heysomeday

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Planers, 1875

All hail Gustave Caillebotte, the only Impressionist who bothered to say “You know what this art movement doesn’t have enough of? Shirtless rough trade, that’s what!” And then he became the change he wanted to see in the world, and I think that’s beautiful.

i saw this in a museum once and i gotta go off on this for a second– not only is it a gorgeous display of technical mastery over light, darkness, composition, form. it’s also a slap in the face to artistic conventions at the time. at the time, you could have nudes but they had to be heroic. they had to be virtuous. 1875, paris– art was supposed to be elevating. it was for the wealthy, it was to be uplifting, it was so everyone who commissioned the pictures could flex their classics education. okay?

so here’s the floor planers. they’re workmen. they’re workmen. they’re not some rent boy you dolled up with a helmet to be achilles or adonis. artists have been hornily painting working-class models (and sex-worker boyfriends) into their portraits forever, but you’re supposed to frame your appreciation for the male form as an intellectually irreproachable appreciation for the heroic body from literature, or, conversely you could depict the humble beauty of peasants, if you must, but it had to be a sort of ode to nature and the simple life. peasants could be art, as long as they were… out there, you know. in a field. being a metaphor. so there’s your options for looking at a shirtless guy: he’s got to be mythic.

but no. look, here, at the workmen. the floor planers. the workmen’s bodies not dressed up in sandals and helmet, in flowers, on a pedestal. the workmen not employed as some distant paean to an arcadian countryside, not stacking sheaves or holding a lamb or elevating the beauty of nature. they’re here, they’re urban, they’re in a room just like you might have. the workers of your world, in your home, in this reality. the male body as a very real, very nonfigurative tool, humble and employed, but still gorgeous. the beauty of the men that the patrician class pays not to see. the men who come into your mansion through the back door and work unseen and leave unseen. those men. there, right there, this painting, glowing and beautiful.

not adonis. but beautiful.

anyway at the time everyone fucking hated this picture because it’s a direct slap across the classist chops. they were BIG MAD, this was filthy, it was an affront. they hated it. the paris salon rejected it. established intellectuals didn’t want anything to do with this kind of confrontation. it wasn’t art.

i just love that.

like, look at those hot guys go. look at the shine on the floor and the way their arms are. no virtuous framing, no classic allusions. just some regular guys making the floors nice for a rich fucker who never laid eyes on them at all. but here they are: look at them.

they’re still beautiful.

its so sweet to me whenever a reconstruction of a neanderthal's face shows up on social media and people are like "oh they would have loved minecraft" "they would have loved weed brownies" it's so sweet. i hope that continues on to the next stage of human evolution. i want whoever comes next to dig me up, reconstruct my face, and for the girlbloggers of this far-flung civilization to go "duuuude she would have loved churfing back a freefing zarbee"

peach momoko

(original tweet)

I would like a million dollars so I can give it to this man to carve whatever he wants in wood surfaces all over my dream house and also any public buildings he feels like, please.

An empty vessel.

OOAK necklace ft. an antique tin pitcher, baroque pearls, & vintage chain.

NFS. Personal piece.

I found this tiny pitcher at Root’s flea market a few years ago. It was damaged, but I didn’t see the hole as an issue. It made for the perfect pendant & was only $1.

If I’m being real, it sat for a while. The idea for this necklace was immediate, but the execution was much slower. It’s funny how that happens. When I have an immediate fully-formed idea, I tend to push it to the back burner. I tell myself that there are other, more pressing & unformed ideas, that need my focus. Super inefficient process tbh.

Autumn is the time for reflection, & I guess this is that.

ii--