So somebody on my Facebook posted this. And I’ve seen sooooo many memes like it. Images of a canvas with nothing but a slash cut into it, or a giant blurry square of color, or a black circle on a white canvas. There are always hundreds of comments about how anyone could do that and it isn’t really art, or stories of the time someone dropped a glove on the floor of a museum and people started discussing the meaning of the piece, assuming it was an abstract found-objects type of sculpture.
The painting on the left is a bay or lake or harbor with mountains in the background and some people going about their day in the foreground. It’s very pretty and it is skillfully painted. It’s a nice piece of art. It’s also just a landscape. I don’t recognize a signature style, the subject matter is far too common to narrow it down. I have no idea who painted that image.
The painting on the right I recognized immediately. When I was studying abstraction and non-representational art, I didn’t study this painter in depth, but I remember the day we learned about him and specifically about this series of paintings. His name was Ad Reinhart, and this is one painting from a series he called the ultimate paintings. (Not ultimate as in the best, but ultimate as in last.)
The day that my art history teacher showed us Ad Reinhart’s paintings, one guy in the class scoffed and made a comment that it was a scam, that Reinhart had slapped some black paint on the canvas and pretentious people who wanted to look smart gave him money for it. My teacher shut him down immediately. She told him that this is not a canvas that someone just painted black. It isn’t easy to tell from this photo, but there are groups of color, usually squares of very very very dark blue or red or green or brown. They are so dark that, if you saw them on their own, you would call each of them black. But when they are side by side their differences are apparent. Initially you stare at the piece thinking that THAT corner of the canvas is TRUE black. Then you begin to wonder if it is a deep green that only appears black because the area next to it is a deep, deep red. Or perhaps the “blue” is the true black and that red is actually brown. Or perhaps the blue is violet and the color next to it is the true black. The piece challenges the viewer’s perception. By the time you move on to the next painting, you’re left to wonder if maybe there have been other instances in which you believe something to be true but your perception is warped by some outside factor. And then you wonder if ANY of the colors were truly black. How can anything be cut and dry, black and white, when even black itself isn’t as absolute as you thought it was?
People need to understand that not all art is about portraying a realistic image, and that technical skills (like the ability to paint a scene that looks as though it may have been photographed) are not the only kind of artistic skills. Some art is meant to be pretty or look like something. Other art is meant to carry a message or an idea, to provoke thought.
Reinhart’s art is utterly genius.
“But anyone could have done that! It doesn’t take any special skill! I could have done that!”
Ok. Maybe you could have. But you didn’t.
Give abstract art some respect. It’s more important than you realize.
Ad Reinhart did some great comics about interpreting art too
Also a lot of paintings like this will not get properly captured by photography at all. There’s definitely a lot of pretentious bullshit made to pander to fuckwit rivh snobs, but there is also a lot of stuff that may look simple at first glance, but is actually quite complex and took a lot of skill and hard work
this isn’t a shitpost. in skyrim’s dragon language there are pairs of distinct words such as: ‘nid’ (no/none), ‘mid’ (loyal/loyalty), ‘mu’ (we) vs ‘nu’ (now), and ‘aan’ (an) vs ‘aam’ (to serve). this indicates that dragons are able to distinguish between the sounds ‘m’ and ‘n’.
the only difference between ‘m’ and ‘n’ is that the latter is formed with the tongue, while the former is produced with the lips
therefore, dragons have lips
This is some solid linguistic field work and I look forward to the followup post.
i hope everyone is following TNG Season 8 on twitter because it’s fucking hilarious like
I JUST
lord jesus
Always reblog for the SCREAMING DISEASE
(via )
Anonymous asked: ok but what MAKES austin 'weird'? like i visited there about a month back and??? everyone wass wearing 'keep austin weird' shirts. im so lost
So the “keep Austin weird” thing actually began as a small business promotional campaign in Austin. “Keep Austin Local”, if you will. However this mantra expanded to define the personality of the city and how unusual Austin is when compared to the rest of Texas (if not the stereotypical South as a whole).
Austin is very much the Portland/San Fransisco of the south. This is where the beatniks and hippies flocked during the infancy of their movements, and their bohemian attitudes left an indelible mark on the city. The city of Austin isn’t perfect, but as a whole it promotes environmentally friendly practices, pedestrian lifestyles, artistic expression, and is generally very accommodating to people of all walks of lives. Which compared to the “idea” of Texas makes it seem “weird”.
While the fandom at large was basking in the warm sapphic phosphorescence of Pearl’s unbridled gayness, I have spent the last 24 hours fixating on a number of weird mysteries surrounding Pearl’s nameless new girlfriend.
Now, it’s not exactly a spoiler to say this lady looks like rose, but I don’t think we as a fandom have addressed just how fucking weird this is. Mystery girl isn’t just tall, she’s about as tall as Rose was. Rose herself was pegged as being around 10 feet tall (by comparison, the tallest human on record was only 8′11″).
In other words, Mystery Girl is taller than any human alive. Now, I was willing to brush this off, but thats only the start of the weirdness. Remember the discussion about her Pink hair and how Steven speculated that she dyed it? As plausible as it sounded, that claim was never actually confirmed. When Pearl actually asked her, she completely deflected the question and asked Pearl to tell her instead. And when Pearl said she was a hologram, what did mystery girl say?
“I know how that is”
Okay, these clearly aren’t just a bunch of circumstantial similarities. Something smells fucking icthyan in here willing to suggest that this mystery girl is ANOTHER Rose Quartz.
Yes, I just said there was a second Rose Quartz in play, and it’s not as crazy as it sounds. A lot of people assume Rose was some sort of unique gem, but Bismuth stated pretty damn clearly this was not the case
Bismuth: Just another Quartz soldier, made right here in the dirt, but she was different. And she was different because she decided to be.
There are other Roses out there, or at least there were before the rebellion. I don’t doubt that after Rose became the face of the rebellion the Diamonds would have gotten rid of any imitators, and when that happened the only option a non-rebel Rose Quartz would have would be to go into hiding among the local population, to take a human name and wear human clothing.
The only other way we could see another Rose Quartz is if they were a fugitive like her. A gem hiding in plain sight, a twist so huge that the crew can’t even let her speak if they want to preserve it, lest people notice that she has the same voice actress as an identical gem. What a coincidence then that our Mystery Girl doesn’t speak in the episode all about her
But… she has ears…
You’re right. Clearly she isn’t another rose quartz, she’s pink diamond
