the pile of candy weighs less and less, like how AIDS had deteriorated the body of Ross Laycock.

The SF Gay Men's Chorus

This photo was taken in 1993. The men in white are the surviving original members. Every man in black is standing in for an original member who lost their lives to AIDS.

“Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers); Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate, 1997” — John Boskovich

After the death of his lover, Stephen Earabino, from AIDS, Boskovich discovered that his family had completely cleared his room, including Boskovich’s own possessions, save for this fan. An entire person, existence and relationship had been erased, just like so many lives during the AIDS crisis. Boskovich encased the fan in Plexiglass, but added cutouts so that its air may be felt by the viewer, almost like an exhalation. In a sense, restoring Earabino’s breath.

“Blue” — Derek Jarman

This was Jarman’s final feature film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. These complications had left him visually impaired, able to only see in shades of blue. This film consists of a single shot of a saturated blue color, as the soundtrack to the film described Jarman’s life through narration, intercut with the adventures of Blue, a humanization of the color blue. The film's final moments consist of a set of repeated names: “John. Daniel. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul". These are the names of former lovers and friends of Jarman who had died due to AIDS.

“Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Created by the same man who created the previous untitled piece, this piece was also inspired by his lover’s deterioration and death due to AIDS. This piece consists of two perfectly alike clocks. Over the course of time, one of the clocks will fall out of sync with the other.

In a letter written to his lover about the piece, before his lover’s passing, Gonzalez-Tourres wrote, “Don't be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit were it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.”

Please feel free to reblog with more additions

#aids #aids pandemic #aids crisis #lgbt #lgbtqia #queer history #lgbt history #art tag #azure does a thing #(i cried while putting this post together.) #(something about art about those lost to aids makes me want to fall to my knees.) #(happy pride month) #long post #death tw

[charlotlie]

bitches be like “this is the best piece of literature i have ever read” and it’s either a book that took them six weeks to finish or a fanfic they read at 3 AM

#booklr #wdym the best book ever is a my hero academia fanfic?? #the secret history #tsh #richard papen #henry winter #odd eye fic #odd eye #marauders #andreil #classics #literature #from the sidelines #if we were villains #harry potter #drarry #bakudeku #franz kafka #i can’t believe i’m tagging drarry and franz kafka in the same post #or larry stylinson #😭😭😭 #1d #unbelievers #ao3 #fanfic #metamorphosis #this is the most controversial tagging i’ve ever done #help #mha #bnha

[adiradirim]

Sephardi & Romaniote Jewish Women's Clothing in the Byzantine and Ottoman Periods, illustrated by Nikos Stavroulakis

#jumblr #jewish #jewish art #jewish women #jewish history #sephardim #romaniotes #art #these are from all over. byzantium/constantinople/istanbul and smyrna/izmir and rhodes and adrianople/edirne and thessaloniki etc #shoutout to a fellow edirne girlie in the top right. #my posts

[fox-teeth]

Do you think someone will remember us?

DEEP TIME was originally published as an accordion-fold comic glued into a circular shape, so the story could be read backwards and forwards from any starting panel. Physical editions of DEEP TIME printed in bright red and teal risograph are avaliable in my shop.

#my artwork #comics #risograph #paleoblr #tiktaalik #paleolithic #astronaut #space exploration #dinosaur #history #artists on tumblr #my comics #long post

[dyke-delphinia]

3D Reconstruction of Tenochtitlán by Thomas Kole

#history #art #mesoamerica #archaeology #antiquities #mexico #aztec #indigenous #indigenous history #precolumbian #precolumbian art #tenochtitlan #my posts

[utterdrip]

plans? nay, on a wing & no prayer (inspired by @snowberry-pie’s post)

#frankie posts #bg3 spoilers #astarion #bg3 #astarion acunin #bg3: vid #i have more that are him failing nature/history/investigation checks #but those are moreso situational #whereas these hea literally like #no plans just vibes #my favorite one is the hammer lne #id never gotten it before and it made me LOL #starry comp

[kewpiekills]

gross old man drinking problem

#kewpie's art #pots n picks #chilchuck #senshi #suggestive #chilshi #sorry the last panel is…. like that #i’m really down bad if you couldn’t tell #i’m sure you could though. based on this and my previous posting history

[studywithjennifer]

whitby abbey, where dracula arrived in england

#dracula #dracula daily #count dracula #mina harker #jonathan harker #my good friend jonathan harker #literature #books #reading #bookblr #dark academia #academia #academia aesthetic #history #whitby #whitby abbey #my posts #york trip 2023

[bigfatbreak]

What does Tom think of Emilie after meeting her?

the only Agreste he's not massively disappointed with is Adrien himself. It's a good thing that's the only one he plans on sparing.

#my art #long post #dad villain au #emelie agreste #tom dupain cheng #gabriel agreste #nathalie sancoeur #gabriel has memories of being in an almost relationship with nath from the last timeline so he's still weirdly possessive of her #and emelie knows nathalie has a crush on her and has been using that to string her along so she always has an emotional crutch nearby #she does a similar thing to adrien but only because she's built him for it #its different with nath tho. they have history and she likes the rush of superiority she gets #also nath doesn't know that tom is viceroy. she just knows that tom can interpret the butterflies on 'viceroy's' behalf

[die-rosastrasse]

Ball gown, 1840-41

Maker: Unknown

From the collection of Wien Museum

#That's the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen #dress #clothing #historical dress #historical fashion #1840s #19th century fashion #ballgown #garments #costuming #historical costuming #victorian era #victorian fashion #19th century #my post #fashion #period fashion #historical clothing #fashion history #old fashion #iridescent #iridesence #fairy aesthetic #fairycore #light academia aesthetic #light academia

[thecryptkeeper]

inspired by the DK Eyewitness book series

#my art #art history #yes that is the same font as my last post ...

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

They had a fun corner in the natural history museum in Bern about the taxidermy process, and they showed the effect the eyes have on how realistic or uh. disturbing. a mount is

The first fox had all black eyes. Not super realistic for those who know red foxes usually have orange or greenish eyes, but still pretty cute

The second one had normal fox eyes. I think they could've gone with a size or two smaller, but still. Regular orange eyes with a vertical pupil as it should be. But then. Oh. Oh no.

Human eyes 👁👁

#vulture culture #taxidermy #fox. #natural history museum bern #museum #my post